Leaving Home and not wanting to return:
My Journey through the Passover-Easter Week, 2014
6:48 am
April 21, 2014
Last Wednesday I left my home for a Passover retreat high in the mountains off Angeles Crest Highway. I challenged myself to make the trip. I hadn't been feeling strong for more than a month. My immune system is down. Part of this had to do with emotions stuck in my chest. I weakened my immune system through doing too much, going way beyond what was natural for my age and development. I am 66 now. There are lessons to learn when we are 66. There are lessons to learn at every age. Now is an extraordinary time when our future is calling to us. Our future wants us. We are the creators who choose the future we want to live. Toward this for this purpose all the life lessons we are to learn surrounded by core issues we have not yet mastered are coming up now to be seen, revealed, and redeemed.
I've never been comfortable in my Jewish skin. There are many issues that came up in the months following the death of my father. He died February 7, 2014. Some of these issues are still trapped in my chest. I can feel them there. The day after the 30th day gathering called a Schloshim, following his passing, I spoke in the synagogue. The day following, I came "down" with Bronchitis. I haven't been fully strong since. Other emotions had to do with living with 7 other people on a 1/3 acre parcel in San Diego, a 1/3 acre parcel of land. I am the manager and this is a burdensome responsibility. I choose the new housemates. We have a vacancy now. When I have a vacancy this becomes a time when my core issues come up.
As a result of my Passover retreat I recognize more than ever that I have chosen housemates who expressed many of the core issues I personally need to do to overcome. I feel like the conditions of my life now are presenting me with life and death issues. If I want to live I am called to live differently. I do not want to repeat experience I've had for more than 2 to 3 months. I have been in bed too much. I have suffered too much. I have been depressed too much.
At our Passover retreat I was one of the people who set a tone for extreme vulnerability and transparency every time I spoke. Many others as well spoke from the deepest place of heart, compassion and desire to express the depth of their being. I have been scared too much. Being scared and frightened are two qualities I inherited from my father. Now is the time to create a different experience. How about you? Are you also ready to heal family relationships. Are you ready to meet the future that is calling you?
I came to the Passover retreat with numbers of intentions. One was that I wanted to further redeem my relationship with my father who was known in his community as Rabbi Solomon Goldman. My father was regarded as a holy man by his Orthodox Jewish community. My original pain work occurred in a Jewish context and has been up for me since his passing. The lifelong issues surrounding how to live with others in community are also up for me. Both these opportunities resolving the conflicts inside me that I brought from childhood, as well as resolving the issues I'm experiencing at home are addressed in the theme healing family relationships. Healing family relationships is the legacy I am dedicating to my father's passing.
I had the gift of announcing this legacy and feeling heard in a council process that we did at our Passover retreat in the Angeles forest.
Healing Family Relationships--this is a photo of my dad, Rabbi Solomon Goldman and me, Leslie. I am working to redeem this relationship. My original pain work happened in a Jewish context. My dad was a player in my soul contract, helping me become the person I am today. Here is a Video of Adam Hess speaking about my dad. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152245513777235&set=vb.504567234&type=2&theater
I am hearing the call to Heal Family Relationships. When we attempt to be with others under the same roof our core issues come up. Many of these are from unfinished business during childhood. It is impossible to live with others on this earth without conscious processes that can be learned. This Passover retreat showed me some of those tools.
I feel I touched heights and depths of healing at our Passover retreat. I was as honest and transparent as possible. The retreat happened during the week of Passover and Easter 2014, a time of the Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse and other energetic astrological influences called the Great Cardinal Cross.
GETTING UP TO THE MOUNTAIN AND COMING DOWN
Successfully leaving home and returning was in itself trying. I overcame great fear.
I wasn't sure that my body would successfully carry me up Angeles Crest and down again. These feelings intensified on the mountain.
My fear was that my 68 VW van that I call the Enchanted Garden Mobile would not make it up Angeles Crest Highway. I also had a fear that I could not successfully drive down.
This fear was exacerbated by the groin pull during our first opening council session. It was only through using a natural anti-inflammatory called AminoActiv that I was able to relax the muscle. I also used Arnica Montana constantly.
There were about 42 adults including numbers of children and our Passover retreat. Part of the community process was constructing a tent. In previous years I've taken photos of the construction and deconstruction of this tent. This year I was resting in my van during that time. The retreat agreement is to not publish photos on the Internet without a lot of community discussion and process. After years of taking time and attention from the community over this photography issue, my decision this year was basically not to take too many photos. I was also feeling too much discomfort on Friday to feel free enough within myself to take photos. My body was my number one concern.
UNABLE TO RETURN HOME
When I left home I had a profound sense that I I had to leave. My health was not that strong. My earliest morning thoughts were that I was not healthy enough to go. I was exposed to some petroleum distillates the afternoon before leaving. I had a headache all through the night. The glands in my throat were swollen. This intensified the immune system issues I was already feeling for more than a month. I also had deep fear about the trek up the mountain. I have had bad experiences in my life going up mountain roads in my 68 VW van. Even in good health managing the clutch on an incline is difficult. I once lost a clutch caught in traffic on an incline.
The trek up the mountain was a lot less severe than I had imagined. I made one mistake, leaving my emergency brake on for 13 miles of that journey. I will likely incur a cost to that. The passage down the mountain was quite gentle. I enjoyed pulling over and allowing cars to pass me by. A number of drivers waved as they passed me. This felt so very sweet.
THE WEATHER FACTOR
The weather was also a major concern. 5200 altitude in a mountain plateau had the potential of heat and cold fluctuations and drops in temperature. This campground had the potential of sudden winds. For weeks before the trip, I was having difficulty with minor fluctuations in my own room and bathroom.
In retrospect, the weather on the mountain during the time we were up there, was also a gift. There was no wind during the night. I was warm in the Enchanted Garden Mobile.
I spent numbers of hours in my van on Friday thinking about the issue of getting down the hill with the groin pull. I also had a persistent under the surface nightmare going on. My mantra was that I was unable to return home. I had reached the limit of what I could endure.
THE FIRST COUNCIL IN THE TENT
I sat in the chair in physical discomfort during our first in the tent council. I spoke to my state of mind. I told the forming community that I could not feel I could go home. I was being totally honest to my feeling.
Friday night at the opening of our Seder I was lying on the floor with my head on the pillow and some blankets under me, I liked this perspective on the ground. It reminded me of times in my life when I was crippled totally, could not walk at all, and was dependent on others. Somehow this time regardless of my physical limits, the community found a way to include me.
By Saturday I began to feel a bit better physically. I kept taking the AminoActiv pills and Arnica Montana.
This is a time when there are shifts going on that demand we look at our unfinished business that I call our core issues. I expressed that thought numbers of times during the weekend and it became a part of the Seder message.
Saturday night the Seder leader read a message that I gave him. I took it off the internet. He framed it as words from Elijah:
We told you that there would be timings in 2014 in which you will be compelled to focus on those remaining areas of your life stream that need to be addressed. That time is now. You will be required to confront the self and prioritize what actions are needed. Redefine your inner contracts and determine how you wish to utilize your remaining time on the planet. You will be compelled to seize the moment , and make a bucket list ...linear life is a quantum of heartbeats ...seize the day!
(I apologize…I am out of touch temporarily with the link to the author who wrote this….I pulled it from an article on the Cardinal Cross that is happening this week during Passover-Easter.)
THIS IS A POEM I READ WITH THE ELIJAH CUP CEREMONY
I've made a decision not to hold back anything. I've decided to tell everything I'm feeling, not just the good stuff I'm feeling. I've decided to share myself, all of myself, I can't hold back myself from giving until what I have to give is all sweet and clean. It's the very act of giving that sweetens and cleans me.
To preserve and respect the confidentiality of the weekend I'm withholding parts of my full experience of what I witnessed while we were in Council. I can only say that I observed numbers of core issues in the community building process come up. The community handled these issues gracefully and elegantly when all was said and done. I am in gratitude that I was able to use my gifts with the children to play a part in the healing.
The full range of my expression both from being down on the carpet Friday night, to expressing my poetry and inspired thoughts, to playing and engaging the small children of our camp, all helped me. The feedback to the work I did with the kids was especially appreciated. I entered full Enchanted Gardener mode. One of the esteemed woman elders said she experienced herself in a dreamtime. I was able to create a very special quality of participation, joy, and teaching with the kids and adults.
THE COUNCIL PROCESS AND WHAT HE TAUGHT ME ABOUT IMPROVING CONDITIONS AT HOME
By Saturday afternoon I began to see how crucial it was for a Council process of a talking Stick to be introduced to my home environment. Sunday morning, I was able to make a few videos with, Shoshana Wheeler, one of the members of the community. Shoshana teaches the Council process. I am going to post some of these on Youtube and on my blog to show to members of my home community. Shoshana offered to be a empathy listener with me.
In the closing circle each person had an opportunity to express. I know that if I am to come back to life it will take a lot of support. I feel I showed the gifts that I have. I feel those gifts added a lot to the weekend and would be missed at future Passover retreats. I very much would like to come back to life. The last few months have been very trying with events at home making it necessary for me to pay extreme attention to management duties, including the need to find a new housemate.
I'm 66 now. I'm sad in some respects that from this point forward in my life I will likely have moments when I will question if I can fully depend on my body to go forward when I want to go forward. I have had hip replacements and Hip revisions. There will always be a possibility that I can pull a muscle doing the most simple actions. Just getting in my car or getting up from a bench at the Passover retreat was enough to pull a muscle and cause hours of discomfort. My life forward will always involve challenge and moving forward in spite of the possibility of injury.
I'm clear that I have contributed immensely through my soul contract and would like to continue to gift humanity. Life for me will always demand faith.
GRATITUDE TO THOSE WHO ATTENDED
I am most lovingly grateful to all the members who attended the Passover retreat. I wish more people in the world could experience that it is possible for us as a community to reclaim our earth. I believe that it is possible through our own cooperation and energies to influence the outcome of events in distant places. God and Angels smiled upon this Passover retreat. I know that it was in Grace that we experienced a gentleness in the weather. I have returned home. This morning, I was appreciating that I have a place to be in spite of the stress that comes from the apparent need to find ways to live together in spite of the core issues that will come up when people live together.
I feel restored to a place where I can sit here and begin to imagine some of the solutions that are needed. I still have the issue of filling one vacancy. The world deeply asks that community form, not only for a Passover retreat, but on a daily basis. For this place to continue, the future itself asks to take steps to become one of those places.
I know there are places where people are living together harmoniously and honoring their core issues as well as their soul contracts.
This house cannot live with many issues swept below the carpet. I will call upon the support I know I found at the Passover Retreat to outgrow my present predicament. I will do my best to have faith in my own capacity to live in a world that becomes more and more an Enchanted Garden home.
11:24 am
April 21, 2014
MORE ON CARDINAL CROSS
ON THE LUNAR ECLIPSE
First Blood Moon starts on the major Jewish Holiday, Passover, April 15th 2014. Then 3 more blood moons follow on 3 more high Jewish holidays, October 8th, 2014 Feast of Tabernacles, April 4th, 2015 Passover, then September 28th, 2015 Feast of Tabernacles....coincidence or a divine message? In the past, the Blood Moons appeared during these Jewish holidays and a major events happened regarding the nation of Israel. Until October 2015, it will be very interesting to see what happens.--Illana Berger
http://www.wisdom-of-astrology.com/astrostarsarticles/the-cosmic-story-libra-lunar-eclipse-april-2014
http://www.opednews.com/articles/3/The-Cosmic-Story-April-20-by-Cathy-Lynn-Pagano-Aries_Change_Community_Courage-140408-344.html
CENTER FOR LIVING COUNCIL, OJAI FOUNDATION--OJAI FOUNDATION
http://www.ojaifoundation.org
VIDEOS OF SHOSHANA WHEELER ARE FORTHCOMING
"It is imperative that we recognize what our core issues are. When we don't we are always in a state of projection, thinking that others are doing it to us. For me that is the huge Maya of the world. It looks like other people are doing it to me. When I know My own core issues, I recognize I am triggered not by what other people do, but because of my own wounds. When my wounds are healed, people can be just as they are to make me feel O.K." --Shoshana Wheeler, Council Facilitator, a Teacher of Compassionate Communication.
ABOUT THE PASSOVER VILLAGE
If you want to be on the mailing list for the Passover Village Annual retreat, or study groups held throughout the year, please go to this website:
http://passovervillage.blogspot.com
My Journey through the Passover-Easter Week, 2014