Leaving. Beautiful word. My favorite thing to do, my goal in life, my first love. If I could spend my life leaving I wouldn’t ask for anything more.<\/p>\n
Suitcases slowly pile up in the airport van in the early morning at Mandeville, and the group around the kitchen table grows to half a dozen.<\/p>\n
The amount of light, ease and grace that’s around J-R’s physical body (not from his body or personality) is difficult to describe. The workings of life seem frictionless. It’s as though you were to accumulate the happiness that would derive from all of life occurring perfectly, exactly as you would want it, and take that accumulated joy and cram it into the imperfect, bumpy ride that is day-to-day living in the physical world. Nothing outwardly has changed but everything has changed.<\/p>\n
Difficult to describe. Here’s another way: I’m a pretty sensitive guy and I can feel the depression and fear when people express in a contracted, materialistic way\u2014especially when they create something, like art, or a TV show, or TV news. When I’m at home I turn it off. But in the van going to the airport there’s some awful TV news show on the screen and all I can see is the beauty of people working out their little dramas, and the great courage and nobility of souls coming to this planet to overcome it and get a taste of the divine. What was disgusting and mildly painful becomes as wondrous and awe-inspiring as the stars and the trees and the mountains.<\/p>\n
The people around J-R have a devotion to the great pursuit of happiness. In the kitchen at Mandeville getting ready to leave, John Morton and Leigh radiate, Jsu clowns around, Laurie giggles, Delile (J-R’s brother) quietly attends to his big bowl of oatmeal, every once in a while looking up with a mischievous smile\u2026a musical comedy of odd personalities thoroughly enjoying each other’s oddness and their own, and taking joy in leaving.<\/p>\n
We get to the airport greeted by some more of the crew. Watching Jsu organize, direct, herd our little group, schmooze the ticket agents, simultaneously prodding and soothing, is fun to watch. (We should sell instructional videos on how to win people over in daily life, with Jsu at a ticket counter going through all his moves, and then emerging from the scene to explain to the camera how he did that, the mechanics of the interaction, with each person’s motivation and how to respond. Then we should get him to watch his own videos so he can do it more often.)<\/p>\n
He disarms people. We all disarm people. As we line up at the ticket counter Julie sees a security guard dressed in black with a flak jacket and a big machine gun, and says, “Boy you’re really packing,” and he says, “and you should see my gun too,” and everyone cracks up. He takes a bow for the joke. Lightening the world one person at a time.<\/p>\n
It’s the first day of the trip. Everyone is fresh, looking forward, and happy to be leaving. We’ll see if it lasts. We get ourselves and all the equipment to the gate and take off.<\/p>\n
After landing in Israel we meet Benji, our tour guide on so many trips here with J-R in the ’80s and ’90s. After we check into the hotel we take a walk through the old section of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
The preparations are starting, and everyone’s getting their bearings. (We haven’t been here for 5 years.) There’s still time, so I’d say get over here if you can. And most people can, they just won’t, for whatever reason. The energy is already incredible. J-R has put his body on the line to be here, for all of us. He’s holding open a door in a hurricane. It’s heroic. These trips, for me, are opportunities to release lifetimes karma and make gains inwardly that seem impossible in daily life. I’ve never lost anything from participating in any part of my life. It’s when I hold out that I lose. There’s always only one chance, multiplied many times over. And, even though there have been a lot of them, sometimes that one chance is the last one, but you never know it until the game is done.<\/p>\n
Leaving.<\/p>\n
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