Barry Schwartzbach
Discover Power Journeys
- December 29, 2009
Why would anyone want to go on a power journey? Why take the time, spend the money, leave the country to do spiritual practice? Can’t it just as well be done from home?
Well, yes, certainly spiritual practice can and should be done at home. Home is where we put into action our highest intentions, where all our inspiration is played out in the context of our daily lives. For many reasons, however, I have found spiritual journeys to be a key component of my path on this Earth.
First of all, on a journey, you get out of your normal routine. All the energy that you otherwise would spend at work, with the family, in the world, can be gathered and focused for self-reflection.
Next, you are with like-minded people. The leaders and other participants are there for the same reason you are, to grow in spirit. The group energy grows exponentially when all the members are pointed in the same direction. This energy is a treasure that you can put in your pockets to bring home. Also, in terms of energy, the sacred places are continuously charged by the faith and yearning of all those who visit that place. Some of this power also travels home with you.
Additionally, the intention with which the place was built can act as a boost to your own intentions and as a mirror to clearly see that which may be veiled in your life. I have been to Teotihuacan many times and every single trip, I have gained insight into something in my life that needs attention or should be left behind.
I recently returned from a power journey to Peru. At many places along the journey we performed ceremony. Sometimes there was a local Shaman; sometimes we were on our own but at each ceremony our overall intent was to leave behind that which no longer served and to open to the light of spirit. This twin intention, of releasing and at the same time gathering, is one of the main benefits that can be realized when traveling to sacred places.
Finally, power journeys, spiritual journeys, are an adventure of the heart. All of the many journeys I have taken in my life have sprung from an inner urge to experience the mystery and magic of these sacred places. These are not just tourist trips; these are journeys where I have gained insight, energy and power to continue the quest at home.
At the same time, using the power of these places and my own intent, I have been able to see many of my limiting beliefs that have robbed me of my power and covered up that blazing spirit that I truly am. When I have been able to leave these beliefs behind and filled the space they used to occupy with the light of Spirit, I have truly felt the power of a power journey.
Within the next few months, Life Mastery Teachers will be leading Power Journeys to Mexico and Egypt.
The trip to the pyramids of Teotihuacan, Mexico will be from February 11 – 16, 2010. Teotihuacan is the ancient city of the Toltec, specifically built as a place for transformation. The name Teotihuacan, roughly translates as ‘the place humans go to become God’. See details on our Featured Journeys page
The journey to Egypt will take place from March 8 – 21, 2010. The itinerary includes visiting the Valley of the Kings, Abydos, Dendara, and the Temples of Karnack and Luxor. There will be a five day Nile cruise to visit the Temples of Edfu, Kom, Ombo and Phalie. The ‘grand finale’ will be private time in the Great Pyramid and at the Sphinx on the Spring Equinox. Egypt Flyer
The Gift of a Spiritual Journey Keeps on Giving
- November 23, 2009
On November 1, 2009, I returned home from my latest Spiritual Journey, a two week adventure in Peru. I was there as a co-facilitator with my ‘Dreaming’ sister, Life Mastery Programs Associate Teacher Gayle Franceschetti. Gayle organizes journeys, through her Lightworker of Vibrational Energy (L.O.V.E.) Institute, as a service to all those who feel attracted to visit sacred sites around this Earth. The next trip Gayle is planning is March 8th – March 21st, 2010 to the Timeless Mystery of Ancient Egypt.
This was my second journey to Peru having gone two years ago with Life Mastery Programs Master Teacher, Rita Rivera Fox. This most recent trip allowed me to build upon and deepen the experiences I had during my first adventure there.
What a magical land Peru is! We spent most of the two weeks at high altitude, anywhere from 8,000ft. to 16,000ft. above sea level. While the altitude was a challenge to my body the vibrational atmosphere fed my Spirit. We visited many sites built by the Inca; around Cusco, in the Sacred Valley, in Machu Picchu, at Lake Titicaca and near Arequipa.
We were blessed to have Peruvian Shaman and the author of Andean Awakening, Jorge Luis Delgado as our guide. Jorge explained the Andean world-view as based on love, service and wisdom and on the principal of reciprocity; quite a difference from our western view of the world. As we traveled throughout the country, I was struck by not only the physical beauty of mountainous terrain dotted with ancient Incan cities and sacred sites, but also the love and acceptance of the Peruvian people.
Personally, this journey provided me an opportunity to take my spiritual practice up a notch. I find that when I am away from my normal routine, especially with like minded people, I can focus on my deep intent to be who I truly am in each moment. Who am I truly? I am a spiritual being in a human body; a traveler on this earth seeking oneness with the ‘all that is’. So, being in the presence of other seekers, feeling the deep energy and intent of sacred sites, performing ceremony meant to open to light and release that which no longer serves, all provide the framework upon which growth is possible and even easy.
This is the reason to take a spiritual journey! To facilitate your own insight and personal growth; and to provide an extra dose of energy to continue the process when you return home! This is a gift you can give yourself that continues to give light, inspiration and purpose to your path for many months and even years.
I urge anyone who is attracted to these words to consider giving yourself the gift of a journey of the spirit. There are two journeys coming up sponsored by Life Mastery Programs or by Life Mastery Associate Teachers. The first, February 11 – 16, 2010 is to the pyramids at Teotihuacán, Mexico. This journey will be led by Life Mastery Programs, Master Teachers Rita Rivera Fox and Meghan McChesney Gilroy. Information for this journey can be found on the Life Mastery web site or by contacting Rosemary Nichols at Rose@lifemasteryprograms.com .
The second journey is to Egypt, March 8 – 21, 2010, with Life Mastery Associate Teachers Gayle Franceschetti and me, Barry Schwartzbach. Information on this trip can be found on the L.O.V.E. web site www.return2love.net or by contacting Gayle at sunnispirit@sbcglobal.net or by calling 203-265-2927.
To help facilitate your decision please accept the gift of $100 off the cost of the journey to Egypt by mentioning this blog when you register. Please click here Egypt Flyer.
Meet Associate Teacher Barry Schwartzbach
- June 23, 2009
Associate Teacher Barry Schwartzbach has recently been feeling an overwhelming sense of joy. This feeling is generated, in part, by the energy being created around the circle of the Four Agreements Wisdom Group that he facilitates. This growing community of people, who are seeking to adapt their lives using Toltec practice and process, meet most Saturdays at 10:00am in Altamont (near Albany), NY.
Barry has long had a desire to share the experience and wisdom gained over a life-time of spiritual seeking. Over the last five years, as he immersed himself in the Toltec philosophy, and learned the simple yet very difficult techniques to regaining his authenticity, this urge to serve has grown. His approach is common sense and loving, combining meditation, readings, lecture and discussion. His intent is to create an atmosphere where each individual can actually feel their connection to “All That Is”.
The meetings are held in ‘Center’, a building that has recently been dedicated as a place where serious seekers of Truth can gather. Barry has worked to create a safe space for spiritual work and practice and the unfolding of a sense of community.
In addition to the wisdom group, Barry co-facilitates Spiritual Journeys to Mexico, Peru and Egypt. He is also currently accepting students for private sessions.
Barry lives in Altamont, NY, with the love of his life, his wife of 37 years, Beverly. They share their 11 acres and mountain views with their dog and cat and countless other creatures.
Contact Information:
Barry Schwartzbach, Altamont, NY
e-mail: barry@lifemasteryprograms.com
phone: 518-577-9411
The Four Agreements Class in NY
- April 24, 2009
Life Mastery Programs is now offering The Four Agreements Class in Altamont, NY through Associate Teacher Barry Schwartzbach.
The Toltec teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz, as presented in The Four Agreements, paint a vivid picture of how we create our own world based on our beliefs or “agreements”. These agreements, which we have often unconsiously accepted, can be based in fear. Once we make an agreement it becomes part of our belief system which triggers automatic responses to the world around us. If we can recognize these patterned responses, we can begin to change them and make concious choices based in Love, not in Fear. Barry’s intention for this group is to introduce concepts and techniques that enable one to move along ones own path to self-discovery.
Class meets most Saturdays beginning April 11, 2009, 10:00am – 12:00 noon
By Donation
5815 Gardner Rd. Altamont, NY 12009
For more information, directions, and dates of meetings: call Barry at 518.577.9411 or email barry@lifemasteryprograms.com
Spirit Beckons
- February 28, 2009
Just as I was maturing into adulthood Spirit beckoned me.
It was the early 1970’s. The Viet Nam war was raging and so were the youth of America. We were demanding “peace, now” and freedom and equality for all. It was a time when I thought we would change the world. But the war dragged on. Demonstrations and rallies gave way to work and marriage and the realization that change had to come from inside and then be reflected back into the world. And so the search began.
I started to read Eastern Philosophy. I tried meditation, read the Bhagavad Gita and was ready to renounce the world in search of my Self. At around the same time I met some “Jesus Freaks” (today we would call them ‘Born Again Christians’) and accepted Jesus in my heart. This was a little unsettling to my Jewish spouse and parents as I was trying to cover all the bases. But as I continued to read eastern thought, replete with karma, reincarnation, bhakti yoga (the path of love), and meditation, it was those concepts that I felt in touch with. Almost as if I already knew them but had only forgotten.
I was torn between the “steep path” of renunciation and the “middle path” of being a householder. Of course I was already married so to renounce it all would have meant ripping my life apart. My thirst for Spirit was strong but I was floundering on my own, unsure of what path to take. I called out to the Universe for a teacher, someone who knew the path. Someone I could trust for guidance and inspiration… and then, the Universe delivered.
My wife showed me a flyer that she had seen in the Dentist’s office about a Swami teaching selected verses from, ancient Hindu texts, the Upanishads. The flyer spoke of his time as a monk and his many years of experience in spiritual life. We went to see him and started a relationship that lasted over 12 years. After 5 years, in 1978, my wife and I were founding members of an Ashram or Spiritual Center, with this Swami and lived there until 1985.
Looking back from this vantage point I am struck as to how one of the first verses we studied in the Upanishads class really foreshowed our time with the Swami. It was roughly…” What is like nectar in the beginning but becomes poison in the end”? And…” What is like poison in the beginning but becomes nectar in the end”?
The answers to the questions are: living only for material things brings poison in the end; living a life dedicated to Spirit brings nectar in the end. Imagine my surprise when my expectation of receiving nectar became the reality of eating lots and lots of poison.
The details are not important, but when the Ashram ended, with an explosive force that sent its residents and the Swami out in all directions, what resulted in me was anger, shame and loss of faith in my concept of God at that time. I was disgusted with myself for having relied so heavily on another human for my own spiritual well being and resolved that it would never happen again.
So there I was, 33 years old, cast adrift. All of my beliefs had been shaken. I was filled with doubt, anger, judgment and I was a huge victim. A victim of another human who, I believed had played me and my wife as patsies, a victim of my own false beliefs that caused me to put my faith outside of myself and a victim to my own internal judge who mercilessly punished me for having ‘failed’ at spiritual life. Oh, and did I mention, I was angry?
This anger was to become a major challenge in my life as I sought to rebuild some semblance of normalcy. All through the time at the Ashram my wife and I had worked at jobs outside, helping to support the place financially as well as with our intention and action. Now, we had our jobs but not much else. We lived with my mother-in-law until we found our own place and tried to put our lives back together. It was not easy. The pain we carried impacted all that we did or tried to do, but slowly as time healed the shock and confusion, we became as any working couple in the world, buying a house and starting to think about a family.
We had healed enough that we decided to have a child and in 1989, our son was born. For a while I was able to forget, at least on the surface, about the pain and perceived betrayal. To have a child, with all of the promise and joy that that brought, helped immensely, but if I looked inside of myself there was still this volcano of anger waiting to erupt at any moment. As I saw this anger in me it only reminded me of my ‘failure’, and so I pushed it away, not wanting to feel it and instead denying that it was there. I had an image of myself as calm and peaceful, someone who could flow with life’s ups and downs. In fact my name at the Ashram was “Prashant”, or ‘peaceful’ and it was that self image that was now in direct opposition to how I felt.
This dichotomy of my self-image and who I really was continued to plague me for many years. I grew to hate myself and what I had become, an angry frustrated person who didn’t trust anyone or even me. Yet, this deep inner longing for what I had started to call ”The Highest Source”, was a real part of me. I refused, however, to seek help from outside of myself, believing that I would not be able to trust anyone again.
By the mid 1990’s I could hardly feel anything except my anger and frustration. I had spent 10 years just trying to recover my balance in this world and I wasn’t having any success. It was at this point that a dear friend of mine took me to a psychic. To say that I was cynical, would be a major understatement, but this person told me things that helped me to open up a bit and I began to look for ways to release and heal. I started to begin the process of forgiveness but mostly this was focused outside of me. I still hadn’t begun to forgive myself, not really seeing the need, believing that if I forgave others my anger and frustration would disappear. It did not.
At this critical point in my life, another friend gave me a book tape of The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, as read by Peter Coyote. This book changed my life. Suddenly, through the simple and direct language used by Don Miguel, I began to see what I needed to do to recover my integrity and my enthusiasm for life. As I read Don Miguel’s description of the parasite who feeds on heavy emotional energy and of the judge and victim we all have in our minds, I began to recognize myself and my own situation.
Of course, if you have read The Four Agreements you know that Don Miguel not only describes ‘the human condition’, but also provides tools for us to be able to redirect our lives from ‘the path of fear’ to ‘the path of love’. These tools, the Four Agreements themselves, along with a description of the three Toltec Masteries, The Mastery of Awareness, The Mastery of Transformation and The Mastery of Intent or Love, gave me a new framework to practice reclaiming responsibility for my own life. However, I found that practicing on my own, while beneficial, left me with many questions. I was beginning to transform my life a little at a time but I was confused about what specifically to practice that would have the most impact. I got a chance to spend a weekend workshop with Don Miguel and his son Don Jose Ruiz and I took it. After that I traveled to the city of the Toltec’s, Teotihuacan, north of Mexico City, with Don Jose. Still later I attended another weekend workshop.
Each time I came home inspired and with more focus about what to practice. But I wanted more contact with a Toltec community. Don Miguel and Don Jose were living in California. I began to desire a community of Toltec’s on the East coast. At about that time I started to receive e-mails from Rita Rivera a Toltec Master Teacher personally trained by Don Miguel. There was a group called Life Mastery Programs, meeting in Winsted, Ct. that had quarterly programs. I still had to overcome my distrust of teachers. I also had to fully understand that a teacher’s role was not to take responsibility for the student but to provide tools to enable the student to make their own transformation.
I approached the group with caution and spent at least my first year testing the leaders to see if they were trying to take advantage of me. To my great relief they passed all my tests. At the same time I started to transform my life.
In the beginning of my association with Life Mastery Programs what I experienced in that community was the love and acceptance of seekers all trying to unfold their own spiritual beings. I also observed individuals making progress on the path and the more I saw that, the more I believed that I could also change my life.
I joined Life Mastery Dreaming, an intense, 3 year program designed to help seekers transform their lives from the path of fear to the path of love. We met for one weekend each month, learning tools and techniques designed to clear false beliefs and to slowly uncover the love and joy which is our natural state. I can report that this process works and that the results are real.
An integral part of the Dreaming process is the identification and clearing of our emotional wounds. We learn to become aware of those areas in our lives that are painful to look at, that we push away rather than deal with. We are asked to feel these uncomfortable feelings. More than that, we are asked to embrace those heavy, dark areas in order to release all the energy we have used in keeping them hidden.
The principle behind this practice is that, the more we feel our emotions as they occur and allow them to move through us rather than not feeling and denying them, the more clear we are to be in our natural human state of love and joy.
In my case, I had to see my anger and release it. I had to accept that, yes, I was angry and I was ashamed of my anger. I had to forgive not only those whom I perceived had ‘wronged’ me but also I had to forgive myself. Slowly, I was able to see and release most of the heavy energy I had been carrying for all those years.
I am transforming into that being I have always sought to be. I am still working and will continue working my process for the rest of my life on this earth, but I am no longer that frustrated, angry man that I feared I would always be.
Now I can see that freedom is based in choice. I can make a choice in every moment to believe or not believe the limitations that my programmed mind is telling me that I am. This process is about “healing, empowerment and service”. First we heal the old wounds based on false beliefs, then we feel empowered to really take control of our own lives and finally we want to serve the world in some way to share the love, joy and clarity that is the natural result of this work.
This work is about giving up our victimhood, taking responsibility for our own lives, and embracing love. This love, which is the goal of all religions, is attainable and real and starts with loving ourselves. Once we can find that love of self, we can also love the rest of humanity and the world. This then is the change I sought so many years ago when my spirit first beckoned.
» Comments (0)