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New Life’s July Banquet was held in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where a soft, most welcome rain fell much of the weekend as the banquet activities progressed undisturbed, even enhanced.
The Pagosa Lakes Clubhouse, surrounded by so much natural beauty, was the perfect setting for Friday and Saturday’s events. As always the food was plentiful and delectable, with a wide variety to please one and all.
From Friday night’s class throughout the whole of the weekend, students were also showered with energies from on high, while each New Lifer benefited no doubt according to his/her degree of receptivity. And the more we participated in the available activities, the more we felt this wonderful energy.
It seemed as if each and every person who spoke was inspired to give us something beyond his usual self, increasing our value of this work and rousing us to work harder. (I think Vernon must have been watching from “high upon a hill where Truth has always been.”)
The theme for the weekend was “Practical Exercises for Inner Harmony” with each speaker assigning an exercise and giving so much in his talk, it truly set the stage for realizing that ‘Something Else’ does exist.
Bill Brown launched the first session on Friday night by assigning the exercise Keep Your Mind Where Your Body Is, which unmistakably raised the level of the class. Saturday’s exercise was to Get Off the Stage, or said another way, to stop pretense. Though the exercise made our old nature uncomfortable, the effect of everyone immediately working hard on themselves and becoming more conscious gave remarkable results.
Richard Wooldridge, our keynote speaker on Saturday, invited students to come up during the first half of class and tell ‘what cross they had to bear and then give truth’s solution to it.’ This exercise led to revelations of what people secretly suffer from; from feeling ‘left out’ to secretly wanting to ‘be someone important.’ The exercise in fact exposed the impostors within, the voices which tell us how to think and feel, the voices we believe are us but which in reality are not. An indispensable part of our work is to become aware of the voices which are the cause of so much pain in our lives.
Sunday’s class, led by Dr. Bruce Tracy was held again this year on a mountainside high among the Blue Spruces and Ponderosa Pines on the New Life property a few miles southeast of Pagosa Springs. A deer or two were spotted while the rain held off until the last minute of class, allowing us to enjoy the uniqueness of the surrounding beauty and a special class atmosphere charged with new and higher energies.
One special benefit of banquets is that the efforts made to attend and participate are an important step in continuing to climb the spiritual mountain. Without super-effort, people begin to fall back asleep, never noticing that the direction they have taken is no longer upward. Those who made incredible efforts to attend, those who worked hard to help out and/or those who worked with right intensity to go against the false nature were highly rewarded. Our hearts indeed were thrilled. What else could one want, but more?
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