The MSIA 2025 Conference of the Inner Master is coming up in just over a month.  We are super excited to host it again at Prana starting with the first event, the PTS Commencement Ceremony, on Wednesday, June 25.

Our new chefs and kitchen team are looking forward to serving delicious meals for those of you attending in person.  We are also including two other special organizations that John-Roger founded, Insight and USM, who will be making their presentations on Thursday, June 26.   In this year’s Conference Workshop, The Inner Master Calls – A Two-Day Immersive Experience, we will get to explore and experience the spiritual qualities that form the path of mastership. Please be sure to sign up soon. We look forward to seeing you online or in-person.

At the April Global Ministers Meeting, Paul Kaye spoke about a John-Roger excerpt that he would play at IHOP that he found so dense and layered that he always felt it could be broken down to make the several principles that J-R was expressing, more accessible and experiential. In PTS’s Harmonic Self course, they have been studying the great Sufi master, Hazrat Inayat Khan, who wrote a book The Mysticism of Sound and Music.  In the book, he describes the HU in very similar ways to John-Roger. Inayat Khan also talks about the Saut-e-Sarmad (what we call the Sound Current of God). This led Paul to revisit the J-R excerpt with NOW Productions’ fabulous editor, Angela Parkes, to review its pacing, and to ask Angela to make it shine with beauty and create a visual and auditory mini-meditation.

The wonderful result is: Saut-e-Sarmad

 

In March 2021, when MSIA sold the USM Building in Santa Monica, we used some of the proceeds to upgrade and reinvest in our properties.   The next couple of years saw extensive repair and restoration work on the Windermere houses. We also added an ADA lift at Prana for access to the labyrinth terrace level.  The lift was finally installed last year after a couple of years of design and permitting challenges.

A project we have been looking at and planning for several years, was a Tea House for the meditation garden at Prana. Actually, we have envisioned a Tea House in the garden for over twenty years.   The rustic, thatched roof garden shed was our placeholder – we liked its location in the garden – but it was always in the back of our mind to someday have a formal space for serving tea as a meditation and another doorway into peace.

After the sale of the 2101 Wilshire property, we started to lean into the idea of finally making the tea house dream come true.   After considering multiple solutions, we decided to consult with retired architect (and MSIA minister), Charles Berstein, who designed the beautiful dining room at Prana, as well as the stunning lobby and conference rooms at the USM Building.   After visiting the Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden in Pasadena for inspiration, and connecting with Steve Beimel for his input, our meetings with Charles to discuss our vision led him to create some beautifully crafted designs for a contemporary Japanese garden tea house.

Little did we know we were embarking on a four-year epic saga before we could even break ground.   After delays to engineer the plans, we hit a two-year period of back and forth permitting through the LA Department of Building and Safety that showed the depths of patience one can achieve when navigating the intricate process of trying to build a unique structure in Los Angeles.

We have been preparing for the tea house in our own way for the past couple of years.   Last year, Kikuno Hyodo from Kyoto, Japan did a residency at Prana to share her love of the Japanese tea ceremony.  A Shinto priest and a practitioner of the tea ceremony for 17 years, Kikuno performed the “Chabako (tea box) Journey,” an initiative to connect people through tea for the many visitors to Prana. Her small tea sessions with people were an outstanding success. Our own Peace Awareness: A Way of Tea events have been well received and shared on social media.   The new Tea House will be an intimate space for tea, meditation, attunement to nature, and an immersion in the Spirit that embraces it all.

We will be sharing more about this project in the coming months.   It will become a key feature at Peace Awareness Labyrinth, Gardens & Tea House which has already been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, lifestyle shows, and social media.

Thank you to all of you for all that you give in so many ways. As J-R would constantly remind us, “It is the loving that makes all this work.” The times are calling us all to stay in the loving!  We love and appreciate you.

God bless you,

Mark, Paul, Vincent, Sherie, David, and Jeffrey