Days of Wine and Roses

Well, I have been in Holland for two weeks now and my blogging intention seemed to slip away. The only time I seemed to have for the computer was late at night and it messed up my sleeping too much so I had to let it go.

Last weekend we had a wonderful workshop in Utrecht, home of the Speelklok Museum, and now I am in Alkmeer, a beautiful city in the north of Holland. I am at the house of Basia Szpak-Borst, a Watsu practitioner I met in Arizona about ten years ago. Tonight we are going to Schoorl for a concert with my teacher Shyamji- www.innertuning.com- where I will spend tonight and tomorrow night attending a workshop on microchakras. I have not been with Shyamji for over 5 years and I love that when I made plans to come to Holland I found out that he was going to be here at the same time!

Sunday, back to Soesterberg and then I cram in as much sightseeing as possible before I leave on Thursday! Yesterday I spent most of the day giving sessions with toning, craniosacral therapy and tuning forks. This weekend is for me! Next week I am hoping to go to Delft, The Garden of Life www.levenstuinen.nl , the Kinderdijks, and see a movie at the amazing art deco Theatre Tuschinski in Amsterdam.

I am fascinated by the use of space here and the ability to keep things uncluttered and tidy. I understand that in a small country with a relatively dense population that space is at a premium and must be used wisely. Everything is narrow- the streets, the cars, the stairs, the refrigerators! I remember when I was little reading the book "The Dutch Twins", which is when I first decided I wanted to go to Holland. The little children slept in brightly painted cupboards! It also has come back to me that someone gave me a little Delft windmill when I was about 6 years old. I have no idea where it came from but I loved it- it was a treasure. So more and more I remember this resonance and the desire to come to this land of windmills and tulips.

Which brings me to the flowers! The supermarkets (which are quite small, more like the old grocery stores from when I was a kid) are full of flowers along with all the other neccessities. Inexpensive- beautiful varieties of orchids for example that would at least twice as much in Florida and twice as much again in New England- and I wonder how this country that is far from tropical can have all these beautiful orchids at a reasonable price!

But... there are greenhouses... and greenhouses and greenhouses and greenhouses! Driving along the highway you look off to the side and there are vast stretches of farmland, green fields and not just one or two large greenhouses, but maybe 20 or 30 all side by side. The Dutch love their flowers!

I went to Lottum last week, a town in the south of Holland. I have always thought of Holland and tulips, but this part of Holland is famous for their roses. Of course they were not out yet- August is the peak season here, but as I walked along the sidewalk I saw that there were these big curlycue structures that looked to be the framework for topiary rose bushes. I don't know that for sure but that seemed to be what they were. I'll google it later! How I would love to come back in August and experience a sea of roses. I imagine the scent filling the air that must be divine.

The sufis use the scent of roses as a way of connecting to the Divine. They place a drop of rose essence in their ear because it is the highest vibration of any plant and causes the consciousness to vibrate at a very high frequency. I tried this once. It was heavenly. Somehow it enters into the system and I was breathing roses- very subtly- but it was intoxicating. Days later after the scent had faded away, I went swimming in the ocean. I dove underwater and when I came up instead of breathing the smell of the ocean I was breathing in roses and went into total bliss. It was so unexpected, but I guess the wash of the ocean released the essential oil once again and it was absolutely beautiful. I lay on my back in the water breathing in sunshine and roses.

Cheese? Oh my God, the cheese! All I eat is goat cheese, no moo cow... but really. Goat cheese with coriander? HEAVENLY!!! I tried about 6 different kinds this morning in a cheese store ("kaaswinkel") in Alkmeer. I have already forgotten what they were but they were all amazing! I may have to go back there before I leave. I don't understand how I can eat all this stuff here I'm "not supposed to eat"and I feel great! Chocolate, dairy, the occasional nightshade... no problem! I swear I am starting to think it's just Florida that doesn't agree with me and all these dietary restrictions are for the birds. However, that being said, I think in general the food is cleaner here. Organic vegetables are organic vegetables- but other than that, I think the milk (which I have been using in my coffee) and the meat is generally better and cleaner.

Also, they don't put heaps of food on your plate. Just enough. A small plate of salad or veggies, a few onion rings and your meat- and the fried potatoes or french fries with green mayonnaise. And maybe a glass of wine. Dessert? One dark chocolate bon bon. Lovely and delicious. It's all so simple and nice. Most Americans don't know much about simplicity! Food for thought...

I know for some of you this is nothing new- but for me? I've never been to Europe before and it is so refreshing! I am loving it.

Speelklok Museum- A Dream Come True

I had a most extraordinary and exciting day today.

When I was little, as I think I mentioned before, the first country I ever wanted to visit was Holland. And I am here. I had actually forgotten that this was one of my first childhood dreams until I realized that I was coming here.

One of my fascinations as a child was music boxes. I loved music boxes and was totally fascinated by them. When I was about 6 years old I had a stuffed rabbit with a music box in it. One day I decided I wanted to find out how the music box worked so I some how managed to open up the rabbit and remove his stuffing, followed by the music box itself. I was thrilled to discovered the inner workings. I got in serious trouble for it- I actually got a spanking- which I didn't understand because as far as I was concerned, it was my rabbit to do whatever I wanted with it, and I did not regret for a moment taking it apart!

The next one I got was a little piano which I didn't have to take apart because I could lift up the top of the very baby grand piano and see into it! My fascination with music boxes had begun- also with watches. It wasn't long before I got a watch which I took the back off of so that I could see how it worked and watch the little gears inside of it move as the seconds and minutes ticked by. Reincarnation was not an unusual dinner topic in our somewhat unusual family and I was quite certain from a young age that in a past life I had been a watchmaker and repairer. I loved the idea that I had once been a happy little old man in Switzerland taking apart, repairing and building cuckoo clocks.

What I never imagined was that there might be a museum of musical clocks and music boxes! When my friend Jane mentioned to me that she wanted to visit this museum in Utrecht that she'd read about and would love to go with me while I was here, I jumped at the chance. Certainly had I ever known that there was such a thing it would have been on the top of my list of places to visit in the world. What an incredible wonderful place beyond my wildest dreams!

It was a very cold wet rainy day in Utrecht and Jane and I were quite chilled when we reached the museum which seems to be in a very old church in Utrecht that has been restored as this amazing museum. We decided to go into the cafe first and get warmed up but I kept jumping up and looking at these huge extraordinary "music boxes", many of which were so huge that they were more like wagons from a carousel. I was absolutely astounded and so thrilled that I actually had tears in my eyes. At one point I actually thought "This is the happiest day of my life"- being in this museum that was dedicated to this incredible creative exploration of playful and beautiful ways of creating sound with exquisite detail and craftsmanship... I felt like I had entered into the heart of these miraculous musical machines that I so adored as a small child and have been fascinated with all my life.

To see pictures from my visit to the museum click here.

When we left the museum it was colder and rainier than when we got there. We had parked quite a ways away and it was so windy that I was using the umbrella as a cane on the cobblestones streets which worked far better than the function it was designed for. Cold and soggy, we got back to the car with our clothes soaked through, but we were laughing, delighted with our adventure and entry into a land of musical magic.

News From the Netherlands

So for openers I will share this beautiful song my friend Paul Goudsmit turned me on to the other day. He and his partner Jane Tipping teach personal transformation workshops based on the principles of A Course in Miracles and they use a lot of music in their workshops. This is one of them. I was completely knocked out by it. So beautiful...

Beyond the "Beyond" (Para Gate!) I am having an amazing and very full time in Holland. Paul and Jane live in a small town called Soesterberg about 35 minutes by train from Amsterdam. I am still trying to get my sleeping thing worked out. The night before last I was exhausted but ended up being up until 4 a.m. regardless, totally unable to sleep. Even the Delta tuners didn't help, which are tuning forks that entrain the brainwaves to different vibrational states. The Delta tuner is for deep sleep and it usually works pretty well for me. But I was being faithful to my blog that night and worked on the computer until very late and I think it really whacked out my melatonin. I finally got up at 11:30 a.m. after being awakened twice by Paul, took a shower and we got on the train to Amsterdam.

Strange Encounter in Amersfoort

I started off the day today by giving a sound meditation with Tibetan bowls to Paul and Jane's Practitioner Training group which was quite lovely- about ten people all lay on the floor on tumbling mats. Interestingly, every person who shared seemed to feel the bowls strongly in their heart. It was sort of amazing the similarity that they described in that aspect of their experience. Maybe it's because they have been together as a group now since October so they are unusually connected, rather than a group that has just come together for the first time for the purpose of experiencing a Sound Journey.

After that Jane and I went to Amersfoort, a nearby city, the heart of which has retained it's medieval origins in it's architecture. It was really very beautiful. In 1300 a defensive wall was built around the city but about 80 years later it needed to be enlarged so a second wall was built around the first and the first one was taken down. The bricks from the original wall were used to build more houses. The front of theses houses were built on the original foundations of the first wall and is now called Muurhuizen (wallhouses) Street.

So Jane and I had just gotten to Muurhuizen Street and hadn't walked more than 50 yards when we were stopped by an old man, easily in his early eighties, who was about to go into his house and invited us in to see the inside of his house. He was quite persistent so in we went! Wouldn't you know he was musician- he played contrabass. The first thing he showed us was his toilet! Unfortunately I still haven't figured out how to get pictures to my blog so to understand why, you'll have to go to my Facebook page! Seriously- I am not saying this to plug my Facebook page- it's just the only place I've been able to upload pictures since I got a new computer!

Anyway it was a kind of a wonderful and bizarre visit. His house seemed like something out of "Amelie", the living room absolutely packed full of all kinds of knick knacks, photos, stuffed animals, crazy old instruments... God knows what! But it seemed so oddly auspicious that he was a musician. I got very excited and tried to tell him that I am a sound healer but absolutely nothing we said really registered. He just wanted to show us everything in his house. He showed us pictures of his family, his father, his brother- old pictures- very old! But it became apparent quite quickly that if we could stay all day he would have been very happy so finally we told him we had someone to meet and sort of backed out the front door of his funny narrow little house. He asked when we were coming back and told us to be sure to ring his doorbell and pay him a visit when we were back! His name was Fritz. He was sweet and lovely and I'm sure if you go to Amersfoort you too could simply knock on his door and he'd let you right in!

Transformational Healing in Holland

Well, once again it has been a stretch since I have been writing. Much too long. I arrived in Holland yesterday and figure this blog will serve as one of my journals! Along with my Dream Journal and my other journal that I like to write in by hand- which also holds notes from sound healing workshops with Shyamji, Jai Uttal, Thomas Ashley-Farrand, Margalo Ashley-Farrand, Daniel Tucker and who knows what else!

Next weekend I am teaching a workshop on Transformation Through Toning, Tuning Forks and Tibetan Bowls. I will also be attending a workshop the following weekend with my Nada Yoga teacher, Shri Shyam Bhatnagar. Amazing that I have not been able to see him in the states for years but synchronicity provides me with the opportunity on the other side of the Atlantic!

I am staying with dear friends from Toronto who moved here last year. I met them in the late '90s when they were in Florida facilitating some deep process workshops based on the teachings of A Course in Miracles. After that they bought a sound table from me and hosted me for 6 weeks up in Toronto where I taught one sound healing class after another, gave many private sessions and met all kinds of amazing people.

Unfortunately I have a new computer and haven't figure out how to download pictures onto Blogspot yet. I need to find a Mac person here. So for now it will just be my random writings!

I have had a very full past few months with some wonderful sound experiences, not the least of which was a Nada Yoga: Temple of Sound workshop last weekend with Yogi Amrit Desai and Bhagavan Das that was extremely powerful. The most extraordinary piece occurred when I got back though and gave someone a treatment. I did not tell her the theme of the workshop but she received the whole teaching through the session. This is her testimonial:

My Experience with the Dance of Creation & Dissolution: Shiva Nataraja - Betsy Vaught

As I lay on the sound table with the heart opening rhythms of Jai Uttal vibrating through my body, Rosie was by my side energetically supporting me as I moved through this journey. The experiences I had opened my awareness and understanding, shifted limiting energetic patterns, and gave me insight into Satya: Truth.

The following words explain as much as they can of what I experienced, but cannot encompass the wholeness of it. I could feel my body energetically receiving the images, information and awarenesses in fully integrated form, as if a hologram was downloaded into my being, although I was able to view it in linear fashion.

Lying on the table with my eyes closed, the form of Shiva as Nataraja danced into view. I felt the energy, the movement, the creative life force flowing through the dance and out into manifestation. As the dance continued, the universe was created, and desires were made manifest. I saw, knew, understood that as I danced with Shiva/as Shiva, my deeply felt thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions came to be what I experienced as the 3-D material world. I saw, knew, and understood that I had created every situation in my life through this dance. Whatever I put energy into through my attention to it, became manifest.

In a brief instant I asked, “How do I then change the things I don’t like or want in my life?” Very clearly, I was shown that as Shiva Nataraja put his foot down and came to stillness, everything dissolved back into pure consciousness, Purusha. So it is in the stillness that the maya, the illusion of separation dissolves. It was when Shiva lay down in stillness under the foot of his Beloved Kali, that Kali was able to stop and recognize Him as her Beloved. The illusion dissolved.

And so it became clear that the opportunity in this lifetime in this moment is to consciously dance our dance of creation by choosing our thoughts, words, and actions to reflect the world we want to live in and then feel the reality, the truth of them in our bodies, dancing them into being. If we want peace, then we must live peace. When confronted with situations that are not what we want, we shift them by moving into the stillness, reconnecting with the oneness of pure consciousness, and merging our thoughts, feelings, words, attention and actions into our desired manifestation.

I must admit to being absolutely astounded as she began sharing with me the details of her experience. What I got from that is that the sounds, mantras, that we practiced were imprinted on my energy field and the experienced was transferred to her through the process of the sound healing session. And yet, she did not get my experience. She had her own experience that was completely accessible to her. I just keep learning about how this works and the endless forms it takes.