By Susan Ellis of Key Life Journeys

In June 2007 I found myself at a lodge by the Blaeberry River, the banks of which were filled with wild flowers. It is located on the western side of the Rockies near Golden British Columbia. There I was to find a labyrinth, sweat lodge, medicine wheel, resident deer that would give birth, circling bald eagles and the sound of drumming to awaken me at the time of the summer solstice. I had booked 8 nights at Quantum Leaps Lodge to attend a 5 day spiritual retreat. What was the journey that has brought me here?

 
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

Was it moving towards, and into, my 6th decade that made me understand it was time to rethink my beliefs? I had been brought up in a Christian environment and certainly had great respect for the teachings attributed to Jesus. But I had little respect for the way many Christians, en masse, tended to behave – contrary to his teaching. I wanted to belong to a faith community but I could not reconcile the vision of a god as promoted by Christianity, Judaism, Islam etc. I started reading Carolyn Myss, Karen Armstrong. Don Miguel Ruiz, Pema Chodron, Tom Harpur.  I even read Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion” just to check out whether the idea of no god resonated with me. It didn’t. But I certainly was losing interest in the man - made god I was seeing portrayed around me.


Three books in particular excited me. They reminded me of truths I had forgotten in this life but I needed to remember. The first, Lynn McTaggart’s ‘The Field” helped me begin to understand in awe and wonder the quantum world. Now we were talking about energy, vibration, frequencies and the invisible world. Now an essence one could call god started to be more real. For I saw god as the energy force that bound us all together. We were all part of the whole and our matter at its core contained that universal energy. Nothing was separate from anything else in the universe. How irrelevant separation theology now seemed to be. There was no “out there - in here." So how could there be a god out there watching us, loving us, punishing us, cheering us on in battle against the infidels etc.

For my 60th birthday I had taken a cruise along the coast of South America to the Antarctic Peninsula and sub Antarctic islands. While there watching land and icebergs go by, watching light, shadows, colour change, I was filled with something that made me feel completely connected to the “out there.” 
It is described in my DVD download
“Antarctica – a soul journey - awakening” the first in a series of spiritual DVDs.

The second enlightening book I read was Dr.David Hawkins “Power versus Force.” Through this book I started to understand the universal consciousness and how human behaviour is governed by what level of consciousness the individual or the society around the individual has reached. It helped me to be more understanding and forgiving of others.


I have long believed in reincarnation and the endless interchange of form between life and afterlife heralded by birth and death. So when I read Neale Donald Walsch’s “Home with God” I knew I had finally come home. Familiarizing myself with some more of his work, I realized we were talking about a universe that was resonating with my soul. On a quest to learn more, I headed west. 

photo by Donna Lalonde

So I found myself on the shore of the Blaeberry River. A river which would eventually join the Columbia River and journey to the Pacific Ocean.

 
Some guests would be sleeping in teepees by the river near a sweat lodge.

At a later date we would have the chance to fire walk and break an arrow against our throat, sit in hot tubs, have massages and river mud baths and eat delicious organically grown food. Although I would be staying 8 nights, I had come for a 5 day retreat with “Conversations with God” author Neale Donald Walsch. I had come to learn from Master Young Hee the practice of Dahn Yoga.

 
Join me for the next few entries while I share this part of the journey.