A Magical Mystery Tour in Hungary
In May of 2014, I attended the first Integral European Conference in Budapest. It was a mind-blowing event—both because of everyone who attended and the wide-ranging knowledge they transmitted (keynote speakers, workshop presenters, Integral Academy staff, audience, simply everyone who was there) and the miracle of coordination that the conference represented, with many workshops going on simultaneously by day and amazing, special experiential events by night.
The conference was followed by an unforgettable 3-day bus tour of Hungary led by conference co-director Bence Ganti. Bus tour participants got to experience magical events and visit historical power spots. We rode in covered wagons pulled by stalwart horses to a beautiful ruin of a monastery, swam in a large, outdoor thermal lake, and listened to the hauntingly beautiful music of a Hungarian mystic/musician, who sang and played spiritual chants with his small band for us in a remote baroque church. We also learned a lot about the poignant history of Hungary from our tour guides as well as our fellow tour members.
So, this year they are doing it again. IEC 2016. And although I am not going to be there this time around, happily, my most recent job was to edit the itinerary of the upcoming Magical Mystery Bus Tour, where once again Bence Ganti will lead the lucky bus tour participants on a wonderful journey full of surprises. So during this project, not only did I get to join the 2016 tour in my imagination, while editing the detailed descriptions of the events to come laid out by Bence, but I also got to relive and remember beautiful and forgotten moments that happened on the bus tour of 2014.
So I wish this year's conference participants a wonderful journey of mind, heart, body, and soul.
And thank you to Heidi Hornlein of Integrale Paradiso and The Wisdom Factory (a wonderful weekly show featuring Integral visionaries talking about all sorts of things from the refugee crisis in Europe, the situation in the Middle East, to how artists can make a better world for all of us), for printing out flyers for me at a little Hungarian print shop near this year's conference.
And thank you to Bence and Dennis for allowing me to put these flyers on the book table at the conference. So many of my most interesting jobs came directly or indirectly from people who were at IEC in 2014, and I wonder what this year will bring!