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 13th 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
4th 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 25th of April. This way, we are covered in either case, except between April 25th and May 5th. 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.