Saturday, January 9, 2010
A new calm and quiet pervades. People come and go, the energy changes, but the overall theme is one of tranquility. I haven’t lived with friends since the early 70’s when I was much younger. I like Uta’s energy. Her vibration is so complementary that it’s good to have her here. The people who come by to see her are good people and always it’s been a pleasure to have them pass through, stay for a while and move along. Paul and I keep saying that this back porch behind our house which is shaped like an open curve feels like a stage that has different actors appear from time to time to take part in our play, with us as the main characters (probably since we rarely leave the stage.) I suppose, looked at that way, we are performing for the vast insect life that fills the air around us. Rather than the audience marveling at the activity taking place on the stage, we the actors upon the stage marvel at the audience – the birds and insects who appear in our arena from time to time. The set changes with the light and with the weather patterns as they roll across our panorama. An occasional person appears walking down the lane or planting a tree in the field across from us, but more often the characters appear from off stage to the left where just around the corner of the house, they enter the fenced yard through the front gate, grown over with tropical vines.
I’ve been noticing a magnetic pull drawing me from the plastic chair, which believe it or not is the most comfortable piece of furniture around with its reclining back, even though a large chunk of the front of the seat is missing, pulling me down to sit on the wooden planks of the deck which look weatherworn from the frequent rains. The wood soaks up the sun and though looking like a source of danger from splinters is actually smooth and seductively inviting. It calls me to its natural element and reminds me what a pox plastic is to the planet. Each plank of the deck, cut to fit the uniquely curved shape of the c-shaped porch, warped to a different height and slope with perhaps two or three in a row, level with each other. It makes finding the perfect place for the large wooden rocker a bit of a challenge to find a spot level enough to accommodate both rungs for a smooth rocking experience. Each morning we bring the two chairs out because there’s no where we’d rather spend our time than here soaking up the sun or resting in the shade with a view out over the valley encircled by far off mountains, blue in the distance, waiting for a couple toucans to fly close by.
The birds are certainly magnificent as you might imagine tropical birds to be, but the thing that really astonishes us is the insect life. Bumble bees the size of a child’s fist, tiny beetles that look like Egyptian painted armor, enormous lapis blue butterflies, unidentifiable flying objects (not your typical ufo’s) which have you wonder whether they are a small bird or a large insect as they leave your field of vision nearly as fast as they enter….And then there’s the flora! Outside my kitchen window is a medium sized bush, or perhaps it’s a small tree. I never took much notice of it until a few days ago when these enormous fluted, bell shaped orange flowers appeared. Uta told me they are a hallucinogenic flower that only the indigenous Indians know how to use properly. Peri confirmed it a few days later when she related a horrible experience ingesting them with friends on one of her travels somewhere in India (?) We also have the Ayahuasca vine growing in our yard. But not only entheogens grow here, but also coffee beans and bananas, and that’s just in our yard! When you walk down the lane to the corner there’s a huge tree dripping with avocados. We never pass by without stopping to pick up the avocados that fall into the street below it. My former landlady whose back yard faces mine has been busy planting 50 new fruit trees this year. Already in her garden are many ripe trees loaded with different fruits. I walked over the other day to see if I could take a few lemons to make a tea for my sore throat. “Of course, help yourself,” she told me whenever I want. This morning Paul came back from the market with a new kind of fruit for me to try. On the outside it looked something like a hard strawberry. To eat it you peel off the hard outer covering, which is prickly, to uncover a large slimy grape-like fruit which you then suck off of a smooth pit. Olivia saw me eating it and cried to have it. At not even two she knows this fruit which is one of her favorites, even though it looks to take the skill of an adult to know how to eat this fruit properly. Paul simply wanted an excuse to give this new friend a little money by buying some fruit from him in the market. He comes by to borrow Uta’s bike and scours the surrounding area to find fruits to sell at the market for a few extra reals. This is a land of abundance in that regard. The fruits are there for the picking for anyone who walks by. And what is not an edible fruit is likely a valuable medicinal herb or a tea! Here in the cerrada the biodiversity is greater than in any other land form and it is the birthplace of the waters that create the Amazon rainforest.
Whenever we visit land someone tells us there is a spring where the water is “born.” Three of the largest rivers in Brazil that travel through several states begin here and as I’ve undoubtedly mentioned before in my accounts of this place, the waterfalls are magnificent and plentiful and each uniquely different. We returned to visit two of the other towns which are a part of this Chapada (the large preserved national parklands) a few days ago. I was impressed again at the larger size and scope of the mountains there with steep vertical rock cliff faces. There’s something about them which really call to me, maybe because of seeing that picture so clearly in my mind some time back. I still think it was trying to tell me something and I’m drawn to places with this land formation. We stopped once again at the gate where we saw a for sale sign to check on the phone number for an enquiry and encountered a man who lived beyond the gate next to the sitio (small farm) that was for sale. He pointed us in the right direction and invited us to pass through the gate to see it closer up. What was so cool was that we drove straight back from the road towards the very cliff (I thought) I saw in my vision. At the end of the lane we ended at a really cool farm up against the mountain with a view of surrounding mountains for 360* Our friend Peri called to the man sitting on his porch to ask about the place and when he finally answered her call and came over we found out we were not indeed at the farm which was for sale. But further down the road we encountered the one that was and snooped around a bit since we were told the owners were in Brasilia. What was cool about the place was a small river just beyond the fence with a white sand beach surrounded by palm trees.
There’s no doubt this place has a mysterious beauty and charm and is loaded with possibilities. Funny though, the other day when Vistara came over with a survey map of the 50 acres we were thinking of buying in her valley, and we saw the true nature of the narrow band-aid shape of land between the mountain tops and knew it wasn’t right for us. In the absence of that consideration, all possibilities opened for us once again. Now we are back to considering things that had left our view screen as viable options and the possibilities have again expanded. In fact today at the market, a friend found Paul to say that he’d like to come over and discuss some ideas about including us in their land search, while yesterday 2 other friends explored some ideas for travelling through South America together.
So we sit a lot on our porch, feeling the fresh air, thinking about things, discussing ideas and concepts and pondering what the future holds – but more and more enjoying only the present moment. Freedom is an experience we have each sought our entire lengthy lifetimes but have come to find we are truly in the presence of now. We are free to sit and “do” nothing. There is nowhere we “have” to be and nothing we “have” to do. No one has any expectations of us. Today Paul realized he is having the perfect hippie retirement. I’ll leave you readers to your own interpretation of what that might be like. I don’t have any guilt about the fact that I’m not “working” to contribute to our income. What a trap anyway…. Here we have everything we need and a little more so we can help one or two others.
About a half hour ago Uta returned home with Olivia sleeping in the baby carriage. She parked her in the yard just outside the door to their room and off the porch where I was writing and went in the room while she slept. Rocket, oblivious to the thought of keeping quiet while she slept, came running out of the room behind me, where he was napping with Paul, in full barking mode at some noise he must have thought was threatening our safety (as that is his job- to protect us from danger.) Of course Olivia awoke to his barking sat up in the stroller and looked around, catching sight of me, she smiled before the realization that her mommy wasn’t also in view and began to show a sign of worry. Now a few minutes later, sitting on the porch with a cup of yogurt, happily feeding herself, too busy to notice the stream of pee pee running down the porch from where she sat, her mother notices and brings the garden hose over to wash things down- the porch, her hands, her face, her little bottom….too cute! And now some minutes later this naked little Colombian-Argentinean girl is riding her big wheel, happily in conversation with herself and now and then with Rocket. I love this baby energy! She is just delightful. I might have left this porch today, but I have a bad cold and just didn’t have the energy to go anywhere. Had an invitation to join friends to walk to the river for a swim, another to go to a waterfall, but the Way wanted me to stay home today and rest up, get rid of this miserable cold- so another day will present other opportunities- today rest.
Friday January 15, 2010
Today, a solar eclipse of a new moon…..
So, without a review of what I’ve already written, I shall continue…. This was a rough few days for me. I got sick with a sore throat which continued into a cold. My body needed simply to rest and do nothing for several days. Funny but I’d just been reading about a transit which predicted that an illness could likely occur. We postponed a trip south to Brasilia to get Paul a Brazilian drivers license (before his expires next week) until I would hopefully feel better and left this Monday instead. Our dear friend from Ecletica accompanied us to Brasilia where we met with our lawyers to follow up on our visas and then continued to the various necessary places to accommodate all the bureaucracy which was required. At the end of the day, we realized another day or two would be required.
Ganeesh (the nickname we have given to our friend) told us about a sudden illness he had been stricken with the day before Christmas. As if possessed while sitting in his easy chair watching TV, he began to violently vomit and suffer from diarrhea, losing use of the movement in his limbs for several days to follow. Calling to his friends for help in healing, they came saying that he had been on the edge of death and had called none too soon, as serious dehydration had overtaken him. The entities which had come to heal him spoke of the possibility that he had been taken to a war stricken battlefield to aid in the transition process of lost souls on their path between lives. Stories like this which once would have sounded too absurd and impossible to believe, coming from a spiritist are common place. To incorporate spirit entities opens one to more damaging effects as the absorption of negativity energy is inevitable when they are healing another. The gift with which they endeavor to garner is the ability to invoke protection during this process and quickly cleanse themselves of these negative energies. This is why you always see the mediums giving each other passes before and after they offer this service.
With this story fresh in my mind, coming home to High Paradise I was eager to visit the Vale da Amenhecer who have a branch nearby. Having visited the main location on our very first trip to Brazil, I was excited to visit the local branch here and have a healing from the mediums. I’d been shown by a friend when we first arrived here where their Temple was and I knew that they held a service twice a week, but hadn’t yet found the right opportunity to visit until Wednesday night when my two friends accompanied me. Ganeesh tells me that Vale da Amanhecer and Ecletica’s mediums operate in very similar ways and once thought to join together and work as one but decided against this since both techniques were quite effective in their own way. This Wednesday night when Uta, Peri and I arrived at the start of the service we were led to a bench from where we could observe while the mediums sang prayers for a while before ceremoniously smoking the space inside of the temple as well as all the people with incense before gathering around a special table where they worked to usher lost souls to the world beyond this one in their transition from this life to the next. This lasted quite a while and there was not much to see during this process as our seats were nearly around a corner from where this took place. When this ended the mediums came directly in front of where we sat to another room filled with special benches made for two to sit side by side, each with a red upholstered banquet placed in front so that it resembled booths in a diner in a strange way. Pairs of mediums sat together as we watched one of each pair incorporate a spirit entity, after which we were each invited to sit next to the medium while their helping partner stood behind. The helper spoke with us and encouraged us to ask whatever questions we had. As I sat next to my medium, she chanted praise to very many different saints and priestesses, giving thanks to each while she held my hands in hers. Though I could not understand well what she spoke because of my language comprehension, with the help of her partner who could speak one or two words in English to try to assist me, I heard her say that I had a very big heart and that I would be able to easily understand her. When I could not think of a question to ask her, she said I needed only to hold the question in my mind and she would know what it was.
After this part was over we returned to our benches for a short while before being called to another room in the temple where we each laid down on a table, like you would find in a doctors office or for a massage, under a sheet with our head facing towards the medium for a healing while the mediums helper stood next to us. I could not actually feel much during this process but when it was over and I followed the person who was directing me to the next place in the temple where I was to wait, I noticed I was a bit dizzy. The man sitting next to me on the bench commented that he too felt this same way as we awaited the others to come and join us. We were a small group attending the service this night, probably only about 10 people, compared with 100 who might attend the service on a Wednesday night in Ecletica. When we all finished this healing we were taken to another inner chamber of the temple where we sat on a bench in the center of the small room while the mediums stood around the outside walls surrounding us, all engaged in singing a song. The music was enchanting and the energy in the room was palpable. The mediums standing behind us then came forward to stand close behind us while one passed their hands above each of our heads, touching our forehead and then lightly tapping our back three times, repeating this process several times. It was a very special energy I could feel with each touch and later Peri told me that she felt this too. From this room, we left to another part of the temple where we were again instructed to take a little salt and place it on our tongue and place a drop of water on each temple before entering a room where we were to stand before three different mediums for passes. In this room, the mediums giving the passes were deeply in trance and many were speaking in tongues, unintelligible even to Portuguese speakers I think. All but one of the mediums were dressed in brown skirts or trousers with a white vest covered with different patches over a black shirt, while one wore all white signifying a special status. I mention this because as we stood waiting to enter this room, she incorporated an entity who spoke with a very deep mans voice. This was startling and quite intriguing to watch and listen to. While I stood before an Indian looking man with long black hair, who was deeply entranced and speaking heavily in tongues, Peri stood next to me in front of this woman in white and later said how powerful the energy was to be healed by her. As each part of the process ended we would be taken to another area with benches where we would wait for the others to finish. Uta who carried Olivia in her arms, occasionally nursing her before she eventually fell asleep, was the last to finish each process, though first to enter the room of the singing mediums. As we waited for them to come from the last room, Peri and I were taken to a place where we were each given an empty bottle and told to pray for what we needed as we filled them with water, being told that the entities would fill the bottle with just what we needed. We continued around the circular path of the temple to wait for Uta and Olivia and then departed, walking the path through the gardens and back to the car.
Like my first visit to the Vale do Amanhecer, this was more bizarre than any experience I’d ever encountered, though now a year later I have some understanding of the intention behind the rituals and continue to be fascinated by them. Spiritism does not hold the same interest for me as it once did in that I no longer wish to study to become a medium myself, but I still desire to know more about it and feel quite drawn to the experience. I like to be in the presence of the entities and feel that energy, though I am more cautious about being where they strictly work with light forces, knowing now about the forces of black magic.
Tuesday January 19, 2010
Just a quick note today before I wrap this up. We’ll leave in a few hours to return to Brasilia to complete the necessary bureaucracy for the driver’s license. Again it will entail some help from “Ganeesh” who will assist us in locating one of the preferred physicians for the medical exam required to get the license. There are times when we do not require translation and can get by on our own, but getting around Brasilia itself is quite a challenge still. Upon my return I will resume our travelogue as new possibilities are emerging that I will share with you.
Until then, we send our love and wishes for your continued well being and happiness.