First we sat on the runway as the storm broke around us, closing Dulles Airport for an hour. Finally, around 10:30 pm, we rose into cumulous towers, as lightning lit every window. Soon we viewed the storm along side the right wing – a lightshow inside a gargantuan cloud, it’s black edges swollen with rain. For a good ten minutes we flew next to this vision. The full moon rode the wing.        The next morning I opened an E-mail sent on our travel day:

…the evolutionary reset begins today 9:44 pm (East Coast time), illuminated and amplified by the Full Moon. Uranus, (lightning bolt of awakening), is activating a new evolutionary cycle as it completes its 84 year journey from Aries through Pisces- and begins again, at this moment. Big celestial event…. Uranus into Aries: spontaneous innovation, unprecedented originality, adventurous experimentation!

Seven Pillars:  We traveled to Albany, New York on that energy, then drove to New Lebanon and arrived around 2:00 AM. We had come to participate in a Guiding Voices Conference of The Seven Pillars House of Wisdom. I kept turning over in my thoughts what wisdom might be. I felt it as rooted to the feminine and nature.

http://www.sevenpillarshouse.org  <> Seven Pillars exists to support the advancement of wisdom in the global culture.  By wisdom is meant knowledge that is rooted in the experience of the heart.  This is knowledge that recognizes the universe as the living expression of a sacred unity…

I took pages of notes on the two days of meetings, but I have misplaced them. Here are some highlights: Shabda and I hiked up the mountain behind the Abode, which is in the Berkshires near the Massachusetts border. We went to the place Pir Vilayat used for retreat when he was alive – The Pod. The woods were beautiful and full of delicious sounding streams and songbirds.

Here are some highlights from the conference: I connected with Paul Devereux’s talk on cosmology, and the notion of one’s place in the physical world. Dot and surrounding.

I read from Untold, participated in a high energy evening of dance and Zikr, lead by Shabda; engaged in moments of personal sharing with members of the group; and finally was ceremonially handed a pomegranate by Janet Piedilato.

<>  Omega Institute. We met our old friend, Stephan and his lovely wife, Annette, had lunch and a golf cart tour of Omega Institute on Memorial Day.

That evening I gave a reading from Untold at the Ram Dass Library at Omega with my Publisher, Publicist, and book designer present! I met Elizabeth Cunningham, Monkfish author of The Passion of Mary Magdalen.

<> Monkfish Books! I met my publisher! We stayed next door to the Monkfish Books headquarters, on a beautiful property in Rhinebeck. A good time with excellent food and company!

<> Our friend Wen drove us from the Abode to Rhinebeck then to the airport on Tuesday. We stopped at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, and delivered Untold to the Dean of the College. I had not been there since I graduated years ago.

Through the window next to this painting I could see the New Dorms where I lived freshman year, and on the other side, the dorm at the library… where I shared  a suite of rooms with Karen Magid, next door to Bessie Huang and Nancy Houseman… where Tibor used to call up to me from the road, when he arrived on his Norton motorcycle.   In the place where I am standing in the photo below, I walked in my cap and gown decades ago…