THIS IS MY LIFE
Wednesday, 9/26/2001
Copyright (c) 2001, Michael Dickerson. All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction or quotation is strictly prohibited without
permission.

Hi, y'all ~

That greeting is appropriate to a conversation I had about a week ago with a Southern belle. Well, maybe not exactly, but a woman from the South anyway.

I'm back, as I suppose you've already noticed. Tehre have been big chunks of the Spring and Summer that I haven't written about yet. I'll begin working on catching up pretty soon. Don't know if you care or not, but I do.

So, I'm going to start this off with just before I left for The Invitation and then go back to "The Week" in my next letter. But you already know a lot about where I was that week. You got all kinds of forwards that reflected it. I now know that all of that was my way of coping. More about that next time.

So, here we are at Monday, 9/17/01, with me ready to take off for The Invitation. For those of you who don't know, it's a Warrior Spirit advanced retreat facilitated by Jeff Alexander, who also facilitates Leap of Faith (which I'm going to recommend again right now to all of you who haven't taken it).

I was full of mixed feelings about it (or simultaneouos experiences, as Jeff calls them). I was eager to get there and participate. (After all, I'd stayed in the Seattle area for another month largely so I could do this retreat. I had high hopes for it.) I was anxious abouot what might come up for me. Surely I'm not the only one for whom that one appears every time I particpate in a major program, am I? (Anything longer than a day that is experiential in nature is how I define "major.") And I was reluctant to separate myself from what was going on in the world. (I thought we were going to be totally cut off from the news. As it turned out, they did post a couple of updates from CNN.com to read if we wanted to.)

But, despite all that, I got everything handled in time to get to the ferry for the earlier (of the 2 they had recommended) crossing. Then I noticed another source of anxiety. I was nervious about riding on the ferry. Just a 15 minute crossing, but I was anxious that some fanatic might think this little ferry was worthy of sinking in another act of terrorism. I was clearly experiencing some of the symptoms of having been secondarily traumatized (another one besides intellectualizing about it, I mean).

Obviously, I wasn't the only one who was thinking that way. They immediately announced that any baggage or parcel left unattended would be treated as suspicious. Then, about 5 minutes later another announcement came over the loudspeakers. Thre was baggage left unattended already. Some people just don't listen, huh? Well, that was a bit of a rush for me.

In case you're wondering how it turned out: The ferry didn't blow up, and I didn't sink to the bottom of the Sound. Or had you already guessed that?

And so I arrived and accepted The Invitation.

Now is where I'm going to become a bit obscure. I don't want to tell you exactly what happened for a couple of reasons: (1) if any of you ever participates, I don't want to ruin it for you, and a lot of the value of Jeff's programs comes from the element of surprise and not meeting our expectations. (Another thing that contributed to my anxiety, as you might imagine. For all I knew, anything could have happened. I did end up having some fascinating fantasies about what might occur. One of them was . . . . [censored].)

What can I tell you? The web site tells this, so I'll feel free to talk about it. The premise of the retreat is that we're being given instructions from Mission Control relevant our personal missions to come on earth.

What else? I met some wonderful people. We did some powerful exercises. I had the chance to act and be a comedian and build towers, all of which I'm good at. I met a horse. I died and was reborn. I got lost in the wilderness. I climbed down the side of a very steep hill quite a few times (and back up once). I found myself very attracted to some unavailable women. I saw through a tube clearly. I gave away energy. I answered the bell. I lost track of time (and even day). I took a hike. I stopped trusting. I learned from an egg. I got shot several times. I fell in love. We connected. I blessed the flame. I let myself be exposed. I chose not to be invisible. I celebrated. I crossed over. I accepted myself as a tube. I was the essence of Spirit. We ate and ate. I saw the Big Story. I let my powerlessness be. I recognized a master. I contracted and expanded. I confirmed that I'm a pencil. I appreciated being perturbed. I embraced my mission. I won the energy pod and shared the energy. I just knew. I remembered who I am. I fell in love some more. And it was all NOW!

I really enjoyed creating that word collage. Others who've taken The Invitation will probably know what most of it means. (Hey, Tammi, how much of it are you getting? Some of it is specific to this retreat, but much of it should be recognizable from yours, too.)

What did I get? A lot:

I came out having faith in my own value with regard to what's mine to do and being willing to let go of what's not mine to do.

I realized that I'll always have enough money to do what's really mine to do.

I accepted that I only need to know my next step and that that's all that Spirit may give me at one time.

Relevant to that, I clarified my life's mission statement. My current statement of it is now: My mission is to participate in creating heaven on earth by remembering who I really am, demonstrating love in action, and following Spirit without hesitation.

I let go of caring what people think about who I'm attracted to and who I love.

I know more fully the power of being what I want to communicate or teach. I'll always know from now on when I'm being effective and what to do when I'm not.

I feel very different, only not really different - more like I've remembered that I'm the same as I always was but had forgotten about.

I'm feeling very centered, open-hearted, and expansive - most of the time, that is.

I came out having even greater faith in a positive force operating in the world.

And more. I'm sure there are things I haven't even realized yet.

The overall outcome? For me, it was life transforming in a very gentle but solid way.

Another interesting result: I lost nearly all desire to forward information and statements about terrorism and 9/11. It still doesn't seem important to me for some reason - even though I spent much of my time pre-retreat and post-9/11 doing that. All I can say is that it just doesn't seem important any longer.

And now it's been 5 days since I returned to the world. Everything is a little different. Everything. It's like a Star Trek episode in which they notice that they've stepped into a parallel reality that isn't quite the same as the one they came from.

We shall see where it all goes.

Namaste,
Michael

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