Life as it is!

by Ann McMaster

The Scene: The Pearl, an advanced residential course in the More To Life program held this year at the Elohee Center, Georgia United States.

Peggy Jarrett and I had a manual – it was an excellent manual. Truly. Each day was perfectly planned, deeper and deeper steps into the magical, mystical journey when Everything comes together. We knew it was Plan A, and that Plan B was coming just around the corner. For us, that wasn’t just a concept, it was a visceral knowing. And it still caught me by surprise.

One person, in an outpouring of ancient grief, opened the space for everyone else’s grief to flow out, right alongside hers. It turned into a group experience of washing out the past.

That wasn’t in the manual. Neither were all those other moments that released us all to the numinous connection of love for each other, to our unabashedly, all-ways present joy.

On the one hand, there is the manual (government regulations, local rules, cultural customs) that provides a conscious framework to hold our experience. On the other hand, within each specific context, life peeks out and offers spiritual experiences that heal, transfigure, harmonize who we are as human beings. At-One-Ment was offered, welcomed and birthed by us all – again and again.

The “manual” is the placeholder/purpose-rich platform from which the At-One-Ment cascades.