Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Location: Just South of Guadalajara

Happy Birthday Ma! Thanks for 34 years of being there as a wonderful mother, teacher & friend :-)

About a week and a half ago I was getting ready to leave PV on this next leg of my journey. The apartment I had been living in had just been painted, and to avoid the fumes I made a bed in the doorway to the back patio. There I slept half inside and half outside but in neither nor. That night I had a dream about bats, the next morning I read into the symbolism of bat and found that bats often represent or foreshadow spiritual death.

It's funny because at the time I felt as though I was dying, and since then a big part of me has been falling away in spiritual death. I feel I'm still in the midst of this death process.. I'm between worlds as it were. The old me through a process of letting go is making room for the new me.

It's only when we begin to let go that we find ourselves in that old familiar space I like to call now/here. In this space I think we have two clear options...

1) PANIC!!! Grab back onto the closest thing you can find that makes you feel safe and work your way back into fear and control.

OR

2) Remain Calm... breath.. and provide some space for reflection to see what emerges. In providing a space of emptiness we allow new forms and opportunities to arise and then present themselves to us. It's not always easy especially when you find after one day of remaining calm, nothing quantifiable has happened. That's when I personally usually start to favor option 1). But if we can simply NOT REACT and just accept what is we allow things to naturally return to the rhythm, pace, and place that they belong. In remaining calm we are actually creating a space in which our perceived chaos is able to return back to perceived order. In reality there is neither chaos or order as everything is exactly where it needs to be.

So if we find ourselves unhappy with our reality, first we need to recognize that it's likely the perfect thing for us right now. Since if it weren't the perfect medicine, we likely wouldn't have created it in the first place though all those choices we made along the way. Like the gurus say, the outer world is simply a reflection of the inner world giving us everything we need to become conscious and able to 'see' ourselves. Then once we recognize the lessons we can begin to shift gears into the next stage of our personal evolutions and make new choices that create peace, harmony, balance, & happiness.

Where was I going with this? In my space of spiritual death things have begun to emerge, first was a friend, then there was a surfboard, then there was an ocean, a good book, silence, and a joker named Bear... in the silence these all emerged and gave me the following: companionship in my solitude, balance, cleansing, teachings, meditation, and a renewed realization of the fact that we have to remember through it all.. not to take ourselves so Fucking Seriously!!! And Laugh at ourselves even when we don't think it's so funny...Haha!!!

With some balanced regained and laughter returning, I set off to meet a man I've been looking forward to meeting for a while. I arrived at Santiago's home in the early afternoon, whereupon I began to resonate with him, his wife Tisa, and son Daniel. We talked all afternoon over a beer, a meal, and then on and off camera... we shared so much in such a short time.. through a somewhat difficult language barrier. It's really incredible what can be accomplished when we step outside of fear and boldly forward. Here I was with no sense of where I was going, or where I would sleep.. having in depth conversations with people I've never met, ignoring language and speaking from the heart... It's amazing! Haha!! Really.. gotta laugh.. it's amazing!!!

Daniel upon meeting me and finding out that I shoot 8mm among other formats, left the room to return with a camera in hand.. "This is for you!" he said, having only known me for ten minutes.. a beautiful 8mm camera in perfect working order.. Amazing!!

Around only 8pm I found I could no longer process the Spanish being spoken and felt Moses needing a walk out in the van.. so I bade them all goodnight and took Moses for an hour walk. Santiago informed me that it was alright to sleep in the van in front of his home.. so we crawled into bed at 9pm full of paz, amor, y luz (peace, love & light).

It's been raining non-stop for three days.. non-stop.. and the roof in my van has a few small leaks. So there I was laying in bed, literally vibrating with the event's of the afternoon and evening with water leaking into my personal space. I couldn't help but think how water is a symbol of the sub-conscious and consciousness. Here I was in the middle of what I consider to be a process of spiritual rebirth and I can't stop the subconscious flow from entering into my life. There space has been created, by me, and the energy is coming as though it were a tidal wave... leaking into the cracks and filling the void.

In meeting with Santiago other doors have inevitably opened up, and my commitment it to walk through them to see what's on the other side.

Last week in Sayulita I met another man with sparking eyes and a smile so wide you'd swear he was a Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. This man was another doorway. Taking one look at me, for some reason he decided to share his knowledge of the Huichol Indians and his connections leading to a certain mountain Marakama (medicine man).

Tomorrow, hopefully it will stop raining, and I will go begin to explore these doorways that have opened up to me. It's amazing to me how we are all doorways to each other, into different worlds and different ways of seeing.

I'm grateful for the right people at the right time, past, present and future.

peace,d