ISTA

My memories with ISTA. A Journey with a Soul. The context in and around ISTA at this time is what has inspired this sharing. It’s my story with them, lights and shadows. The intention is to encourage gazing on a wider horizon, where all forms of the arts of loving and healing meet. A horizon where we all lovers of love can feel appreciated and included. Where the sacred and the sexual can be wedded happily and in peace. A horizon where attacks are met together and where mystery schools can come together in appreciating ways that hostility makes us stronger and forces everyone to give an account of oneself. My narrative emanated as a reflection on ISTA’s recent response to the attack of a fundamentalist Center in Israel. The response was thorough. And yet, some energies are not quite settled yet. Thanks for reading. I hope it is useful. 1. First Times I am in Berkeley, CA, Dez is in the room along with Deborah Anapol. It must be sometime around 2009-10. They are running a Puja. We all bask in a cloud of glow, softness, cuddliness, light. I feel the density of the oxytocin all around, even as I don’t yet have a name for it. A strong intuition comes to me. “As soon as it’s time for me to complete my career in academe, I want to become a teacher of the whole person.” I tell Dez between one eye gazing and another. I feel such joy and plenitude in my heart. 2. Doing It Next time I’m in Angsbacka, Sweden, 2017 or so. I’ve just taken ISTA L1 for the first time. We get out and people ask me. “The curriculum is great,” I reply, “I could not have designed it better.” It embraces many of my values, including the plenitude of bisexuality, the expansiveness of polyamory as lovestyles that are an option for those ready to expand. It values women and expresses a positive sense of androgyny: the presence of feminine and masculine elements in all of us. It emphasizes ways of healing and loving that are natural, even as they are inclusive, and reflect the wide horizon of diversity that nature itself encompasses. These had been the main themes of my academic research, as a literary person with a penchant for narrative. These are the ISTA highlights that were apparent to me at that time. 3. Wings In my new life as a retiree, I endeavor to educate myself in all the esoteric disciplines and practices that today’s academic world keeps out of bounds. I offer myself opportunities to explore and learn from several esoteric schools and intentional communities, including the Tao Garden and the Source School of Tantra, in Thailand, Lolia in Hawaii, the Sex-Positive education group in Portland, Oregon, a number of venues in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tamera in Portugal, Damanhur in Northern Italy, and many others. Eventually, I take ISTA a number of additional times, as a participant, as an assistant, as a repeat participant, with several lead facilitators in Levels 1 and 2. 4. Awkward? My experiences are mixed. Sometimes I feel a strong affinity for the facilitation, the organizing team, and location. At other times, less so. I NEVER feel abused. Sometimes I do feel constipated and sleep deprived, due, not so much to the schedule itself, but rather to my desire to stay up beyond the schedule and socialize, and to my capricious bowels. A number of times I feel out of touch with the bulk of the group for, as a participant who is also by age retired, I am so much older than the average. 5. The Entire Person Teaching the entire person means, of course, going well beyond what’s allowed in today’s universities, namely visual communication, plus the written and the spoken word (logos/mind). Teaching the whole person means activating all the senses and perceptions that our human species can avail itself of, as a way to learn about oneself, the world, and the universe we’re in. There are risks involved in this. It was known even in classical Athens, as Eryximachus explains in Plato’s dialogue, The Symposium. Yet the advantages far outweigh the risks, as the knowledge one can transmit is so much more transforming, impacting, profound and valuable. It is initiatory in its character, just like it was in the ancient Mysteries of Eleusis. These knowledges allow the initiated to transform energies. It’s like an alchemy where a wide range of emotions become transfused as love. This happens in ISTA as in all other esoteric schools. Today I can say that my awareness of all that matters, my sense of existence, of energy, of matter, of intuition, of souls, of heart, of health, of love, of initiation, of frequency, of vibration, of connection, of emotion, of the universe, has been so expanded from the time I met Dez, ISTA’s founder, in that Berkeley puja. It’s been a great journey and I’m so glad to have embarked in it. I feel another big part of myself has been found and I’m proud of it. So far ISTA is by far the esoteric school where I have invested more energies than in others. I feel an affinity and an affiliation for it. At this time, I also realize how easy it is for fundamentalist associations to assemble what they call “evidence” against this mystery school. It’s easy because so many people afraid of mysteries are eager to believe it! 6. Peak Experience My peak experience with ISTA is very recent. It’s related to the first 50 + ISTA that Laurie Handlers conducted in Mexico. There I felt totally at home. I felt totally connected with the group, the team and the conductors. I was assisting, which requires extra time, yet I never felt constipated or sleep deprived. It was a major breakthrough in my life. Fifty people together for a week, in and around the themes and practices of sexuality, spirituality and