The John Morton seminar March 20, 2001 was a milestone event for MSIA. For starters, over 220 people nearly filled the spacious Brentwood Room at 2101 Wilshire in Santa Monica, CA, but it seemed like more people than that were there…Wait! There were more! Despite minimal promotion for this prototype evening, there were well over 100 computers tuned in to the live event over the Internet, and there’s no way of knowing how many people per computer were listening to the streaming audio.
We do know they were not just the usual local crowd. The audience stretched from Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Barbara to South America, Australia, Sweden and South Africa, to name just a few locations. And despite being in the middle of the night in some places, folks hung in for the entire 2 hour+ seminar.
The evening began innocently enough with a brief cordial welcome from host, Tom Boyer. Then John Morton took the stage and all heaven broke loose. After a few warm up pitches, the Traveler came on full force as John led a guided imagery meditation on creating an inner sanctuary. Personally, I have rarely heard John’s voice and expression convey such magic as he spoke for over 40 minutes. This meditation tape is going to be a treasure.
After the meditation John spoke for a brief while before opening up for questions. The first was from a young man, who I would guess is maybe 9 or 10 years old, and obviously wise beyond his years. He wanted to know how long MSIA has been around. With innocence and a very sweet purity John responded that MSIA has been around at least as long as the sun and the stars. He spent 3 or 4 minutes explaining this. Ah, the Traveler in action.
Other questions ranged from extra-terrestrials to Soul Awareness Discourses, and John made the profound point that the direction for Discourses is to read them — there is no requirement to understand them. He spent a good bit of time elaborating on how the spiritual connection is activated when our eyes scan the words, as in reading. And, most Discourses can be completed if you just read a page a day. You really need to hear this from the Traveler’s mouth and you can by clicking here to listen to a recording of the internet broadcast.
John went on to recommend people read Discourses with the intention of studying toward initiation, because that establishes a special working relationship between the reader and the Traveler. He emphasized that stating this intention with the first Discourse does not oblige anyone to request initiation at the end of the first two years of study, however it does give the best experience from which to decide whether to follow through or not.
After speaking for over 2 hours, John closed the seminar and stayed to sign copies of his book, The Blessings Already Are. Despite the late hour, the crowd stayed to munch refreshments and chat. The Internet attendees presumably went on to a very pleasant night’s sleep.
To find out about these kinds of events in the future, join the eNDH list by sending an email to Join-New-Day-Herald@lists.msianet.org
To read a behind the scenes look at MSIA’s first live internet broadcast, click here.
