Healthy Choices Wellness Blog

In a holding pattern after retreat volunteer experience
Related article: the importance of community

Except for any noted source material, content copyright, Neva. J. Howell, all rights reserved

I left Omega early on a Saturday morning, before breakfast. I had said goodbye to a few friends the night before at the Magical Awakening group healing and before dinner and at dinner. I didn’t want to prolong it.

I left with a full heart and also sad in another way to be going.

I found myself missing the animals, the walking everywhere (ironic since I hated having to walk everywhere when I first got there) and the wonderful food, prepared for me every day.

I missed the spiritual experiences that were so easy had there, despite how tired I was, well even brain-dead at times, from the grueling administrative tedium of each day.

I missed the solidness of environment. I still do miss that.

I am looking online for community. Real community this time, not a business with elements of community. Not easy to find, at least not so far.

There are several retreat centers that seem to give more support for keeping the work from getting so tiring. One I read about gives a 30 minute break both morning and evening, in addition to a one-hour lunch.

Pieces of a Spiritual Puzzle

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have turned in my notice that I will not be staying in the position at Omega for which I was originally hired.

This was a difficult challenge and pushed many of my “save the world” and “honor your commitment” buttons. I agreed to be here for 7 months. However, I could not have imagined the reality of the work til I was in it, doing it. Being miserable for 40 hours a week does not help the planet or ultimately save anyone. It creates a negative, draining environment.

So, I am leaving the job position that I accepted. At this point, there is no other opening.

Another massive piece of information that came back to me happened when I attended a Source Consciousness workshop. A cranial osteopath co-teaching that workshop, Richard Skurla, adjusted my shoulders. It only took a few seconds and it changed everything. It brought me back round to the energy of the Pipe. I had waited 9 years to feel that again. I knew it was telling me that the long dark night of the soul I had endured was over and that the answers were coming.

That leads me to what happened yesterday. For the past two weeks, in particular, pieces of my own life work have been brought to me through experiences at Omega.

An offering of energetic transmission

I have just come back to my room after an hour and a half with Snatam Kaur and the band of spiritual alchemists who play and chant with her at concerts.

I want to write this right now, because I believe this way I’m feeling can be transmitted, just as it was transmitted through these Divine channels of Light.

If you open yourself to the experience, and breathe out resistance or belief systems, and breathe in open space toward your heart, something Sacred is being offered.

Snatam went behind a screen and nursed her beautiful, beautiful baby just prior to the concert. It started then, this feeling of the Divine Mother pouring through the entire room. Breathe.

My heart began to immediately open and I felt as if I were being nursed by the Divine Mother as well, nurtured in a way that created safe and Sacred space for all that followed.

Breathe.

When the music started, even before voice, I began to weep as I felt a Love so Divine that I could barely stand opening that much that fast. The Love I felt seemed simultaneously to be enfolding me and pouring into me while emerging from a core of me that I recognized as who I Am. I weep again as I remember and feel again the expansion of my heart center.

Breathe.

Next, Snatam spoke of God’s will and surrendering into that will, trusting that will, walking from a place where that is all there is. This is what I heard. I have a feeling each heard what they needed to hear, in the way they needed to hear it.

Hear. Breathe.

Then, two more beautiful, gloriously beautiful and divinely channeled songs. And a violin segment that reminded me of Riverdance and my southern bluegrass roots in a way that was affirming of lost memories of the divinity within all music. Original music that endures, endures because there is the divine in it.

Feel. Breathe.

I stood so full and in love with all that is. Glancing out the window at the sweetness of the trees, lush green and damp from continual soft rain, I saw that I was one with them, with all. This is when Snatam gave us these words to sing:

The infinite is within me
There is no beginning and there is no end
All is my Self

And the concert closed with a blessing

May the longtime sun shine upon you
All Love surround you
And the Divine Light within you
Guide your way home.

Aho. Amen. Namaste.