In Part One of my last show, I introduced you to Dr. Beverly Nelson and her husband Michael Lee Bartlett, who are the producers and hosts of an eight-week, experiential interactive online program called “Moving Abroad: A Hero’s Journey.” As you may be able to tell from its title, the program uses the work of author and professor Joseph Campbell as a framework for helping people who are contemplating a move abroad, that is, people like me and my wife Leslie.

 

If you have yet to hear Part One, I recommend you listen to at least the first few minutes, where I talk a bit about Joe Campbell, and provide some context for what you are about to hear. Better yet…listen to all of Part One, because when you first meet Beverly and Michael, I think you’ll fall in love with them, as I have.

Beverly has a PhD in Psychology and a BA in Business. She has created and directed internationally recognized Healing Centers all around the world, including what has become the largest and most comprehensive holistic center in Mexico — the LifePath Center.

 

 

Michael is a fellow former IBMer and entrepreneur, having founded or co-founded successful ventures in high tech, education, real estate, video and film production. During the 1970’s Michael practiced as a psychotherapist and founded Ashewood Primal Center, a vibrant therapeutic community in New York City and Woodstock New York.

 

Together Beverly and Michael help people find and follow their life’s passions, and that is why I am so pleased to be collaborating with them. I do make a commission on the sale of their “Moving Abroad: A Hero’s Journey” course, even though you won’t pay a penny extra for it. In fact — you’ll pay less — because at the end of this show, we make an offer, exclusive to Dance listeners, that you will want to know about.

 

I am also collaborating with them on a break-out class for discovering one’s life passions, and I can tell you first hand that the quality, beauty and efficacy of their coursework is second to none. I am proud to be associated with it.

In Part One, the three of us talked about how Michael and Beverly met, and the circumstances that led them to collaborate in picturesque San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Tragically, those circumstances included the untimely deaths of dear loved ones, but out of the ashes of their sadness a beautiful Phoenix has arisen, one wearing the radiant plumes of their own love affair and subsequent marriage, and now, the birth of “Moving Abroad: A Hero’s Journey.”

 

In this Part Two, we delve deeper into the program, and how it helps couples and individuals make a life transforming decision with greater clarity, confidence and much less stress.  It’s all part of my “Move to Higher Ground” theme, which is for people like me who are seeking innovative, out of the box ways to live out our sunset years in a powerful, joyful way.

 

So please join me in Part Two of my two part interview with Dr. Beverly Nelson and Michael Lee Bartlett, and let’s learn how to make the rest of our lives, the best of our lives.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Mark Twain

I often hear nowadays, people being accused.

“He’s a racist.”

“She’s a racist.”

“Trump’s a racist.”

“So and so’s a racist.”

What I have yet to hear is: “I am a racist.”

So let me be the first.

I am a racist.

Yes.

I see the ugly thing, creeping around my soul like a roach in the kitchen. I squash it, but sometime later, there it is again.

I know there is a nest somewhere, eggs hatching, a source deep within me, hidden away where it’s easy to deny. There is where I'll find the library of my false beliefs, the lies I tell myself over and over, so often they become grooves cut into my gray matter, like fissures in rock where the water runs down, cutting deeper and deeper, until fissures become swales, and swales become canyons.

When did the first racist raindrop fall? I don’t know. As a child, for sure. How many drops of poison does it take to pollute the vessel of pure water of which we are born? When, exactly, does a person become a racist, and who gets to decide?

I don’t know, but then, neither does anyone else.

I don’t believe in permanence. That’s one thing the Buddhists have taught me.

Everything changes.

We can become aware of that library of false beliefs, that nest of nasties that colors our perception of things, often for the worse. Awareness alone brings change. We can cut new grooves. My challenge as a human being is not to deny that I am a racist, for that would be as foolish as denying I have cancer when I really do. My challenge is, rather, to stop the cancer from metastasizing and poisoning the whole man.

I doubt I will ever fully eradicate my racism. Unfortunately, I suspect some vestige of it will always be with me. But what I can do, and what I do do, is expose myself to experiences that lessen my racism, those being travel, kind and honest conversation, and breaking bread with “the others” whenever I can. These experiences, like wind and rain, smooth rock and, over time, lay low even the highest mountains.

So when I hear the angry crowd shouting, "He’s a racist,” I want to ask:

“Who among you is not a racist? Stand up then and take a bow...for you are surely a god.”

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