by Debbie Jamieson
How has Avatar touched and inspired me? It seems that forever I have felt there was more to life than met the eye, that something extraordinary was going on that I could feel but was not directly experiencing. At least I couldn’t see how I was experiencing it.
What Harry Palmer calls extraordinary moments would occasionally whisper to me of knowledge beyond anything I knew. That I could harness and deliberately create these moments, and knowingly experience them, was a concept unknown to me until doing The Avatar Course.
So, what is Avatar about? It’s about so many different things it’s hard to describe, because it is so broad and expansive. (A few of the things people have learned are listed in the sidebar. But that is only a partial list. How far people go and what realizations they achieve are strictly up to them.) Lately what I tell people is that it is about dropping your load, literally en-light-ening—lightening up, in other words.
Another thing I tell people is that it’s about being happy. I learned this idea from a student on a recent course. As part of an exercise in Section III she asked herself, “What would all these people have to believe to be here on this course?” Her answer was that they must believe that they could be happy. And as I looked at her face, and all the faces around me, and felt my own, I knew this was so for me as well.
Before doing Avatar, even though happiness was what I wanted most, I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea for me to be happy. It might go to my head, I might be conceited—I don’t remember what all I thought. I wasn’t even sure how to define happiness, or what would make me happy. I was pretty sure it wasn’t just about being better than others, or having lots of stuff, or partying—but I didn’t really know what it might be besides all that.
Now I believe it comes from the quiet acceptance of oneself, not being perfect, or better than others; that it comes from contributing to a better world, not getting more stuff; that it comes from working, laughing and loving with a group of people who have similar goals of contributing to the world, rather than just living a party lifestyle.
For me, being an Avatar Master encompasses all those things. The more I do the exercises, the happier I get—life is full of extraordinary moments. Recently my stepdad asked me, as I returned from yet another course, “Are you smart yet?” Well, I’m probably getting smarter, but even better, I’m happy. Just happy to be me.
Debbie Jamieson, Punta Gorda, Florida.
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