Wednesday, August 27, 2014

BOOK REVIEW: "WALKING THROUGH ILLUSION: Jesus Speaks . . ."









WALKING THROUGH ILLUSION:
Jesus Speaks of the People
Who Shared His Journey:
An Emotional Biography


by Betsy Otter Thompson


*     *     *


To read Neall Calvert's review 
of this powerful book
(the only book he has read twelve times), 

Saturday, July 19, 2014

VOICE IN THE LIGHT -- Memoir






VOICE IN THE LIGHT


O Roseo Magnifico   (c) 2020 by N.C.



[ * There are 20 pieces of writing on the mystical path
 in this blog: essays, articles and poems. 
The "blog archive" or Table of Contents is located
below the tall, narrow image at left. 
Click on a white triangle to open it. * ]



Text and Images
© Copyright 2020 by Neall Calvert  




"WHAT IS HEAVEN" I asked "all angels singing and harps of gold?"

It was the early 1990s and I was sitting at a table of the platform restaurant at the Hauptbahnhof, the huge main railway station in Bonn, Germany, wanting to relax with coffee and strudel. Electric-powered trains rolled quietly and efficiently and hypnotically in and out on the dozen tracks spreading out into the distance in front of me. I seemed to go into a kind of trance and then, between the third and fourth set of tracks, a glowing ball of white light almost a metre in diameter had appeared, and something in it had begun to talk to me. The communication came not in words, rather through thoughts . . .

After four weeks of European travel with my German-Canadian girlfriend I felt tired. On the plane coming over to meet up with her, I had had a panic attack and in its denouement my first encounter with a non-physical, helpful spiritual force, and then a level of inner peace I had never thought possible, especially five miles above the Earth. 

In Amsterdam that night, solo after midnight in the wrong part of town, I had been accosted by a pair of dark-skinned would-be thieves. Despite one of them already holding me and the other having his hand in my pocket, they fled after I made direct eye contact. I can only guess that the fearlessness I still experienced upon leaving the airplane was radiating from me and somehow affected their nefarious intentions.

Suzanne and I had been to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland (Carl Jung’s home and the Jung Institute), Italy, Greece and Austria (Sigmund Freud Museum). After bathing nude in the warm Adriatic off Corfu, while travelling by scooter late in the afternoon we‘d had to hit the ditch when an errant motorist came down a steep, winding hill in our lane. Then it was a rush via bent moped thirty kilometres to the nearest hospital for repairs. My left forearm had been bared to the bone and gravel was embedded deep in my split-open left knee; my friend’s ankle had been burned from the vehicle’s exhaust pipe.

In the Austrian Alps we had meditated for a week with a yoga master. “A small accident and the karma is gone,” was his wisdom for the two bandaged and limping disciples. It corroborated my own intuition—of inexpressible anger towards my mother (a devout Mennonite to whom holidays seemed unnecessary) hidden deep in that arm.

Leaving the meditation retreat, I had spent half an hour in an ornate room in a Viennese castle where Mozart had once played. Now I had three more weeks to spend in Europe and I would be living in too-close quarters, I thought, with my girlfriend and her parents in a high-rise on the edge of Bonn.

At the moment, though, I seemed to be connected with a force that had a lot of answers, so I had asked my question. It sat at the top of a list of questions I mysteriously seemed to have prepared just in case such an encounter ever occurred. My inquiry reflected the often-sombre fundamentalist Christian beliefs with which I had grown up. I had tried to find happiness in these teachings, but since it was a philosophy where joy, enthusiasm and ecstasy are suspect and must wait till one leaves 'this earthly vale of tears' and meets Jesus in the afterlife, there seemed little chance of me reaching my goal.

The speech traits of the Voice in the Light closely resembled those of my father, and at first I had assumed the voice to be his. But I quickly remembered that my father was still in British Columbia and simultaneously realized that this was a force with far greater knowledge. This being had been party to every word, every feeling and every event, large and small, of my life growing up. It knew my physical, emotional and spiritual history in its totality. And in these moments I got a larger perspective—I could see it all too.

I relived the great beautiful mystery of, as a child, resting calmly before sleep arrived and hearing Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (“A Little Night Music”) broadcasting into the darkened bedroom along with beams of light from the adjoining kitchen. As the theme song of the CBC’s nine-o’clock classical music program, the piece aired every weeknight, and I was especially pleased when the announcer, before beginning his show, let it play past the opening Allegro movement into the flowing Andante section titled “Romance.” To me this was the highest expression of music in existence. My parents listened only to classical music.

I reviewed my tastes in music changing abruptly at the age of ten with the new and exciting realm of rock ‘n’ roll—Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender—and a year later another kind of mystery with the greats of rock ‘n’ roll playing at the Cloverdale Community Centre, two kilometres down the hill from our house. In its cavernous hall I had peeled dozens of the hefty local potatoes so Surrey Brass Band mothers could raise funds for our outings by cooking and selling turkey dinners at the Cloverdale Fall Fair.

Few Surrey (British Columbia, Canada) citizens remember that Roy Orbison, Buddy Knox, Conway Twitty, Ritchie Valens, Johnny Cash, The Cascades and Bob Luman—all the top acts of the mid-1950s—played this room because it had the largest dance floor in the Fraser Valley. We neighbourhood kids pooled our money to buy one ticket; one of the older guys used it to enter, then he opened the fire-escape door to let the rest of us in.

There was darkness outside, but inside, hundreds of teenagers (all much older than my eleven years) moving to the beat in raucous Saturday-night sock hops. It was a different, and much larger, world than the one I wanted to escape from on The Hilltop, where for reasons unknown the family had stopped singing together a few years before, and when I tuned in to popular music on the radio or played records my reclusive, book-loving father would bristle: “Are you listening to that crap again?”

Through this movie now playing in my mind I experienced summer nights when our group of neighbourhood kids prepared to sleep in our back bush, in the cabin my father had built for us. After dark we crept out of the woods using flashlights, tiptoed silently through our own yard to the street and walked three kilometres to Hillcrest Drive-In Theatre on the (former) Trans-Canada Highway, where we lay in the tall dried grass at the back and caught the end of the Saturday Night Triple Bill.

I relived the rich but rare moments of family togetherness when there was no other place I wanted to be; the puzzling but satisfying first solitary hours as a twelve-year-old, hitch-hiking fifteen kilometres to the town of White Rock and standing on the beach, gazing at the ocean; and when I lay, reading under my covers till dawn with a flashlight, my father’s Reader’s Digests stored in the boys’ bedroom, repeatedly, until by looking at any cover image I could remember all the articles in an issue. 

I recalled the seemingly endless silences between my stressed-out father and myself, contrasted by his attacks that began with an incident of explosive religious rage when I was four in which I was struck so hard that my soul and body separated—a hundred Thou Shalt Nots now buried to the bone—and then bullying and criticism that continued until I was as tall as he was (thankfully, with fresh cow’s milk every day, at age fourteen) . . . 

. . . There was terror in the whole family from never knowing when, and for what unwritten transgression, the next raging outburst would come; then in early adolescence longing for my mother to introduce me into manhood; at twelve starting to shoplift, at thirteen to smoke cigarettes, at fourteen to drink beer and hard liquor, and at sixteen after initiation into driving to race at speeds over 160 kilometres per hour Dad’s powerful ‘56 Meteor station wagon (292-cubic-inch V-8 engine, four-barrel carburetor and a ‘three-on-the-tree’ shifter) on rural and not-so-rural Surrey streets, day or night; spending my high-school graduation night—that second unsatisfying rite of passage in western society after achieving a driver’s license—drinking and racing full-bore, tires screaming, a fellow student around twisting Stanley Park Drive in Vancouver . . .

. . . There was the near-death experience of barely missing another car at 130 kph in our tiny two-seater Austin-Healey Sprite when my pal, for unmentioned reasons of his own, one night began running, one after another, the stop signs that appeared every mile at intersections on 168th Street; the two-year college diploma earned at twenty and the ensuing good fortune of being hired for a position in Eastern Canada, 4,500 kilometres away—the answer to my first self-created prayer: the one I had intoned on my fourteenth birthday asking Jesus to get me far away from that concentration camp and my holocaust on 184th Street . . .

On and on the stories came. The Voice in the Light, free from judgment about any of them, then stopped showing me images and began communicating in sentences again. 

"As you let go of the pain of your growing up," it thought into my mind, "your life will improve and you won't be so tired or suffer so much stress being close with unfamiliar people."  

At that moment I realized I had missed out on a basic human relationship—that of being fathered: nurtured, instructed and guided by older male presence. However, I now seemed to have just the kind of attention, guidance and caring I longed for, some of the fatherly wisdom for which my whole being thirsted. Then I asked the question that begins this piece of writing. 

"You can see angels," came the reply. "You havent forgotten how, while many others have. You are a seer . . ." 

And Heaven? 

"Heaven is all around you, wherever you are . . ."

I emerged from Bonns Hauptbahnhof energized and radiant, feeling stronger than in months; all tiredness had vanished . . . 

 [ Twelve years after this European trip and three years after my fathers passing, one evening as I sat quietly in my kitchen balancing my chequebook, another voice began whispering in my mind. Im sorry, it silently said. Then again, Im sorry . . . Im sorry. . . .” This time it was the voice of my physical father, and the nourishing message, repeated for perhaps twenty minutes as my tears fell, began to re-establish a communication that had been lost for decades. Much later, during a channelling session I attended with Sananda/Jesus, I was told that it had taken my father three years out of his body to do his emotional healing. ]

Four days after my visit to the station restaurant where the Voice in the Light had communicated with me, and drawn my that experience, I wanted to stop by the Hauptbahnhof again. This time Suzanne was with me, and as we approached the vast structure, tears began flowing down my face. Asked what was happening, I couldn't find words to describe the experience. The tears streamed so freely and for so long that she began moving away from me, seeming to wonder if I hadnt lost my senses along with my ability to speak . . . 

Finally I was ready to comprehend the unfamiliar new feeling—it was joy! At age forty-five I was having my first, almost unfathomable, experience of adult joy. I was relaxing on a long European vacation with quality companionship, happy to be practising my German—spoken exclusively till I was four years old—in Germany; happy to at last experience the presence of a caring Father . . . happy today and still on this Earth. . . . 

French philosopher and priest Teilhard de Chardin wrote: "Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God."






 ~ J ~ O ~ Y ~




Thinking of Home
(c) 2020 by Neall Calvert


 
 



Wednesday, May 21, 2014

THE BEST HOLIDAYS are HOLY DAYS -- Memoir





Text and Image
© Copyright 2017 by Neall Calvert





"House of Jewels" (c) 2017 by N. C.




I

 USED TO OVERWORK AND NOT TAKE VACATIONS. One spring a few years ago I’d been busy for months editing books, selling my photographs, and performing music for the first time . . . okay, I was actually addicted to work—I couldn’t unhook.

Hard work (along with thriftiness, family togetherness and the church) is a cornerstone of the Mennonite faith in which I grew up. The Protestant work ethic was so important that, in some homes, emotional and physical violence were not considered too-strong measures to instill this ‘value’ in children. My prayers to Jesus at age 14 to get me far away from my victimizing, unhappy family had been answered when, at age 20, I got a job 5,000 kilometres away. I returned only occasionally. 

After my fatherthe most obvious offenderdied (when I was 46, and had become tired of city life), I lived on my mother's 10-acre farm for two years and got to know her again. I became aware of her contentment, her love of nature, and her consideration for others in her extensive social network. I introduced her to the benefits of animal companionship by bringing a kitten I found beside the road into the house (it spent many hours on her lap during her bereavement). One day she said to me, "You have the Christ light in your eyes," so at last I felt seen as a spiritual being rather than a so-called 'religious person'.

Sadly, many Mennonites in my growing-up experience seemed to be out of touch with their bodies. They continued working until something, either physically or mentally, broke. Mistrustful of the medical and psychological worlds, they avoided seeking help till the last possible moment. Even in the late stages of the 20th century, one Mennonite man, a carpenter, recounted to me as if it were an everyday experience how his wife awoke one night to find him, standing up while still asleep, pounding unseen nails into the bedroom wall with an invisible hammer. . . . Overwork? Stress? No, not here.

Though I couldn’t afford a distant excursion this year, I realized that the main reason I hadn’t been taking journeys out of town was the lack of a partner. “So why don’t I have companionship for adventurous holidays?” I asked myself.

Awakening the next morning with the words “Granville Island” on my mind, I set as my destination this artistic community surrounded by water in the middle of the city of Vancouver. First, though, I decided to have an hour-long hot bath. After all, I was building a holiday state of mind—a state free from fear or worry. The long soak (with Epsom salts that pull tension out of the muscles) is useful for generating creative ideas too. In my search for wellness I had discovered that when my body deeply relaxes, so does my mental apparatus, and in that state I become receptive to fresh thoughts and ideas.

In the tub I continued to contemplate why I had no female companion, and afterwards, putting on my jacket, I recalled a stimulating two-year relationship with a sun-filled woman, a time that had included a seven-week vacation in Europe; we had separated five years earlier. I suddenly realized I had never forgiven her for leaving me. (My mind had now relaxed and moved out of the repetitive track called “But you’ve got to earn a living!”) Then, quickly, one after another, pictures of other women I had had relationships with assembled in my mind like a stack of playing cards—all waiting to be forgiven.

I faced a nearly impossible task, it seemed. My mind, however, had a solution: spend a whole day (or more) repeating “I forgive you” nonstop while holding each ex-partner in my thoughts; that would lay the necessary groundwork for future female companionship.

During the thirty-minute bus ride to Granville Island I started silently chanting my “I forgive you” mantra. I continued while beginning my walk in sunny, breezy weather and while stopping to watch children at the water park laughing and screaming with delight as they romped through the various fountain configurations or sprayed each other with hoses and water cannons . . . “I forgive you . . . I forgive you . . .”

I strolled to the eastern tip of Granville Island, past the old foundries that had become artisans’ shops and art galleries, along the boardwalk beside the marina crammed with deluxe motor yachts . . . “I forgive you . . . I forgive you . . . , past the hotel and its outdoor restaurant, empty at this hour, past the neat row of rectangular floating homes, their decks decorated with emerald-green shrubs and hanging petunia baskets . . . “I forgive you . . . I forgive you . . .”

I moved on to the art school named after Emily Carr where I stopped in to visit the gallery, then strolled by boutiques and restaurants bearing names like Dragonspace and Kharma Kitchen . . . “I forgive you . . . I forgive you. . . .” I finally got to the huge, high-ceilinged public market with its cornucopia of vegetables and fruits and its art and craft displays and began catching whiffs of baked goods, seafood and fresh-ground coffee. My repetitive chant was in its third hour as, at a Greek food stand, I bought a falafel sandwich for its tasty filling of deep-fried, spiced chickpea patties, tomatoes, lettuce and tzatziki sauce comprised of yogurt, garlic and cucumbers.

Stepping outside to eat in the sunshine, from my perch on a picnic bench I watched sail and power boats lazily motoring back and forth beneath the steel truss work of Art Deco–styled Burrard Bridge. A siren sounded from beyond the bridge and then a powerful red-and-white crash boat from Kitsilano Coast Guard Station sped out to sea.

Closer to me, seagulls and starlings successfully begged for handouts and a young man in a striped T-shirt shouted, in that raucous song unique to dog owners, “Cisco—here boy! Cisco—here boy! Cisco—here boy! . . .” I looked around and located his dog three metres beneath the dock we stood on, violating all notions of animal intelligence by eagerly struggling to drag out of False Creek’s salty-smelling brine a five-metre waterlogged plank.

The youth’s hollering continued as I scanned the enormous outside deck of sunflower-bright Bridges Restaurant, full of sunning customers. Relative quiet suddenly manifested, so I looked over and then gave thanks that Cisco, who moments ago had seemed to be nowhere, was now here.

My chanting now began to take on a different quality, I noticed. My voice had strangely become more feminine—and it seemed to be taking on a life of its own. What is happening here? I puzzled. I realized slowly, hard as it was to believe, that I was no longer the speaker, rather a listener—some voice besides my own was now uttering the phrase that I had been repeating for several hours!

“I forgive you . . . it was saying, and then: “I forgive you for anything you need to say to me, or about me, for the way I raised you. I forgive you. Any hatred, anger or resentment you need to express, I forgive you for right now. The slate is clean from my end, Neall. I forgive you.”

My committed Christian mother, who had unexpectedly died of a stroke three months before (at age 82 and in the midst of a widow’s romance with a fellow churchgoer, age 81) was leaving me her last words. In response, tears fellcleansing, redeeming tearsand more than a few. . . . And then, since today I was claiming time as my friend, I sat for another half hour, embracing my new clarity, sense of connectedness and inner peace. 

“Holy day” is what the word “holiday” once meant. My day had proved itself true to that original definition.




Tuesday, April 15, 2014

JET STREAMS -- Essay / Memoir





WHEN JET STREAMS 

BECOME LIFE STREAMS:

The Mystics Path
to Peace 



Text and Images 
(c) Copyright 2020 by Neall Calvert


'Past-Present-Future'    (c) 2020 by N.C.
  

[ * There are currently 17 entries in this blog: 
essays, articles & sets of poems on the mystical path.
The Table of Contents (a.k.a. "blog archive")
is located below the tall, narrow image at left. 
Click on a white triangle to open it. * ]




 
AS I DROVE SOUTH ACROSS OAK STREET BRIDGE, emblem of the citys boundary, I wondered where I would find peace of mind today. Having over-worked and over-worried yet again, been tense and unhappy for a week, it was vital that I unwind. In contrast to the heavy rain that had been bombarding Vancouver for days, a creative cobalt-blue filled the top half of the world this Sunday morning.
      
      I was thinking of farm country seventy kilometres to the east when through the windshield I noticed, extending forward across the sky overhead, a strong, bright-white jet contrail. The track seemed to be acting like a pointer, so I took it as my guide and decided on Crescent Beach, fifty kilometres to the south.
      
      When I arrived at Blackie Spit at the north end of Crescent Beach it was being visited by the self-sufficient, seemingly worry-free ducks, gulls and shorebirds that feed near this small sandy point. The view through my windshield across Boundary Bay extended for tens of kilometres: northwest to the distant snow-capped North Shore mountains, southwest to the Southern Gulf Islands, and west to the much larger peninsula whose southern tip is American territory: Point Roberts, USA.

     The smell of my hot egg-cheese-and-potato wrap from the local gas station announced breakfast to the local crows and they assembled near my car. It tasted too good to share, but after partaking I began throwing blue-corn chips out the drivers window. Soon one of the brainy birds was perched on my outside mirror, just half a metre from my face. 

     As it bent forward to take a chip from my hand I thrilled to the precious faint scraping sound of its impossibly delicate, wrinkled black trident claws trying to keep hold on the smooth metal mirror frame. An organically-grown morsel grasped firmly in its beak, it flew off and then -- after setting the chip on the ground, jabbing at it till it broke into small pieces and swallowing the bits -- it returned for more. The rest of the tribe was content to feed off whatever I tossed out the window.
      
      I walked to the narrow point where the tide was coming in from both sides, only two feet apart. I felt like a giant as I stood, soaking my shoes in the incoming surf, soaking my mind in tranquil early sunshine. After an hour of photographing ducks paddling the various nearby lagoons I headed to the main beach area. On one of the varnished slab benches beside the long promenade for which Crescent Beach is known, I sat down facing the ocean. 



'Watching Water Fall'     (c) 2017 by N. C.
       
      Listening as the waves quietly rolled in, I examined the eight-kilometre expanse of water that separated me from Point Roberts. The bay was owned today only by seagulls, one distant motoring sailboat and a lot of still blue air. But I was mildly surprised when a contrail began forming in the western sky. It pointed slightly downwards, towards the treed cape of Point Roberts. Okay, I said to myself, if jet contrails are going to guide me today, then Point Roberts, USA is my next destination.
      
      Travelling leisurely through farmland, I stopped to photograph reflections in small lakes left from the week’s rains. Once through U.S. Customs, where a birth certificate proved Canadian citizenship, I advanced down the tiny community’s main road. At first opportunity I pulled off into a more rural area. The track turned from west to south and after the bend I was astonished to spy yet another contrail, this one growing southward. What, I wondered, would greet me south of here? Soon I’d run out of Point and be in the ocean.
      
      The pavement took me to Lighthouse Marine Park, occupying the southwest tip of the cape. Millions of fist-sized rocks, polished smooth from eons of wave action, make it hard to walk on the beach so I climbed the two flights of steep wooden steps up the observation tower. From here, as this day moved steadily forward, I could appreciate the Strait of Georgia, almost calm, with its occasional cabin cruiser and a few feathered flyers in the air. 
       
      As I gazed up at the various birds, I noticed several flocks of ducks manoeuvring, in an attempt to link up. Next, in a constantly shifting, back-and-forth mid-air scenario, perhaps three hundred ducks formed a raggedy long line. Then, slowly shifting and adjusting, in a stage play that was beginning to carry hints of magic, they arranged themselves wingtip to wingtip . . . and then, with a rushing sound from hundreds of wings, a precise, straight formation of three hundred ducks -- the largest I had ever seen -- swept by just metres over my head. 

   What force arranges such things?! I had been observing the wild world for years and had never come across such activity. . . . In those awesome moments something in me changed. I felt connected up tooto something very big: the entire living world of Nature. And I couldn't help but wonder, had the show been just for me? . . . It didn't matter. Standing calmly seven metres above the beach in afternoon sunshine I began to understand something about inner peace.

     I realized that what I was seeking would only come from accepting the world exactly the way it was. Wonderful parts and not-so-wonderful parts equally (including events of both kinds in my own upbringing) all comprise this world (at least at this stage of humanity's development). Stories of violence, greed and tragic suffering fill newspapers and TV newscasts (I had been a newshound journalist for five years and then often a newspaper reader) as well as stories of human altruism, basic goodness and the magnificence of Nature. 

     But endless concern about human evil or ignorance brought only disempowerment: feelings of helplessness. Real change in the world would come from me discovering how to become peaceful and empowered within first, perhaps through taking regular holidays such as this one that involved following my intuition and enjoying Nature, and then teaching others how to do the same; it would come from me becoming an agent for the change I sought to see in the world.


'Ocean Trails'    (c) 2016 by N. C.

      I walked back to my blue Mazda hatchback and, after a nap, woke up to the sun setting over the Gulf Islands. I experienced once again the particular bright stillness that occurs just at sunrise and sunset, and mentally thanked and said goodnight to Sol. The ocean had become a huge, glowing, pale blue field, one seemingly sourced with a light from withina show Ive learned that Nature likes to put on just after the sun has disappeared. 
     
      In fading light I drove slowly eastward across the tip of Point Roberts. At the end of the road, as I turned the car around, I saw in the western sky a tiny contrail forming. It had been heading upwards, but now it arced to the right, northwardsthe direction of my home. Still guided, still connected, a part of me silently thrilled.
      
     Two weeks later I again headed out of the city for a day in Nature—to West Vancouver’s Lighthouse Park. As I drove west through Ambleside shopping district I suddenly noticed in the southern sky a long, glowing contrail numinously growing westward—pointing the way to my destination . . . 
      
     Materialistic science says that we are mere observers in the universe, and that consciousness must fit into the brain inside our heads. Spirituality declares that we are part of the universe, co-creators; that we are hardwired for mystical experience; and that there is no limit to consciousness. The spiritual mystic’s path—the Big Picture—is the one that seems to bring the most inner peace.
  



*      *      *



Postscript: December 3, 2017

In autumn of 2017 a couple of disciples of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi from Parksville, B.C. (120 kilometres south of my new home town of Campbell River, Vancouver Island), came to town to teach kundalini meditation. I feel drawn to Indian culture and I attended the three weekly classes held at my local library. Afterwards, I felt I had received some benefit: I was lighter and had more energy. I practised the techniques at home daily and wondered if this would be the context and the 'inner technology' that would change my life for good into a constant state of happiness. But the eight-inch-high picture of Mataji that had sat on my kitchen table I had inadvertently knocked over four or five times in the month since placing it there.

      On Sunday, December 3, the husband-and-wife team had scheduled a meditation class in Courtenay (50 kilometres south of Campbell River) and, though I was still unsure if this path was for me, I decided to attend -- with one caveat: I would pray on the way that if kundalini meditation wasn't right for me, I would be shown this in some way.

     I took the scenic coast road, Highway 19A, and after 45 minutes of affirmative prayer was inserting the GMC Jimmy into a parking spot at the back of Courtenay librarys lot. As I walked toward the library building I noticed a white jet contrail in the clear blue sky. It was heading north -- to Campbell River, from where I had just come. Surely not an indicator, I thought. And it wasnt a large contrail, I rationalized (though its direction was quite clear) . . . I wasn't sure.

      I decided to think things over on a walk to a nearby hardware store for an item I needed. As I emerged, I spotted another jet contrail, this one pointing in exactly the same direction -- north towards Campbell River. . . . I had asked for a sign and in the space of ten minutes something indicative of direction had happened -- twice.

      After a warm cinnamon bun at Driftwood Mall’s bakery, I headed north. Once again in Campbell River, driving west on Cortez Road just before turning into my apartment's parking lot, I spied in the now pale-yellow western sky two golden, north-heading jet contrails -- one just above the other, one slightly ahead of the other. It seemed a beautiful echo of what I had just experienced in Courtenay.

      In my apartment once again, going over e-mails I came upon a new one from Reverend Lea Chapin, an experienced direct-voice channel for Mary Magdalene, Jesus and Mother Mary. I had been studying Ascended Master material for a decade, but wasnt certain sometimes if I was making progress. This channelling contains deeply moving messages on achieving inner peace from all three of these sources. Words are often not enough to express profound spiritual states, but these ones somehow do the job [see gem.godaddy.com/p/0eb34b?fe=1&pact=9628].

     The next day I had my first kundalini experience -- five to ten minutes where my tailbone region spontaneously and pleasantly vibrated with some new kind of energy. My body filled with a level of positive vitality I had never known. . . .

     Somehow, by following my jet-stream guidance system, by trusting my own inner / outer experiences, I had gotten what Id needed from the kundalini couple: another step forward into inner peace.



Christmas Parade, Campbell River, B.C., 2017



*     *     *