I didn't realize until this past year just how significant my trip to France back in 2008 was, as it truly was a time of my spiritual awakening. I'd made the trip to write at an artist's retreat, but I think I barely did any writing. Instead, I was finding out what I was made of.
I spent four weeks in the inn's barter program rolling logs down a medieval mountainside for firewood, weeding in the composted garden on the edge of a cliff, and brushing paint on cellar walls to brighten up the space. I chatted with people from all walks of life, learned about Florence Scovel Shinn's Law of Attraction book, "The Game of Life and How to Play It," and had my first Reiki and mediumship session with a healer in a trailer in the middle of nowhere after experiencing major anxiety and homesickness. I was lost, I was confused, I was navigating a foreign country completely on my own.
It was the most amazing experience of my life.
Taking walks to get fresh water from the mountain source, meeting the food truck for freshly baked bread, and settling in by the fire were moments of reprieve amongst the difficult journey I'd found myself on.
One thing I knew for certain: I was meant to be there.
I'd found the ad in a writer's magazine a few months prior and applied to their program. I was purely following my intuition and many times, I almost chickened out. But my parents encouraged and supported me, my best friend comforted me on the phone at the airport, and angels walked with me every step of the way on my travels. Truly, the miracles along that journey were bountiful.
When the owner of the inn told me the history of the Languedoc region and the connection to the Cathars, I was intrigued. But I didn't realize the significance until this year, as part of my ascension journey. Protectors of the Christos-Sophia code or Father/Mother god (masculine and feminine princple) and the understanding that the Kingdom of Heaven is found within ("Know Thyself,") the Cathars rejected religious indocterination. Nearby in Montsegur was the Cathar massacre during the inquisition, where much of the gnostic wisdom and knowledge was lost.
We're at a point in time collectively where we're recognizing our sovereign self, where we're being asked to question and re-evaluate what we once thought as truth, and where we're being called to rise beyond our perceived limitations as physical beings to become the bridge for the highest embodiment of love.
I didn't know then that this trip was part of my own ascension path or how tied together it would all become.
I know this now: we may not be able to see all of the threads as they're being woven, but nothing is coincidence.