Festival of Awareness
(Feb/March 2012) Spring

The front cover was taken at the Spring Festival of Awareness last year. What an amazing tree and site for such an amazing event! I have just finished arranging this year’s presenters so you can enjoy another smorgasbord of healing and insights in 2012. If someone had told me 25 years ago that I would be doing this for a living, I would have raised my eyebrows. Time builds confidence and trust in the universal flow of energy. I remember consulting an astrologer to make sure I would not lose money taking on this new challenge. When it was over we had made about a hundred dollars’ profit that first year, so I took the team out to dinner and we celebrated.

Then I asked if they would like to do it again. I had learned so much that first year that I wanted another chance to do it better. I so clearly remember walking into the gym and whispering loudly to Laurel Burnham, “We should have decorated the gym.” She had attended one of the early Spring Festival events when it was in Nelson and was a great support in those early years. Two Reiki Masters took over finding people to work in the Healing Oasis. Urmi, Dave and Daryl organized the Children’s Festival, a part of that original weekend event which we continued for about ten years.

I had attended one of the Festivals when it was in Vernon. It was held in a school that year, and I remember walking the hallowed halls looking into the rooms that didn’t have too many people so I could find a seat. I remember a female monk giving instructions on meditating with the eyes open, another workshop talking about herbs and several others on topics I was interested in. Soon the day was over and back to Summerland I drove, feeling glad I had managed to fit in at least one day at the Festival as I worked on Sundays. The next year, the event was held at a hotel, so the atmosphere had improved as well as my comfort level. I appreciated the funky hand-typed schedule as I figured out who was in which of the three rooms, but I don’t remember much else.

The Festival had originally started in Castlegar, moved to Nelson, and then the Vernon Center for Positive Living took it over. I wanted to know everything about the kinds of information it presented and had already started the Penticton Metaphysical Society with meetings every second Friday. We listened to local talent like Cheryl Grismer, Andrew Schneider and Peter Morris, a ghostbuster from Vancouver. Peter had participated in the Vernon event and when he did not get invited to present for the third year, he asked me to find out why. When I phoned I was told, “There is no energy to continue the Festivals.” Peter said, “Too bad, it was such a good event!” Then he suggested that he and I could do it.

I had quit my job as a lifeguard by then, and I figured this was a good way to pay society back for having received some unemployment insurance. Looking back at what was happening at the time, I smile at how the universe works. For one thing, knowing that my time working for the Summerland Recreation Department was coming to a close, I had started to study graphology part-time a year before I quit and then full-time till I was ready to write my final exam. I was so disappointed when I failed that I cried. I just couldn’t understand it. The instructor then said I should wait at least six months before trying again. So the timing was, in effect, perfect. I would organize the festival with Peter, I thought, for he had moved to Penticton and so had I. Then I would get on with my life … as I had planned it. This statement often reminds of the joke that asks, “What happens when you tell God your plans?”