Travel is highly addictive. It\u2019s very seductive. It\u2019s an appearance of newness, a shaking up of old patterns that itself becomes a pattern eventually, just like everything else in this world. Often, the more patterned you are the greater travel\u2019s appeal. Something new! How exciting!\u00a0 At some point, however, you end up singing, \u201cI read the news today, oh boy,\u201d with Lennon\u2019s world-weary, old-soul mixture of pathos, humor and horizonless compassion for the endlessly replicating mirage of departures and arrivals. In the longer running mirage-chase called reincarnation, the departures and arrivals are called deaths and births. Travel is just like reincarnation, but tidier and less grueling.<\/p>\n
This is our second year in a row in Florence, and probably the fifth or sixth time for me. The first three or four times I saw Michelangelo\u2019s David I cried (well, let\u2019s just say my eyes welled up with tears, which counts as crying for me). But last year I was as dried up as the retired older folks who tend to populate this kind of trip like a crowded departure lounge.<\/p>\n
I keep going back to beautiful Florence even though it\u2019s old news, because as J-R often said, \u201cThe eyes are always hungry.\u201d The pull of that hunger is a force that\u2019s stronger than the pushing away of familiarity. But how much can you stimulate yourself with newness before it\u2019s dried up like tears, or exhausted like laughter? How many times can you visit a place before it glides into the same level of unconsciousness where home resides? How much can you stuff yourself with emptiness before you finally know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall?<\/p>\n
And now I\u2019m going to create some sort of record of all this human-created loveliness for the second year in a row (and God-knows-how-many lifetimes in a row), in a way that conveys some newness in and among all the patterns. \u201cI\u2019d love to turn you on\u201d to what\u2019s new, but that\u2019s a kind of evangelism that was functional sixty years ago, before the Traveler\/Christ changed the world. Now I have to turn myself on. The key is awareness. I get turned off when I \u201cdidn\u2019t notice that the Lights had changed\u201d\u2014when I lose awareness of what\u2019s already there and how the ever-moving Light reveals it. There\u2019s no growth, just revelation. There are no inventions, just discoveries.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s new? Nothing. Oh, you want to know about what\u2019s new on this luxurious Italy trip? Nothing\u2014which is just awareness, which is everything. Moses initiated the technique (as far as we know) of taking people out of their familiar reality in order to change their psychic\/genetic patterning. J-R describes how Moses led them out into the desert in \u201cChrist My Man for Eternity\u201d on youtube: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=amixNe6py7U. Rip them out of their routine and pour in the new Jew juice. J-R did the same thing on MSIA trips to Egypt and Israel but updated to the modern age, in much greater comfort. And now instead of having to wander around in the desert we\u2019ve got John Motrin in lovely Florence to palliate the pain of our promiscuous pattern-reproduction.<\/p>\n
As the new juice of one of these trips pours in, I start seeing my patterns that were unconscious before, as though I\u2019m observing from way above my head instead of from inside my skull. When I observe a pattern it doesn\u2019t disappear, it\u2019s just loved. The pain of attachment is alleviated, and I have more freedom to move to the next new mirage on the horizon\u2014if I want to. It\u2019s a lifting and acceleration of the same old desert experience, but with no unpleasant G-force because I\u2019m in a field of no resistance, otherwise known as peace. Greeting the Spirit as a trip like this starts to materialize is like seeing an old friend slowly emerging from a mirage in the heat-distorted distance. It\u2019s instant recognition\u2014but different from pattern recognition because this old friend looks new and different every time. I recognize him through the feeling of newness, not through any input from the five senses or any repeatable pattern.<\/p>\n
Florence for me means the perfect frictionless functioning of artistic creativity and the joy of doing it in the energetic field of a community of artists. It\u2019s a collective intoxication. The artistic community that was here many years ago has been replaced by the touristic community of art appreciators, but it still lives here. I\u2019m in love and I\u2019m addicted to the euphoria of harmonic beauty.<\/p>\n
But the Traveler doesn\u2019t allow wallowing in the past. This is a Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. I\u2019m guided by a series of \u201ccoincidences\u201d to what I need in order to let go.<\/p>\n
On these trips there is always a dulling of my personal desires and plan-making ability in order for that guidance to flow meticulously. An example: After we arrive in Florence the Girlfriend wants to find a certain restaurant where we ate last year. We wander around in what we think is the right direction, but we can\u2019t find it. Eventually I have to go to the bathroom so badly that I sit down at the first available restaurant and run to the toilet. A few tables away we see someone on the trip, an \u201cold friend\u201d who I\u2019ve always recognized from past lives, but who I hardly know in this one. The Girlfriend continues her restaurant search, and the friend and I order food.<\/p>\n
The friend tells me about her ability to see psychically\/spirituality, about the 200-foot high pastel colors that surrounded John Morton when he called in the Light in Lake Como, and the angelic host that descended on us when John gave a seminar in the mountains of Switzerland several years ago. She tried a long time ago to paint what she saw and couldn\u2019t reproduce it, so she gave up. I tune into her ability to let go of physical representation of inner reality, and something starts to shift inside me. I know she\u2019s here to help me into the next step above my artistic karma\u2014not to destroy it, but to soothe the attachment.<\/p>\n
This morning we toured around the city of Florence, along the Arno River and through narrow ancient streets. We strolled through the Uffizi courtyard and ended up at the Duomo. Starting off from our hotels near the Ponte Vecchio we encountered a host of protestors of the Israeli-Palestine war, carrying Palestinian flags, chanting rhythmically. They were entering the area just as we were leaving\u2014a perfectly choreographed opportunity to send the Light and peace to this age-old conflict. As if to remind us about the eternal echoing of these historical patterns, our guide told us a bit about the history of Florence and the significance of Michelangelo\u2019s David (a copy of which resides outdoors in the Piazza della Signoria) as a symbol of the new freedom of the Florentine republic, balanced by the nearby statue of Hercules, symbol the old way of might-makes-right. The tension between the old and the new is as old as newness. Then we moved on to the glorious Duomo and an exploration of its interior. Then some free time.<\/p>\n
Starting at 3:00 pm we reserved a space in a building near the Duomo and had sharing from John Morton and our Travelers Through the Ages presenters.<\/p>\n