I’m Jim Wert and my primary interest, if it can be said to be one thing, is to support the awakening and empowering of the Divine Feminine energies in all people and the culture. For the past two years I have been leading Sacred Cacao Ceremonies in DC, Maryland and Virginia.
Cacao has been dubbed ‘The Food for the Shift’. An Indigenous myth tells us that whenever the balance between humans and nature becomes threatened, cacao comes from the rainforest to open people’s hearts and return us all to harmony.
To this end, I participate in, and am very much interested in, continuing discussions on what a sustainable and fully functional economic system might look like and what kind of financial system is evolving, or could evolve, to support the development of such an economic system. Until April 1, 2011, I was a senior counsel in the Legislative Counsel’s Office of the US House of Representatives where I worked for almost 31 years, 26 of them writing banking, financial services, credit, and coins and currency legislation and laws. My role was not a policy-making one and I wrote for all points of view. (Politically nonpartisan and independent office). Before that, I had spent some time as campus co-coordinator against the Viet Nam war on my college campus in the late 60s. I led a contingent to the March on Washington in November, 1969, and dropped out of university very soon after that. The next several years were spent laboring on large construction projects, often as foreman, working with my father in our small electrical contracting business, and engaging in extended travel and other forms of exploration and experimentation. In 1973, I attended a Sunday service with Kriyananda in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas: my first satsang. I corresponded briefly with Kriyananda, after returning home and began a long-distance course of study shortly thereafter with the Self-Realization Fellowship (yoga classes were rare and unknown in most places, and none were available near me). Soon a student of Swami Rama came to town and began teaching classes which led to my meeting with and studying the teachings of Swami Rama of the Himalayan Institute. After I began my legal career in Washington, DC, several years later, the personal and spiritual journey continued. This included training for and becoming a Certified Polarity Therapist. I was involved in a number of ways and in a number of positions with the ManKind Project (an international men’s organization for the initiation of men into lives of accountability and service), and through the auspices of MKP I received and then led multicultural awareness trainings, and led multicultural conversation circles, for over a decade. The MKP work included a number of leadership and shadow work trainings as well as deep work in weekly group meetings for a number of years and participating on the staff of weekend trainings. During that period I was introduced to kundalini yoga and practiced it rather intensively for several years until an extended and intense legislative scheduled blasted it off my schedule and the ashram where I attended classes closed. I attended several winter solstice intensives with Yogi Bhajan who gave me my name Amrit Singh. My interest in developing ways to restore and sustain right-brain functions and qualities like nurturing, cooperation, and intuition came as a result of the multicultural awareness training and processes and some very powerful transformative experiences on empowerment trainings with David Quigley of the Alchemical Institute of Hypnosis. (Joined 4th Nov 2013)
