Seven Days of Spiritual Strengthening

A few days ago I completed a Peace Awareness Training, PAT. If you’ve taken one you know that it’s much more than peace awareness. For me it was an experience that ran from ebullient joyful laughter to profound sacred revelation. At times my entire body was shaking with mirth. At other times I couldn’t speak from being moved so deeply by the presence of the Traveler and its emissaries.

This particular PAT ran seven days. Seven days without cell phones, without e-mails, without any contact at all with anyone outside of the training. In a sense this is what makes it so challenging to sign up for – “what about my work commitments? My family? My cat?”

These are all legitimate considerations that need to be handled. And in my experience, the sacrifice of seven days of my life to the PAT odyssey has consistently yielded richness beyond anything that I can describe.

It’s called a ‘training’ rather than a ‘retreat’ because it asks such full engagement from those who participate. The training day runs from early morning to late night. It calls forward a certain discipline, not the hardened discipline to goals in the outer world, but the sacred discipline to oneself and the inner journey taking place through the auspices of the training.

It’s been five years since the PATs were offered due to the disruption from the pandemic. I didn’t have a strong inner pull to take the training in a way that made me think I needed to be there as part of a spiritual calling. Rather, I leaned into it as an opportunity because of the memories of how much I’d enjoyed past PAT’s and how much I had received from them inwardly. Why not one more?

I notice now, a few days after the PAT, that I’m stronger in certain areas of my consciousness. In situations where I once felt twinges of envy, I now experience peace. In areas where I felt stuckness and stagnation, I have a new willingness to experiment, to risk, to explore. These inner shifts came forward not by me trying to fix them but in my willingness to participate fully in the PAT process.

The PAT is for students of MSIA, from those reading their first Soul Awareness Discourse to those who have been in it for decades. I found that my presence in the training was a gift for me personally but also a gift for others taking the PAT for the first time. It helped to have experienced students to assist in the light work going on at such a high level in the room. The mix of long-timers and first-timers also lent itself to deepening connections with new and old friends. I may not see the people I met there ever again, but what we shared in seven days makes us spiritual friends for life. And, something tells me I’ll be running into most of them down the road.