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PAT 8 in Moissac, France – Back from the Far Side of the Moon

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The PAT 8 ended yesterday, and I’ve come around the far side of the moon and I’m in full communication now. I’m not going to go into detail about the training itself, except to say that a door to the Spirit (or the Traveler, or the true self, or whatever you want to call it) is opened for a while. We’re in a protective energy that twists every occurrence, every moment, into an opportunity for unraveling our creations, our pain, our psychic knots—instead creating them. It’s like riding in a train where your seat is facing backwards. You’re pulled instead of pushed, and the past and all the world gently recede instead of blowing in your face. Everything is reversed for a while, and as the world recedes it pulls out of you not just the negative creations, but also vision, enthusiasm, pleasure.

“PAT” stands for Peace Awareness Training, and not only do you get trained, but like a train it doesn’t matter if you miss this one, because there will be another one coming soon enough. I used to want to be at these things all the time, until, after J-R passed, I saw the pain of some of the people who were close around him, and had a small taste of it myself. Now I’m less interested in defining where Spirit is or is not, and less resistant to being pushed out into the unpleasant forward-flow of the world. But I’ll still take whatever chance I get to visit the ease and grace of concentrated spirit-energy. Another part of the J-R legacy: even his death is a training, a disillusionment, an offering of something greater while always allowing the choice to stay still, or stuck, or at rest (depending on your point of view) and wait until the next train comes.

The PAT took place in the picturesque village of Moissac, at the hotel Moulin de Moissac, right on the Tarn River, with foggy mornings and sunny afternoons. It felt like being on a boat. PAT processes there were like our processes on the Nile cruise on our PAT IV Egypt trips, where you could look down from the room and just see water and green shores.  Some people even did processes outside, like we did on the deck of the Nile boat.

Our hotel is also the place where the village hid Jewish children from the Nazis during the war. The children lived in the building, the whole village was in on the deception, no one let on, and the children were kept safe until the war ended. One of the people who was hidden there as a child, Monsieur Simon, son of Shatta and Bouli Simon, (who were the creators and leaders of the scheme) gives us a moving tour of the area, telling us about his experiences and showing us photographs and memorials. (These are the shots toward the beginning of the slideshow, with Vincent translating.) The children were educated and well cared for, kept busy and also kept in groups as a way of keeping their spirits up and healing trauma, and were even taught survival skills in case they had to escape quickly. They were given Christian names, and were drilled in not responding when someone called their Jewish name. Some still come back to visit, and the hotel staff knows them because they stand outside pointing at windows to show where they lived as kids. It’s a happy place. I keep thinking I hear the sound of children laughing in the halls, but it’s probably my imagination. Perfect site for a Peace Awareness Training.

The village is a bit of the old France—quaint, ancient, with narrow streets and long rows of leafy trees on straight walkways surrounding the river and canals. It’s slow, peaceful, and it seems like there’s always someone fishing on the river underneath our training room. It also feels like something from a bygone era—a lot of the buildings are shuttered, and there aren’t many people on the streets. It’s busy with tourists in the summer, but its heyday as a center for the transport of farm produce along the canals is a thing of the past, and it’s now listed in a group of the poorer villages in France. But the slow pace of that older era seems to be infused in the walls, the streets, the grapes, the cheese, the people. Cell phones, even cars, seem a bit out of place.You just want to sit under a tree along the river and lose track of time.

In addition to shots of the PAT training, there are also photos of a couple of the walking meditations that we went on—one around the river, and the other a guided tour of the local abbey (where we had been before—see the PAT 8 John Morton Seminar slideshow) and cloister, led by Sister Marie-Benoit. The sisters met us earlier and invited us back. We got a great education in medieval Christian iconography in her talk about the carvings and sculptures.

The food, of course, was amazing. I might even call it part of the Peace Awareness Training. The people who prepared and served the food were in a high state of awareness about it. And we were an enthusiastic audience—so enthusiastic that the hotel owner later told us that the staff, exhausted by a busy summer, were surprised that they actually felt energized by our group, and wanted us back.

Then the training ends, the protective spirit-bubble that we’ve been in is lifted, and we’re transported to another, slightly less impervious spirit-bubble suitable for the rigors of touring. We have to get to work immediately breaking down sound and coiling hundreds of feet of cable, assisted by an army of participants fueled by boxed lunches; and within about an hour we’re back in the modern world, on the bus riding west to our next hotel, Auberge Ostapé in the French Basque country not too far from the Pyrenees and the Spanish border. Our hotel is a series of small Spanish-style houses dotting a green hillside (quite Californian, think Ojai Valley Inn but with an added European solidity and weight) with golf carts given to us to get around the long distances. We arrive a bit before dinner, and the slideshow ends with a few shots of the countryside and the hotel. (Look at the pumpkin soup at dinner, served in a real pumpkin.)

3 thoughts on “PAT 8 in Moissac, France – Back from the Far Side of the Moon”

  1. Marian Katz Jahn

    David, I got chills while reading this article. Two of my cousins were rescued from Camp de Gurs by the French underground, and were hidden in plain sight in a French town, taken care of by a cousin of my grandmother’s, whose last name was Simon. What a small world!

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