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Into the Holy Land:
A Journey Into the Mystery of God and Grace

Explore the mystery of prayer and grace while visiting the most sacred and revered holy sites in Israel. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

One of my personal mysteries is that, given my background in theology and my devotion to teaching within the field of health and now mysticism – and always with a smattering of history – I have yet to visit the Holy Land. During my almost twenty-five-years as a teacher, most of which have included international travel, I have taught all over the world and yet, I have not made it to the one country that represents the point of origin of my own journey into the mystery of God, grace, and the nature of the sacred – Israel. Well, I’m not waiting any longer. CMED is going to Israel in October, 2008, and I am hoping that after you see the extraordinary tour we’ve organized, combined with the thought-provoking theme, you’ll join us.

Israel is a spiritual power point on this earth. Given its extraordinary history, which is a combination of Biblical myth and historical events, Israel exists as a center of mystery, of faith, and of spiritual power – and thus, of social, religious, and political controversy. Peace remains the greatest challenge to our world and certainly that is reflected in the Holy Land where, paradoxically, three shafts of sacred light co-exist so brightly, so obviously: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Here, three of the great world religious traditions converge in this small nation, two of which were born on its soil – Judaism and Christianity. Three of the greatest spiritual prophets this world has ever known and perhaps will ever know – Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed – ascended to their God from this land.

My focus for this trip is, “a journey into the mystery of God and grace.” Blending that subject while exploring Jerusalem, Qumran, Safed, the Wailing Wall, Gethsemane, and Masada – among so many other ancient sites – seemed more than perfect. Israel is itself a mystery of God and grace, with a people whose history has influenced the very core of western civilization. As individuals, we will focus on the more subtle implication of the mystery of God and grace, on how the presence of God manifests into the details of our lives. And what of grace? What is this substance? A well known story in the scripture illustrates the fact that Jesus drew upon grace constantly when he healed people: a woman who was bleeding constantly merely wanted to touch his robe, believing that just by touching his robe she would be healed. The moment she touched his robe, Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Who touched me?” Peter noted that they were in a crowd and any one of many could have touched him, to which Jesus responded, “No, I felt the power go through me.”

Grace is the breath of the Divine, a force capable of interfering in the laws of nature on your behalf, of healing illnesses that conventional medicine claims cannot be healed, of providing wisdom well beyond your temperament. Grace – the subtle presence of the mystery of God in your life. What better place for us to explore the mystery of God and grace in your life than in the Holy Land?

 
Some Astrological Intrigue

Every aspect of the history of Israel intrigues me. I can’t help but include this information because of its cosmic, archetypal perspective. Consider its mythic beginning, with the first covenant between Abram and Yahweh, in which Yahweh changes Abram’s name to Abraham, declaring him to be the “father of a multitude of nations” and giving him the land of Canaan for his people. In exchange, Yahweh requires all male babies to be circumcised, the first of whom would be the son that his wife Sarah would bear him, Isaac. And so began the journey of the Chosen People of Israel, a journey that has given humanity the Ten Commandments, the sacred laws that elevated our survival instincts to actions that have consequences not only on this earth, but before God.

Curiously, to draw astrological intrigue into the drama of Abraham, his encounter with Yahweh occurs as the transition of two astrological ages – just as Taurus, the age of the Bull, is at an end, and Aires, the age of the Ram, is at the beginning. Let us, just for one brief example, visit the cosmos and merge that with a biblical story: an angel appears to Abraham and tells him that Yahweh wants to test him. “Take your son, your only child,” he is told, “and go the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a burnet offering, on a mountain I will point out to you.” Abraham traveled with two servants and Isaac, having gathered wood for the sacrificial fire. Isaac inquires of him, “I see the wood, Father, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” And Abraham replied, “God will provide.” Everyone knows that at the last moment, as Abraham raises his hand holding a knife to kill his son, the angel of Yahweh calls to him to stop, for he has proven that he fears Yahweh above even the love of his son. Then Abraham and Isaac spot a ram caught in a bush and offer that as their sacrifice of thanks. Now note: during the age of Taurus, the Bull, the worship of the golden calf and the bull were common, as was human sacrifice. But now it’s the beginning of a new age, the age of Aires, the Ram, and with that comes a new consciousness – the beginning of a new and more intimate relationship between humanity and God. A new covenant is made, human sacrifice is recognized within the people of Abraham as an act that will never happen again. A new day, a new God has come to a new people and they, to a new land.

Two thousand years later, a man named Jesus is born amid a time of great political and social unrest. Could it be otherwise? Great light can only be born into unrest for what other purpose does it have? Fast forward to his death (as this is not the time or place for me to go through the mystical interpretation of his life – that’s for Israel) – Let us focus on his life within an astrological context. Like Abraham, Jesus was born at the close of Aires, the age of the Ram, and the beginning of Pisces, the sign of two fish swimming in opposite directions. During Easter, Jesus is often referred to as the “last Pascal lamb”, symbolic of the end of the sacrificial icons associated with the Ram age of Aires. Jesus initiated yet another new age – the age of Pisces. “Come, and I will make you fishers of men,” said he. Following his death, the fish became the code sign for being a Christian.

Now we are at the close of this age of Pisces and at the beginning of Aquarius. Astrological ages do not begin on any special date, to be sure. We rather rotate into them over a century. It takes time to dismantle the energetic systems and symbols of an entire astrological age and create the scaffolding for a completely new paradigm of consciousness based upon new concepts, new principles of thought, and most of all, the opposite template of the direction of the movement of how the human community itself should move. That is to say, where the fundamental blueprint of Pisces (two fish swimming in opposite directions) expressed itself in a continually need to divide and conquer, separate and study, split East and West, body and soul, male and female, yin and yang, the left-brained from the right-brained, the intuitive from the intellectual, Aquarian consciousness holds the template of holism (holy)– to draw humanity together. Thus, holism has become the template for medicine, the environment for the beginnings of a global community, and for how we now model ourselves: body/mind/spirit. Holism has become the new soul impulse. We are now living between eras – half in Pisces, an age of separation – and Aquarius, an age of unity and holism. We are living at a time when the familiar power archetypes and systems of the conscious and the unconscious world are getting dismantled while new archetypes and more sophisticated perspectives are getting animated, such as the impulse to recognize that the environment is itself an endangered species.

This is an extraordinary and very bold time to be alive. More changes in one year of our lives than in ten years of our parents lives when they were our age (assuming you are in your forties – fifties). It is a bold time to be alive because you have more capacity to make a difference in this world than you have ever considered and one of the tools is sitting on your desk – the internet. You can reach millions of people in a second with your ideas, for example.

And your other tool is your soul – the mystic’s tool. It is a mystery how the soul works. Just like God and grace, the soul baffles the five senses. You can’t see God, grace, or the soul, and yet, when it comes to power – that is, to the type of power that can inspire peace and bring hope into the world – your soul is your resource. We are at that pivotal moment in history when every choice we make matters – down to what car we drive to our light bulbs to whether we vote to whether we believe our thoughts and prayers matter when it comes to influencing the field of grace that governs this planet. It does matter and you matter more than can be communicated in a newsletter.

There is no greater moment than now to visit the Holy Land. We shall walk where the great prophets lived and died, and we shall stand upon the text of history itself. And together we shall pray on that great land – for peace.

I hope you will join me.

Love,

Caroline and the CMED Family

For more information: http://myss.com/CMED/workshops/israel/