April 23, 2010

April 23, 2010

Abadiania, Goias, Brasil

I’m writing to you this morning from a very special place. I sit under an adobe tile roof on a suspended stone platform high over the cerrado on the edge of town in this place where thousands of people come every week to receive a healing from the world famous medium Joao de Deus (John of God.) We came here on Tuesday afternoon after a long morning in Brasilia doing business to put our things in order to return home. In search of an old friend we met here more than a year ago on our first visit, we found a pousada at the end of her street which she had long ago told us was a very good place to stay, owned by her friend from Germany, Walter. As we passed her house and could see she was not at home we continued on our way to meet Walter and see if perhaps this might be the place to stay while we received one last healing before returning home. Paul suffered a severe injury to his hip from a hammock fall onto a concrete floor several months ago and has been suffering ever since, unable to sleep much or take long walks. I was more than delighted that he agreed to return here to ask for help from the entities who work through John of God.

While waiting outside the door of a traditional Brazilian house for Walter to arrive, I did not know what to expect in the way of accommodations. Most were out of sight from where I stood so when Walter arrived to tell us that his one and only remaining room was a very special place of incredible energy, my curiosity was piqued in spite of the fact that the price was beyond my intended budget. I was surprised when we left the front of the house and continued down the road to the very end where we entered through a gate at the edge of town. We descended a walkway which meandered past another house before encircling the curve of the hill ending at an octagonal house made entirely of glass perched on the hillside with a view to the deep and lush valley which opened below it. “The energy in here is very special,” Walter said in his thick German accent with his eyes twinkling and his elfin like smile, missing a tooth or two. I could feel the hairs on my arm almost standing up as I stood under the center of the octagon. The floors were of white marble and the ceiling overhead had an array of halogen lights arranged like a starry sky or the bottom of a spaceship. Walter’s assistant stood nearby opening one after another of the thick white draperies to reveal more of the outdoors beyond the glass windows. As I hesitated over the price, Walter negotiated with me until it met both our satisfaction and I agreed to rent the room for our three day visit to this magical place of healing. In front of the glass octagon, which Walter reminded me was the sacred Sufi shape, was an open stone patio under a tile roof, off of which was a bathroom and behind one stone wall an outdoor shower which Walter wanted me to know was the best of the two (one inside, one out). There’s something about an outdoor shower in a tropical climate, which can’t be surpassed. The feel of fresh air around you as you stand under a spray of warm water is simply delightful. But enough of the surroundings of our temporary quarters and more about Abadiania, the Casa de Dom Ignacio and John of God….

John is an ordinary man, a simple Brazilian, but an extraordinary medium. For more than twenty years this ability has become known worldwide and continues to bring thousands of people from around the world and all over Brazil in search of a cure for a myriad of ailments, both physical and spiritual, minor and catastrophic as well as the occasional curiosity seeker. In fact our journey to Brazil nearly began with a visit to see John of God and now has come full circle as we prepare to leave.

There is so much to say that I will come back and revisit this in the book I intend to write upon my return, but for now I will attempt to be a bit more succinct. The town of Abadiania has grown around this healer and is full of pousadas, but not the typical “Bed and Breakfast.” In these pousadas, three meals a day are prepared and arrangements are made to bring meals to the room for those who are receiving treatments and instructed to remain quietly in their room in their own space following a spiritual operation. Most of the treatments given are spiritual operations which John’s volunteers will explain treat the more than 80% of the causes of illnesses which manifest into physical symptoms. Perhaps these things come in with us from previous lives, they explain, from the karma we carry with us. These can be treated by a spiritual intervention and the results of this phenomenon are apparent in the people we have witnessed regaining their sight, walking after years of being wheelchair bound, and the story after story of cured cancer, aids and more we have heard.

The process is impressive as people are divided into first time and second time visitors, those previously instructed to return at the morning or afternoon session or for an operation or a revision. When each session begins, a line is formed according to these designations and then permitted to pass through two rooms full of people who sit in meditation, what is referred to as the “current.” From the energy of this current, the entities are empowered to be received by John who is a powerful medium. As each person in turn stands before John he either hears their request or simply knows from their presence what it is they need and performs a triage, instructing them to return for a procedure or revisit at a later time for one of the three or four other remedies he uses to heal people. For Paul this Wednesday morning visit, he was instructed to return in the afternoon for an operation. I was simply asked to return to the two o’clock line at which time I was then told to come for an operation the following morning.

Paul’s request was brief, please fix my hip, he asked. I was not to speak a word. The encounter is strange, as John, to me, each time has appeared to be in deep trance, and does not make eye contact. With so many to see I’m always given the impression of being waved off and quickly dismissed. In my mind I have reasoned that I am one of the incredibly lucky ones who should not be wasting his precious time while so many are in such critical need, as I am blessed to be in good health. Perhaps this is the case, but one can only know their own perception of what is so. I do not wish to bore you with the small details but I am thinking there may be those of you who are really curious about what actually happens on the physical plane, so I say more perhaps than is necessary.

I’d like to skip ahead and relate some of what Paul describes as it is different than my own experience. When you return for an operation, the process is very similar. You form a line with others who like you are having an operation or as it’s sometimes referred to, a spiritual surgery. You file slowly past the meditating people of the current in the adjoining L shaped rooms into a small closed room which looks much like a chapel with long benches separated by an aisle down the middle. You sit, although on the day that Paul arrived there were so many people that he among a few others had to stand off to the side or as in my case the next day when there were a few in wheel chairs who rested just outside the surgery room, inside the current room, to receive their operation. With eyes closed and a few quiet instructions given and perhaps words of prayer, (they are spoken in Portuguese so I can’t say for sure,) the entities go about their procedures for healing. Paul describes a feeling like small knives cutting him, mostly around his heart. On his hip he explained it felt like scratching. I felt very little, a small amount of warmth only and the lifting of my hand from my heart. The procedure lasts less than thirty minutes and then we are lead outside to be given instructions in English by a volunteer. The instructions basically say to have a prescription of herbs filled at the pharmacy, return to the pousada by taxi cab, rest for twenty-four hours quietly in your own space. Have your meals brought to you, don’t speak much, stay by yourself. The entities, we are told will continue to work on us through the next 24 hour period. And this, Paul and I can testify to be true. Although Paul was not as good this time at following the directions to remain silent, he spoke to me a few times to describe what had happened and to tell me that he could feel them working on him.

I too could feel them from time to time and was surprised and a little disconcerted that I was feeling so much discomfort where before I had not. Old symptoms of a condition I had called Hashimoto’s Disease returned after being absent for a couple years, such that I had even forgotten I’d ever had it. In fact I was sure that I had succeeded in healing myself before I arrived in Brazil the first time and come to see Joao more than a year ago. But the first place I felt anything during the procedure was in my right hand where the entities were clearly focusing their healing. Paul reasoned that this disease must have lain dormant without really going away and that it was likely the cause of my joint problems which still cause me pain in one shoulder and one hip from time to time. “Ask for a straighter and stronger back,” Paul said to me. Actually my back was feeling fine; nothing was hurting me at the time. But you see during the operation and the next few days following it, my back was hurting so bad, I was almost mad that I’d asked. I could feel such a strong pressure across my lower back which was painful; since then it has moved up to the middle. We can only assume the entities are working on me and really helping me to have the straighter and stronger back I asked for. I felt very much as if I was recuperating from surgery; weak and very sore. * (Just a note to say as I review this now several days later, I can report no more problems with my back.)

As for Paul, the most amazing thing, the next day following his 24 hour recovery time he told me his pain was gone; his hip was cured. He slept with no pain. But better than that, his depression was gone. I don’t know exactly how to describe this but, he returned into his eyes. When he is depressed he has a way of retreating deep inside himself so much so that his eyes take on a kind of cloudy look. With a person of his personality type, the observer/ type five in the Enneagram, you can sense their presence is almost halfway behind their physical body. The energy is a half step back. Because this observer stance is not only observing everything outside themselves but at the same time observing their own interaction with the outside world, it is a very cerebral internally focused energy. When depression comes, they retreat even more as if to escape this painful reality in any way they can and often this is by going even deeper inside. So I saw that his eyes became brighter and I could feel his presence more solidly in his body. It’s the strangest thing that when this is happening, this depression, we often don’t realize it until it is over and they come back. It’s that whole hindsight being 20/20 kind of thing. So as I was resting in the room, completing my 24 hour recovery, Paul had finished his a half day before me and could bring the last two meals from the pousada’s kitchen down to our patio. He was happy! His energy and vitality had returned from a long and deep slumber of months. And suddenly he was finding and acknowledging the good things about Brazil and telling me he wanted to come back, perhaps for the winter. I was absolutely stunned. I tried to explain how my perception and experience of Brazil was so different from his, but he wanted to argue that it was only because I couldn’t understand how bad he was feeling. And I suppose this is true. I couldn’t. I was experiencing relaxation and peace of mind in a way I never imagined possible, while Paul’s reality was black and dismal. But that then is a perfect description of depression, isn’t it? I regretted that I hadn’t noticed until so recently, but then as we discussed this fact we both acknowledged that there really isn’t a way to help another emerge from such a depression. Well, the entities sure know how to do it! And for this I am so incredibly grateful. Now Paul is cured and he is happy. And I am feeling better too. I can move my shoulder now without pain and the back too is better.

The healing continues for a week and then the entities return to where you are on the 7^th night and remove any stitches they have used during your surgery. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights respectively this will happen. But Paul remembers well the night this took place over a year ago when the entities removed the stints from his heart. He could feel them there working. And once again, he knows that even though he did not ask for more than the fixing of his damaged hip, they have worked again on his heart and also fixed the elbow which he fell on but never mentioned as well as the depression neither of us had acknowledged was happening.

April 27, 2010

Abadiania itself is an unusual place. In many ways a typical Brazilian town, but so very different in other ways. Our first impression over a year ago was dismal. Here in this place where heavy duty spiritual work was taking place, cottage industries abounded selling white clothing to all the weary travelers who are asked to wear only white when going before the entities. This we are told helps the entities to see better where the problems are. I suppose it all comes down to blocked energy as we are simply that. After traveling through Brazil for 4 weeks, we were filled with appreciation for the generosity and loving nature of its people, the music in the people who played in the streets and in their homes, the slow rather laid back energy of a culture whose main preoccupation was not the incessant drive to earn money but seemed more focused on enjoying life. That time we were appalled at the energy around us on business enterprises which occurred to us then to be preying on the unfortunate who had traveled far to come in the hope of being healed. Americans with laptops conducting business deals, buying and selling crystals, arranging future tours, this then was a source of disapproval on that first visit. We found the sale of herbs infused with the entities blessings to be suspicious and were disappointed to see travelers ignoring the pleas of the unfortunate local people who asked for a few coins while they purchased their crystals and rosaries to take home appalling. But we were different people then, I think a bit more opinionated and less understanding. Paul couldn’t wait to leave then and get back to what he considered the real Brazil.

Coming back the second time I found a different place, one which I quite liked. But perception is everything, isn’t it? After all, look at how different the very same experience of this last 10 months in Brazil has been for me than it has for Paul. It’s like we are a chemical cocktail. If my blood sugar is low, things can look incredibly dismal. I might wake up in a panic for instance if I haven’t had enough to eat before going to bed. Pain is another factor that might color one’s outlook. It’s crazy! It has nothing to do with external factors – what some people would call physical reality – it’s all perception which for each of us is different.

We came back to Abadiania not long after we returned to Brazil and were still living in Cidade Ecletica to see the most wonderful woman who had become our friend on our first visit. She implored us to go back to the casa and see Joao, thank him for the healing Paul had received there, but Paul would not. His head had been filled with stories of bad things that the friction between spiritual schools seems to abound in. Some of the mediums from Ecletica disapprove of Joao who as a man has had a history of some actions which would not have shown good judgment or integrity. They disapprove also of the money that is being exchanged around although not directly for, any services of healing, for example the sale of blessed herbs and water, the crystal beds and things of this nature which help to fund the running of the casa and the soup kitchens. At Ecletica it is contrary to their spiritual laws to accept money for their spiritual work and this remains a bone of contention between the schools. This very ill feeling that had been also forming in our minds on our first visit. So we did not return to the casa to see John until now, and Paul’s opinion of Abadiania remained the same even then on that second visit. But our sweet friend Beatrice was another story which enriches our journey to this land beyond the veil (my personal description) or land on the other side of the mirror (Paul’s personal description) here on the continent of South America.

For now I will simply say that Beatrice came to Brazil from a life in Luxembourg, renounced all material things in one fashion or another to become one of the most spiritual and highly evolved people either of us has ever known. In the process she has been given some very hard lessons which would make a lesser person suffer incredible sorrows. Reunited with a husband of shady character, she has according to her friend Walter now disappeared under questionable conditions. “I thought to contact the Luxembourg Embassy,” said Walter. “I don’t know whether that lunatic of a husband of hers killed her like he did the other one…” Meanwhile my emails have gone unanswered…..

As to Abadiania now, I think it’s a very special place. I wouldn’t hesitate to return here for healing or to bring anyone here for that reason which I hope in fact to do. It’s a quiet little town and out on the edges of town where the ground drops away into crater like ravines, one young man from Ohio who we met over lunch one day at Walter’s pousada, reports seeing the entities late one evening on a walk past the casa. They appear like a series of twinkling lights, he told us. Two photographs on the wall inside the casa show a distinct column of light just next to the chair where medium Joao sits while incorporated.

Bubbles and columns of light, oh my!

As tonight will be the night the entities return to remove stitches for Paul, I shall have perhaps more news next time to report on his experience. For now I will end this report on Abadiania until another time.

Sunday April 25, 2010

Moinho

What a glorious day. I awoke to join Paul on his morning walk to the bakery to buy fresh bread and pastries for our breakfast. Upon returning Uta and Olivia dropped by for a visit and this brought us such joy. Now that we are not sharing a house we do not see them as much as we would like. As the morning neared its end we drove from town to Moinho, through a small mountain pass to this magical place we once visited long ago. This time we had directions to our friend’s fazenda (farm) to join them for lunch. Pass 4 bridges, Freida told me and then take the right fork in the road, passing between the football field and the cemetery and through the gate. Forgetting the very first part of the directions, I neglected to count bridges and got us a little lost but stopping twice to ask did eventually take us through a gate that we only hoped was theirs. Amazed to arrive at what I’d been led to believe was just a small farm with a very humble and simple house to find the farm covered a vast area of land surrounded by mountains nearly encircling a whole valley. The house was indeed simple but only in that it is just large enough for a bedroom and bathroom. The kitchen itself is outdoors under a roof of banana leaves, yet containing everything a kitchen needs including energy to power a refrigerator and light. Outside this covered room, a sink stands in the fresh air overlooking the vegetable gardens and beyond to the banana plantation, one of several fields of manioca, (a root tuber much like a potato only more versatile and nutritious) and the mountains beyond.

I thought I’d found my way to heaven as I sat with my friends, enjoying an afternoon and a meal together in this fantastic place. I must admit it was everything I’d hoped to find for my own home in Brazil before plans emerged to return north. It’s times like this I have regrets that I am leaving. But I do think now of returning and spending some time each winter as this is a place that really welcomes me.

After lunch our friend hung his 2^nd hammock on the porch and excused himself to drift off into an afternoon nap while I swayed gently in the other hammock talking to his wife, my good friend Frieda. Paul stretched out next to my hammock on a blanket on the floor of the porch, drifting in and out himself for a few minutes respite. It was an ever so peaceful way to spend an afternoon and when the men awoke we all climbed into Kelson’s pickup truck to have a tour of another side of the farm, even more beautiful than the part we’d seen. Gently climbing a hill and driving deeper into the valley, the view expanded as we continued to the end of the lane where we left the truck to walk past fields of beans almost to the bottom of a nearly vertical mountain which led to an area, we were told, which has a flat place the perfect shape for a UFO landing. Stopping again midway back we walked out to another field of beans, this one interspersed with palm trees reminding me that I am in a tropical climate, should I have forgotten. Here in Moinho the air is cool and a gentle breeze made the afternoon perfect.

These visits to places like this fill our heads with fantastic ideas as we spend much time designing the home we intend to build upon our return to Vermont. Though modifications will need to be incorporated to acclimatize things to withstand the severely cold temperatures and snow, the basic concepts are helpful and inspiring. We have decided to eliminate the beliefs and concepts we hold in place that serve to limit possibilities and instead expand our thinking to unlimited potential.

April 27, 2010

My friends and loved ones,

I’ll bring this letter now to a close as activities ensue to wrap things up here in Brazil for our return to Vermont. It is a beautiful sunny day in Brazil and we will leave shortly to drive to the capitol to continue our business there. Until next time, stay happy and be well.

Kisses

Mindy and Paul

April 15, 2010

Thursday April 15, 2010

Alto Paraiso

I left my apartment last Saturday to walk over to see Uta at the lotus space. Rounding the corner past the open field next to my block of flats, three toucans flew by as I passed the Prefeitura (mayor’s office) and the gymnasium. Passing the now empty space where the Saturday farmers market is held, I thought how cool it is that I am now seeing so many toucans, even flying through the streets of town. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, a few hours after the market had ended and cleared out for the day and I had the feeling that everyone had either left town to head to the waterfalls or were quietly inside their houses having lunch and an afternoon nap. Whatever the reason, the streets were empty and I was appreciating the fact that I could walk alone without having to greet anyone along my way. There are moments like these when Alto Paraiso feels like a ghost town and I kind of like it that way. As I continued past the ferrias (farmers market) I walked past the funeral home which always gets my imagination running wild thinking what is this Grupo Serpios with the strange symbol encased in wings? Walking up the hill, I approached the double boulevard which encircles the town but seems so out of place. No one actually stops at the stop signs on either side because there’s never any traffic passing by. One simply needs to roll slowly up to the corner, take a peek in either direction and continue on the way. When walking even that is barely necessary. On the other side of the street I felt as if I was walking on top of the world as from this vantage point I am high above the rest of town looking over the tree tops towards a ring of mountains which surrounds the little pueblo. It’s not hot but the sun feels warm on my skin and I breath in the fresh clean air and sigh a moment of appreciation for being in this magical place. Today it feels magical. Other days it does not. It’s uncanny how it changes with my frame of mind. I am happy today that no one is about and Rocket can stroll along nearby without the worry of cars in the road. Even the mean dogs behind the gates who bark ferociously as he passes, seem to be taking a siesta today. It makes the passage so much more tranquil. The lotus space rests midway down the hill, still affording it a lovely view over the village of the mountains beyond. Entering through the gate between the two blue domes, I always feel a sense of pleasure at the beauty of these hand crafted buildings which sparkle in the sun light. Even here there seems to be no one about except Yvonnia who is cleaning the loft above the restaurant for the arrival of Pedro’s sister. Her obnoxious little barking Chihuahua greets us at the door. This little dog used to live next door to us in our first house when we lived in front of Vistara. I remember her name is Nina and that she hates Rocket and barks incessantly when she sees him, baring her little Chihuahua teeth and curling her lip as if to warn him away from this house which today she is protecting.

With the news that Uta is not there but has gone off to have lunch, Rocket and I continue on our way down the hill to the river. In this strange land of the high plateau here in the inner most interior of Brazil, one simply has to walk down to the lowest point in the landscape to find a lush and tropical river. Along the way I love to marvel at the plants and the trees which offer up some kind of interesting seed or pod or flower which I can use to fashion some kind of artistic sculpture. This I will miss more than anything. Not far down the paved street from Lotus where my good friend stays with her friends now that we have returned to town and no longer have a home we can share together, a side street veers off and follows a dirt lane winding past my former home, and beyond the little Waldorf school called Fada Madrina (Fairy Godmother) where the rookery for all the Arraras (Macaws) sits high above in the clouds at the top of the giant eucalyptus tree. It’s not unusual to find bright blue and yellow feathers in the road as I walk past. Across form Fada Madrina is the home of Marco, Meili and Shankar, but they sadly are in Brasilia where Shankar, the 11 month old son of Meili and Marco is receiving transfusions and very ill. I send thoughts of love and wishes for his recovery as I continue down the lane past the little cottage where Tomasina used to live when we first arrived. Rocket is happy as he is about his favorite things, walking and exploring the various scents of the landscape. At the end of this quiet dirt lane, the houses of town end at a large stand of bamboo and one last farm. Often I hear and see their chickens scratching in the garden. As I approach this place, my breath comes back in full exhalation because I have at last left the village and am surrounded now only by the sounds of nature. Walking here under a canopy of large shade trees that line the sides of the road which leads from town winding through the valley before heading steeply up the mountain to an area where several friends have settled into a cozy community of rather upscale homes, including an Iranian princess and a holistic international doctor who conducts ritualistic ayahuasca ceremonies in a shamanic tradition when she is in the country, I am at peace. Rocket is in heaven. The road rounds a bend and then begins to gently descend past a field which often has a few cows grazing and Arraras flying overhead. With palm trees edging the distant border, this sight has me gasp at its phenomenal beauty every time I come here. At the final descending curve the sides of the embankment are exposed to reveal a deep orange clay which is often taken by the passerby to be used for ceramics, apparent by the cavernous divot creating an ominous overhanging cliff, just where the road, itself mostly clay here and very steep, is slippery by foot at its last approach to the cement bridge crossing the river. Just beyond this bridge a short trail takes me to a swimming hole which in certain times of low water has a tiny island in the middle. No one is here and that is just perfect for me as I feel this day like being alone with my thoughts.

As I sat on a rock on the edge of the swimming hole surrounded by forest, I was feeling such appreciation for this magical place and considering staying on here without Paul. In that moment it felt right. Thoughts like this have passed through my mind and through my heart often these last couple months as it became more and more apparent that Paul wanted to return to the States. At his suggestion I considered the best path for me and what would bring me the most peace. It occurred to me in this quiet place to stop thinking of my own happiness and I was able at last to finally put myself into Paul’s shoes for a moment and feel his suffering and unhappiness and at last I understood that it wasn’t about my own happiness but his that I needed to understand and consider and now help him to find his happiness again, whether I stayed or not. Nothing was resolved this day, but it was a moment of illumination to feel this and it stayed with me and changed me.

This was a magical day for me. There are times like this in life that have profound impact and stay with you; moments that change you. I once had a very special teacher who told me to watch for the subtleties. In my experience the biggest most life altering revelations come through in a subtle way. Some of us, if we’re not used to noticing the subtleties, miss them with only a passing thought of wonder, shrugging it off and losing the impact. Honestly when our minds are too noisy, our lives too busy, we can’t notice these things and learn from them. They whiz by, the lessons missed or lost.

It’s Friday, April 16^th, almost a week later and I have decided to return to Vermont with Paul without question as we are booking flights and making all the necessary arrangements. It feels important now to write as much about this place while it is fresh in my mind before it becomes a distant memory.

Brazil is a vast country as diverse, if not even more so than the United States. It too has many states, each uniquely as different from one another as Vermont is from Alabama. I have seen only a few and can only relate my own impressions and experiences from my unique perspective, for whatever that is worth. Since I’ve not centered my travels around the usual tourist destinations, these musings will probably not be of much use to the typical traveler looking for a great vacation on Brazil’s beautiful beaches, for example. Although I did spend a couple weeks last winter in the Atlantic rainforest and spent some time at the beach near Itacare in Bahia, I can attest to the incredible beauty and magnificence of Brazil’s beaches and that was only one of many more that would knock your socks off. My focus even then on that first trip to Brazil was an esoteric agenda, exploring the uniquely different avenues to expanding consciousness that Brazil has to offer. Since then I have learned so much, I hesitate to use the phrase, “esoteric agenda” because now this has implications more evil than I wish to expound upon. As a research journey this has proved to be invaluable.

If you ask me what I think of Brazil, do I like it here, I have to answer in all honesty, yes and no. There is so much about Brazil I do not like and don’t choose to live in. What I do like, actually love about Brazil are the people. I’ve never known better people anywhere in the world. They are unusual in that their roots are so mixed between the Indians who are indigenous to this continent, the Africans who were brought here to be slaves, and the white Europeans who came here from not only from Portugal where they got their language but as many from Germany and Italy, primarily and many other countries in addition. Through the years of blending, there is no real strong sense of division, no clear cut division between black skin and white skin because there is every shade in between, creating such a beautiful mocha skinned people, I couldn’t begin to guess if they were black or white and the real beauty is no one cares, it doesn’t seem to matter. You often hear people say, “They’re poor but their happy.” This is truer than you’d think. What’s noticeably different between our cultures is the absence of attention on earning and having money and basic survival, leaving time for relationships to take precedence over time schedules and commitments. The very thing that drives Paul crazy about being here is also the thing we both love best about the people here. He can’t walk down the street to go to the bakery for example without running into two or three people he knows and want to stop and chat with him. For someone who is basically a hermit, this is irritating. When we walk together, for example just the other day we walked two blocks to get an ice cream cone and encountered a French man I’d only met earlier that morning who wanted to chat with us, Paul stands there silently imploring me to end the conversation so he can move along and get done and get back to the solace and privacy of his inner sanctum, the apartment. I keep hoping it’s just his fragile state of needing alone time right now as he recovers from the harrowing journey to Argentina and back, but no, this is common behavior from a person who prefers to be alone and detests chit chat.

I was noting down a list of names of all the people I knew here in this town and wanted to remember after I’m gone and I was astounded at how many there are. I’ve never known so many people and had so many friends. It’s uncanny, this place and how this works. This is a community more unusual than even my imagination could have invented. Sitting high in the middle of the Chapada, a national park which encompasses five towns as well as the actual parklands, this town looks like many other typical Brazilian towns with its mixture of very poor and simple native neighborhoods with some poorly attended structures looking not much more than shacks and some more well to do neighborhoods with well kept nicer homes behind gated fences. Unlike other Brazilian towns this one also has hand crafted artfully designed houses, often inspired by ayahuasca visions. Houses like I remember falling in love with in a book depicting the handmade houses of Woodstock, New York – hippie houses, only way cooler. There are even neighborhoods on the hill filled with many of these kinds of houses because this is an alternative community mixed with a more traditional native town and also settled by followers of Osho and other various spiritual teachers for more than thirty years. Many of the original settlers from that time are still here. When they came the streets of town were still unpaved. Since then people from around the world have been showing up, looking for an alternative lifestyle, some of them staying while others have only passed through for a time. I’ve never lived in an international community like this before and that appeals to me, but it’s a community still in the making and has had trouble becoming what it really wants to be. It is still a Brazilian town with all the limitations that go along with being a town in a third world country. There is division and animosity between most of the native Brazilians and the more wealthy Europeans who hire the natives to do work for them, rather than becoming their friends and showing them the same respect and friendship they would to a fellow European. It’s hard to see and since I don’t feel this way but feel love and appreciation for the Brazilian people I never feel the resentment that Paul sees when he looks around. But I understand its there and know that it creates tension.

For me the town is not a paradise, but when I leave the edge of town and the energy of the city, I do experience paradise. When I find myself in the company of friends both old and new, engaging in conversations with people who are having a similar experience of life and experiencing a reality like mine, this to me feels like paradise. It’s about kindred spirits. This to me is so important and not easy to find, but it exists here. Being in a tropical place with toucans and macaws, exotic plants and trees, waterfalls and fruits in abundance, this to me feels like a paradise, but the minute you have to leave this little haven to deal with business of any kind, driving the 3 hours into the capitol city to interact with beaurocracy, this feels punishing and leaves you wishing for the familiarity of your own country where at least you speak the language fluently and understand the rules.

Now that I have begun to speak with people about my intention to return to Vermont in such a way that acknowledges how much I love it there and what a great place it is, a few are admitting their previously unspoken disappointment with certain factors about this place and staying here. Before, there was always an effort to dissuade me from leaving and encourage me to stay. I’ve even had one long time resident tell me she feels stuck here and admires that I am as free as a butterfly.

This morning Paul and I spoke with a neighbor outside our apartment about leaving. He too feels the distress and discouragement of being here, though he is a native Brazilian. He has also traveled the world and has a mother who lives in the US. We are all coming to the conclusion that there is nowhere to hide. The problems exist everywhere; they only vary slightly from place to place. So we will each choose to be where we find the most happiness.

I can’t say why it is so difficult, but from the very beginning until now, the very end, we have not mastered the art of making a telephone call in this country whether by land line or mobile. This presents insurmountable difficulties when the need arises. We must go in search of a helpful friend, who like us, speaks English but as well speaks Portuguese. But most do not even have a land line and minutes are preciously expensive on mobile phones. The fact is to conduct any business usually requires long drives to far away places and hours of slow moving time. Our quest to try to reclaim the unused portions of our airline tickets had us driving the nearly three hours into the airport to spend many hours in pursuit of the answer to the question, was it possible.

Sunday April 18, 2010

The Journey

Lao Tzu said it was better to stay at home, live a simple life. I understand now. The journey is really not an outer one but an inner one. Travel however is broadening; how else can one know how others live, experience other cultures, get new ideas. Certainly movies give you an experience as real as life, especially with high definition graphics which honestly creep both Paul and I out. The brain, you know can not separate what it sees on the movie or television or even computer screen from what it processes through visual sight first hand through your eyes and so called “real” experience. It is all the same to your brain. All that violence you’re exposed to on the movie screen goes into your psyche and affects you as much as it would if you were right there on the street next to it watching it happen. But unless you know the people, sit down and have a conversation together, get invited into their home, shop in their markets; the experience really isn’t the same. On one level different cultures each offer a unique experience with a different flavor and twist to the lessons we are all here to have in this schoolyard of life. But from a broader perspective, though they may be eating passion fruit ice cream while we are eating chocolate, we’re all still eating ice cream. What am I trying to say? I think it’s important to have an open mind and an open heart, to be able to put yourself into the shoes of another and understand them, have compassion for their suffering, appreciate them even if you can not even begin to understand why they are so different from you. This has become a harder task for those us of who have not had the opportunities to live in the shoes of another even for a short moment. There is an intentional design to this. You see those very few who have been controlling and shaping the destiny of the rest of us though the power of money and all that trickles down from that like government etc, want to keep humanity divided every way they can, by race, by circumstance, by intelligence or lack of it, education or lack of it, by many many things: the design is the same to keep us divided and separate with a lack of understanding or compassion for “the other.” So in the end, what is there to do but live a simple life close to home. Open your heart to anyone you can reach, help in any way you can, try to keep your body healthy and strong by eating “real” pure foods – not the chemically engineered crap they are selling us in grocery stores and telling is actually “food,” by the way, it’s not.

I got my first real education from Landmark Education. I remember sitting in their first weekend course thinking, “I know that, I already know that.” I thought to myself, Mindy if you’re going to take that smug attitude that you already know, how will you keep an open enough mind to learn anything?” But the thing is that what we are here to do is “remember” because we all already know but we’ve forgotten. We need help to remember and through our own individual teachers, whoever they might be as they are different for each of us, we begin to remember what we’ve forgotten. Years later when I became a student of Sufism, I was asked what I was looking for. I said I wanted to find a teacher or a guide to help me to grow and expand. I was given the Sufi name for God that means guide and instructed to chant this name in my meditation for the purpose of finding the inner guide within myself. I did. Paul asked to know and see everything and he too was given two special names to chant. All I can say is be careful what you ask for. Because I am on this journey with him, I can see now and know more now than I ever wanted to know. Sometimes I wish I didn’t but you can’t really un-see or un-know a thing just as you can not re-enter the womb if you change your mind. I had a friend once who one day blurted out, “oh fuck you!” He paused rethought what he’d just said and then said, “un-fuck you.” I thought that was hilarious at the time and have since attempted to un say a thing I wished I hadn’t said, but the sad truth is that every word we say, every action we take effects the vibration of the entire galaxy. That was something I began to learn through Landmark. They taught me to take responsibility for how my words and actions affected other people. They taught me that everything I do makes a difference. I don’t think I realized that before. Even now it’s often hard to remember, especially for me because I do my thinking as I speak (or write) not before so I don’t have a good censor in place like some people. Paul for instance is very good at thinking deeply about what he wishes to say, before he actually says it. Since that time this revelation has deepened within me to a much fuller understanding of how each of us impacts everything. You can see it in the smallest example, for instance of remembering a day when someone smiled at you and that smile made you happy all day long. Or if you are as sensitive as me, maybe someone you know seemed sad or upset, maybe they simply had gas and a stomach ache and you made up all kinds of stories about how they were upset with you for something you did or said and it kept you in upset for the rest of the day- maybe even for several days? We’re all just a vibration of energy. There is no solid matter. Even the atom is hollow. You should listen to or read some of the new information from the sciences that is being revealed about this! So all we are is energy. There is no separation between us, we are connected, each a part of a whole, with everything. Of course we have an effect on everything around us. So many people look around at the mess the planet is in right now and think, “What can I do? I’m just one person. I can’t change or even affect anything.” That’s not true. I love what Gandhi said. I keep seeing this particular quote on people’s t-shirts and actually it’s popping up all over the place now. He said, “Be the thing you wish to see in the world.” I hope I quoted him correctly. The message is, start living life as if it already is everything you wish it was, that every thing you hope and dream for already exists. It does if you believe it does. Live as if it does.

I know I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Every Saturday at 5:00 pm Greenwich Time Max Igan, an Australian internet radio show host, has created a worldwide group meditation for one hour. At the same time all over the world (whatever is the same in your time zone) people do a meditation that is simply living life as if the world we wished we lived in exists now. My friend Marco asked me the other day if I would write on my blog and ask everyone to take a minute once a week and repeat the word amour (love) over and over for only one minute at the very same time so that we could send a vibration of love around the world for that moment. He said it would make a huge difference. He didn’t know that Max Igan was doing his global meditation and I would venture to guess that there are many others also creating something like this. It’s powerful what we can affect with a vibration of love. Marco suggested we begin a day say for example 6am on Monday morning in this way. And why not?

I’m not saying I have already gained any facility at remaining equanamous, in fact far from it. I am like a sponge absorbing the emotion from all around me. These days the person I am most connected to is struggling with his health and with his happiness. He is feeling a strong calling to return home and has been fighting me every step of the way to let him leave, to let him follow this gut feeling that he has to go. You know most of us feel these things long before we actually understand what they are saying to us and we can voice to another let alone voice to ourselves. We sit with these strong gut feelings a long time before we understand them enough to say what we need to effect the change we need to make. When it finally forms into cohesive thought we think we’ve already said what it is we feel so strongly and wonder why the ones around us don’t already understand what we need from them, because by this time it is so obvious to us we think we’ve already expressed it outwardly in a way that it should be obvious to those others we are in close relationships with. And then, quite often resentment has begun, why you might ask have you kept me from doing or having what I want or need? Don’t you love me enough to see? But then those of us on the other side of this equation are trapped within our own fragile ecosystems of body chemistry, emotions, thoughts and feelings working diligently to keep our own rudders on course. How few of us are so grounded and centered that we can put aside our own private preoccupations to know even before they do that our loved ones are in trouble and need our assistance. I often forget a thing I learned, I think from the Dali Lama, that to put others first brings the most joy. When we can help another, bring joy or peace to another, our own happiness increases threefold. It’s true, I’ve tried it and found those times to be my best.

These are challenging times on the planet for all of us. Many changes are underway. Sometimes I become very frightened at the course of events that may occur, but fear is the very thing that keeps us from having the outcome we want. Paul and I have this discussion quite often. He insists that there are only two emotions: love and fear. I always want to debate the truth of this because I have such a rich vast emotional cadre and taken each nuance of emotion to the depths of their possibilities. But no he insists that every other emotion other than love is at its roots, fear. So lets say I go along with this fact which he insists is indisputable, then we have to say that the only thing to do is remain in a state of love and that my friends is the only goal. I’m down with that. I always thought that love was the only thing that really mattered. So I try. Sometimes I even pray (I use that term broadly) that I can become just an emanating force of love and light that reaches out and touches everything and everyone. I sometimes meditate on this aim. Sometimes it works and I can see that my love reaches out and touches them and they reflect it back. Rumi, my favorite poet, once spoke of us being mirrors. I think maybe we are and the relationships and interactions we have with others reflect back to us how we are being with them. If we are broadcasting love, it bounces off, like a reflection and comes back to surround us in love.

But like everyone, maybe a little less often than some, but none the less, I have moments when I am very frightened. It is so disempowering. In these moments I feel frozen into inaction. This is what I am struggling to overcome because in the framework of the absence of fear, which Paul will say is automatically love, we can create any possible outcome we want in this moment. The future doesn’t actually exist, only another moment, which exists NOW, replaced by another and then another. The week before I left Alto Paraiso to begin that arduous journey to Argentina, I was reading a book of talks that Osho gave in India. He said that everyday he wakes up with a choice, to be happy or not. Several days after reading that I remembered that I had that choice and in each moment when I felt like I might be bothered by the circumstance I was in, I remembered that I could just as easily choose to be happy. It’s not always easy, but I’m trying to remember I still have that choice.

Two nights ago we rented a video to watch called 2012; maybe some of you have seen this huge blockbuster Hollywood production? As I watched I found myself feeling more and more tense and frightened at the prospect of such cataclysmic disaster. I know that all Hollywood movies are actually made with the intention of conditioning the public and prepping us to be ready to accept some intended future outcome. It’s not for the sole purpose of your entertainment and their profit as you might think. As I was watching, and by the way, not believing that this is what will happen as you might think, I was remembering about my choice to be happy. I was remembering that what these elite powers that control everything want is for us as a human race to be afraid, because then they have more control of the outcome. It also occurred to me how important it will be when each disaster strikes, to be equanamous, to maintain my equilibrium, remain unafraid and calmly face whatever disastrous situation I am presented with. I think it’s a good idea to be prepared to survive without systems, yes, but if my mountain erupts in a volcano, and I am not meant to survive, I can exit this life without fear. If it means that I am only to have to exist without the public services that I depend on for food or fuel, then I can still feed myself and heat my home with wood. For each of us the circumstances vary, depending on where we live, but these are the things I’d like to be prepared for. I’d rather put my efforts into these endeavors than focus on what job I can do for what company that will pay me enough to pay my mortgage to the bank and the bill to the power company for my electricity and the grocery store for my food. It takes less to provide for myself and in the end, for me this is a better way to live, connected to the earth, with a simpler loop from the source to the recipient. I personally prefer it this way. But we have lost this connection in our times in our culture. We’ve forgotten the basic skills necessary for this kind of life. I’m happy to be returning to a community that has realized this and has formed a network that is hooking people up who still have these skills to teach the to the people who want to learn them again. They call themselves the “Post Oil Solutions.” It’s a good model for a new way of life, returning to a more simple agrarian kind of life where each person can contribute from their own skills so that everyone in the end has what they need.

Some would say that this system we now live in provided great opportunities for the ones who are willing to put the effort in to thrive. I disagree because it is not only a matter of willingness to put forth effort, but luck and circumstance play too heavy a role and many unfortunately lose out and go without while those few lucky ones have way more than they need and in my opinion often too much. (I hate having opinions) But I’m not a communist or a capitalist or even a socialist. I am not an IST of any kind. I simply want everyone to have what they need. I don’t think that’s asking too much. Paul likes to say that he would like to see a world in which having more than another would become a source of shame, not pride. But he will clarify that to explain that he too is not a communist. The real truth is that there are enough resources in the world for everyone to live with much more than a subsistence level of survival. There is enough for everyone to live a very good life. Please don’t misunderstand what I say because I do not wish to make anyone wrong for having more than another or for having a spent a lifetime creating success or even wealth. It is only a faulty system, not bad people for excelling in the system. We were given a game board to play on with rules for the game. In this game there are winners and losers. I just think it’s a shitty game. I’d prefer a game with no losers; that’s all. Silly me, maybe….

So this crazy newsletter I’ve been writing which somehow has found an interested readership is a mixed blessing. On the one hand I want to share what I know in an attempt to awaken others from the slumber that we have been programmed into accepting as normal reality. I keep thinking if we know we can change the outcome. On the other hand, sometimes sleep is bliss. When things are bad, sleep is a nice respite from our troubles. In those few hours one can escape into a different world where those troubles don’t exist. And who is to say which is the nightmare and which the reality. There’s a fantastic story from Chang Tzu in which he tells about a dream. In the dream he is Chang Tzu dreaming he is a butterfly but upon awakening he no longer knows if he is Chang Tzu dreaming he is the butterfly or the butterfly dreaming he is Chang Tzu. I know I myself have memories that I can not catalog as a dream or my waking reality, the memory is too surreal to classify. Paul says that he has told some stories so many times now that he doesn’t know if he remembers the incident or some telling of the incident. Isn’t it like that for all of us. How can we really say for sure which is the truth, which is the reality? But I stray from my point. If one has not awoken to certain disturbing facts about life but is simply living the prescribed plan in a state of acceptance and compliance and is content with things as they are, is it a disservice to relay conflicting information and therefore disturb their sense of peace? I used to love to do what I read on my favorite bumper sticker, disturb the comfortable, comfort the disturbed. But now the implications of that action are too severe. I don’t know if I want to disturb anybodies comfort anymore. It’s too hard to find.

In the academic world of Ego Development, what I prefer to call the expansion and development of consciousness, I have learned that a disruption takes place between stages of development. In each stage there exists a platform of perspective where one settles into a comfort zone and operates from a fairly now well defined worldview. What seems to cause the jump from one way of experiencing life to the next more expanded way is a total disruption and chaos from which one can no longer organize new information into the existing framework. All new reference points have to be constructed before one shifts their worldview to the new platform. This is a very uncomfortable process to go through. If you are like me, being uncomfortable is next to intolerable. But really good things come out of processes like these. When one door closes, another one opens to a better place. Saying goodbye to the familiar is painful, even if it wasn’t working; at least you knew the rules and could function there. We happen to think that humanity is going through this process now. We like to think that all this suffering is the disruption that will cause ego growth and consciousness is struggling to expand to possibilities greater than any of us can imagine. We’re doing it on a personal level, but as above so below. Many think we are a hologram. What happens in the tiniest sense is exactly happening in the grandest sense. All consciousness is now in disruption on the verge of constructing a new reality, a whole new broader platform of understanding. It has to be. So am I making a mistake sharing what I know about the elite ruling families? Maybe? But I also believe there are no mistakes so I can’t possibly do anything I shouldn’t be doing. My script has already been written. It has to have been. Who could possibly write a choose your own adventure script on this grand level with billions of different outcomes. It must be the finest musical score ever composed, the most elegantly choreographed dance ever created; the whole galaxy is involved- all consciousness is interwoven, how could I, little me, make a mistake? So what can I say? Just be happy.

March 29, 2010

March 29, 2010

I finally got it this morning while lying in bed just before totally waking up. I’ve been overly suffering being here in Argentina with the heavy police presence, waiting for Tica to return, thinking and deliberating about Paul’s decision to return to the US and whether I’ll join him. Too much suffering... I’ve known from a theoretical standpoint that suffering only happens when one puts their thoughts in the future and in the past but never when one remains in the moment of the experience that is happening now. It was really clear to me as I was lying in bed next to the man I love with my little dog snuggled up against us. Paul rolled over and put his arm around me and I was content in a comfortable bed, with the gentle breeze from the fan blowing over me. I remembered where I was, that it was a special place and very beautiful and that rather than enjoying it, I’ve been somewhere else, playing out different possible scenarios in my mind and feeling frightened. So I remembered I could just go for a walk up the mountain and I could be happy; it was my choice.

Paul too spent the night mostly awake having endless insights which he shared with me when he awoke. We’ve spent the last week downloading videos at the internet café to bring back to the cabin to watch after dinner. After the first several nights of current news events which were rattling our nerves and encouraging us to feel more agitated and afraid, we started looking for videos that would focus on the positive side of what’s happening; the change of consciousness that’s taking place, the awakening of more people from this deep induced slumber we’ve been manipulated into. I picked up some talks by Krishnamurti and Paul found some talks by Greg Braden; each of us hearing different things that stuck with us and caused our own version of insight or triggered memories of profound lessons we’ve already learned but weren’t remembering to apply in our experience of daily life.

I heard Greg Braden describing an ancient form of prayer through a meditation practice in which one places oneself in a world that already exists in which the perfect scenario of peace without conflict already exists – not the traditional form of prayer where one makes pleas to God to correct an errant situation. It brought to mind a practice that others are currently undertaking such as the group meditation that Max Igan has instituted through his website where at the same time all over the world for one hour each week, everyone meditates with the vision that the change we seek for a better world already exists and we live for that hour in that experience. The casa where John of God performs his miraculous healings in Brazil three days a week has a similar practice which they refer to as a current. Two rooms fill with people who sit in deep meditation around him while he visits with hundreds of people one by one, who come before him to be healed. That energy which is created from the group meditation facilitates his ability to heal. I don’t actually know what label Greg Braden takes his background credentials from, if quantum physics is his scientific background or some other branch of science but he is well versed in an ability to explain fairly complex topics and did a good job of articulating how the holographic field applies to this concept in which every emotion experienced affects our whole reality. I understood how much damage my experience of fear was doing to our group experience of life. I also understood why when I am in an experience of love and therefore at peace, that everything and everyone around me also appear to be loving, calm and peaceful. This experience I found in Brazil.

I fell in love with the people of Brazil. Total strangers reached out to help me and shower me with love. More than anything it’s what compelled me to sell everything I owned and loved to move to Brazil. For Paul, it was different. He had a spiritual experience. In it he was given a message which he listened to and followed. I went along for the adventure and besides I am always drawn to loving and beautiful environments where I thrive. It seemed to fit with what we are about, Paul being a transpersonal psychologist with his field being consciousness and spirituality and my own lifelong interest in dissecting who I am and therefore everything about the psychology of human nature. It wasn’t the first time I left behind a life I loved to explore new possibilities – I did the same when I left my 20 year home in Boulder, Colorado.

We wanted to know what this phenomenon of spiritism that we experienced first hand in Abadiania with John of God and in Cidade Ecletica through Paul’s own spiritual experience was all about. Everything we understood about the beliefs of spiritism aligned with our own philosophy and understanding. We believe that we are more than our body, our mind and our emotions; that we are simply an observation point having an experience. We also believe that only the body dies, but the essence of who we experience ourselves to be doesn’t die, it continues into the next life as a different personality. We think that some people have an ability to remember who they were in previous lives though most of us can not access this memory, certainly not in waking consciousness. As students of consciousness we are aware that other levels of consciousness can be accessed through altered states, such as the ones that occur between waking and sleeping, sleeping and waking, dream states, states induced by smoking pure unadulterated tobacco and marijuana, ingesting certain sacred plant medicines and even some chemically engineered products for this very purpose. We have done our own research and can attest to the fact that insights are there to be remembered. It made sense to us to go and learn what we could first hand by being a part of a community and studying with them. And so we did, as you know if you’ve read my accounts of our experience in Ecletica.

Things are not always only as they appear from what you can experience with your five senses and your ability to cognitively explain to yourself what you’ve gained. We happen to believe that nothing happens by accident; that everything is beautifully orchestrated and designed for each person to develop along their own path. If you look closely at astrology for instance and learn what each placement means in a person’s natal chart, you can’t deny that each life is mapped out from the exact moment of birth. It’s sciences like these ancient wisdom sources which have been taken from mainstream knowledge by being reduced to whimsical non-sense so that most of us won’t have these tools for understanding, that keeps these resources limited to the few who look beyond the accepted notions. But that is not the topic I want to expound on today. Through the beautifully choreographed course of events that unfolded during our stay with the people of Ecletica, we learned a great deal about the esoteric teachings and practices of Kardecism and Umbanda which are branches of spiritism. Even though at the time we thought we were not learning enough because of our limited ability to hear the spoken words of the teachings, through our experience and our own background of knowledge in esoteric teachings we learned far more than anyone suspects. Enough to know that it was not a life we ourselves wanted to dedicate our remaining years to participating in. We have another purpose here in these times of changing consciousness. Paul who has an uncanny sense of when to move on which does not come from the five sense field of knowing, felt the distress which clues him in to a deep knowing before it becomes cognitive and compelled me to leave before I was aware that we should move along.

I’d love to share our insights about what we learned there but the time isn’t right. I need more time to sort them into a cohesive literary form; to discuss them in a way that doesn’t damage any relationships we have with the people there with whom we share a deeply profound love and appreciation, and to fete out the critical points worthwhile of your time to read them. As you know I do my best thinking while writing and can be somewhat wordy, rambling spirals towards my point. So I’ll return later to the insights we garnered during our sojourn with the spiritists.

Moving along to our next location we were given real lessons in friendship and seeing the experience of being a foreigner in a strange place from the other side of the equation from our friends at the language school who invited us into their life in a very special way. Having spent time with a spiritual community themselves as Brazilians living in the US, they understood the isolation and helplessness one feels and wanted to correct their experience by helping us to have a better one. Again, the generosity and love of the Brazilian nature shone through as a light brighter than the sun on a clear day.

*Thursday April 8, 2010

On the road back to Alto Paraiso

Some time later as you can see…. I’ll return to these insights and line of thinking – but for now the story continues….

Friday April 2, 2010

Capilla del Monte, Cordoba, Argentina

At last, the evening before leaving has arrived. This is the end of day 13 in this hamlet perched under Uritorco, the mountain known as an entry into a cosmic center; one of three here in South America. My time here has not revealed any unusual activity directly, unless you consider the afternoon Paul and I had the same dream exactly while napping head to toe in the cabana.* But no sightings of unusual lights, no encounters with unusual beings, except of course two people who I could almost swear had noticeably alien eyes. I speculated that they were walk-ins posing as normal people about town by day and romping off to the underground city by night. I jest, but you know I’m not doubting this stuff actually exists, only testifying that I personally did not have any encounters.

So we sat here for thirteen days and nights while we put Uta and Olivia on a bus to visit family and take care of some business in Buenos Aires, a fourteen hour bus ride. Not exactly in the mood to hike or swim or ride horses or any of the other usual tourist activities, we spent a lot of time at the internet café, downloading informational videos to bring back to the cabin to watch in the evening. We spent a lot of time thinking and talking and creating some possible ventures to engage in upon our return to the US next month.

The day after our long ordeal with the militia, we changed course from continuing on to Patagonia to retrace our voyage back to Brazil, being absolutely over this country as a welcoming place to settle down, let alone visit as a tourist. When a person is halted at road blocks more than 5 times a day, it doesn’t exactly endear one to the ambient environment. Paul as you may know, was over living in Brazil and hoping to find a more suitable and hospitable environment in Argentina, having long dreamed of seeing Patagonia and the Andes. I was still holding out hope that he would realize what a great spot we had found in Alto Paraiso and would be happily eager to return to continue our dream of building a homestead there. He’d only said how much he missed his daughter and how much he looked forward to returning to the States to do some work and spend a couple months. What he hadn’t mentioned was his plan not to come back to Brazil once there. So he came clean with me the night we stopped our journey south and told me everything about how wrong a fit for him living in Brazil has been. He had actually hoped to find what he was looking for here in Argentina. So our 13 day sojourn has been all about searching our hearts and planning what’s next.

I must admit that returning frightens me. I learn all the time about the intentions of those in control, the powerful elite who control the governments’ policies and every system that’s in place creating the world we are living in. But I will add that before coming to Argentina, I was under the perhaps false illusion that my little hamlet in the central plateaus chapada was exempt from harm. I still hold out hope that it could be, but I’m not as innocent as I was 6 weeks ago. I have uncovered startling new information and I have seen first hand what it feels like to live in a military dictatorship or under martial law where the roads are controlled by handsome 20 something year olds wielding automatic weapons.

Now I have no doubt what-so-ever that no one hides from the system. The technology exists to send a drone to the most remote places on the planet- there is no escape if they want you. Why they’d want me, I can’t imagine unless they simply won’t rest until everyone who’s awake to their activities is eliminated. But if I can’t hide out and escape the nightmare, I might as well be back home where I might actually do some good and help other people with what I know. I’ll tell you, what I’ve learned living here could fill volumes and I think really go a long way to creating a new way of living in today’s’ world. In the US especially, we aren’t privy to many things that could make a huge difference. We’re really isolated and encased in a lifestyle that is so hooked into the agenda you wouldn’t believe it. You kind of have to step outside the fishbowl to see the water you’re swimming in. So I’ll do my best to spend some time trying to fete it out over time and see if I can illuminate some things you might find helpful. If they don’t apply, they may at least entertain you. I’d like to jump straight to the end point but if I do that without taking you through all the steps, you’ll discount everything I say because the information is staggeringly unbelievable, so bear with me while I make my way through – it’ll take some time.

Saturday April 3, 2010

On the road…

Last night came the fantastic light show we’d yet to see. The cabanas we stayed in were perched on the side of a mountain over a valley across from which as I’ve mentioned was the famous range called Uritorco. For 12 days we had hot dry weather by day with cooler temperatures at night but yesterday, our final day in Capilla, we awoke to very brisk jacket weather and overcast skies. Last night the winds picked up almost to gusts and by the time we were in for the night and ready to drift off to sleep the rains began. We’d been watching an old movie on the computer called Antz starring the voice of Woody Allen which was an uplifting story of an ant who refused to play by the rules and left the colony to find Antopia, only to return from finding it to his colony to save his beloved and in the end the whole colony from the oppressive termites. The story seemed to fit our own general motif. I kept noticing a flashing light in my peripheral vision but it was one of those things that I would question, did I just see that. The rain had only lasted a few minutes and there was no sound of thunder. As the night went on, the movie ended and computer shut down I lay in the bed looking out the glass doors at the foot of the bed and watched as the sky would suddenly light up, not like a flash of lightening but in greater scope like something of a more energetic encompassing field of light. I remembered Olga saying these hills attracted so much energy because of all the crystal under the ground that often intense winds would suddenly arrive and the lights would be spectacular. This was more descriptive than any lightening I’d ever seen. I watched it for hours before finally drifting off to sleep on our last night under Uritorco. It was Friday, the 13^th night of our stay.

Uta and Olivia’s bus broke down just after getting underway which delayed their arrival by 2 ½ hours. We sat in the most rustic and charming café at the bus station I could ever remember being in drinking coffee while we waited. The coffee in Argentina is like a great espresso and is commonly served accompanied by a mini glass of seltzer and sometimes a fresh squeezed mini orange juice and a small sweet. You’re given the choice of a small or large which is also referred to as a coffee Americano. It’s a cool way to serve coffee and I’d love to bring this tradition back to the States with me. Speaking of Argentinean traditions, there’s another that’s quite endearing. Everywhere you go you see people carrying a thermos of hot water along with a wooden cup with a metal straw with a tea strainer at the bottom. The cup is filled with Yerba Mate leaves to the brim, a very strong herbal tea. The cup is then filled with hot water from the thermos, sipped through this special straw and then passed like a peace pipe to the next person to repeat the process and on to the next person or back again to the beginning. It’s a strong brew that I don’t particularly care for but I love the tradition and Argentineans seem to be absolutely hooked on the stuff.

So Uta’s 8 o’clock bus arrived around 10:30 and I was thrilled to see our girls reunited with us again so we could begin our arduous travels back to Brazil. Following Google Maps directions we headed north east back past the amazing pueblo of Ongamira which you may remember I mentioned from our first travels through the area. Rather than heading south through the capitol of Cordoba we were instructed to follow a direct route through the mountains towards our final destination. This took us through some of the most beautiful landscapes we’ve ever seen. My appalling disgust with Argentina turned back into admiration for the incredibly lovely beauty of its mountain ranges, especially through this region of Cordoba’s hills north of the capitol. It is very remote and here and there small farms or ranches with the most beautiful horses I’ve ever seen and wildflowers that have you catch your breath as you utter “oh wow” around every turn. In places the landscape takes on the rural style of England and Wales lay lines with stone walls and sheep grazing in the fields, large outcroppings of rocks that look ancient or even other worldly. These high rolling hills lead to enchanted wooded forests that could be deep in Vermont’s mountains and rivers and rivers full of water with hardly a soul around. But every so often a gaucho on horseback appears in the road or on a nearby hillside in your line of vision. With the cost of living so incredibly low here in comparison to the US I must admit my fantasies of living in the remote mountains of Argentina with horses came back to replace my memories of military roadblocks, now that I was back in the hills and off the asphalted roads where they lay in wait for the passerby who has neglected to put their headlights on or wear their seat belts. We have about 3300 kilometers to travel back to Alto Paraiso so traveling through the winding mountains over rocky pot holed roads at speeds of 20 kilometers an hour covering 50 kilometers in 2 hours seems agonizing until you remind yourself to enjoy the beauty because it wont be long until we have nothing but flat fields of soybeans and industrial cities to travel through with no clean air to breath for day after day.

It’s 4:30 and we’ve arrived at those long flat highways through miles and miles of soybeans. So I can sit here writing without missing anything. Last night when I stopped to read Paul what I’d written that evening he corrected me and said I’d misrepresented him when I said he’d intended to return to the States for work and then not return to Brazil. It was only after coming to Argentina that he realized he might have felt that way once he’d gotten there – that his intention had been to return after a couple months visit. I think he’d been sorting out what he was feeling all along but hadn’t identified before then. Perhaps I can sum it up. Maybe you arrive at a time in life after 60 when you desire the comfort of the familiar. Even if the people around you do not share the same worldview, they do share the same experiences from your youthful days when so much of your character is being formed. For Paul the experience of the Viet Nam war and the ominous danger of being drafted to fight in that war was a huge foundation of his early years. To be around people who went through those traumatic times brings a source of comfort. The comfort of familiarity of roots, so to speak; just one example but maybe it depicts the point. The familiarity of Saturday morning breakfast at the Chelsea Royal Diner holds more appeal than being in a place where they speak a language that you don’t speak and can’t hold a conversation of any depth after, “hey, how’s it going?”

This is only a part of the story. While we sit around enjoying or not enjoying, depending on which one of us you ask, a life of the simple pleasures of retirement, gathering more and more information about the esoteric nature of reality, listening to predictions of dire times ahead, knowing that our loved ones may suffer much harder times than we expect to where we are, it’s begun to feel wrong to seek out an easy life where we are not making any contribution to assisting with the change. Having found my utopia (Antopia) I can’t see myself there sitting in the river having a back massage in the waterfall cascading over the rocks, knowing my children are living in a nightmare reality and finding pleasure in my good fortune while they are suffering. Now, granted I am projecting forward to a future that hasn’t yet happened and with any luck may never happen so let me back up to the present reality and change direction for a minute. Though I myself am having an experience of delight in High Paradise, Paul is not. He is measurably unhappy there. I can’t stay and enjoy myself while he is this distraught. Nor do I feel like staying on without him which is what he is proposing I do, so that I will be happy. The truth is I love Vermont and I was very happy there. I imagine I will be again, although it will be a considerably different life this time than before we left.

We left with a hefty mortgage on a lovely house in the middle of 31 acres. We needed to maintain an income of considerable size to live that life. Paul was fortunate to have work that could support that lifestyle while I remained at home trying to create a sustainable homestead. Things are different now. The consulting work that could sustain that economy has gone away. We were lucky in that we figured out we could eliminate things like health insurance and other expenses to lower our cost of living long enough to maintain that lifestyle until we could sell our place to leave for South America where the cost of living is a fraction of what it was. Now we have learned the skills of living with less and can reduce our needs to hopefully fall within a retirement income which itself is a fraction of what it was when there was work. It’s really cool actually to realize how much less you need than what we’ve all been conditioned to accept is realistic. As the economy falters I imagine many will find themselves in the same situation even though they may not have reached an age of retirement. Living in South America comes with real lessons in living without. Things we were once accustomed to simply do not exist in a way that makes them readily available. After the initial discomfort of not having them, they cease to be of any concern. Take for example foods you are used to having in your kitchen to cook with. They are not available. For a while you try to find substitutions until you simply end up changing what you eat to what is actually readily available. The same goes for comfort in furnishings. When all there is to sit on is a wooden bench, eventually you stop wishing for the comfy couch or recliner and become accustomed to the backless bench or find a wall to lean against. You adjust to what’s actually available. After a while you don’t miss what you used to have. The simple things are fine.

Monday April 5, 2010

Near Cascavel, Brazil

Stopped for the night just past 9pm. We are all quite happy to have crossed the frontier from Argentina back into Brazil since we had a few doubts about being permitted to leave Argentina and being permitted to enter Brazil. However both went smoothly. In fact no one checked us in coming through Brazil so we have not had our passports stamped and there is no official record that we are here, which might prove to be a problem when we leave. I suppose we will know before long as we are planning on leaving at the earliest possible opportunity.

Tuesday April 6, 2010

On the road, near Ourinhos

4^th day on the road, heading back to Alto Paraiso. Yesterday Paul stopped to rotate the bald tires from the front to the back because he was worried about our safety. Not wanting to put any more money into the car than absolutely necessary since we hope to have it not more than a few more weeks, rather than purchase new ones to replace the 2 with little tread, he didn’t feel good about driving us the more than 1500 kilometers still left to go so wanted them on the back. It was an easy fix, took only a half hour and cost about the equivalent of $25. Really good thing because today as we were driving through the main street of a town along our route we had a blow out. We heard the noise, pulled immediately over to see the flat and then noticed we were 20 yards in front of a tire repair shop. We also happened to be in front of a bench in the shade and a store selling ice cream that also had clean bathrooms. Not repairable but only about $25 more for a replacement, we were on the road again within a half hour on this day as well. Had the tire been on the front, it could have been more dangerous, but as it was on the back, the consequences were minimal. We all agreed that we were either really lucky or the guy in the tire shop placed the cause of the blow out in the road in front of his shop.

Other than this it’s been an uneventful day. Stayed in a great hotel last night and had a fantastic café de manha, the driving has been mostly pleasant until about an hour ago when the traffic got far worse and the air began to take on that unpleasant smell between the heavily fertilized fields and the toxic exhaust of the more densely populated cities. It’s close to 6 now and we will begin to find a place to rest for the night earlier tonight than last as we are weary.

On our way through Puerto Iguacu yesterday we stopped at a veterinarian to get Rocket’s Rabies vaccine updated since we will not be able to travel into the US until 30 days after his current vaccine, unless we are able to leave while his last one is still in effect by the 25^th of April. This way, we are covered in either case, except between April 25^th and May 5^th. We expect to be back in AP within two day’s time.

Last night we met a man who worked at the hotel who traveled by motorcycle from Brazil to Alaska. Hard to imagine such a trip but quite impressive I think. As to traveling, I’ll be happy if I never again travel anywhere. I am absolutely over it. I’m craving a nice dull life of living in a tiny cabin, growing a garden, driving to town once a week to vend art and maybe some granola at the farmers market, do my marketing and return home to write my novel when the gardening’s done.

Had a cool experience on Sunday though. Stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. I knew it would be good because the parking lot was filled with trucks. We were led through a filled smoky room into an empty non smoking room where we were happily surprised to have home made pasta, salad and bread for lunch served by 2 of the nicest people we’ve encountered in a long time. After the food was served, the woman pulled up a chair to have a long chat with us. What was especially cool about it was when she said to us, “You are so calm and relaxed. What’s so great about that is that it’s contagious and makes us around you feel the same way.” Wow. This happens every now and then. It’s a special connection that happens when people are open to feel our vibe, notice it and comment on it. It’s as if they feel pulled to us like a magnetic energy and are visibly affected by it. I absolutely love it when this happens and it reassures me that we make a difference just by our very state of being.

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* This actually was quite extraordinary. After awaking from this nap I mentioned to Paul that I wasn’t sure that I had actually slept because I had this waking experience of talking to Uta whose face was as clear as day very close to mine and we were deep in conversation. I recall thinking, “Am I awake or asleep?” It was as if she was lying down next to me with her face only inches from mine and we were talking. Paul replied in shock that he had exactly the same experience only he was watching the two of us having the conversation. When Uta returned from the river where she had been with Olivia, she told us that she was sitting there thinking of the two of us the whole time.

Thursday April 8, 2010

On the road-the final stretch from Campo Allegre de Goias to Alto Paraiso de Goias

Happy this morning to be on the last leg of the journey back to what feels as much like home as anywhere these days. But it is with a sense of melancholy that I return there because it won’t be to find a nice home to rent while we search for the perfect piece of land, but only a temporary stop on the rest of the way home to Vermont where we do not yet know what awaits us. It will be a parting from many good friends in a place that is so familiar we’re all eager to return. For Uta and Olivia it is without a doubt their home and they have no question it’s where they belong, but it is a change in plans from our intentions to stay together and build a home and a life there together. We’ve extended an invitation for them to join us but although still unspoken I think we all know that it would be a mistake for them and that Alto Paraiso is truly a paradise for them where they belong.

So this has been a long journey indeed and depending on where you can say it began we have covered nearly the extent of two continents from north to south. From the northern tip of Newfoundland only a few years back to almost the southern tip of Patagonia. We made it just short of the place in the Andes where the tragic plane crash of the football team that turned to cannibalism for survival, which was well documented in Hollywood movies, occurred. It was also less than a hundred kilometers shy of the tragic earthquake that just took place near Santiago Chile. Without continuing to our intended destination, as you know, we changed course, deciding this journey had gone far enough. I think Paul and I by nature are driven to go further, to see more, to know more. As to knowing more, I’m sometimes sorry I know as much as I know and long for the days of innocence when I knew less. Paul calls it unconscious heaven and says you have to go through unconscious heaven to get to conscious hell and then beyond to conscious heaven. This is where we think all consciousness will arrive when this change of the last of the eras completes.