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Last week I attended the annual Unity retreat at the Kanuga conference center in North Carolina.  The photos above are a few that I took on my phone.

The theme for this year’s retreat was “The Wall, the Walk, the Wisdom, the Wonder: Transcending the Illusion of Limitation”.  Some of the activities included rock climbing and mountain walks.  I, however, stayed with the indoor sessions, listening to excellent speakers and then doing my own exploration, walking the labyrinth, and bodywork with a local massage therapist.  I went to meditations and created my own quiet journaling time.

The two keynote speakers were Mark Nepo http://www.marknepo.com/ and Rev. Sky St. John www.unityhawaii.org.

Mark Nepo presented concepts from his book, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Inner Courage and Where It Lives. He talked about three arts that are part of inner courage:

• The art of putting things together (seeing things in a new way rather than putting them into the old boxes that we have created).
• The art of facing what is ours to face.
• The art of feeling what is ours to feel.

It was impressive how the work of the two keynotes worked together.  Both emphasized acceptance of our experience, whatever it may be.  It is all “part of the tapestry” as Mark Nepo called it.  Another quote that I wrote down from him was “A spiritual warrior always has a crack in the heart, that is where the blessings come in.”

This theme of acceptance (and thereby transformation of) our experience was reflected in the words of a song that Sky St. John taught us:

Let it draw near
Let it come in
Let it pass through
Let it move on

In my opinion, the purpose of a spiritual retreat is to reexamine one’s life and rejuvenate, perhaps set goals, reevaluate and prioritize.  I feel like I did all of this as well as just had fun and connect with old friends.  One thing that I love about these kinds of retreats is the depth of the conversations that go on around me.  It seems that we all come together to focus on our higher selves and see the higher selves in others.

I have just returned from a spiritual retreat which I will write more about very soon. While I was in the beautiful North Carolina location, my new iphone did not get telephone service. The top of the screen read “No Connection”.

I worked hard to put aside the feeling of annoyance. I had internet access through the retreat center’s wi-fi network so I was not totally cut off. Also, I had chosen to leave the world for a few days in order to focus on spiritual matters. I really did not need to be connected.

Since my phone did not work in this location last year I was semi-prepared to be out of reach. Despite this, on the first day I did struggle to stay positive. As I got caught up in the retreat experience this feeling subsided.

Today, I was scheduled to participate in a two-part teleconference from New York. This morning’s session was totally unavailable to the teleconference participants. After listening to silence for awhile I had to find something else to place my attention on. The afternoon session was fine for the first hour-and-a-half then cut out for about half an hour. Again, no connection.

On the email list where some of us on the teleconference were reporting the outages, someone suggested that we take the attitude that we would know what we needed to know when we needed to know it.

Good advice.

It occurs to me that I have been exposed to a wealth of new ways of looking at things and encouraged to assimilate them into my life during the past week. No connection could on the physical level signal a technical problem but on a deeper metaphysical level signal that no new input is necessary.

I have traveled a great deal in Concord –Henry David Thoreau

This is one of my favorite quotes from Thoreau because it expresses that travel does not have to be through large outer spaces. Concord was a small town but Thoreau traveled great distances in this small space, gaining insight though paying close attention to every detail.

I like this quote because it reflects my own experience. As a person who does not drive I travel on foot (as Thoreau did) and observe the relatively small geographical space that I call my neighborhood. Much of my experience is interior sparked by exterior circumstances or generated through my own self talk and will.

Yes, I think we can create our own inner experience. This is done by what we choose to focus our attention on. We can shift our inner experience by choosing something that makes us feel good rather than something that generates a negative emotion.

This is what I have learned from the teaching of Abraham. (www.abraham-hicks.com). Abraham is now calling that feel-good place the vortex. It is where we learn to create our reality by reaching for things that feel good.

Today I was reminded of this as I was watching a TV show on the home network. A couple were looking for a house to buy and could not find one that was big enough. They were looking for something a little larger than 3000 square feet and around a half-million dollars. My critical mind kicked in and I almost started an inner tirade about how some people just could not be happy, and what did people need with that much, etc, etc. Then a calmer voice took over and I reminded myself that my judgments did nothing but diminish me. Then I was able to see and enjoy the beauty of the houses they were looking at. There was an inner shift that made me feel peaceful.

Sometimes it takes an effort of will to focus on something that feels better but the time required to make a shift is surprisingly short.

Today, was a quiet day spent attending to small things. Nevertheless, I feel that I traveled far on the interior journey.

Today was a day to experiment. The result is my first webcam video.

I have spent the past few hours listening to the audiobook edition of “Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World” by Michael Baigent. This is a just-released book. I heard the author in a radio interview Saturday night. The thesis is quite scary but I am afraid may be true. Baigent contends that there are factions in all three major religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism that are actively working to bring about the apocalypse. He develops this argument with many examples through much of the book.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian setting and learned (and read) Revelations at a fairly young age. I was taught that this was something that would happen, not something that should be helped along by the efforts of men. In the thirty-plus years I have been away from the church it seems that this may have changed, at least in some circles. There are also counterparts to this development in the other two religions of the book.

Baigent’s conclusion is that there must be a shift in our thinking about God, from an outer understanding to an inner understanding. This is something that I am very familiar with. The inner way has been my chosen path for many years. For the fundamentalist of all three religions, God is the external, punishing, exterior being. All three religions have an interior component which has been overlooked or considered heresy by fundamentalists. There are the Christian mystics, Kabbalists of Judaism and the Sufi’s of Islam, all of which have a great deal in common.

I, like many, subscribe to the theory that all paths lead to God which is in reality the life force that infuses everything. I also have a desire to respect all religions and as a result feel uncomfortable placing one above the other. For me respect for my neighbor’s path allows me to advance on my own. Dogma is not necessary and can easily get in the way of spiritual growth.

I do not think there can be an apocalypse willed by the divine. I believe that what is perceived as apocalypse is really transformation. The end of Revelation speaks of “A New Heaven and a New Earth.” Given all of the contradictory forces at work in the world it is easy to believe that destruction must precede this New Heave and New Earth. But, do we know that is the only way it can be? Can we imagine a different way?