Psychedelic Wild Child: Coming of Age in The Source Family Cult{ure}

Dawn became a part of a movement destined to change the way people think, act, and interconnect to seek truth, fairness, and cosmic consciousness. While the culture of being a Jew had been grounding in her life, the religion left questions with big blank answers. While she had a large circle of family, the richness of her legacy was unknown before her great-grandparents after the Holocaust, giving Dawn a deeper sense of disillusionment. She became driven to explore alternative spirituality.

Times were changing in the 60s & 70s. Equal rights for all people especially women were in focus. Watergate brought down a government that would no longer operate business as usual. Martin Luther King proved that black people deserved as much respect as any other human.

As a teen, Dawn experimented with drugs, which opened her mind and lifted her boundaries. She found her way to the west coast encountering Father Yod and The Source Restaurant in LA. After listening to Father Yod in morning class, she knew The Source Family was her destiny and it began a five year trek with them through experimental living. They shared all their resources, everyone worked in some way either at the restaurant or taking care of their homes or children, and they practiced meditation daily alongside an organic vegetarian lifestyle. They learned to value the finer qualities of everything in life. And they all accepted Father Yod as their Spiritual Father.

Father Yod had a deep intuition and studied many different spiritual practices bringing all of his knowledge to the mix to experiment with a lifestyle that could only be lived communally and with complete trust. He was never dogmatic and many times abandoned ideas after they proved unworkable. He sought to live in harmony with the laws of nature and wished to create a utopian life for his spiritual children. He brought them all to the Hawaiian Islands after a world search for a home. But it all unwound in Hawaii, and Dawn eventually was left to take her experience and move on to grasp her own power and find her own way.

Dawn is still the Wild Child she ever was.

Includes many black & white photos from that time.