THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18:
FIRST DAY OF THE FESTIVAL

The Mind Body Spirit Festival is held in the Sydney Convention Center, which looks out upon Darling Harbor. The festival opens at 10 AM. We arrive at 10:30 to prepare for my 11 AM, one-hour workshop titled, “Soul Callings.” It is a work day in Sydney and early, so I do not anticipate a large attendance.

Tara on the MBS Festival floor.

The festival floor is covered with 200 booths offering New Age services and products from holistic health to the occult, music, books, clothing, aura cameras and at least 50 psychics doing private readings at individual tables. We meet Graham Wilson on the festival floor. He is the man who invented New Age festivals. His initial offerings were in New York, Sydney, and London. This is the 31st MBS Sydney festival. Over the years, Graham has become a personal friend and we enjoy sharing time with him and his family.

Graham sold the festival to an exhibition company a few years ago, so he could semi-retire in New Zealand. The exhibition company didn’t understand the New Age or New Agers, so after two years of failed festivals they asked Graham to come back aboard as an advisor. And from the turnout this morning, I am guessing it was a very wise move. We agree to meet for lunch after my workshop.

The workshop is sold out. They’re trying to cram more chairs into the room. Anything Graham is associated with, I can count on a highly professional sound system, which is always a relief. They even have three kinds of microphones laid out -- take your choice. I am programmed to use a hand-held singer’s microphone. Large speakers line both sides of the room every ten feet.

I talk about soul callings. Freud called them “repetition compulsions” -- calls that keep surfacing until you deal with them. I credit author Greg LeVoy who says, “All calls lead to some sacrifice, and if you’re unwilling to make sacrifices you can end up losing a great deal more than whatever you might have sacrificed. One of the first places you want to look for a call is any area of your life where there is friction. As in nature, friction occurs where changes are taking place ... or trying to take place.”

Some of our callings are fated -- destined to be, as I have written about in my next book, “Soul Agreements,” which Tara co-wrote with me. In such cases, fate leads those who will. Those who won’t, it drags.

But we often try to avoid a calling, because we’re concerned with security. On such occasions, more often than not, the result is a reduction of our life-force. Our soul shivers and suffers. So we need to understand that security is not secure. The whole concept of security is contrary to the central fact of existence; life changes. When we avoid change, we isolate ourselves from living.

The last 30 minutes of the workshop is an altered state of consciousness session in which I have the participants explore their own callings.

We have lunch with Graham in an elegant outdoor restaurant and catch up on each other’s lives. Cheyenne joins right into the conversations, which delights me. Graham wants us to come to New Zealand after the festival to spend a few days at his new home on the water. But we have already made plane reservations out of Sydney to the US. Next time.

At 3 PM, Tara and I appear at The Speaker’s Café -- a big open area on the festival floor next to a coffee cart. There are cushions for listeners to sit on. We have 30 minutes to promote our “Psychic Sessions” three-hour workshop from 5 to 8:30 PM. I have not prepared any special material, so make it up as I go. There is only one microphone, and Tara prefers to stand off to the side as I talk. I pull her in when people ask questions.

The session over, it is difficult to get away from all those wanting to talk and ask questions. When we do break free, we have a couple hours to kill before we’re on stage in a large, glass-walled upstairs room that looks over the festival. I use some free time to have my Astro*Carto*Graphy chart run, while Tara goes off to make an appointment for a Polarity Therapy session. Her neck is frozen and has been bothering her for weeks. She hopes a hands-on therapist can help.

On my Astro*Carto*Graphy chart, I find my Mercury line runs right through Los Angeles. This is the best place in the world for my writing, communications of all kinds, travel, mobility and youthful mental creativity. My Sun line (where you become master of your own fate) cuts through San Francisco, but with each line covering 300 miles it should also overlap LA. My Venus line (love, beauty, sensuality, luxury, money, ease and artistic interests) is between Phoenix and Santa Fe, so should cover both cities. If I wanted to live in New York or Philadelphia, my Mars line would take over resulting in me being more courageous, sexual, passionate, and my zest for life would increase. Interesting and true unless it isn’t.

When Tara and I meet up she says, “Why don’t you have a polarity session too? We don’t have anything else to do.”

Long ago, I stopped volunteering for tweaky New Age therapies. I’ve maintained this rule for nearly 20 years, always watching as Tara volunteers to try out everything. I stopped volunteering because I had some experiences that left me feeling upside down and backwards. I also spent a lot of time with Pat Flanagan back in the days when he was eating Cobra snake gall bladders and injecting youth-sustaining concoctions into people down in Mexico. Because of Patrick, I may live to 100. But I have always feared I might grow a third ear at any moment.

“I don’t have anything that I know of to fix,” I say.

“Ah, do it anyway,” Tara says.

So I sign up for a session. An elderly woman has me empty my pockets and lie on my back upon a table. She then begins manipulating my energy with a lot of hand waving, leg pulling, arm shaking, and heaven knows what else. She accurately perceives a knee injury, tennis elbow, and at one point leans down and whispers in my ear, “I’m only supposed to do Polarity Therapy, but I’m going to do something else if I have your permission.”

“Sure,” I say, “Go ahead.”

Now one might think I would have enough intelligence to ask, “What else are you going to do and why?” But oh, no. I say, “Sure, go ahead.” For the next two days I will be asking myself questions about stupidity.

I have no idea what she is doing, but at one point, I have to quickly sit up to avoid throwing up.

“Oh, I’ve released too much,” she says.

“Too much what?”

She mumbles something I do not understand, then lays me back down on the table and continues her work. When the session is over she says, “You may feel a little off this evening, but you’ll sleep well and will be okay in the morning.”

A little off? I have a three-hour workshop to conduct.

The workshop is nearly sold out, but by the time we are ready to go on stage, I am sick. I hide it well and give an enthusiastic talk. Then during a period of the workshop where Tara and I telepathically send three psychic symbols to the hypnotized participants, I have to leave the room to throw up. Cheyenne quickly stands in for me, mentally projecting the symbols along with her mother. I return to the room in time to finish the process, and almost everyone in the room telepathically receives one or more of the symbols. To the best of my knowledge, the participants did not know I left the room.

The show must go on, and I manage to conduct the rest of my part of the workshop.

Back at our apartment, I fall into bed. I remember Tara awakening me in the middle of the night, saying I have a high fever and giving me aspirin. In the morning I feel okay.

No fever.

Healer Patti Conklin says that when you’ve had a true healing, you will likely feel sick and experience a fever afterwards.

“The woman may have really saved you from something,” Tara says.

If she did, her timing was terrible. But now that I feel better, I am grateful. I think.

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