Dear friends and family
I received a really cool email from my friend I wanted to share with you all. Some weeks back when we had only been in Cidade Ecletica for a short time, I mentioned the arrival at the hotel of a family who came to Ecletica after the youngest son committed suicide. He had been in a drug rehab clinic at the time of his death. Looking for solace and understanding of this tragic event, they came in search of answers. In this email my friend tells of meeting her dead brother…
My dearest friend,
I'm so sorry you're not well yet; but I hope you recover you health.
We're very well. The last too Sundays, my brother "Xandy" came to the temple to see us.
The first day, he kissed the hands of my mother, make she put her hands in the face of the medium and said: - look at me!
Last week, he came to me. I asked to talk to the entity and, when I came, I just said that I was feeling very bad and I don't know why.
She asked for help and, when the mediun came, he incorporate my brother. When it happens, I felt it was him.... He hugged me, putted his head in my belly and cried. I put my hands in his back, and I said: "Xandy..." while I was crying. It was a wonderfull moment...
I cried so much... But it was fine. After, I talked to "Vovó Rosa" and she said to me that he's coming to see us because he is missing us so much. But all the time he's protected by the entitys and there's no danger.
So, we're soo good.
I hope i'll see you soon.
lovely,
Déia
When we first heard the story of Xandy, we told our friend about a video we’d seen called “Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging”http://www.youtube.com/watch?
But I shared this email from my friend more to describe the interaction my friend and her mother had with her little brother (and son, in the mother’s case) after he has passed on from this life, because he has not ceased to be after death, he continues, as I believe we all do, in a much grander and more expansive way. Many cultures believe that death by suicide is spiritually damaging and will not end the suffering of the one who takes his or her own life. This, I think, was a deep concern for my friend’s family. Personally I can not help but think that in this case he was not responsible for his actions, that they were a result of the chemical reaction of his body to the drugs. I could be wrong, but this is my speculation.
I’m writing this morning from the verandah of the pousada in Pirenopolis where we still stay after 13 days, too sick to begin looking for other arrangements during most of that time. But today we hope to spend the better part of the day looking at houses for rent. Suddenly the loveliest music began playing. I can not tell where it is coming from, but peering around the corner of my verandah I see many people on the lanai eating breakfast. It’s Saturday morning and the pousada is once again filled with people unlike during the week when it is quiet and mostly empty. In Hawaii they use this word “lanai.” I don’t know if it is the same here but it’s the only word I know to describe an outside room, enclosed only by a roof and two or three walls. In the tropics where the air temperature is nearly always warm enough to sit outside, the only element to consider is rain which can be generally kept off with just a roof and occasionally a roll down waterproof shade. This place has a setup with a vinyl shade that can become a sun awning as well as a wall when pulled straight down. I think this is too cool.
But back to life after death, a subject I find of the utmost interest! Is it a topic you have ever explored? During Paul’s doctoral studies, we (I say we because I was completely absorbed in it too) took a course about Life after Death. We studied the beliefs of many different cultures into the nature of this time. For many this falls into the area of religion as that school of thought often dictates one’s beliefs about what happens after death. For some it is a topic thought too morbid and simply ignored from consideration. Not for me. I find it fascinating! Kenneth Ring is one researcher who interviewed people who had a near death experience – pronounced clinically dead, before being revived and brought back to life. In every account a similar experience is described which gives us some information regarding the time immediately following death. Ian Stevenson is another researcher who documented many cases of children who remembered their past lives. There are highly advanced and adept yogis who can describe a longer time between lives and there have been books written by people who have channeled this information from entities in between incarnations. I find it interesting to see how beliefs from different cultures intercept. I asked my parents what they believed coming from a Judaic perspective because I don’t think it ever came up during my childhood education. Their answer was that they thought people lived on in the memory of others. There is a tradition of naming a child after a deceased loved relative. I think this is what they were referring to. Hmm something to think about if you’re so inclined. I can recommend volumes of books if anyone is interested…….
Sunday October 18, 2009
Pirenopolis
There’s a light drizzle now here in the middle of the day. Perhaps it will cool things down. It’s simply too hot to be out and about so we are resting back at the room.
Monday October 19, 2009
Pirenopolis
Everything I wrote yesterday started out so dismal, I gave up. Today I will attempt another go at it. Our search for a house to rent turned up only one viable possibility and though we are not in love with the place we are thinking it is still our best option going forward for the next 3 months.
Having come as we did with a few too many belongings to easily travel about – including Rocket – exploring the country by car with everything we have doesn’t seem like a good option. The little car holds it all but is packed to the brim, leaving Rocket a small space near the roof next to an open window, which gives him little more than head room. The small engine hesitates to pull the car up any degree of inclination and we are in a mountainous region. We have determined it best to rent a house for 3 months, find Rocket a friend he can stay with and travel from here as a home base. Today this is our plan. It has changed everyday for the last two weeks. However if the owner of the house accepts our offer we may know later this afternoon if it is a done deal.
The house is centrally located in town in what you might call a row house, abutting the house next to it, with about 3 feet between it and the agro store next to it on the other side. By day I like the neighborhood fairly well, but last night driving through, and later walking about, I felt a little less than secure. It was a strange feeling I had that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there. Paul drove me around to several other neighborhoods to see if I would feel the same in others, by way of pointing out to me that perhaps I might not want to live in Brazil after all. I thought it was a city thing and that I might be happier living outside of town in the countryside, so he drove me there to see. It’s true, I said, I do feel more secure in the countryside.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Pirenopolis
I was going to continue to describe the little townhouse, when I was called away by a knock on the door. Marta and Leide (pronounced Lay-chee) came by our hotel room to take us for a ride to see their family farm outside of town. I may not have mentioned Marta and Leide before. They are our new friends who own the language school in the center of town. We have been going to teach English to their students in exchange for Portuguese lessons from Marta. They have taken us “under their wings” so to speak as foreigners in their country because they have lived a few times in the United States and remember how difficult it was for them when they first arrived and could not speak English and were themselves dependent on the kindness of strangers to help them establish themselves while they learned the new language and culture. They were not as lucky to find friendly people as willing to help and wish to give to us what they so dearly needed for themselves. But that is the Brazilian way – helping others. I have heard it described as the greatest gift to themselves when they can help another, by many of my friends here.
So we got in their car and sped off Brazilian style (they drive so fast here) out of town on the same road we drove to the waterfall last week. It’s a beautiful drive out past the airport and through lovely mountainous countryside. About twelve minutes out of town (Laide’s calculation, I wasn’t keeping track) we turned down a small dirt road after going through a padlocked gate. The lane led through old pasture land which had once been jungle, huge mature mango and cashew trees lining the sides of the lane, an old deserted farmhouse on one side. It was a long lane and led further back from the main road through beautiful “mato” high grasses, winding through more old fruit trees, passing cows until we at last arrived at an old adobe brick house. Laide told us his grandparents built the house from adobe bricks handmade on the farm from the soil which here was quite white and sandy unlike the red soil closer to town.
We had just the day before had a tour of the house Fabio and Denise, the owners of the pousada, were building from similar adobe bricks, only very deep orange and Fabio described to us the process he used to knead the clay soil, form it into bricks and sun dry, not bake, the bricks. But more on that later.
Leide’s family farmhouse is quite old and very rustic and absolutely charming. As we approached it from the car I remarked, “”This is the kind of place I’d love to live!” All along the drive when I’d ask or refer to where we were going as his farm, he would correct me and say it wasn’t a farmhouse it was a camp. He asked if I liked to go camping. I didn’t get that he was preparing me for a surprise. But at my comment he said, “We would like to offer you the house to stay in for free while you are looking for a place so you can get out of the pousada. It’s too expensive for you to stay there any longer.” They both went on to say that it wasn’t much; in fact his mother was too embarrassed to offer it because it was so old and too rustic. They wanted us to know we could paint it to freshen it up and make it cleaner. It will be like camping, they said. This is how they use it when they come for family vacations.
We walked through the house with different kind of eyes than we would have otherwise, noticing the gaps in the roof where the light came in, wondering if the rain also came through. I questioned if snakes ever came in as there were spaces under the doors and between the walls and ceilings plenty big enough for creatures to come in. They hadn’t seen snakes but told us about the occasional sloth in the trees nearby. Again my thoughts imagined swaying in a hammock under the trees, watching the monkeys come by to eat bananas, macaws, papagaios and toucans flying overhead…. But we walked through the house and around the yard, imagining the kind of time we might experience in a place more rustic than anything we’d ever lived in and wondering if we were up to the task.
It was like an old camp, the sparse furnishings covered with plastic to keep the dust off when the house wasn’t in use. Single beds and bunk beds filling the 2 bedrooms, covered with plastic too to keep off the dust. One had a straw mattress handmade by Laide’s grandmother. The dining room had a very long wooden banquet table, handmade by Laide’s grandfather. And in the kitchen a wood cook stove built from brick into the wall. Behind the house a small creek, which feeds into another and fills enough to form a swimming hole in rainy season, we were told we could reach if we walk downstream for a while. But in the swampy dampness of dusk, it was more frightening than idyllic.
Meanwhile out front, just before dusk, 5 young cows ran up to the house towards a paddock where they come for salt in the evening. Rocket thought he’d try to herd them and was hilarious to watch as one wanted so much to play with him or at least get a closer sniff but he was too frightened to let her come close enough and his barking kept her away.
Friday October 23, 2009
Alto Paraiso, Goias
It’s been a week full of changes. Should we go or should we stay? Is there a house for us or isn’t there? What about the farmhouse? So many questions and so much minutiae to deal with. In the end we decided we would go to Alto Paraiso for a while and then decide if we wanted to return to Pirenopolis. We would wait to see a dermatologist in Anapolis, the big city close to Pirenopolis and leave the following day.
Paul had a pre-cancer spot to be removed and after weeks of trying to make arrangements to see a doctor when we were in Ecletica, I thought to ask the owner of the pousada who lives during the week in Anapolis. The next day she had made an appointment and met us to translate. It was beautiful! We thought it remarkable that the doctor in addition to removing this one, prescribed a product to use on the skin that will bring all the newly forming pre-cancers to the surface of the skin and dissolve them. This was something we’d not been aware existed.
In the morning before leaving we made another unsuccessful attempt to phone with skype to our bank to wire money. After several days of trying to get through we drove to Marta and Leide’s to ask for help in phoning the states from their landline. Who would think making a phone call could be so incredibly difficult! But with this task accomplished we left Pirenopolis behind for a while to drive 6 hours east through Brasilia and north to the Chapada dosVeadeiros.
Alto Paraiso means high paradise. It is more than 1200 meters in altitude in the middle of the central plateau on top of the highest concentration of crystals in the world. Today my friend Enrico described this to me as being like the heart of the planet and the source of its energy. This place has called many people to come here from all over the world. About 25 years ago followers of an Indian Guru came to establish a community. It was the beginning of establishing a place where people from many spiritual paths could come. I have so much to learn about this before I can say more. Today I met a woman who came here from the US 27 years ago, I believe as a follower of this guru. She has a place which Enrico described to me as the most beautiful place he has ever seen called Vale da Esperanca and Lua. I have not been yet to visit. Here is a link:http://yatra.yage.net/vale.htm
When we arrived in town we stopped to ask how to find our friend at the Lotus space. This led us through winding hilly streets where we saw beautifully hand crafted houses of the most unusual designs. They reminded me of a book of handmade houses built in the 60’s in Woodstock, New York. Someone told me people have come here to realize their dreams. They have visions and then create these visions in their reality. The lotus space was a teardrop shaped adobe house which houses a space for yoga and meditation. Across the street at the Mandala Spa, a place where many massage therapists and alternative healers work we found a person who knew how to find Enrico and walked us through the neighborhood to his house. She happened to live next door. In conversation she told me how she had come to live here 20 years ago but had just returned from living in Ibiza for a year. She, like a couple other people I spoke to today, tell me they like to travel and leave for a while but always they prefer to return here to live. There are many English speaking people here and many foreigners and the common theme seems to be a sense of spirituality, whether they are members of the Daime church or Vegetal or some combination of the two, or followers of this Indian Guru, Spiritists or one of many other paths. Today I saw a branch of Vale do Amenhecer and a Kardecist Spiritist center as well as several meditation and yoga spaces.
It looks like there may be several houses for us to choose from to rent and many pieces of land and houses to buy, all of which could be a paradise for us…. On our travels through town today Enrico took us to a very special place called Tom das Ervas. Tom is an Indian Shaman who makes medicinal remedies from the native plants; these were displayed in a little shop. When we arrived Tom was not there and we toured the shelves reading the labels, amazed at all the conditions they can cure. Afterwards as we were looking through the space next to the products at beautiful crafted musical instruments and works of art, Tom emerged from a back room where he had been resting. We were introduced and during our conversation he recommended two of his products for us to treat the effects of our flu. Amazingly this hadn’t come up in conversation, nor had we shown any indications that we had been ill – he simply seemed to know!
When I write next I will describe more of this place as there is so much to depict and so many pictures to share. Life is unfolding quickly and there are many things I’d like to express.
Until then, we wish you well and send our love
Mindy and Paul