Saturday December 12, 2009
Another glorious Saturday. I do love Saturdays. It’s market day. Here they call it the Ferias; perhaps I’ve already mentioned that? So many people to see and meet and talk to. Happy faces, pleased to see me. I love it.
Today I received an invitation to an Ayahuasca ritual tonight. A very special celebration with many people from many countries, coming together to acknowledge the survival of a friend who has suffered through fire with burns over 70 % of his body. He recuperates in California. The person who leads the ritual has returned from several months in Europe and stays now for 2 months.
But today we await the arrival of our friends who will join us here for the weekend, who come from Brasilia. So a ritual is not on the agenda this weekend. Perhaps an afternoon at the cachoeira (the waterfall)….
Still in the quandary of where to live next, we visited three places yesterday, one of which was a small house for rent across the street from the one we are in. It is an excellent price but again is available only for two months…. It is good to know that it is available while we await word on another much larger house in the valley behind us, which we might prefer.
The other two places were for sale, not rent. I’ll try to describe them as they were both quite spectacular and unusual in terms of anything I’ve seen in the States. There is a neighborhood on one edge of town which sits high on a hill and is mostly filled with very nice, more expensive homes and a few pousadas. It has an amazing view of the surrounding mountains which encircle the town. If you travel deep into this neighborhood there is a lane that passes through and out the other side which descends into the valley quite a ways. Though only 5 minutes from town, our destination was not at all part of town and ended at a river deep in the floresta and mata, the tall mature forest. At the end of the dirt road, we parked the car and walked across a very cool bridge from where we could see a lovely small cascading waterfall, at the bottom of which was a little pool. The sound of the water was enchanting and reached across to the other side of the river and up a small hill to where the house rested in the middle of very pretty gardens and an opening in the trees where there was a large circular fire pit, the construction of a sauna sagrada (sweat lodge) under way, another structure containing a wood fired oven and all purpose room of sorts, and another small storage building. The house itself was totally lovely, small but with room enough to have 3 bedrooms, a living room, dining area and kitchen. We liked that it was on three different levels, descending the slope of the hill. All beautifully hand crafted and very simple.
An incredibly lovely place but on a small piece of land, only 400 meters square… From there we walked down a well made path through and into the mata where the local herbario once lived and had planted with many herbs, plants and trees of all kinds. This too is now for sale. The land is much larger, very beautiful, lush and sacred in so many ways. In one secluded place in the forest was a bed of crystals. The house however which was once, although very simple and interesting in design an adequate structure, is now in disrepair and needs major reconstruction, but the possibilities are so enticing! Both of these places sit just above a river and are surrounded by beautiful forest. They are also just under a high ridge where the cell and internet towers stand, making it possible to have those services with no problem. Access in by car, however is not possible, so for us it would be like returning to the same problems we encountered in Vermont before we built the driveway which came up to the door, making our life 100% easier, particularly in snow and ice. Here we have only to be concerned with heavy rain, but a long walk in from the car especially returning with groceries, wouldn’t be fun. Still……. We are keeping all the possibilities open…
Later…
Speaking of possibilities…. There’s more. Speaking with an American woman at the ferias today about many things as we always do whenever we meet up, she is looking for someone to write her stories, of which she has many. I have been eager to spend some time with her to hear her stories, because Paul and I have an idea we’d like to delve deeper into…. And so it seems we will come together to work on this project. When is hard to pinpoint and here again my need to be very open will have to develop yet further and wait (waiting is a major developmental need for me!) until the time is right.
But, I have good news. I have just returned from an inside look at the house behind me in the valley and I have seen that it is a good place for us and where I’d like to be next. So if it will be available, and today I have found out there is some uncertainty, then it will be the one. And if not, I have a back up choice in mind. Now perhaps I will relax and leave it go from my thoughts and my concerns until our return next week from the city.
So it seems like many of you I would imagine who are busy now with end of the year activities, we too will be very busy for the next week. After our friends spend the weekend we will travel to Brasilia, to Pirenopolis, to Anapolis, to Ecletica, back to Brasilia and then return. We have a few items to attend to, people to see, things to do and things to buy….. It will be a nice diversion from life here in the chapada. I’m happy to say that the rain has eased up a bit and we have seen the sun for a couple days. Funny, but you wouldn’t think that here so close to the equator, it could get so chilly, but the altitude keeps it mostly quite a bit cooler than other places. I was delighted to find that there’s a wood stove in the house we might rent. Paul has been yearning for one and I too have often wished for one on cool damp evenings. Evenings when some of those wool sweaters I left behind would be welcome.
It’s strange being an introvert and fairly shy, while craving connections and a need to be in the middle of everything, at least to know what’s going on that I’m missing, it holds me in a quandary – wondering where I want to be. All places all the time, everywhere at once – well it’ll probably happen after consciousness shifts. Again a need for patience. It comes up all the time.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
So tomorrow a new moon - new beginnings….
Today many things changed. This morning we woke up with the intent to make some sort of a plan. Over tea and coffee we got out the calendar and a notebook to make an attempt at figuring out our life- what exactly we needed to focus on, what we needed to prepare for, what was important… stuff like that, more or less. Here’s why: we’d had a plan, one we’d been several weeks in making. After our friends left for Brasilia, we were going to drive there and take care of some business. We set things in place to stay with friends, to go together with their help translating to take care of some stuff. But Dawbey and Marinia had plans to stay well into the day on Monday with us and this meant that leaving early to do our stuff didn’t feel right. I had anxious feelings all day Sunday about going. It didn’t feel right and I really didn’t want to go. When I voiced my concerns to Paul he listened to me and decided that if I was having strong feelings not to go, then we wouldn’t. He said it was important that I listen to my heart and that there was something important we needed to heed- perhaps an accident, or some other problem that might occur if we were to go in the face of this strong feeling making me feel very deeply that I didn’t want to go. So we called and sent emails, postponing our meetings until further notice.
This morning we woke up after profound dreams. Paul dreamed he was dreaming and had dreams inside of dreams. Puts me in mind of Chang Tzu dreaming he was a butterfly dreaming he was Chang Tzu (fantastic story! If you haven’t discovered Chang Tzu – treat yourself to the gift of reading his stories – here’s a link to Amazonhttp://www.amazon.com/s/ref=
So we sat with notebook and pen in hand, a calendar nearby but mostly blank minds that refused to project into the future and come up with a coherent plan. They just wouldn’t engage. And then with a little help from my friends, it occurred to me to draw a symbol that represented us today and another symbol that represented us in the future with our permanent visas in hand buying land and building a house. Another to represent us on February 8th with no visa….. Hopefully you get the idea, as my brain is not cooperating in describing the full details, but suffice it to say that the drawing out of possible future scenarios depending on all the variable outcomes, revealed a clearer picture of steps we needed to take to plan for all the possibilities. Meanwhile, or more accurately before we’d even begun this endeavor, I picked up the phone and called the friend with the house in the valley I wanted to rent to find out about its availability, only to be told that just yesterday the call came saying that the people who might rent it were not going to come, but another person called to say they wanted it for a year and would sign a contract. In any case, she said, we could come over and talk to her this afternoon while she was there cleaning the house. So I shared this with Paul and we figured, well, no big deal we’d rent the other one because it was likely we’d have to leave the beginning of February anyway, but we’d go over later and have a talk. Turned out to be a good talk which lasted all the way into the evening (with a break in between) and covered many topics least of which was the fact that in spite of our uncertainty of the length of time we’d be able to stay, she wanted to rent the house to us. So on Sunday we will move. Paul and I are both quite delighted with this plan and actually very surprised it turned out as it did, particularly as we had finally arrived at the conclusion to rent the smaller, cheaper house, just before the visit.
During the time we left her to finish cleaning the house before she came by ours later to continue our chat, we went to return a video and noticed the ferias was open so we stopped to buy a loaf of bread. We saw another friend and stopped to say hello and she told us an interesting story. It seemed she had left yesterday morning to drive to Brasilia with a long shopping list. When she reached the top of the hill out of town, her car broke down and so she of course had to cancel her trip while her car is in the shop being repaired. (Sound familiar?) Then she told us that her son had invited her to go to Mato Grosso for Christmas and she really wanted to go but she had a strong feeling in her heart she shouldn’t go. She mentioned thinking of visiting her 84 year old father but he was too busy with his girlfriend and wasn’t interested in her visiting so instead she decided to go to Brasilia and do this long list of things even though she didn’t really want to go. Her decision to go in spite of the feeling that she really didn’t want to and having her car break down – the very thing Paul said to me might happen if we went ahead and went even though I had such a strong feeling not to go was a good reinforcement for me to listen to my heart and honor those gut feelings. Another case for eliminating the word should from our experience of life. But here’s the real kicker. If we’d gone to Brasilia yesterday morning as planned, the house in the valley would have been rented to the guy who was coming over after us and wanted it for the year.
So to sum up before I head off to bed for new dreams, today we figured out our future in so many ways. We have a house to move into at the end of the week and contingency plans for many of the possible scenarios that might unfold; not only that, but answers to many questions, new possibilities which before today didn’t exist that I will share with you tomorrow.
Thursday December 17, 2009
We begin again, a new moon cycle. This morning Paul suggested we pretend to get new super powers with each new moon. Why not? “Which ones,” I asked him, “should we get this time?” We’ve both forgotten which one’s we chose, except I recall something about better meditations and this so far has happened with this cycle. Well, we do have all new possibilities which I have begun to describe and will continue to elaborate on further.
But first, a little more about Paul as he is being rather delightful lately…. He is like a walking live musical. He grew up with a mother who loved show tunes and the radio was his best friend during those years before TV was so prominent in every house. He was whistling a tune this morning as we sat together having tea - he often gets the worst head runners and this was no exception! “I must have tapped into the smaltzy part of the universe while I was meditating today,” he said. “You open your mind and you don’t know what’s going to come in.”
We were discussing the effect some people have on us; the rate of their vibrations can be so different than ours that it often takes us some time to recuperate from being around them. You know we’re all just vibrations and electrical energy….. Our American friend Tivani is an eight on the Enneagram, a protector, and she talks so fast and has so much to say that it’s hard to keep pace with her. We’re still readjusting to our own speed after spending time together. That plus 2 and ½ days with our young friends from Brasilia; we’re still settling back down to prepare for what’s coming next.
So what is coming next? For starters we are packing up to move over to the house in the valley behind us. It’s a very cool place, hand built by its Dutch owner who will spend more time in California recovering from his burns. It has four bedrooms and so we will be in a position to receive guests quite nicely while we are there. But how long we will be there is the big question?
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So I received an email from someone who reads my newsletters on the blog. She is someone I’ve never met. She asked me what inspired us to come to Brazil and make this big life change, which was a good question to answer considering every now and then, Paul asks me what we’re doing here and if this is where he wants to spend the rest of his life. Immediately he knows that it is unlikely and rephrases it to where he wants to spend “the Armageddon” But that word is so strong, we like to rephrase it as the time when the shift in consciousness takes place. So I thought it might be fun to share my answer with you, especially those of you who may have started reading these posts recently and have not read the earlier entries.
For many years I have been wanting to live outside the US for many reasons which include my desire to live in different cultures which in my mind are much richer (not monetarily, but otherwise) than the American culture (more accurately, the American lack of culture) and my dissatisfaction with the government's policies and a feeling that I didn't want to be associated with that in any way.... You must travel outside the US to know that there are completely different worlds out here, because we are not really given any information about this, for a purpose!
With that in mind, Paul and I have been watching and researching what is going on in the world behind the scenes for several years- news that is considered esoteric or secret only because you can not get it from any mainstream media sources- so it must be sought out in books, on the internet, etc. At the same time we have each always questioned everything and used many tools to know more, for instance meditation, altered states of consciousness, psychological models of exploring patterns of behavior to know ourselves better and gain a broader understanding of not only ourselves but the world around us. (I'm trying to sum this up- bear with me...) So we came across a real deep knowing and understanding of global events that are in the process of unfolding and with this knowledge we felt very compelled to leave the US which is being used as a template for a one world government controlled population of dumbed down, consumer oriented, basically slaves to the system to further an agenda of the ruling families who call themselves the Illuminati. Now, I know this sounds completely crazy, but I am answering your question as honestly as I can and trying to do it as briefly as possible. With this in mind we were especially highly motivated to leave there and I think I've detailed some of our other reasons (financial, spiritual, etc) for leaving there to come here.
But why Brazil? A couple things: we had an opportunity to come to Brazil to use Ayahuasca which is a shamanic entheogen, a tea brewed from 2 plants which induce an altered state of consciousness for access to other realms and dimensions of reality that can not be experienced in normal waking consciousness. We worked on a research project with a graduate student who knew that we work with a model that measures stages of consciousness development (ego development) She hired us to score the protocols of people before and after using Ayahuasca. Brazil is one of the few places in the world where Ayahuasca is legal and there are churches here (a little like the Native American's peyote churches) where it is a part of the religious and spiritual beliefs..... While we were in Brazil we discovered a country where 80% of the people are very spiritual. It is a place where people are poor but very happy. Priorities are different. You can see it in little ways like the fact that Brazilians are never on time. Why is this? Because relationships are more important that keeping schedules, so if someone drops by to visit or you encounter someone you know on the street, the conversation takes priority over the appointment. Now is more important than later. There are many examples of ways in which the people are different and this more than anything called to us. In the 6 weeks we traveled through Brazil last winter we made more friends and encountered more people who saw the world the way we did than in our whole (very long) lives. We have always been very open but through the years we have taught ourselves to develop this quality even more, so on the last day of our travels we encountered a very special experience. On that day we visited a Spiritist Temple. We were lucky to have met an Argentinean man who spoke English and translated for us while we met with the mediums for passes. I wrote about this in my earliest newsletters. While Paul was receiving passes, he felt a vibrational shudder through his body and was instructed to get down on his knees and touch his head to the floor. He was told that his entity was very near. The medium who was working with him began to kiss his head and fell into a kind of devotional swoon and showered him with more love than he had ever experienced in his whole life. He sent someone away for a flower from the alter and carefully blew smoke all over the flower, blessing it before presenting it to Paul and telling him,” What you're looking for is here in Brazil. Not necessarily here in this place but here in Brazil. You have to make a choice between the material and the spiritual life. Keep this flower with you until you make the choice. You don't have to make it right away, but time is short. When you decide, bury the flower under a tree. Don't let anyone else touch the flower."
Well, you can imagine, that was a pretty special experience and one that could hardly be ignored. So to sum it all up, we chose a spiritual life. We went home to Vermont, sold everything and moved to Brazil.
More good news:
I have just received an email from our advisor who has communicated with the lawyer who is working on our visas. He assures us we have no cause for concern, that there is no chance the visas will be denied and that the worst possible scenario will be having to drive across the border for only one day. He has also advised us to pursue our plans to stay with no concerns. That is good news and now we can put contingency plans aside.
Cristal cachoeira
Monday we visited another waterfall close by while our friends visited. An amazing place, we thought for a minute we walked onto a Disney set- it was so perfectly beautiful that it seemed too good to be real. But real it was as it cascaded down the mountain in a series of waterfalls with pools at the bottom of each. A trail led along the side of the river with a spur off in ten or twelve places to reveal another spectacular fall all the way to the very bottom where the most spectacular of all falls descended straight down several hundred feet. The resident golden Labrador retriever took it upon herself to be our guide and demonstrated a swim in each pool all the way to the end and back. As we swam in the last pool the rain started and we climbed the trail back up the hill to the thatched pavilions where we sat watching the rain for a while. The snack bar which we could see by the signs, served acai was closed for the weekdays, and we had the place to ourselves – a fun way to experience the sights.
Until next time then we send our love your way…..