Leaving Arizona

Dear readers, much has been changing in my external world and, hopefully, some in my inner world too since the last several months have been full of emotional opportunities to feel tough emotions, which, when we allow those emotions to flow, can help us grow towards love.

This past winter, I started feeling a desire to let go of what I had created in the highlands of Arizona. I think this desire began to take shape when I heard that there is a possibility of a Divine Truth learning center being developed in the North Carolina/Tennessee Appalachian Mountain area but not in Arizona. Hearing this was a little disappointing (that I had spent a lot of time and energy in an area that is no longer being considered for a learning center) but, at the same time, exciting. If Jesus and Mary establish a learning center in north America, I want to be there, be a part of it if they will have me. And, if it happens to be in Appalachia, all the better. North Carolina, in particular, has been on my radar since the early 2000’s, when I had been interested in living in intentional community. There is a famous eco-groovy intentional community there called Earth Haven near Asheville, NC that caught my interest at the time and a really cool nursery called the Useful Plant Nursery that educated and inspired me in my Permaculture studies all those years ago. 

Now that Appalachia was again popping up in my radar, I quickly became curious about it and started fantasizing about relocating there. I watched a bunch of videos on different towns and events, including many showing the devastation of the recent hurricane Helene. And I began playing a game of looking at my stuff in and around my home and asking myself, if I decide to move, would I take this or leave it/give it away?

I also started noticing that several things that had held interest for me in Arizona started to fall away. Playing music with others came to a close. An idea about going back to massage school (which I endured for a quarter-semester August-October) turned into quite a drama that, beside offering me all kinds of emotions to feel, ultimately showed me that massage is not the direction I want to go anyway. A brief relationship I had with a man during the fall came to a head when he let me know that I embarrassed him when I responded honestly to questions about “So, what do you do?” with answers that included Divine Truth and its teachers. He asked me to stop mentioning Jesus and Mary to his friends and definitely don’t mention them to his family. But how could I do that and still be myself? Divine Truth is paramount in my life and they are its teachers. It turned out that his request was actually an ultimatum and, for me, a no-brainer of a decision. I definitely prefer endings that are clear, which this was. I felt a good dose of grief about it because I had opened my heart to him and he had rejected and wanted to control me, a pattern that got established with my dad and still needs attention. I was glad, however, to know that I could open my heart up to a man again. It was worth it for this, to know that I could, and to grieve more of what is there.

All this shifting away from Arizona and towards the unknown in Appalachia was unexpected and not something I imagined could become a reality until just a few months before I left. I had put my heart and soul into creating a self-sufficient life style that I had some genuine passion for and that I hoped would support me in developing a relationship with God. God wants us to learn to take responsibility for our physical needs, but focusing on our physical needs is not going to bring much benefit to our soul or anyone else’s or our relationship with God if we do not address our much more consequential emotional errors. For me, a major error in my soul is arrogance and desiring to feel superior to others. In some ways, my “cool” off-grid, homesteading lifestyle actually fed my arrogance and desire to feel superior. Letting all that go for the great unknown certainly felt humbling and would require me to have faith that God and my loving guides would guide me. 

Unfortunately, my faith in God often feels minuscule when faced with big changes. It is easy to question faith in order to avoid change. Is God really guiding me through all this upheaval? Or is this the workings of spirits who want to destroy me? I have had lots of spirit influence in recent years that cause me much confusion and distraction, so that felt like a real possibility. But I feel that I have a pretty strong will (often to my own and others’ detriment), so, hopefully, I would not be blindly led to do something I don’t want to do. The shift and the growth of desire feeding this change has been gradual, which encourages me to think that it is a soul-driven desire. I believe it started when Jesus mentioned possible locations for learning centers but didn’t solidify until my desire grew enough to advance the idea beyond fantasy. I had gotten quite comfortable living an isolated life with no almost no bills to pay and very little interaction with other people, so a radical shake-up had to be good for me and was sure to bring up suppressed emotions. And it has. I have felt overwhelmed, out of control, crazy, and terrified. What the heck am I doing? I just planted an entire orchard! Yet, I felt drawn to leave. I felt excited and happy when I started watching documentaries about the Appalachian mountains, reading up on certain communities and towns that I wanted to visit, and pinning places of interest on my Google map. I reached out to some Divine Truth folks in the North Carolina/SW Virginia area who are now new friends. I started pondering what my place would be worth if I should sell it and browsed Zillow real estate postings in towns that interested me. I could see that things were a lot more expensive back east. I might have to do with a fraction of an acre instead of 40, and naturally-built homes for sale seemed non-existant. It looked like I would have to let go of a number of expectations. Asheville, North Carolina and Floyd, Virginia seemed like rather enlightened areas with respect to natural building and self-sufficient living, but I ultimately did not feel drawn there. I seemed to be headed to a more conservative area, further towards the Smoky and Nantahalla Wilderness areas. I definitely wanted to be closer to the mountains.

When I realized my desire had become more than a fantasy, I called a real estate person. Once I did that, things happened with dizzying speed. The real estate man came out and walked the property with me and wisely said that one of the biggest blocks to selling a property is that the seller is actually still attached to it and doesn’t really want to sell it. That fits right into what we are learning about the power of true desire. Well, my desire must have been clear at the soul level, because as soon as he gave me an idea what he felt was a fair price, based on comp sales and the uniqueness of my place (lingo for potentially tricky to sell), I had the idea to call me neighbor and ask if he knew anyone who might be interested. He said yes, and could they come over in an hour and a half? A couple from Oregon, long time friends of theirs, were staying with them and were wanting to move to the area. They came over and immediately fell in love with my place. They offered me the full asking price in cash. Wow. We had a very quick escrow with no conditions, no complications, and minimal fees. Even the real estate man generously refused to take a commission since I sold it before he could take pictures of it or put it on the market. 

I could not have imagined a more efficient departure. Emotionally, however, things were in much greater turmoil. Days before my departure, I started falling apart in public places. I couldn’t think straight. I prayed to God for clarity, guidance, protection, truth, and Love, but mostly I was a wreck. Whether I was ready or not, I would soon be homeless and driving 1600 miles alone across the country to find a new place to live somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains.

The adventure across the country is a story in itself, including my first night in a high probability tornado warning zone (and it blew like crazy), but I eventually made it to a little town called Townsend, Tennessee at the beginning of the Appalachians. It was lovely. My 25 year old truck, however, had started making unhappy noises. I decided I would get it fixed at my next stop, if possible, wherever that would be. I didn’t want to take my truck up and over the steeper route through the mountains, so I chose a longer side route that would take me to the area of the mountains I felt drawn to exploring. This side route turned out to be a famous road known as “The Tail of the Dragon,” one which—if you are a thrill-seeking motor cycle or sports car enthusiast—you might actually seek out. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into until it was too late. Ten miles in and ten more to go—hell in either direction—it was pointless to turn around and find an alternate route. I might as well keep going. Quite a metaphor to my life! In this case, I had inadvertently selected the insanely curvy and narrow road that I had heard about but didn’t pay attention to where it actually was. It wasn’t until I started seeing photo-op business at major hair-pin curves with names like, “Kill Boy”—seriously!! I am not kidding, that is the actual name of one of them—that I put two and two together and realized where I was. I was on the Tail of the Dragon, but I had also made it to North Carolina.

Next post, I will share the adventure of finding my new home, which… spoiler alert… landed me in the town of Franklin, North Carolina.