Jach’s Travels

It wasn’t out of pity; it was out of admiration. It’s another long weekend in Colombia — un puente fin de semana — "a bridge weekend."

Friday we drove to Periera, a city in "el Eje Cafetero," the coffer growing area. It’s not a pretty city but it’s popular as a party town with a reputation. (What happens in Pereira …). With a population of about a million people, and many more tourists, it sits at edge of the middle range of the Andes Mountains. It shares the region with Armenia, Santa Rosa, Manizales, and Medellin.…

Jach’s Travels

Pouring rain on a tin roof. It’s been sixty-two years, but I remember the sound and the sensation. We were visiting my grandmother in Schoolcraft, Michigan. The house had been the family home for several generations. A historical site and a clandestine stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. The basement with its steep stone steps was eery and frightening to me that summer. The house had a living room with plenty of mahogany wood rocking chairs with cane wicker seats and back, and a parlor with a shining ebony grand piano and ferns…

Jach’s Travels

It was hard to leave Bali. Many people wrote those words. Everyone felt it. It was hard. Lazaris spoke of Bali as a land "of the between of worlds." It’s a little island that sits in the middle, in the between, of the Archipelago of Indonesia. Bali is a little world unto itself that sits between our world that is and a new world that is now destined to be. Though not literally true, metaphorically and emotionally — spiritually — it’s true. I felt it. Bali has the beauty akin to Hawaii and to many tropical…

Jach’s Travels  (in PANAMA)

His fingers moved with precision across the keypad. Four digits and the thick battered metal door popped. Opening only a few inches, he pushed the door wide. A small room, an anti-room actually. Scared concrete floor, walls, and ceiling. Decades old dust covered the beams. But a shiny elevator and a well dressed young man with a broad smile welcomed us.

"Welcome to Caliope." The shiny door opened and we stepped in as he pushed the button. The 3 lit up. Moments later the rear door opened, and we stepped out into a chrome…

Jach’s Travels (in IRELAND) Sept 20, 2015

"That strange object you see there in the sky is the sun. Get a picture now. You may not see it again."

I left Colombia Monday afternoon (September 7) and with the overnight flight and a very long layover in Madrid, I arrived in Dublin Tuesday evening. Enrique and his mother flew in from Paris the next day as did my sister. My brother and his wife arrived early Thursday morning.

Thursday: By 10:00 a.m. we were on the top deck of the green line hop on hop off bus when…

Jach’s Travels

It begins with corrugated cardboard and blue tarp. A bit tattered. Maybe torn. The cardboard may be soggy or blood stained found behind a butcher shop. A lean-to shelter is built on a slope of a vacant or abandoned hillside just beyond the limits of the city.

Scraps of wood discarded at construction sites or buried in the debris of a collapsed building are added to support the deteriorating cardboard. Tarp is replaced with more tarp. Tin is added to create a better roof. A few bricks. More wood. In time walls take shape with a…

Jach’s Travels

Christmas season officially begins December 7 with the Festival of Lights (Festival de Las Velitas) on the Eve of the Celebration of the Immaculate Conception, but the season of the Novenas begins December 16. I am not altogether sure of what a Novena is. What I experience is that Colombian families and friends get together in the early evening to celebrate Christmas with the Telling of the Tale — the telling the Christian Story of the birth of Jesus. It is told in spoken verse and in song. Everyone knows all the chants and knows which…

By Jach

A Grouping of Questions with Jach’s Replies from the Online Conferences

Q. What are the differences between Union and Oneness? Seems like Oneness is more connected with divinity.

JACH: Certainly they are connected, and often the terms can be interchangeable in our language, but there are differences, I think.

First, union has to do with conscious creation … creating alliances for mutual benefit. It has to do with creating a concordance or a connecting, or linking, of the heart and also of the soul (I think). It has to do with bonding as well…

By Lazaris

An excerpt from the personal growth recording, Inner Peace by Lazaris:

Note: In Part I, Lazaris discussed the beauty and necessity of achieving inner peace, and the ‘blockbuster’ emotions — anger, hurt, self-pity and fear — which prevent our achieving it. In this part, he turns to the ‘bugaboo’ emotions, the ones we overlook or don’t understand, and explores how to work with them and what to put in their place to create the inner peace we want.

The Bugaboo Emotions

We want to move on now and look at those ‘bugaboo’…

By Lazaris

An excerpt from the personal growth recording, Inner Peace by Lazaris:

Today we want to work with some of the ‘bugaboo’ emotions that you have, bugaboo emotions that stand in the way of your having inner peace. We want to work with anxiety, with worry, and with confusion and doubt.

Admittedly, these are not the only things that are standing in the way of inner peace. The blockbuster emotions you are familiar with already — unexpressed anger and hurt, self-pity and fear. We will be talking about those feelings as well, but much more…