a. Some re-organization on the web site

Sometimes sanity prevails over madness. This truism is illustrated by the fact that after toiling too many hours trying to divide some of the tapes into self-contained segments (a.k.a. “Topics”), it became evident that this would require several lifetimes to achieve.

Mercifully, A.I. is here today to help us lighten the burden: instead of a list of Topics, we now offer a Summary of each tape, courtesy of an A.I. program far faster than anyone could be.
The result? In the three pages listing the tapes (“Audiofiles & Transcripts”, “Workshops” and “Tours & Trips”), you will now find summaries listed right after the title of each tape (with many more to be added), followed in turn by the “Audio” file itself. That way, visitors can quickly click on the Summary and decide on that basis if they want to listen to the full Audio or not. Note the color coding, slightly modified from the previous version, which now looks like this:

Note also that when tapes have been recently added to the site, the “Audio” box is set against a white background instead of a golden one, and if the quality of the audio has been checked yet, it is marked against a pink background (ususally “Excellent”), like this:

b. Ghost Ranch tapes uploaded

When my wife and I met Mary-Margaret in Albuquerque years ago, as we parted she recommended we listen to the tapes of the Ghost Ranch workshop (Feb. 1995), which was the last big workshop with Bartholomew present. At the time, neither she nor I had a copy of the set, but eventually a couple of people who had one were kind enough to lend it to me so that I could copy them. A few years passed before I was finally able to upload them to the site, where they can be found today.

The Ghost Ranch set includes 8 tapes, no less, reflecting the fact that the it lasted 5 days and that more than 100 people attended. They contain a rich summary of everything Bartolomew taught during the 17 previous years.

One word of warning if you choose to listen to them: the audio quality is uneven from one tape to the next, due in particular to the fact that while Mary-Margaret’s voice can be heard loud and clear, the questions asked from the audience are not always as distinct. There is a partial remedy to this problem: you will notice a green box facing the Ghost Ranch tapes that says “PDF”.

This has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating: that PDF document, titled “Where Would I Go?”, is the verbatim transcription of all 8 tapes, including many of the questions asked by audience members. This is the work of our friend Ann Claassen, who at a time when there were no transcription apps of any sort, did the monumental work of listening carefully to each tape before transcribing everything. This work is nothing short of extraordinary and she deserves both the recognition and gratefulness of the Bartholomew community today and tomorrow for having generously made it available to all here. Once again, thank you Ann!

c. Commercial tapes

While the audio file of each one of the four commercial tapes were already on the site, they were not presented along the same format as the other tapes (at the bottom of the “Audiofiles & Transcripts” page). Now that has been corrected. You can read an abstract of each one by clicking on the corresponding “Summary” link.

d. Additional Workshop tapes

1. The 1990 Los Gatos 2-Day Workshop (6 tapes)
2. The 1991 Taos Winter 2-Day Workshop (4 tapes)
3. The 1991 Chicago 2-Day Workshop (4 tapes)
4. The 1991 Detroit 2-Day Workshop (5 tapes)
5. The 1991 Tasmania 2-Day Workshop (5 tapes)
6. The 1994 New York City 1-Day Workshop (3 tapes)
7. The 1994 Bozeman (MT) 2-Day Workshop (7 tapes)

2. Why listen to the tapes?

Dawn Weaver, grand-daughter of Dr. Aiken, sent me a stack of old transcripts, pointing out in particular an interesting excerpt from one of the earliest tapes (Tape 32X2, “Impact of the transcripts”.)

Here Bartholomew explains why listening to the tapes is important and how it impacts listeners:
"There is no question that anyone who comes into the process, and merges himself into listening to the tapes, will soon find areas of their awareness opening, almost without knowing it. Flashes will come. Things will flash, and this is because the process is working."

Depending on their own experiences, each such beneficiary will have to determine what Bartholomew meant by “flashes”, whether he was referring to actual visual flashes, or flashes of intuition or inspiration.

3. Individual favorites

We all have our favorite tapes, the ones that either impacted us the most or the ones that “spoke” to us more than others. If you, the reader of this newsletter, feel like sharing your favorite one, it would be wonderful to let us know. If there is one or more tapes that has a special meaning for you or which has affected you in any way, would you be willing to share it with the group, even anonymously? I’ll start (with two tapes actually).

1. My first favorite is Tape 513 (“Relinquish Judgment”).
Why this tape in particular? Because it made me aware of how judgmental I had been my entire life (and still am to a degree). Listening to Bartholomew on this subject had a profound effect on me when I realized the futility of my judging others and/or situations. And yet, while it is less of a struggle than it used to be once I became aware of my judgmental attitude, I must remain vigilant to this day in order to stop myself from doing it again. As Bartholomew says in another tape (Tape 193), “We Are Living All Lives” simultaneously, even if we are not aware of it, so why judge since "they" are also "us"? 


2. My second favorite is Tape 528AX1 (“1991 Tasmania 2-day Workshop”) Why? Because in it, Bartholomew shared the following amazing statements:

   "The medical model will have to change or it will dis-create itself. And I would like to suggest to any of you who are interested in this kind of thing to give it a lot of life and awareness in your life. Every moment there is a dialogue going on between your mind, that is your thoughts, and the body. And those trillions of cells are listening to whatever you are saying, and it is their job to out-picture whatever it is your mind is telling them.



   I would like to throw down a challenge for all of you, and many of you in this room are young. I'd like to tell you something and see if you can play it out in your life: aging process as pictured by most people on the Earth plane is false. It does not need to be that way. The reason that it is that way is because people believe it is that way. I'd like you to consider applying the opposite thought, coming in with thoughts that say: 'The older I get, the stronger, the more alive, the more dynamic, the more beautiful, the more healthy I become. Each day of my life, I am more radiant, more exciting, more marvelous. I am younger in stature and in feeling and in intensity, this every day of my life'... and see what happens. [Laughter]



   Why not make medical history, you know, why not? [Laughter] Someone has to do it. I'm saying that it is a thought-form that is playing itself out all over this planet and billions of people are suffering as a result of a faulty thought-form. It is nothing more than a faulty thought form, ladies and gentlemen, and the cells' job is to hear what the mind says and play it out. If you doubt me, spend the rest of your life trying this. [Laughter] If I am wrong, when you do that process you call dying, which I call moving into expansion, we'll meet and we'll talk it over. [Chuckles]"


   The implications of these statements are simply staggering. We don’t need to get old? We don’t have to get sick? How is that possible? Well, if you’ve listened to Bartholomew for some time, you can discern a few basic messages, one of which is that our mind is more powerful in creating our reality than we give it credit for, which also means that we’re not using it to its full capacity to mold the reality we want. And as we have been told repeatedly since the beginning of humanity, sentences like “Getting old ain’t for the weak.”, “My body’s falling apart.”, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”, “I’m just tired all the time.”, “I’ve been to more doctors than I can count.”, “This weather’s killing me.”, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”, etc, are in fact shaping our reality, just the wrong way. Each one of us has a whole catalog of these sayings that humans have been telling themselves forever.

   What’s the solution then? Change the script! Turn it around, from fatalistic resignation to positive creation and transformation. Yes, sure. That’s easier said than done… and yet not impossible if we are watchful enough and catch ourselves repeating these old negative messages and replace them with positive ones each and every time they pop up in our head. Watch yourself and gently correct yourself each time, and you should see results.

   That sounds promising enough, but what about pain? Ah, yes, pain is another matter altogether. Pain has a powerful way of confiscating a sufferer’s attention from everything else. Nothing else seems to exist but that pain, be it physical or psychological. Bartholomew dealt extensively with pain and how to handle it in Tape 103 (“Health and Healing”), but essentially his message is that instead of fighting pain, the best way to deal with it is to accept it but at the same time watch it as if it was apart from you, illustrated by saying “there is pain” instead of “I’m in pain”. And then focus on the healing, brought on by the light. This is a rich topic.
   
   
   Feedback?
   If you have any other feedback, idea or suggestion that you would like to share, I am all ears. Thank you for your time.