As we walk off the bus I turn around and ask the cute American: where you from? Florida, she responds. I’m meeting my friends across the street. I walk with her to meet her two friends. All three of them have just quit their jobs at the same cafe in their home town.
Before the getting to know you and catch up begins I just quickly inquire about the temple. I discover it’s about 3-5 miles down the road and closed at 5pm, the same time our bus departed.
At first the frustration and futility of my bus ride overwhelms me. But within minutes I realize the conversation is why I made the bus trip.
As I type this story on the return bus to playa del Carmen, I feel like the character in the alchemist. I made the trip for an entirely different treasure than I originally expected.
The collective conversation was great but I felt a kinship with one friend in particular who was also on her first solo journey out of the country. We talk about how much we hope this 2012 thing will be a huge wake up for the collective consciousness. We connect on our need to have our alone time. Our lack of desire to: own possession beyond what we need, drive to make money or buy a home. I get how crazy and hippie I must sound as I hear her speak. And yet I completely resonate with her ideals because they so closely resemble mine.
Of course I have this new found knowledge of the “life happens to me” vs. “life happens by me.”. And so I could immediately spot her need to be the hero, to be right. Lord knows how often I play that role. And I now get to see how I’ve been in the role of victim the last several days.
I can hear my ancestors chuckle as I wake up to just how supported I am on this pilgrimage to discover my truest self. In it I also recognize my want to be the hero to humanity. To be the model that has struggled as ideas impregnate and have no safe space to birth and grow — to be the model to give birth to those ideas and set the boundaries and give the protection until they can grow into self-fulfilling ideas that can sustain life on their own.
In the end, my greatest wish for the collective (and therefore myself) is balance, true harmonic balance within ourselves, between our community, and with the planet as it.
When I made the conscious choice that this trip was not a vacation but rather a pilgrimage, it has become exactly that.
One small example. Couldn’t find my headphones for the bus ride home so I saw the last 45 minutes of a move that spoke volumes to me: Veronica decides to die.
It’s a bit sappy and a cute love story about a woman coming to life when she faces her death. A few lines really resonated with me:
You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. God chose you to be different. Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude?
Back in Playa del Carmen
As I walked back from the bus last night I passed a club that had a line over 100 people long and was charging $70 cover. I thought they meant pesos but upon further inquiry confirmed it was US dollars.
Had a good talk with my roommate from Sweden who had called off the engagement during his three month travels through Mexico with his fiancé and her mother. He said had he been on his own he could have probably traveled for 2 years.
He wasn’t bitter, but rather calculating what needed to happen to get back on the road. His philosophy was this: money is a means to pay for food and rent. Until this trip he had no desire to spend his savings. He stated he has no need for a big house or fancy car. He just wants to travel, stay at hostels and have interesting conversation with the folks he meets along the way.
He told me how much more he’d appreciated staying in a hostel than hotel. We both noticed how no one in a hotel talks to “strangers” in the lobby and barely acknowledges the presence of others as they make their way to and from their room. He also noticed that at some of the higher end beach fronts the people he’d pass seemed genuinely unhappy.
On the other end of the spectrum, backpackers lugging 30-60 pounds on their back as they walk the streets seem, for the most part, pretty stoked on life.
Of course, it’s a generalization. And it’s a very biased perspective from this side of the looking glass. Perhaps there is something to be said about having nothing to loose: not a ton to worry about except the next meal and where to lay your head at night.
Vacation Trade: your place for mine…
Which brings me to an idea that we threw around as we traveled Thailand: swapping homes and rooms wherever you go, meeting like minded people living in similar ways. And if you’re really brave, swap out a house for one above or below your “social standing.” Of course the solution lies in shifting our worldview to a less possessive and more collective way of being.
Dreaming of the Event Horizon
I had a dream last night that was one of the most powerful of my life. Only a few other dreams I’ve ever hadfall into this category of transcending body mind consciousness.
As we approached the “event horizon” I could feel my body and mind in several places at once. Or simply “here” in my body and “everywhere” in the universe simultaneously. It was a constant fluctuation as though rotating parts of my body were submerged in water.
The fear and awe that I felt as it happened to me was instantaneous. And almost as instantly there was a great release and relaxation as though the universal mother was cradling me and whispering in my ear: “it’s okay now… You’ve gotten over your sickness and everything will be ok.”
Sickness. It’s become global. And we all have it. Any of the superiority of enlightenment is the sickness. The only cure in my mind is to reconnect with nature and make relationship with those people and things in the world we can’t tolerate or stand. Because its just a reflection pointing back at the things inside of us that have become so unbearable that we disassociate from it.
And I now truly do believe we collectively do have “the sickness,” and this Mayan “end date” contains the cure. And I do mean everyone. These enlightened beings who become gurus and attract a following are still in it. Because I believe when one person truly cures the consciousness we’ve been afflicted by for the past 2000+ years, it will start a chain reaction that activates all the potential of human mind & body: eliminating cancer, disease; telepathy, telekenesis, and translocation.
It’s my belief that we will be going through a huge purge next week, that to really activate something like telepathy we had to face our darkest shadows and fears. Because with universal telepathy, there is no more hiding; it’s pure transparency.
Getting to Tulum by Collectivo
Enough of that rant. While I admit the ride back to Tulum has certainly been less direct, I do appreciate the community aspect of the “collectavo”. Basically it’s a van that waits until its full to go to a destination. Along the way, people get off and others get on. For the locals especially, there seems to be an unspoken and consistent fee. Seems like the tourists get a bit of a price hike. Which, in the grand scheme of things, seems more balanced. 40 pesos is the approximate cost of: 45 minute ride, 3 or 4 tacos, a small dish of ceviche, or 4 sodas / waters. It’s all relative to what you’ve got and what you’re able to earn.
One more quick rant: I look forward to the time when all human life is valued equally. That we finally realize it takes approximately the same amount of resources to clothe, feed, and house a human being regardless of what continent they may live.
This morning started with a swim and qigong at Playa del Carmen. The moment my foot hit the sand (for the first time since I departed Santa Barbara), my entire body relaxed and a smile beamed across my face.
As I head to Tulum, I have some anxiety that there’s no room at the in and I may have to sleep in the stable. But, tis the season for that sort of thing. And if I’ve learned anything on this trip it’s to have faith that the universe has the path laid out for my best growth and service on this planet.