How I Came To Be Called AM

 

 

In 1949, I was born into this Earth phase of my spiritual journey with the name of Jerry Goodenough. At eleven months of age, I was adopted and given the name of Arthur Mosley. When I was an actor in the 1970’s, I used the name of Al Minetti as my stage name. After a few years of using the name of Al Minetti, I had almost forgotten the name my adopted mother gave me was Arthur Mosley. I thought of myself as Al Minetti and had even built a history to go along with the name. Italians were the rage in the movies and I had built a history that gave me an Italian background and childhood. There is an old acting expression, "The actor can be so taken in by the character he or she is performing that he or she starts believing he or she is the character being performed". People in the acting profession seldom use their birth name so the IRS allowed us to have two names associated with one social security number. This was because our pay checks usually were made out in the name we were using professionally and not the name we were given at birth.  I still have two social security cards with the same social security number. One says Arthur Mosley and the other one says Al Minetti.

 

One day I was walking down the street in front of the Grand Central Terminal in New York City and all of a sudden I heard someone behind me say, "Arthur Mosley". I actually took a couple of additional steps before I realized the person was speaking to me. I turned around and it was someone from my home town in the Midwest whom I had not seen for at least ten years. Small world isn't it?

 

I was shocked that it took me a minute to realize that he was speaking to me. After all, I was Al Minetti. Wasn't I?  I had almost stopped thinking of myself as Arthur Mosley.

 

My first wife had died when I was 21 Earth years and I decided I did not want to act anymore.  I wanted to be as real as possible and acting was not a way I saw as helping me to be real.  I decided I should start using the name of Arthur Mosley again. As I began to use the name Arthur Mosley again, I began to notice something fascinating. When someone would speak to me using the name Arthur Mosley, parts of me would respond and some other parts would not respond. When someone would use the name Al Minetti, other parts of me would respond and different parts of me would not respond. The fascinating part was that sometimes, parts of both the self-identity of Arthur Mosley and the self-Identity of Al Minetti would BOTH respond. Very interesting how different parts of me would respond to each name and sometimes the same parts would respond to both names.

 

I began to realize that even the name we use as a self-reference will have an influence on our personality and self-image. Al Minetti was an Italian lover. A suave and sexy Italian stud. Arthur Mosley was more intellectual and refined. Sort of the King Arthur type. Each name even had different ways of acting with other people and used different words in conversations.

 

I began to feel fear. Fear that the name I would choose to use in the world would impact my personality and world-view even in ways I probably would not be aware. I would be conditioning my experience of life by the very name I called myself and the name others called me. The name they called me would influence the way they saw me and identified with me. It would influence how the rest of the world would even treat me.

 

I asked God what name I should use going into the future? What name would be the best for my spiritual growth? After a couple of weeks, I had my answer. I was managing singers at the time and writing my own contracts. In the contracts, you signed your name in a couple of places but you signed your initials in ten, twenty and even more places. One day I was signing a contract and signing AM, AM, AM, AM, AM all through the contract. All of a sudden I realized that the initials, AM, were the same for both Arthur Mosley and Al Minetti. Sort of a synthesis of both identities. I had been using these initials for many years regardless of whether I referred to myself as Arthur Mosley or Al Minetti.

 

I then looked up the definition of the word "am" in the dictionary. The dictionary said that "am was an English verb: Present tense, first person, singular form of the verb "be". "I am". What better to call myself but AM? One of the least limiting names I could have and one of the least limiting names to influence my self-identity. AND I did not even have to change my initials. Every time I had signed my initials on anything since I was one Earth year in age had the same initials, whether I was using the name and self identity of either Arthur Mosley OR Al Minetti. I had asked God what I should call myself and the name was right in front of me. It seemed so right.

 

Using the name AM definitely helped to integrate the Arthur and the Al of me. However, when I would go to speak with religious and spiritual groups, some found it difficult to call me AM because of the emotional and mental baggage they brought to identifying me with the name AM. They wanted to call me Arthur, Al or even George - it was then easier for them to compartmentalize me in their minds and label me with an identity they could live with. After all, the I AM is what they called God. Was I calling myself GOD? No, I was calling myself AM.

 

We tend to want an identity that we can quantify and put into compartments. It is safer this way. A known identity is not a threat. We want to compartmentalize our self-identity and the identity we have of others. Everything in compartments and nobody is out of line. Safety and security in compartments.

 

Am I Jerry, Arthur or Al?  Am I some of them but not all of them? Am I all three or none of them?  I am all of them and infinitely more than all of them could ever be.

 

They are only labels that give me an idea of when other spirit-humans are referring or speaking to me.

 

Therefore, just call me AM and let us be on our way