From MSIA Staff: Leaving. Beautiful word. My favorite thing to do, my goal in life, my first love. If I could spend my life leaving I wouldn’t ask for anything more.

Suitcases slowly pile up in the airport van in the early morning at Mandeville, and the group around the kitchen table grows to half a dozen.

The amount of light, ease and grace that’s around J-R’s physical body (not from his body or personality) is difficult to describe. The workings of life seem frictionless. It’s as though you were to accumulate the happiness that would derive from all of life occurring perfectly, exactly as you would want it, and take that accumulated joy and cram it into the imperfect, bumpy ride that is day-to-day living in the physical world. Nothing outwardly has changed but everything has changed.

Difficult to describe. Here’s another way: I’m a pretty sensitive guy and I can feel the depression and fear when people express in a contracted, materialistic way—especially when they create something, like art, or a TV show, or TV news. When I’m at home I turn it off. But in the van going to the airport there’s some awful TV news show on the screen and all I can see is the beauty of people working out their little dramas, and the great courage and nobility of souls coming to this planet to overcome it and get a taste of the divine. What was disgusting and mildly painful becomes as wondrous and awe-inspiring as the stars and the trees and the mountains.

The people around J-R have a devotion to the great pursuit of happiness. In the kitchen at Mandeville getting ready to leave, John Morton and Leigh radiate, Jsu clowns around, Laurie giggles, Delile (J-R’s brother) quietly attends to his big bowl of oatmeal, every once in a while looking up with a mischievous smile…a musical comedy of odd personalities thoroughly enjoying each other’s oddness and their own, and taking joy in leaving.

We get to the airport greeted by some more of the crew. Watching Jsu organize, direct, herd our little group, schmooze the ticket agents, simultaneously prodding and soothing, is fun to watch. (We should sell instructional videos on how to win people over in daily life, with Jsu at a ticket counter going through all his moves, and then emerging from the scene to explain to the camera how he did that, the mechanics of the interaction, with each person’s motivation and how to respond. Then we should get him to watch his own videos so he can do it more often.)

He disarms people. We all disarm people. As we line up at the ticket counter Julie sees a security guard dressed in black with a flak jacket and a big machine gun, and says, “Boy you’re really packing,” and he says, “and you should see my gun too,” and everyone cracks up. He takes a bow for the joke. Lightening the world one person at a time.

It’s the first day of the trip. Everyone is fresh, looking forward, and happy to be leaving. We’ll see if it lasts. We get ourselves and all the equipment to the gate and take off.

After landing in Israel we meet Benji, our tour guide on so many trips here with J-R in the ’80s and ’90s. After we check into the hotel we take a walk through the old section of Jerusalem.

The preparations are starting, and everyone’s getting their bearings. (We haven’t been here for 5 years.) There’s still time, so I’d say get over here if you can. And most people can, they just won’t, for whatever reason. The energy is already incredible. J-R has put his body on the line to be here, for all of us. He’s holding open a door in a hurricane. It’s heroic. These trips, for me, are opportunities to release lifetimes karma and make gains inwardly that seem impossible in daily life. I’ve never lost anything from participating in any part of my life. It’s when I hold out that I lose. There’s always only one chance, multiplied many times over. And, even though there have been a lot of them, sometimes that one chance is the last one, but you never know it until the game is done.

Leaving.

Breakfast is a big Israeli buffet including lots of dairy (yogurts, cheeses), fresh dates (not the dried ones—a middle east treat), eggs, smoked fish, salads, breads and pastries, a very slightly sweetened cheesecake that’s more like a meal than a dessert. We all bring our laptops and phones, so we turn it into an American breakfast. Always working and always on vacation, as J-R says.

We take a walk on top of the wall that surrounds the old city of Jerusalem, and then end up in the Muslim Quarter on our way out. A small taste of what’s to come when the group tours the city later on. Then there are planning meetings with Benji.

Jsu complained last night that I’m not on Facebook anymore. My attitude is that there isn’t anyone on Facebook. Those are words and pictures; they’re not people. After zonking out in jet-lag-coma for part of the afternoon, I spend some time getting back on Facebook. It’s fun because there are so many choices. Right now I’m a 103-year-old woman who was born in Bora Bora. (I tried telling them I was a hermaphrodite—the “truth”—but the page wouldn’t let me.) I went to the College of the Sequoias but dropped out in my sophomore year because I changed my mind and didn’t want to be a sequoia anymore. My sister is Eve Ryone and my brother is Al L. Ofus.

Like any other virtual reality or hallucination it’s temporarily freeing, but I learn that I haven’t really left because I find myself back again. So I go and do SE’s so I can really leave instead of virtually leave.

Always working and always on vacation.

The last couple of days have been quiet—recuperating from the flight and the time change, taking walks, planning, preparing for the upcoming tours and sharing. We go on some pre-tour walks. We find out that there is a brief window when the Temple Mount is accessible to tourists, and John Morton and a few of us go there on Sunday morning.

We find a tour guide and explore the magnificent architecture that includes the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall, and remnants of ancient temples. We have to cover up in order to respect the Muslim dress code. Nat forgets and wears shorts, so he has to buy a makeshift skirt to cover his legs. We go through metal detectors to enter this disputed territory which, depending on your point of view, is either one of the most ancient and holy sites for the Jews and Muslims, or the arena for some of the world’s more deranged people to fight over dirt, or ideas about dirt. (In the USA we fight about money, which may be slightly less deranged, only because money can usually help you avoid having to deal with dirt and ideas.) From the Mount we can also get a view of many of the places where Jesus walked, and we follow the Via Dolorosa (where he carried the cross) on our way out of the old city.

Also included are some shots of the old city, and areas around the old city, that we explored during our time before the trip officially begins.

There are close of 140 of us in MSIA from around the world now gathered in Jerusalem in celebration of John-Roger and his life and ministry. Here is a prayer and some photo images from Jerusalem. We welcome your joining in through the sharings via the New Day Herald and MSIA Soul Cam.

Blessing of Peace of the Spiritual Warrior

Dear God, we ask for a blessing of forgetting, so what has happened becomes more and more invisible.

As Spiritual Warriors, we know that we will be attacked either from within, where the greater negativity can be found, or from without, where the world in the flow of the karma and negativity will bring us something to turn into peace.

As we can do it in this place, it can be done for the entire planet.

Baruch Bashan – The Blessings Already Are

John Morton

Everyone has been arriving for the last couple of days, and we just had our orientation meeting tonight. Lots of laughter and hugs, and lots of new faces—people who haven’t been on our middle east trips before. Wonderful to see new people getting the experience. John calls in the Light and Jsu and Benji take care of logistics and give us an introduction to the trip. John does a blessing at the end. All of this is being broadcast live to our online participants. There is a little over 150 of us here in Jerusalem including staff. Our team of guides from the PAT IV’s of the 80’s and 90’s are here: Benji, Shraga, and Birte. T-shirts and nametags are given out. It’s just like the PAT IV’s but with a relaxed quality that comes from experience, and from a lot of the participants being older and wiser. No drama, no trauma. Coming up are 3 days of touring. On the buses at 8:07 am tomorrow for tours of the old city of Jerusalem. No shorts—and women, cover up.

The day starts and ends with a view of the Old City of Jerusalem from our outdoor dining area. From the rising sun to the rising full moon.

It’s not too different from the old PAT IV tours with J-R. We meet in front of the hotel and three buses take us to the Old City of Jerusalem for a walking tour, each with its own guide so we can split up into smaller groups where it’s necessary. We listen to our guides on FM radios fed by small transmitters that the guides carry.

It’s the Jesus day. We visit sites where Jesus supposedly was crucified, buried, cried, walked, or talked. Some of them feel real and some don’t. What’s real? For me it’s where I experience more of my Self. Luckily I’m not clairvoyant so I get more time to experience myself, and less time involved in what’s factually or historically accurate.

In David Sand world there’s something going on at Gethsemane, which means that my consciousness comes into focus there, and unconscious forms that were in there running me can be seen, defined, and transformed. Then what was in the dark of the unconscious becomes a beautiful light that illuminates so many new parts of myself that it’s a delight and a revelation and a theme that keeps revealing new aspects of itself for hours. (Michael Hayes seems to be having some sort of conniption there at Gethsemane so I must be right.)

Different energies or beings illuminate different areas; they have keys to different doors. For me, the key that Jesus carries is an overcoming of the world, of the “law” of structure and form, of what’s negative; and a transformation of the earth experience, or what’s impure, into purity and experience of the Spirit. I experience him as an almost unbearable sweetness, similar to when you see a little baby. That purity awakens the heart, opens me up and persuades me to allow a little more light to come in.

All day long as we walk along I’m looking at new aspects of what’s “impure” or “experienced” in me and they’re turned into new sources of innocence, as I look at where I’ve been following the law of right/wrong, structures and concepts instead of the joy of the heart. There is a burst of light at first when we tour the area and it reveals its gift, and then an expansion and exposition as it works its way through me. All of this as I seem to be walking around taking photos for the rest of the day, touring other places that are so filled with psychic energies and people’s desires that I have no idea if it was Jesus who was there or the devil.

Oh yeah I’m supposed to tell you about what we did.

We start out on the Mount of Olives, getting a view of Jerusalem and a historical talk by Benji. It’s time for getting oriented, getting your photo taken on a camel, (or on a white donkey of you’re the Messiah like Julie Lurie), getting a group photo.

Then we descend into the Old City on foot, visiting the Church of Dominus Flevit and its gardens where Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and where John gives a powerful seminar; the Garden of Gethsemane and its church; the Western (“Wailing”) Wall; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried; and the tomb of King David. Then a huge family-style lunch at an Armenian restaurant and back to the hotel.

Today the buses take us to Galilee, Capernaum, and the Jordan River. It’s a peaceful, relaxed day. Sweltering heat and bright sun. In the slideshow you can see shots of the countryside taken through the bus window.

After a couple of hours in the buses we arrive at the Sea of Galilee. Our first stop is at the Mount of Beatitudes, site of Jesus’ sermon. Benji gives us some historical background, and John Morton does a seminar overlooking Galilee. Even though he is sharing some difficult personal stuff, there is a peace that emanates through it all, dissolving all the bumps of the bus ride and transporting us into the silky, floaty, warm-water feeling of Traveler-World.

We spacily (new word) glide through the gardens and board the buses again and go to nearby Capernaum, where Jesus first taught and selected many of his disciples. Looks like another ruin to me. My roommate Paul later tells me there was a nice energy there but I was just hot. One man’s energy is another man’s sweaty t-shirt, and spirit may be there but my attention isn’t.

Then we’re on a cruise on the Sea of Galilee, and then on to baptisms in the Jordan River. One of those rare instances in MSIA where the outer beauty and grace matches the majesty of what’s going on inwardly. A little break from the ordinariness that J-R has always promoted as a way of keeping us grounded and de-fanging the ego. For an hour or two we are angels floating in perfect-temperature water, dunking each other, smiling into each other’s eyes, crying, laughing, going for little swims, just floating and being, all dressed alike so that outer personality-distinctions melt. I’ve included a few series of several shots of a single person or pair to convey a better sense of the experience.

There’s no way to completely escape the ordinariness of the earth however, and here it’s thousands of little fishes that harmlessly nibble-kiss-tickle our feet and legs. There’s a photo of them swarming around Brooke Danza’s feet.

Whenever there is some big energetic event in MSIA, like this baptism, I end up, as I’m sure many people do, looking inside myself to sum up and figure out what has changed inside me. Sometimes the change happens right away and sometimes it’s a delayed reaction. No way to predict. This time I come up out of the water and…nothing right away. But a short time later I check inside and…wow, my heart center is different. Something got lifted or taken. It’s several pounds lighter. It’s all different in there. Thanks.

Unfortunately we have to leave our angel-kingdom but fortunately we are going to dinner, at a restaurant right on the sea. Best salmon ever—line caught, steamed, then broiled over several different kinds of wood, including olive wood.

Towards the end of the meal we get a special gift: A huge, yellow full moon rises over the opposite shore. Everybody scrambles to get photos.

Then back on the buses, where we all zonk out until we get back to the hotel.

The God Round

Looks like there are spontaneous tours and excursions happening outside of the planned Light Tour. We’re calling these “God Rounds”, named after the optional late-night processes at PAT Trainings and Living in Grace, where some people stay after the end of each day to get that extra hit of energy and ride it all the way—100%. And as J-R has said, 100% is God.

Our first God Round is a night trip into the Palestinian-controlled West Bank to the little town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. We come back from a whole day of touring in the desert heat and sun, around 4 hours in buses, arrive at our hotel at about 10 pm, and wild-man Jsu Garcia is waiting in front of the hotel asking me, “Want to go get into a taxi and go to Bethlehem?”

I flip through a whole series of reactions in a few seconds. At first it’s, “Are you nuts?” The answer to that is obvious so there’s no need to even ask the question. Zeus has never claimed or even pretended to sanity. My second reaction is, “I need my rest,” which I know is a lie because being on these trips, in this kind of proximity to the energy Source, is a whole different world from the world of sleep, food, comfort, etc. I feel like we’re as far away from that world as we are from Los Angeles—even farther, actually, because in this world it’s as though Los Angeles is a city that we’ve read about in history books that was bombed to smithereens a few centuries ago.

My third reaction is trepidation because we’re going into an area of greater poverty, more violence, fewer rules…and it’s nighttime…and there’s been a lot of Palestinian-Israeli fighting lately. But we’re as far away from the world of fear as we are from the world of sleep and comfort, so the trepidation vaporizes in a few seconds, and I put as many of my valuables in my room as possible, go back downstairs, and get in a cab with Jsu, Nathaniel, and Rick Ojeda.

Our Israeli cab driver can’t go into Palestinian territory so he has to leave us at the border, then we’ll walk through the checkpoint, and get a Palestinian cab on the other side. We get his phone number so we can call him to come pick us up on the Israeli side when we leave. He says they’d kill him if he tried to drive in there in his Israeli cab. That makes me start thinking about my Jewish genetics, (and people very quickly and intuitively size up genetic types over here) so I tell the other guys, half-jokingly, to make sure they say I’m Italian if anybody asks. (Of course being American is totally different from being Israeli, and they’re accustomed to tourists there, with lots of them coming in the daytime.)

After a short drive we leave our Israeli cab driver at the checkpoint, pass the soldier with the machine gun, go through the series of gates and turnstiles that creates a pathway through the walls, turrets and barbed wire, and exit into a kind of seedy film-noir setting—poverty, a feeling of darkness and hopelessness, trash all over the streets. A stark contrast to the clean, well-lit streets just a few feet away on the other side of the wall. We’re definitely in brown-people-world and we’ve left white-world behind. We get into a cab and ask to go to the Church of the Nativity, which marks the birthplace of Jesus, and take some pictures.

It’s near a square, a nighttime scene of young guys hanging out, kicking a soccer ball around, a mosque on the other side of the square. (No women around of course.) Too late to get into the Church of the Nativity. So we drive around, ending up at the famous wall, and start thinking about how J-R put a “light-worm” in the Berlin Wall a short time before it came down. No political commentary intended here, or any kind of taking sides. Just a knowing that we’ve met the enemy and he is us. And we’re him. And in the friction of the two a creativity is ignited that expresses itself in some great graffiti on the wall, which reminds us again of Berlin. We take some shots which include two works by the famous graffiti artist Banksy. (The dove and the girl patting down the soldier that you see in the slideshow are his works.) The wall is a kind of museum, but it’s a brown-people museum that isn’t wealthy, comfortable, or indoors. Definitely worth the trip.

After that we’re just another car full of males looking for something to do in the deserted streets in this male world on this warm middle eastern night. We stop at the 5-star Intercontinental Hotel, a scene out of Casablanca, and get some Turkish coffee. We look for food and go to a kebab place but the big TV on the wall with three muscular terrorists in black masks making some kind of pronouncement in a foreign language with Arabic subtitles doesn’t seem too inviting.

We end up at the “Stars and Bucks” café where some young entrepreneur has imitated the Starbucks logo and decor and created his own little coffee shop.

Nothing else to do so we head for home and phone our Israeli cab driver. But when we try to go through the checkpoint all the doors to the Israeli side are locked. It’s a deserted barracks-style metallic building with bolted doors and gates and zig-zag barriers for herding Palestinians. After going back to the soldier at the checkpoint and then back to the barrier-maze, and yelling and banging on the echoing steel doors for about 20 minutes, we start to feel like we’re in a scene from the movie “District Nine”. We wonder if we’re going to be spending the night sleeping on benches until some guards arrive. Eventually somebody walkies someone else, there are loud, disembodied voices on speaker systems telling us which door to go to (“the last door” which we can’t find, and which is inevitably locked, just like the last “last door” that we tried).

All through this, though, it’s like we’re in the J-R bubble where there’s no seriousness, no real danger, no thought that the ending will be anything but a happy one. It’s quite odd, as though someone with great authority has told the childlike part of us, “No harm can come to you.” It’s a slight tweaking of the normal emotional reactions that would be disconcerting if it weren’t so familiar in so many situations where we’ve been immersed in the spiritual energy. The realm of our baptisms in our angel-suits earlier in the day seems like it’s weeks in the past, but at the same time it’s still present.

Then after we’ve been there for what seems like half an hour, a door slides open, and some guards, who apparently have been playing cards and who are looking irritated at being disturbed, allow us back into our safe white-people world, where there are well-kept streets, money to handle any discomfort, and women to tell us what is right or wrong, clean or dirty.

During an open day in our schedule in Jerusalem a group of us limited to 35 walked the so-called tunnel at the original foundation of the western wall of the temple mount (photos below). One of the foundation stones stretches across some 10 meters and weighs 57 tons. How that stone was so precisely hewed and placed is still considered an unsolved mystery. The greater importance is what is above just east on the Temple Mount considered to be of the Holy of Holies in which God placed its original creation into manifestation and marked as where Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac, the dwelling place of the Arc of the Covenant, and location of the Ascension of Muhammad with archangels Gabriel and Michael in attendance.

We continued our walk circumnavigating the Temple Mount making a brief visit to St Anne’s Church named for the mother of the Virgin Mary who was born nearby. St. Anne’s is famous for many PAT IV renditions of the MSIA Alleluia song. As we continued our walk around Temple Mount we stopped along the eastern wall at a place just below the still sealed Golden Gate for a Moment of Peace and Blessing before continuing our walk along the walls.

The last time I recall one of our groups spending so much time along a wall was in 1988 at the Berlin Wall when J-R famously told the group about putting a worm of light into the wall and declaring the wall would come down within two years. And it did! Our group also drove through nearby Jericho where another famous wall came down when Joshua led the Israelites across the River Jordan into the land of Canaan to walk seven times around that oldest known city wall while shouting until it came down.

Let us join in prayer for the peace of Jerusalem so that all may find harmony and goodwill living together as neighbors and friends as an example to all of the world.

Blessing of Peace of the Spiritual Warrior

Dear God, we ask for a blessing of forgetting, so what has happened becomes more and more invisible.

We place this blessing through the Christ and the Holy Spirit.

The Traveler walks here this day, visiting those who have forgotten their way to God. No longer are they to remain, as the Light has opened a way.

We gently usher those who have forgotten the way and have been caught in things from long ago.

Baruch Bashan – The Blessings Already Are

John Morton

Second Report:

At breakfast John talks about going on a tour of the Western Wall Tunnel, which was actually a wall built by Herod shortly before the birth of Jesus, as part of an expansion of the city of Jerusalem . Over the centuries it was built upon, and like so many ancient cities all over the world it was eventually buried by layers of new construction. I guess that someday people will be touring some pretty deep tunnels in Manhattan.

Gradually, the group grows as the word spreads, until we’re about 35 people strolling through the narrow streets of the old city. We tour the tunnels, walking through dark stone alleyways and underground pools with a local guide.

When we emerge, John decides to start touring some of our other favorite places from past trips in Jerusalem. Generally these are where some Biblical event was said to have taken place, and then a church was built in that place. Sometimes the exact site is known and sometimes it isn’t. We go to the Church of St. Anne (supposed birthplace of Mary, mother of Jesus), Church of the Flagellation, (supposed place where Jesus was whipped on his way to the crucifixion), and then we walk along the outer perimeter of the wall surrounding Jerusalem to visit the Golden Gate at the eastern end of the old city. This is the place where some clever people predicted that the Messiah will enter Jerusalem when he returns, so some other people who thought they were even more clever figured that if they blocked it with stone and surrounded it with a cemetery, they could prevent the Messiah’s return. (We’re a race of geniuses.)

At each place John does a seminar or moment of peace or blessing, and we plant light columns, so if the place isn’t a genuine holy site already we’ll make it into one. (Just like when J-R says that if he doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, tell it to yourself. If you’re not in a holy place, make it into one.) At the Church of St. Anne the group sits quietly and then spontaneously starts singing “Alleluiah” as we used to do on PAT IV’s. In each of these locations I feel John’s calm infusing and influencing the place. Part of visiting a holy place is keeping it clean, and part of making a holy place is cleaning it up. So either way we’re a cleaning crew. Taking out the garbage.

We end up at the Golden Gate at sunset, John talks a bit and we do a group photo, then go around the rest of the outer wall to our hotel just before dark. Good job.

In typical MSIA style, after all that spiritual stuff we have a very physical day. First stop is Masada, a desert mountaintop moonscape where the Jews held out in the grisly drama that became the basis for the celebration of Chanukah.

There is the option of taking a cable car to ruins of the fortress at the top, or hiking up the steep mountainside in bright sun and 90+ degree heat. A lot of us Masada-chists hike and it’s a great workout. I reminisce with a friend about how, on PAT IV 24 years ago, we ran up, then down, and back up again, just for fun. Now I do it once, take my time, and even stop a few times. Our guide at the top is Shlomo, an Israeli who’s taken the Insight seminars and was training to facilitate at one point. Years ago he was leading a tour and was amazed by a unique group that he happened to see, where everyone seemed so quiet and focused. It was one of our PAT IV’s. He found out more about us and ended up getting involved in Insight.

Worn out and relaxed from our battle on the mountain of Masada, we’re ready for some indulgence at Herod’s Dead Sea Hotel below sea level. Spa, massages, jacuzzis, floating in the hot, mineral-rich water, covering ourselves and each other with the healing Dead Sea mud. A kind of anti-baptism, a childlike, basic self fantasy; a mad mud orgy by a toxic sea that is the dead end of the Jordan River where we were baptized a couple of days ago, the final resting place of all that sacred water. We wash off the mud in water that probably baptized someone at some distant point in the past.

Then a big buffet lunch, and then more spa treatments, lounging, and dozing. Like everything else we do on these trips, there’s the physical level and all kinds of other spiritual levels operating simultaneously, and my sense is that a lot of work is going on while we doze. It’s like a spiritual spa as well as a physical spa, and often we do our best work while we sleep. There’s a special kind of relaxation that happens, at least for me, on this Traveler journey, where the veil that normally separates the levels of consciousness has been torn open. The mechanics of life, from the most mundane to the most esoteric, are more precisely ordered, more benevolent, more protected, more everything, in this no-man’s land that the Traveler has opened up between the worlds. To experience it we just have to let go and float up, because J-R snuck in while we dozed and removed most of the ballast.

Then a sleepy bus ride back to the hotel and more dreamtime. We’ll see you in our dreams.

We’ve left our familiar world behind, survived jet lag and bowel eruptions, burrowed through alleyways and tunnels, walked the path of Jesus in Jerusalem, been baptized in the Jordan River, hiked up a desert mountain drenched in sun and sweat and then descended below sea level for cleansing and mud baths, and now finally we arrive at the climax, three days of sharing and Q&A to confront our demons and heal our selves.

The lead photo is of J-R, who comes in right at the start to kick off the sharing, looking better than I’ve seen him in a year. He’s right here, paying a rare visit to his physical body, and as a result to all of us, who are far more stuck in our physical bodies. Coming in for his occasional check on the prisoners, making sure that they’re being taken care of and that the prison officials are treating them kindly, bringing them treats and useful things they might need, as well as the proverbial cake with the file hidden inside.

As the energy builds for this miraculous and ordinary intersection of spirit and space-time, the choreography of events becomes more precise, the rhythms tighter, as spirit meticulously coordinates details that it normally wouldn’t care about, except for the fact that it’s going to visit through a body for a while, and everything and every moment that it’s going to touch in any way starts to come more awake, vibrating faster, interacting with its neighboring events and moments, imparting its energy in a wave through all the particles.

Example: We’re scheduled to start the sharing at 2 pm. I’m working in my room during the morning, and around noon I suddenly get an inner call to go down to the ballroom where the sharing is going to be held, to check on the banner that goes over the dais. Jsu happens to be there and happens to be telling some of the crew that J-R is going to be coming in at 2:00. By the time I get back up to my room it’s about 1:30 and I realize that I have enough time to back up some photo files, and get my equipment down to the ballroom by 2:00. At about 1:50, though, there’s some glitch, my hard drive spontaneously disconnects and I won’t have time to start the backup again, so I decide to go downstairs early, I go out the door and J-R is coming down the hallway. We get into the elevator together, he gets to the dais a few minutes earlier than expected and I have just enough time to put the right lens on the camera and snap the photos that you see. You can’t plan this stuff, and you can’t keep up with it out of anything other than an openness and a humble request that you be kept in the flow so you can play your part in the dance.

I get photos of this simultaneously young and old face, an ordinary guy who’s managed to keep so open to that flow that it gets hard to distinguish between what’s the flow and what’s him. So nice that we get to live in a time when he’s been able to live to a ripe old age, unlike the guy 2000 years ago whose footsteps we’ve been following through Israel, who lived in a more primitive era and had a much rougher time of it. We fight the same battles and have a lot of the same experiences, but ours are so much gentler and easier.

Example: We were planning to broadcast the sharing live online, but it was on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and some folks at the hotel said that their rules forbid operating any equipment on the Sabbath. However over the last week, through discussions and running into the right people at the right time, we managed to get around this and make sure that people all over the world are able to participate in our healing event. Wait…wait…wait a minute. There’s something familiar about this. Healing on the Sabbath…seems like somebody else was accused of that a long time ago. Same problems, more grace.

J-R is on the dais for a while, some J-R excerpts are played over the radios, J-R tells Jsu he’s going to be up there for another 4 minutes, and then he’s gone. For those minutes there’s an electricity in the air, an order, a clarity, a silence, and then a blasting of a single tone that both overwhelms and harmonizes all other tones and silences. Then it’s gone, and the exposition is left to John Morton, Michael Hayes, and occasionally Paul Kaye or Jsu. With breaks for a couple of meals throughout the day, the work goes on. People stand at the microphone and are taken apart, cleaned and oiled, and put back together. Each one standing in for hundreds, or thousands, or who knows how many, finding their way through the same maze of karma that each of us goes through, each with their own unique twist that makes them think theirs is special, but actually with so much in common with everyone else’s that each of us learns all about ourselves from every sharer. A lot of people sit with eyes closed, zoning out, doing SE’s, and then coming back into their bodies for the occasional joke, just like J-R.

Another day of sharing, same format as yesterday—eating, Q&A, zonking out on the energy, eating, out of the body, back in the body, rinse and repeat. It’s mostly John Morton and Michael Hayes, holding the energy that’s doing this whole thing, giving just enough information so the spiritual work can get done and each person can have their experience without too much interference, but making sure that each person is held so that they don’t fall or lose themselves in the typhoon that’s blasting them open and cleaning them out. Sometimes Paul Kaye has valuable keys to unlocking areas in the physical, emotional and mental levels, as his name implies (Paul = small/humble; Kaye=Key).

The work goes on hour after hour, led by our mostly serious and very disciplined men. I’m sure it takes great discipline to hold all that energy, and in the scramble to take on the complete range of roles that J-R used to play out physically (to my way of observing he’s very much in charge of the whole thing spiritually, and/or spirit is in charge of him), it seems to be the most disciplined ones who won. But there’s no complete and whole way to approach the spirit in the outer world without implying its opposite, no construction without destruction, no discipline without madness, no holding without letting go, so the more our disciplined spiritual warriors on the dais hold the energy, the more the moment begs for chaos.

And since J-R, the master pattern-interrupter, isn’t at the dais, and since Jsu, another master of chaos, would rather sit on the sidelines, spirit provides a much-needed pattern interrupt in the form of one out-of-the box sharer who starts with a series of jokes instead of the usual series of problems, and cracks everybody up by violating the conventional rules of sense (but making lots of sense in the spirit). There are gales of laughter, and the room feels tons lighter by the time it’s over. God always provides.

The other great pattern interrupt is a brief appearance by J-R, who waves to everyone, and everyone waves back. The man behind the curtain comes out for a moment. While all eyes are watching him, he says quietly, “I don’t want this to turn into a circus,” and then it’s back behind the curtain again.

During dinner there’s live music by a great Arab musician (Yehonatan Nachshoni) discovered by Jsu, then back into our cauldron of healing, and the evening ends with DJ Phil playing “I Feel Good” by James Brown, everybody dances, we pop off to bed around midnight, and the work goes on.

A very powerful last day of sharing. We’re fine-tuning the mix of in-the-body and out-of-the-body just right, as Jsu creates music and dance breaks through the day when the energy gets too fixed. They’re brief and fun, just enough so the levels stay integrated while still keeping the focus directed upward.

The group holds for each sharer in a very touching way. We’re getting good at this. After 30 or 40 years of trips we’re really getting it down. There’s a oneness in the group, a sweetness, almost no cliquishness or spoiledness or demands. We did a GREAT job this time, and everybody knows it. Thanks to all who put it together, especially Jsu who held his vision in the dark when there seemed to be no chance of it happening, and who went on anyway and held close to J-R’s intention and guidance that brought us all along on this impossible journey.

I love the freedom we have. There’s a birthday cake for J-R with mini-fireworks on it, and the whole event sort of fizzles, with the fireworks going out before they reach the stage, and Jsu doesn’t miss a beat. He just says, “Well that was weird,” and moves on. No embarrassment, no expectations, no regret, no trying to make the moment anything except what it is, just acknowledgment and enjoyment and moving on.

The ending is very high, very moving, and brings us into an even greater sense of oneness. John does a beautiful closing blessing that brings in an energy that I can only describe as the Christ. If you’ve ever been to Living in Grace, it reminds me of what comes in on the last night. The room fills up. J-R’s energy is here. Benji tells us about J-R’s caring for his family, about his recent trials with the passing of his wife and the assistance he’s had from our spiritual family. He ends by telling us about a dream he had recently about an old man who was gathering small stones at the beach, taking them home and polishing them into gems, and then putting holes in them to make them into a necklace, and he realizes that those stones are the people that J-R has transformed in all the years that we’ve been traveling and learning together.

Then at the end Delile spontaneously takes the microphone and tells us stories about growing up with J-R when they were children, and it fills the room with a loving innocence and intimacy. Delile’s cadences and speech patterns have a similarity to J-R’s so we have a physical presence that matches the energy. When we break for the last time you can tell that no one wants to leave. Everybody just sort of hangs out, finding one way or another to avoid going out the door. A lot of radiant faces.

The next day, resting at the hotel, the energy starts to lift, and I sense it with a feeling of relief because the body can only take so much. It’s like I was emptied out during the touring and then filled with a kind of ecstatic high-voltage for three days, both a person and an impersonal ray of light conducted through the body, and that level of energy becomes wearing after a while. It’s nice to feel fleshy and warm and filled with my funny little animalistic emotions once again, and to be able to rest better with less voltage going through me. I almost wonder if I’m going to start growing fur and a tail and find myself in some little burrow by a stream, but I know it’s just the awareness of my body returning after three days traveling at the speed of light.

I talk to Jsu about it and he’s having the same experience. We know that after a few days this relaxation will get boring and, if we allow, it will start feeling like depression, and we’ll start looking again for the next level up. We’ll be staying in Israel for a while longer, so it will be interesting to see what we find.