Five months ago, Maggie called me and told me about a retreat in Sedona and that became the start of a Sedona retreat experience I didn’t plan, but somehow said yes to anyway.
It was an “Ascension” retreat. Not yoga. Typically not my thing. She said, “You are the only friend of mine with an open mind to jump on board with me.”
I remember exactly how I felt when she said it. Slightly curious. Agreeable. Not pulled in by the retreat itself yet.
I never thought about visiting Sedona. It was not somewhere I had researched or saved for later. I had only experienced Arizona through business trips to Phoenix and Scottsdale. Even on those trips, I never stayed fully present. As a result, work made those trips feel temporary and disconnected. Short lived. There and back home. I never stopped long enough to create real memories.
However, what caught my attention was something simpler.
The idea of going somewhere new with her.
She was living in Las Vegas, so the plan became easy. I would fly into Vegas, and we would drive through the desert together into Sedona. Road trips are the best.
There was no overthinking. I did not need to make it make sense. Finally, I said yes because it felt light.
At the time, that was all it was.
Just a trip.
After that, life moved on, and I shifted back into my own work. I was deep in planning my Costa Rica retreat for Spring 2027, looking for old marketing materials and photos from previous years. One afternoon, I started going through old Google Drive files.
Then, that is when I found it.
I found a folder labeled: “Manifested Homework 2024.”
Curiosity alone led me to open it. I did not remember creating it or asking for it. Something still pushed me to click it.
Inside was a retreat. One I had never seen.
This was not an idea or a rough draft. My marketing team had fully structured it into a five-day retreat. Five days, completely structured. The yoga flow, the schedule, the experiences, the details were all there. My marketing team had intentionally designed it, built it out visually with images of the landscape and me, and branded it as if we were ready to execute it.
Then I saw the location.
Sedona.
At that moment, I stopped scrolling.
In fact, this was not loosely connected. My marketing team had built the entire experience around Sedona. Everything centered around the land, the energy, and the intention behind the retreat itself.
I had never planned Sedona.
Years before I ever said yes to going, a version of me leading a retreat there had already been created by my marketing team and saved in my files, untouched.
At that exact moment, I was only weeks away from boarding a plane to Sedona. That was when it shifted.
The trip stopped feeling random.
Right before I left for Sedona, another piece fell into place.
Someone invited me to join a group trip to Washington, DC a few weeks after I planned to return home. Tickets to a game and a marketing event.
At the time, it felt like a separate opportunity. Something I could consider later. I said yes without fully understanding why. It was the same way I had said yes to Sedona.
However, I did not yet realize how deeply those two experiences connected.
When I arrived in Sedona, everything felt slower. It did not drag. It felt intentional. The people felt different. Not just nice, but genuinely kind without performing it.
There is a difference between being nice and being kind. One is surface level. You can feel the other immediately. You cannot ignore the energy behind it. You do not only feel kindness, you also see it in people’s eyes.
Even the environment reflected that level of care and appreciation.
For example, I noticed it first in something small. The McDonald’s did not have the standard bright golden arches. The sign was green. In. fact, it is the only one like it because the city required it to follow light pollution ordinances. Of course, they were not done for branding. The city changed it to preserve the landscape, reduce disruption, and protect something most places ignore.
The night sky.
Instead, Sedona does not flood itself with artificial light. It protects the darkness so the sky can appear the way nature intended. Driving at night is not easy. You need your windows down.
Then, I went outside one night and looked up.
At that moment, it felt close.
It was not poetic. It was not metaphorical. It was close in a way that made me pause, like I was seeing something I had never fully seen before. It felt like I could reach up and touch the stars. Each one. I could see the shape of each star. Each flicker.
The moon has a halo effect. It was so bright it seems a rainbow-like halo surrounded it.
That was when I pulled out my camera to play and realized.
Every setting I had learned about photography was built around compensating for light pollution, adjusting for interference, working against something artificial. Not here.
In Sedona, there was nothing to adjust for. It was raw.
Even that was a ah ha moment.
The next day, I found myself sitting in front of one of the retreat speakers, William Henry. We had not signed up for his talk. It happened to be there when he spoke, so we walked in.
I did not know he would be there when I signed up for the retreat.
I recognized him immediately. I had been watching the Netflix show, Ancient Aliens, for months. The history, patterns, and connections between the past and present pulled me in. The astrology, the study of hieroglyphics, the symbolism. It is all me.
Now I was sitting in front of him, listening in real time.
He spoke about symbolism, hidden knowledge, and the way certain minds are wired to see connections others overlook.
He shared his involvement in shaping the conceptual framework behind The Da Vinci Code. He explained how he sees patterns and meaning in ways most people do not. He had never mentioned this on the docuseries. That detail stood out.
At one point, the conversation shifted, and he began talking about Thomas Jefferson.
Images of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial filled the screen. The dome. The structure. The symbolism behind it. The codes left to decipher. He spoke about Jefferson’s curiosity and his understanding of the universe at a time when thinking beyond Earth would have been considered extreme. The telescope had just been introduced, and he would spend hours studying the sky.
Then, I remember sitting there and realizing something.
I had already said yes to going to Washington, DC.
The place he was describing. The space we were looking at. I was about to go stand there.
That was the moment it all connected.
The trip to Sedona.
The retreat I found in my files.
The speaker I had already been learning from sitting in front of me.
The invitation to Washington, DC.
None of it was separate.
On the flight, I opened the book I had brought with me, The Religious Revolution: The Birth of Modern Spirituality.
Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson was in the prologue.
At that point, I stopped trying to explain anything.
Individually, each moment could be dismissed. Together, they formed something that could not be ignored.
I did not plan Sedona. My friend did.
I did not plan to find that retreat in my files. It had been created years before.
I did not plan to sit in front of someone I had been learning from for months.
I did not plan to be invited to Washington, DC before understanding why I would be going.
It all lined up.
Without the awareness to see it, it would be missed.
Sometimes you just have to say yes and see what shows up.Inside was a retreat I had never seen — the beginning of a Sedona retreat experience I didn’t realize was already mapped out years before.
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