The duality of sense and bewilderment

After breakfast, I allow myself to be taken by Luis to the other pyramids at Tzuntzintzan, the ancient capital of the Tarascans, holders of the Lake Patzcuaro territory. The tip of my tongue trips and taps over the name in ingeminated, gratified triplets.

The pyramids are larger, more numerous and seemingly more alive than those I visited at Ihuatzio a few days ago. I wonder how to broach to this well dressed, expensively perfumed gentleman the fact that I very much want to meditate here.

Before I do so, Luis tells me this place is a centre of energy. He asks me if I know how to "charge" from it.


Taken aback, I reply, "Yes. I think so. Sentar y sentir. Sit and feel."

He nods, satisfied, and beckons me through the alleyway between two of the central pyramids. Then he points to a position on the crumbling stone. "Sit there," he commands. "On the third level up, in that corner."

Once sat, he orders me to uncross my legs and arms, place my palms on the stone, and close my eyes. Asks me if I have a mantra. The only one I can think of is the one contained within my Mayan Yellow Sun dreamspell - "I am that I am". He tells me to focus on my breathing and repeat that. He will tell me when to stop.

Slightly self-consciously, I do as he says. Within around five minutes I feel my forearms twitching. The visuals on my eyelids swirl excitedly and I feel almost as if I have pins and needles running up my arms.

After fifteen minutes, he whispers my name from his position on the ground, bringing me out of my trance. He tells me to stand and raise my arms to the sky, and then to climb down. He places the palms of his hands on mine and tells me to close my eyes.

His hands start to vibrate. For a moment I am flooded with fear, for it feels like I am electrocuting him, and he is so frail. When he takes his hands away, I open my eyes to see him smiling. "You have a lot of power, Julia," he says, with no hint of embarrassment. "Even before we came here I could feel your power. You radiate heat."

Once again, as so often, I am grateful for my poor Spanish; providing a convenient mask when I wish to remain silent.

We walk around the site in a circle, and I remember my meditation a few days ago at the pyramids of Ihuatzio. I have the urge to tell him about the red bird; for some reason I know he will understand. When I do so, he smiles that ever-more familiar quiet smile. "Do you know what that means, Luis?" I question, knowing the answer, knowing he is not going to tell me.

In the silence that follows his nod, I then get the urge to tell him about the stranger in England who told me I'd find answers in Mexico. His smile widens even more. "This is one of your answers."

I can't help thinking, But I don't even know the questions! But I remain silent, still thinking about the red bird and what it could mean. We continue to walk in circles in front of the pyramids.

I gasp. There in front of me is an identical red bird, darting between the trees. Behind it is a bright blue bird.

I stammer Spanish like an idiot, stating the obvious. "Otra pecaro rojo! Y un azul!"

Luis looks surprised for the first time. "Now you have two. Two red birds. And a blue. This is very special, Julia."

I do not find out the answer until later on in the day, driving around the lake, enough time and mind-bending conversation having passed for me to know, with all my being, that something momentous is occurring.

He tells me that enlightenment and states of being are represented by the colours of the rainbow. Blue is love. Red is life. The highest form of being. I am seeing red because I am deep inside life right now.

As he tells me this, we drive over a large piece of bright red plastic on the road, next to a man standing at the edge wearing a red shirt.


I am caught between the wide-eyed silence of disbelief and the clamouring curiosity of the very young. I ask him question after question, processing the increasingly bizarre answers with lengthy stares into the shimmering lake. It does not take long before he mentions the principle of everything being the same thing, and in excitement I tell him about my tattoo.

He stops the car.

When he looks at it, a strange look shadows his face. I ask him why. To this, he replies, enigmatic as ever; "This has a very special meaning for me. I have been expecting you. I think it is you that has a message for me."

I can barely do justice to the events I've related, let alone relate everything that occurred that day. Of course, as will likely most who read this, I found it extremely hard to let go of my scepticism. How many times have I been warned about kidnappers, fraudsters, rapists, who here seem to be just that little bit more professional, that little bit more elaborate?

But I rationalise to myself that whatever he wants can have nothing to do with money, given the amount he seems to have. And I do not feel threatened. If this is a hustle, he has outdone himself.

Of course, I could be letting myself in for something extremely dangerous. But I have committed now to travelling on my instincts; following coincidence. And there were a great many coincidences that day. If I stopped because I was scared, I know these coincidences would stop with me.

When he asks me if I would like to travel with him for a few days, I say yes, before I have even thought about the reply.

An instinctive answer. And thus the correct one.

Later on, when my mind kicks in, I will suffer the paranoia and fear that is missing from this moment. But right now, in this car, I feel I have no choice.


Thus, I flow into the first stage of my entrenamiento.

Maybe it was me

Raul talks in singing Spanish, seemingly not too worried whether I can follow him or not. Within a few hours we have covered natural medicine, shiatzu, reiki, energy alignment, the truths contained within pyramids, and a concise and accurate assessment of my character according to the alignment of the stars on my birthdate. Then he starts to write down the seven laws of the Egyptians.

Number three is, Como es arriba, es abajo. As above, so below.


This is enough to weave me deeply into the knit of his words. We pass the Saturday afternoon by the sunny square, parrying a consistent stream of beggars and children selling gum, drinking our way through a succession of expensive beverages. He tells me to go to a place called Tepoztlan, another centre of energy near el DF.


This is the message I was expecting.


At five o'clock he receives a phonecall from a friend, Luis, an Ecuadorian-turned-Mexican, well-known in the town for his money and his kindness.

Apparently he does not call Raul very often.

Luis invites him to the cinema in Morelia. I hear Raul explaining that he is with a friend from England. Hear Luis invite me along as well.


At first I say no. After an afternoon of gunshot Spanish I am craving the peace of my room. But the answer does not sit quite right and, a few minutes after he has put down the phone, I concede.


Thus I meet Luis Soria de Silva. Slickly dressed but humbly disposed, with a wide smile and humorous manner. He is only forty-one, but a hump in his upper back, and his resulting shuffle of a walk, makes him seem much older.


The evening passes easily, popcorn scents and flowing emotions of the cinema balanced by stone-baked pizza and late night shopping centre. At the end of the evening I drip from the door of Luis' white Mercedes, drained but satisfied.


I spend the next two days with Raul, by the end of which I feel depleted. He likes being around me a little too much. I feel him feeding off my energy. Now that I have spent time with him, I feel obliged to meet him again.

To combat this, I pack my bags to leave.


The morning of my departure, I meet Luis for the second time, at a pavement cafe. Raul is not there. I don't know Luis, but he seems harmless and he wants to buy me breakfast, so I happily chatter away in the sun, amidst mouthfuls of chilaquiles and freshly-squeezed orange juice.


He asks me a lot of questions, about my life in England and about my current direction. He laughs when I say I want to write a book about my experiences; apparently one so young cannot amass sufficient stories for a bestseller. Feeling the need to prove myself, I become confident and direct, believing myself to know secrets that he does not. Speaking in Spanish, I am able to separate myself from my words, saying things that would be considered rude or arrogant in English.

I feel myself getting into the flow, enjoying talking about myself. I unpack some of my mantras for him, laying them out neatly and savouring his reactions.


He doesn't seem surprised by anything - only committed to continuing my soliloquy. When I say that I believed someone in Patzcuaro had a message for me, he immediately asks me what Raul's message was.


I am not sure. It could be a number of things. I tell him about Tepoztlan. However, my usual credence on these matters is absent. Deep down, I know this means I was wrong.

Luis looks at me with deep eyes and says, with absolute confidence, "Do not go to Tepoztlan."

I am startled.

"Why?" I ask. He replies, "Now is not the time for you to go to Tepoztlan."

I nod. Not going to argue with that. Then he says something very strange.


"On Saturday, I invited Raul to the cinema. This is very unusual, but I received the impulse to do this and so I followed it. Raul told me he did not want to go. I started to drive away. There came a point where, if I turned left, I would be at the cafe where you were. If I turned right, as I was just about to do, I would be on the carretera out of town, and the moment would have been missed.


"When I was at this point, Raul called me and said you'd changed your mind.


He looks at me seriously, piercing my eyes.


"Thus I met you."


I look at him with new interest. "So... Maybe it was you I was supposed to meet?"

He nods, slowly, and smiles a quiet, knowing smile. "Yes. Maybe it was me."

Pyramids and Perfect Persistence

Everything in Patzcuaro is perfect. The town threads tiny streets up steep hills, whispering tales of pre-colonial Mexico in terracotta facades and delicately-formed handcrafts.  The lake, like an accidental mud puddle, seemingly living its last days, shows itself in magical glimpses through the clouds outside my window.

The hostel is like my own house. I am the only person there. It rains solidly through my first three days but I happily curl under five blankets, hatted and gloved, chewing my way through neurone-popping books.

On the second day I meet a man in his forties called Raul, twitching, mouselike, mouth crowded with teeth.  He instantly invites me to stay with him for free. He talks about natural healing and energy points within the body, something that rings deeply with what I've been recently coming across. He also talks about the Mayas.


Nervous and protective of my vulnerability I refuse, concealing my answer in a smilingly-delivered "I'll think about it". On the rain-soaked rush home I can't help feeling worried that I have ignored a message of some sort. Is he the person I knew I'd meet? I reassure myself with the thought that if it really is meant to be I will see him again.


When the sun comes out on Friday I borrow a bike and pedal furiously north round the lake, through splashing puddles and villages half-asleep.


I don't know where I'm heading, but after an hour a sign points me towards the ruins of Ihuatzio. The road unfolds before me, steaming away the freezing altitude with shimmering mirage. Dead dogs rot furrily in the gravel; as usual, vulture-like zopilotes the only birds in the sky.


By the time I arrive my legs are shaking.



The only other people here form a group that appear to be chanting whilst sitting in face-to-face pairs. I chain up my bike and creep past them.

At the end of a field of dried grass crouch two small pyramids, sides almost vertical. The Sun and the Moon. Grassy mounds perch quietly nearby; as yet uncovered shells of a previous life. I wonder how many other hills nearby camouflage sites that do not yet want to be found.

Around the edges of the site runs a steep, thick wall; remnants of an elevated road. I check to see no one is watching and clamber quickly to the top, pouring pumpkin seeds into my mouth as I go.


The sun is impossibly bright.


It takes my heart a long time to calm itself. I sit cross-legged, squinting even under my sunglasses, breathing steadily. Close my eyes and allow my mind to slip away with the place. I meditate for twenty minutes or so before inexplicably opening my eyes to see a small, bright red bird, darting among the nopal spines ahead.


Once more a feeling I can't explain; a knowledge that this is a sign for me. I know traditionally red is a warning, but this does not feel like a threat.

The bird follows me back to my bike. Its iridescence is almost gold in the sunlight. I think about it all the way on the gruelling, dusty journey home. I think I have overdone it, but I just can't ride a bike slowly. The 4km hill from the Lake up to Patzcuaro town stretches me almost to breaking point and it is perhaps the only time in my adult life I buy a Coca Cola.

For the first time since my arrival I am warm enough to brave the shower. Afterwards I collapse on my bed listlessly. I am completely useless. I can't even focus on text. Despite the exhilaration of my day and the tingling in my hands from the pyramids, I feel the loneliness creeping in. Before it slams its deadening plank into my exhausted back I force myself out of the door and down to the market, to feed my craving for guavas.


There is Raul. Again, he talks about exactly the sort of thing I have been thinking about. Again, he invites me to stay.


Again, I nervously say I will think about it.


I begin to get angry. If the universe or whatever it is wants to teach me something, why does it have to present it to me in the form of a man and an empty house? I don't want to go! I don't want to stay with a strange man! Why can't I meet someone who just wants to go for coffee?!


I become totally overwhelmed by all the things that are going on. There seem to be currents taking me somewhere and I am scared. I don't want to have to deal with any of this. I miss my country, my family, my friends. I miss mundanity. The void inside takes over the consuming joy of the last month or two and makes me call home, seeking comfort in the familiar.


I sleep fitfully again that night, as I so often have in Mexico. My aching legs the next morning keep me in town, wandering without aim amongst the closed, cobbled streets.

I am just about to go home when I walk past Raul.


He is sitting at a pavement cafe, drinking coffee.

With a barely perceptible nod of thanks to the powers-that-be, I ease myself into the chair next to him.

Metamorphosis

Out of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and in to Michoacan. Closer to the heart, colder to the core.

Lake Patzcuaro has been calling me for a while.

Legend paints a place where the barrier between heaven and earth is thin. I can't explain the feeling but I am sure there is someone there I have to meet.

Dan's van is going to Morelia. When I look on the map, Morelia's proximity to Patzcuaro sends a jolt of electricity through my body and once again I feel in the flow of something far stronger than me.

"Vamonos!" And so we find ourselves, crawling south.

Dan drives his van with all the enthusiasm of a Canadian on a road full of crazy drivers, Moses the husky perched zen-like behind him, Catia the newly-arrived Toronto lass, glued to the passenger window. We stop for the night at a town that begins with M, chosen by vote with map-pointed fingers.

These towns are like secrets, existing, bustling, swarming under the camoflage of anonymity. There is no way you'd see this Mexico with your head in the Lonely Planet. The square conceals millions of birds, who paint the pavement white and screech in stereo sound loud enough to raise our voices.

Catia and I share a room that sneers in spinach green. We awake early, too cold to shower. The morning mist hangs expectantly.


Our destination is one of the four butterfly reserves playing host to millions of Monarch mariposas on their winter flight from Canada. Every year, they return to the same place.

It takes them five weeks to fly down here. It will take them three generations to fly back.


The eternally moving circle of life.


The journey is lined with ranches and shacks, weathered farmers waiting patiently for lifts. Their sombreros shine whitely in the morning glow. Horses trudge their way up pine-clad slopes. Sun tints yellow, clouds wash grey.


Now we are in Austria. Only the cacti and clamouring billboards give it away.


My journey is blissful. I hug my knees on Dan's bed, a back-of-the-van secret. From time to time Moses stands, turns, sits heavily once again; dancing to my reggae soundtrack. Why does "Eastenders" exist and yet "Vehicle Windows Around the World" does not? I sink back into the pillows and lean my forehead against the glass.

We pull off onto a dirt road and find ourselves at a square of coloured shacks, steaming with woodsmoke, where children surround the van, asking for pesos. I hand out hula hoops to squeals of self-conscious giggling.


We eat our breakfast next to a fire tended by a four year old with a runny nose. She gives us cinnamon coffee that has been boiling, bitterly, on a metal plate over the embers. We clothe Catia, who smilingly admits to having arrived entirely unequipped for anything other than Toronto life, and start walking, accompanied by a tanned, toothless guide named Salvador.


We fail to follow his lisping dialogue. The wrinkles in his face tell me the stories I want to hear.

The sun filters through the pines to illuminate fallen trunks; clues to February's uncharacteristic storms. Salvador mumbles about floods and mudslides.

It wouldn't take much to cut the village off from everything.

In contrast to much of the world's broadly blind denial of change, the Mexicans seem to know something is up. Rather than 'global warming', many seem to accept that we are on a time scale told to us thousands of years ago. I have met some people who say, with no shred of doubt, that next year will see snow in this country.


Rare is the Mexican house that is closed to the elements. If it snows, millions of people will die.


I don't want to believe it and yet the rains of the last month have rested heavy on my shoulders, coming down hard and unwelcome in the middle of the historic dry season.

For now, the sun continues to shine on the delicate black veins and saffron-dusted wings of the butterfly carcasses that have begun to litter the path; dappled warning of vulnerable slumber. They exist in a comatose state for weeks, shutting down completely until the sun is warm enough to wake them.

Salvador points up to huge dark pendulums in the trees, like giant wasp nests. Our eyes adjust like we've walked into a dark room and it takes a moment to realise these are all butterflies, wings closed, awaiting the sun's touch. Focus more and tune into entire trunks, covered in wings.


The valley hums in orange.


Dan and Catia take off with their cameras and I lie back in a patch of sunlight to look straight up at the canopy.

I never thought I'd appreciate the fact that someone stole my camera last month. But I am grateful now for the chance to simply sit and absorb.

Butterflies drift as if by accident. Scraps of orange tissue, blown in the breeze.

I close my eyes and join them, feeding off the warmth of dusty beams, fluttering my joy at the world.

These butterflies have flown almost as far as me.

I am learning to read nature. The transparency of its messages is surprising. Butterflies are a theme that has been following me for weeks. They represent change.


I am glad I am with Dan and Catia. A strange trio we make; each of us is in our own state of metamorphosis. Dan still coping with the hole his girlfriend left behind, but plowing eagerly on through his mindblowing, fated journey. Catia, dressed in mournful black and shaking with the shock of leaving her life, testing out her new legs and the arch of her wings.


Me, finding my feet and so much more. Undergoing change and preparing for more. Not only am I flying right now, but in my flight I am preparing to let go of my solo venture when Michael joins me at the beginning of March. I am simultaneously nervous and exploding with excitement. Either way, letting someone else in is enormous. It is not just the change of travelling state but the mental upheaval of entering a relationship.


I feel other, deeper shifts. I wonder who I will meet in Patzcuaro.

Like the butterfly, I will soon be released from my self-constructed cocoon; different shape, same being.

All three of us are butterflies, emerging from our pods. Wobbling on legs we didn't have before. Waving antennae in pine scents. Flying away.

We return to find children still hula hooping. I play with them for an hour or so, encouraging the shy ones and exclaiming at the progress of the new professionals. I keep catching sight of the joy on their faces and laughing because it is me that has put that there.

When we leave I gift them my blue and yellow hoop. I have carried this hoop with me for three months, purely to lend to children, for everywhere I go there is a child who wants to learn.

I will need a new one for them now. But it feels right to leave it here.

The resulting light in their faces illuminates the way ahead.

Student of the Vortex

Fuck Spanish lessons. It appears Guadalajara is to make me student of other arts.

Because I'm 'not supposed' to be here, I feel like I should leave. So much for my disdain of cities. But in actual fact I have stumbled upon a centre of creativity, epitomised by Frank, who seems to be an endless source of energy - constantly producing, creating, literally singing his love for life.

Inspiration juices over my computer screen. I spend days in the hammock on the leafy terrace, attempting to record just a fraction of the information I'm receiving.

After a week and a half Dan arrives for a few hours, and like me is drawn in to stay for a further couple of weeks. Every time we try to leave we feel ourselves pulled back into the centre of the vortex, the flow so strong we do not even attempt to resist.

The hostel is small but it is a magnet for the people I need to speak to. I leave less and less.


Pecas, one of the helpers at the hostel, knows everything I want to know about the Mayans. He helps me understand the complexity of their calendar system. I plug him for information, pulling it out in long, savoury strings, chewing with unsated appetite, swallowing ravenously. When I finally digest it I will attempt to regurgitate it here, but for now I need to let it sit, slightly uncomfortably, in my stomach.

I am tattooed. An overwhelming lesson and a story in itself.

I meet a shaman, who feeds me even more information. His name is Marcos, and his Mayan sign is Cosmic Wind. Messenger from afar.


I feel like a human sponge, and wonder when all this started happening.


He gives me keys for my future journey - tells me to learn to heal with my hands, and correctly guesses that I have already felt the ability to do this without having been taught how.

He gives me the name of the man who will teach me, who I can find on a beach on the coast of Oaxaca state. We can stay there for free, and learn about self-sufficiency at the same time.


I will be with Michael then. I wonder if this will fit well with his own journey, whatever that may be. But then Shaman Marcos tells me there is also a collective of people there who make instruments. I can barely conceal my excitement when I talk to Mike, who has many times talked about his wish to record the sounds of the world. The perfection seems a little odd, even with my belief in all this.


Marcos makes my brain hurt. He is a shaman of three different cultures. Before this he was in prison for robbing a bank at gunpoint as a teenager, his head twisted by the images received as a 'body collector' in the Vietnam war. He heals the migraine of the only other hostel resident by placing his hands on her head for ten minutes. His right thumb is bent at an angle where he allowed a rattlesnake to bite him in a ceremony.


He spent years camping next to the Pyramids of Palenque before they were 'discovered' (Palenque is one of the Mayan sites that tell the prophecies - he was one of those who told the Mexican government about those famous glyphs; something he regrets deeply to this day).

He believes 2012 will bring the return of the Mayans through the black hole at the centre of the universe.

My brain is not quite ready to take all of this in.


I try to write down at least some of his stories. I wrestle with indecision over whether to put all of this in my blog, for fear of what people will think. But the indecision is momentary - of course I have to write.

I don't know enough to be able to comprehend what he means when he says the Mayans will return. Instead I focus on the more palpable information - what his people believe will actually happen in the next three years.

"We have dammed the rivers - the earth's life blood. We have moved mountains from one place to another. We talk about the future, when the Earth will be ruined by our mess, but little do we realise we are already at that point. We have destroyed it far more than we ever admit to. Look at Mexico. Every week there are protests because someone fell into a river and died, not from drowning, but from poisoning. How many rivers are there that can be swum in safely?

"The earth is in huge imbalance. You know enough about flows to understand that this is unsustainable. How can it continue to function in such an imbalance?


"Despite what we believe, it is infinitely more powerful than the human. Very soon, it will reveal this power. The Mayans knew that. We just don't want to listen. It may well mean the end of everything as we know it. And it will be a lot sooner than we think."


Into my mind floats an image of the earth as a dozing dog, having its hair plaited and its paws rearranged by bullish children. It waits patiently. But how much time is it going to be before the dog becomes so uncomfortable that it has to jump up, suddenly, shake itself violently? The plaits come loose, instantly. Buildings, dams, the construction of our lives, all razed to the ground.


Dan brings it back to reality: "The real question is, what will we do if the economy collapses. What will you do if you can no longer buy what you need from a store?"

All I can do right now is become the messenger. Enlighten by reflection.

One day I wake up and know it is time to go. By this time, I am armed with everything I need for a final two and a half weeks alone before Mike's arrival.

As Above, So Below

I have been thinking about my tattoo design since 2001. I always knew the perfect design would arrive, and the key was not to put any pressure on it.

When I went travelling to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands in 2004, I was so taken with the Maori culture that I designed my own tattoo out of elements of various greenstone carvings that meant something to me. The design was beautiful. But I never got the tattoo. I couldn't decide where to have it and by the time I left the area it felt like the moment had passed.

A few weeks ago I watched my friend get her first tattoo in Puerto Vallarta. It was very small but it had a lot of meaning for her. I was as nervous as she. We got pissed on tequila and laughed the whole way through, before spending the rest of the night riding high on endorphins to take on the city.

I felt her liberation and kept the thoughts in my mind, circling slowly.

When I was in Vallarta the next time, I spent an afternoon in tattoo shops, looking at fonts. While I was there, a girl came in, about to have one down her spine. I asked her what it would say.

She replied, 'You have to lose yourself in order to be found.'


I left that tattoo shop with a mark not on my skin but on my mind - of that girl and her truth. It mirrored what was going on at the time. From the lost wilderness of my first weeks emerged the familiarity of myself. Shortly afterwards, I found myself sitting on the beach in Yelapa, wondering where the hell all this perfection arrived from.

Sure enough, my peace and patience paid off. When the coincidence occurred in the bookshop - the coincidence that led me to the Law of Attraction book - I knew the words As Above, So Below would soon be tattooed somewhere on my body.
Not only would it be a physical representation of that amazing memory of swimming in San Blas with the phosphorescence, but also a hats off to the techies up there that gave me the later coincidence.

On another level, there is the basic physical nature of it - that I am claiming my body as my own, maturing, changing, but in the same time recognising that it is just a body, and it is mine, so I can do what I want to it.
But more importantly, in those four words lie the truths I commit to. My beliefs in the unity of everything, the Law of Attraction and the ultimate connection of everything to everything else. The words represent it all for me.
Everything is the same. The things that you find above you are the things you find below you. That which is within, is also without. The stars are made of the same thing as the earth, the same thing as the sky, the same thing as ourselves. The physical manifestation of the world is exactly what is in your head.

Everything is made of the same energy - the omnipresence of consciousness.

All you have to do is tune in, and I feel like I have done that as much as I can for the age I am and the experiences I've had. I am at the stage now where I am truly feeling everything that comes along - seeing energy patterns in things and directing flows, or rather, flowing with them. I feel somewhere that this is a point in my life that will transpire to be very important. I am leaning against the proverbial milestone, catching my breath, darting my eyes around this new tierra to navigate the best way forward.

This is my journey, and these words express that perfectly.

And there is another reason. More and more, I feel like my purpose is to spread the word. The people I meet seem to be bringing me messages along these lines. In Mayan prophecies I am Yellow Rhythmic Sun, which means my life's purpose is "to enlighten". Even in Western horoscopes my charts tell me I am to "shine a light" in order to lead the way.


It is easy to be sceptical, particularly when I blush self-consciously at saying something so far-fetched and potentially arrogant. But what matters is what you feel inside. Without being daunted or condescending of this prophecy I feel myself shouldering it and preparing for it. My instincts tell me it is true. In stepping along this journey I know I'm stepping towards that purpose and I am in the process of submitting to it and simultaneously grasping it.

I say all this in a vain attempt to explain the reasons why I decided to tattoo my stomach yesterday. There are many reasons. Some much deeper than others. I am no longer going to bother postscripting my thoughts with caveats and excuses for those who think I'm being carried away with hippy nonsense. Take the one that most rings with you. I am simply being honest.

They tell me to be the change I wish to see in the world. A tattoo is a ritual, and for me this ritual comes in a poetically beautiful format.

To enlighten the self is to enlighten others.

As above, so below.

By the time I arrive in Guadalajara I have just a rudimentary blur where my tattoo should be, but I know, really KNOW that I want this. I have the words but no shape, the curve but no position. The intention but no artist. When I turn up at the Hostelito Inn, casually mention my fondness for the owner Frank's body art, it does not surprise me that he says he will do mine for free.

Ask and she shall receive. Who am I to resist a flow such as this? Of course I say yes.

But now the decision is made, more decisions arrive. Where to have it? Do I want it to show all the time, or do I want it private? Do I want just the words, or do I want a shape as well? I have toyed with the idea of having spirals or circles, for these too hold a heavy meaning for me. Everything is cyclical, the world moves in circles. I slip round the corner of one.

I even meditate whilst hooping in a blurred cylinder of blue glitter.

A circle is notoriously difficult to draw, and on the wrong body part could end up missing the point. But I want it, so badly. I need those words on me.


Up until the day before I have it done, I struggle with indecision over where to have it and what it should look like. Dan shows up, a welcome addition to the pack and with artist's eyes and comforting presence helps me to find the perfect font. I know it is the one the moment I see it. Words looping in circles and spirals, letters emerging from the swirls shyly but firmly. And with that comes the decision to have it on my side. Partly on the front, partly on the back. Above, below, across my core.

I drink a couple of tequilas and lie prostrate on the bed upstairs, a crowd of well-wishers having a party in the sun outside the door, shouting encouragement.

I am scared.

I'm not sure quite of what, because when I think about it I am not scared of permanently marking my skin. I know it is going to hurt, but I want it to be a journey and it wouldn't be a journey if it was easy. I trust Frank and I know that the words are exactly what I want. I come to the conclusion it is just the energy of the event infecting me.

I breathe through the nerves and ground my fears.

There comes a point when you just have to let go. Trust the hands you are in. That point comes as I am examining the stencil. I could stand in front of the mirror for hours adjusting the position, but in the end I just hold my hands up and submit to the charge of Frank. Frank of the single braid and spiky hair, Frank of strange Mexo-Anglicisms, Frank of morning singing and afternoon doobies. What a legend that man is. Despite knowing he'd only done 40-odd tattoos, I trust him completely. I know this is going to be good.


So I plug myself into music fit for an imaginary world of light and inflection. Close my eyes. Lie back to feel the burning pierce of the needle.

It hurts. A lot.

All across my ribs, down the side of my stomach, to the scarred remnants of my appendix, just inside my right hip. They did tell me it was going to be hard.

But because of the significance of the words, I want to really feel what is going on. This is not just a branding of my skin, but a branding of my life, my persona. It is a declaration to the world of my beliefs and my vow to commit to those beliefs for the rest of my life. It is a declaration of my story, of the path that has led me here and the core trust in the synchronicities I've experienced.

Instead of having a body as the physical means by which the mind is transported, I am bridging the two with a physical manifestation of what goes on in my mind.

I want to etch the deep ink of my beliefs into my tattoo. So I focus on them.


I meditate, for five hours, on the meaning of those words, the significance of circles and spirals. The endlessness of life, symmetry, the journey in and the journey out, the double helix, getting young as you grow old, everything as one. I etch my intention into my skin.

All at once I feel both the unity and the difference between my physical body and my mental body. On the physical level, I lie on the bed, helpless at the hands of my artist, pain stabbing deep into my being. I feel the vibration inside my rib cage.


On the mental level I am a hum of energy, with an apex of intensity over the needle into which I pour all my positivity and awe at everything I've experienced. Those five hours take me to places and experiences usually only achieved with the aid of psychadelic substances. I am in a trip of the highest form, rushing off the exhilaration of the physical and the challenge of the mental.


It is a five-hour long, full body physical and mental orgasm.


I enjoy every minute. I am by no means exaggerating when I say it is one of the most monumental experiences of my life.

I become the music and I become the needle and I become the ink deep inside my skin.

In having the words branded forever, I experience first hand what they mean. As above, so below. As within, so without. What may be outside is also felt inside. My mind is all around.

When Frank taps me to signal the end, I feel a wave of disappointment that this moment, this perfect moment is over. But then I stand up and take my first look at my new body.

I didn't know what I wanted, but when I see it I know it is perfect.

All over my body my skin tingles, like I've been scrubbed.

It takes me a while to gather my mind from the corners of the room. I pull myself together just enough to stumble downstairs to bed.

I am exhausted.

January's gifts - leading to a rant on possessions, Faith and Choice

1. Book about 2012

2. Underwear

3. New backpack, huge

4. Clothes, various 

5. Obsidian crystal, iridescent, heart-shaped

6. Wire, to make obsidian into a pendant

7. A painting (left - entitled Hula in my honour -
see more of Dave's pics here)

8. A pair of poi

9. A tattoo

Most of the above followed me saying (largely to myself - thus most are coincidental) that I wanted that particular thing. On every occasion I have found exactly what I need. I am possessed with a confidence that everything is borrowed and there is no need to become possessive over possessions. They are just possessions. In Dan's words:

Everything we have achieved in this life, everything we've acquired, all the things we've lusted after and obtained... eventually... we have to give it all back.

Worrying about them not being there simply manifests insufficiency. I know that I will get everything I need, in time. I simply need to relax about it.

Everywhere I go I receive the help that I need. Even today, I am trying to make new hula hoops to give away to Frank and Tracey, at every stage of the operation someone has either done it for me or given me the help I need without me having to ask.

I feel myself mentally putting my hands up in surrender. I am letting go to whatever forces affect life and seeing where they take me and what they bring.

Travelling has given me the time and space to observe what is going on and also to take me away from the pulls and pushes of daily routine, necessity, time deficit. By observing all of this I find a new peace, knowing - not just believing, knowing - that I will get what I need.

People describe me as 'lucky'. I say wholeheartedly that it is not luck that brings me these things but faith and choice; in combination: intentionality. I choose what mental state to maintain and what to listen to, and I have faith that my choice, because it is a product of my intuition, will bring me through.


When I left England, the vast majority of people said something along the lines of; "You're so lucky and I'm so jealous! I wish that I could do what you are doing." All the time, I was thinking; How is it 'luck' that takes me from my well-paid job and 'secure' surroundings to the other side of the world, with no plan, no idea of the future, no guide, little savings? I put my whole being into this. I didn't go out for months. I didn't buy myself a thing. I wound my friends up by refusing to even pay a pound for the bus across town.


I have nothing to go back to. I even gave away most of my clothes. I remember the look of my boss when I told him I was leaving to 'go travelling'. There was no way he could hide the incredulity and condescension over my decision. 'How irresponsible, to leave, in the middle of a financial crisis and just when you are getting somewhere?!' He didn't even try to argue, for in my declaration I had simultaneously demonstrated myself to be just the sort of person he didn't want in his straight-jacket of a company.


Luck is the easiest way we can describe the visible pattern of someone doing well. I believe we use the word luck to label the events of a person's life when that person is in their flow. It is inconceivable to many people how one person can have so much 'luck' and another can be stuck in a seemingly everlasting series of misfortunes. The reality is the mental state. When things go right, the person grows into the mindspace of things going right, thus elevating them to an energy space that attracts good things. When things go wrong, a person feels like the world is against them and consequently attracts more misfortune.


I do not mean to say that people deserve misfortunes, but that by changing an attitude, you can change your life.


It is choice - choosing to buy a plane ticket instead of a new iPod, choosing to live from a bag, eat sporadically, experience poverty, exist in transience. Choosing to listen to the intuitions I receive.

And with the choice comes faith - knowing that I was right, knowing deep enough to really let go.


I knew the world I was in was stifling my spirit, and that I would find what I was looking for, as long as I made myself free to be steered by the winds of the world. A position where I am able to listen to the clues that have been provided, and do what I need to do to follow my instincts, instead of hemming myself in with constraints brought on by the need for a routine, for possessions, for security.

It can be hard to do that. Of course I am in the fortunate position of having no ties. Or rather, I was able to cut myself off from everything. My family is self-sufficient and exists in separate worlds to me, and my friends have their own agendas. I did not own a house, a car, a husband, a child.


I did meet someone after I bought the ticket but again he, like me, has made the choice to follow his intuition and join me. He arrives in three weeks. He has chosen to redirect his life and abandon himself to the flow, because he felt, even though it is a huge and terrifying change, that it was the right thing.


And as if to encourage these theories, the synchronicities are already rolling out the red carpet for him too. Ever since he made the choice to come, information, gifts, inspiration and business fortune have come his way.


In short, he has become very 'lucky'.


I'm not really sure where I'm going with this as I hadn't really intended to write about this in the first place. For those of you looking for another episode of Julia's nice story book, I apologise. I merely wanted to thank the world for bringing me all the things I wrote in the list and all the other blessings I haven't.


But I guess on reflection I am not-so-subtly trying to encourage everyone that reads this to have faith in their instincts and the courage to make the choices they need. It may not be travelling. But it will definitely involve tuning in to the 'greater power,' i.e. whatever your guts are telling you. The more you resist it, the less malleable you will find your situation. The moment you abandon yourself to the flow, the "coincidences" will pour out of you and you will draw everything you need to you like a magnet.

Abandon the self, and there you are.



1 was given by Taylor following the coincidence described in Breaking Boundaries. It is siezed upon excitedly by companions everywhere I go - Dan has even admitted to wanting to follow me travel or as long as it takes him to read the book.



2 was given shortly after a private soliloquy of frustration at not having what I needed



3 was given by Dan. Bag packing had become stressful enough to reverse even the most loving of moods, my bag being at least 20 Litres too small for all the things I'd collected. I know I am a true traveller when fitting my camping pan and hammock actually inside my bag is enough to keep me flying high all day.



4 were bestowed on me by a variety of people. Dina wanted me to hula hoop in her dress. Dan watched me break my shorts and released his favourite, beaten jeans to replace them with. And Carrie gave me an entire outfit to wear after she told me to remove all my clothes and throw them in with her laundry.



5 is an iridescent gold/black stone that is meant to absorb bad energy. It was given to me by nomads who spread out their collection and told myself and Dina to pick one each. Just days before, I'd commented on a piece of obsidian on a friend's neck and said I'd like some. I wanted to put it on a pendant but did not have the means to, so Catia, a girl at the Hostelito Inn, bought me 6 when she saw it in a shop. This was immediately taken out of my hands by Frank who just happened to be trained by artisanos, who after several 'chinga mi perro, hijo de putas' strung it neatly on a necklace.



7 was painted by Dave from Seattle, an artist who stayed in the Hostelito Inn for a month to exude his creativity in sprays of colour and strange form all over the hostel. Each one was an explosion of different mediums - paint, pen, dripped, sponged, sprayed, splodged. I've never really thought about buying art before but if I hadn't been trying to conserve money, and if I had a place to hang it, I would definitely have bought some of his. I asked him if he would do me a doodle on a piece of notepaper. Instead he gave me a beautiful canvas that will forever remind me of the vibrancy of that place.

8 was given to me, bizarrely, by a shaman. He saw my hula hoops and asked me if I could spin poi. I said no. He gave them to me anyway. Now I have to learn.

9 was undoubtedly the most emotional, the most significant and the most life-changing of these gifts. So significant in fact that it deserves its very own blog entry.

N.B. A NOTE ON FOOD. Food is something very important to me. It is received with shiny-eyed gratitude, always. The day when I just don't want to cook, someone offers to cook for me. The day when I'm ill in bed, someone delivers me pills, water, a meal - whatever I want. And then there is the food that amusingly and sometimes unnervingly follows my cravings. The day I wished for grilled fish, the world's response being that I was invited to a free house with an enormous Sarandeado Red Snapper cooked on an open fire. Eva and I looking at our dinner of crackers and maizena and saying 'what we need is a rich old man who gives us a free dinner but doesn't crack on to us'. Few days later being given a free dinner and cocktails in the best restaurant in town by a rich old man that treated us like daughters (thank you for coming, safe travels, go separate ways) with the bonus of being incredibly interesting to talk to.

The Mural Trail

I arrive in Guadalajara, Jalisco, "by accident".



It is the closest big city inland from Puerto Vallarta, where I found myself beached after Yelapa. I figured I could get the bus there and look at information on the way, and by the time I got to Guadalajara I would know where I wanted to go and get on the next bus out.

I was giving my decision-making powers a lot more faith than they deserved, for by the time I am cast out from the tinted glass box of the coach, I am with no more direction than I was back in November, stuck in Mexico City.
It is getting dark. I take myself into the city centre because I don't know where else to go.

By the time I find the Hostelito Inn, my roots have already started penetrating the concrete.

I've avoided cities up until now. While I obviously have the capacity to love them at the right moment - having lived in London for 6 years it would be strange to say I didn't - I do feel stunted surrounded by all the concrete and commercialism. I can't help thinking that none of it is real. After so long living in the freedom of the flow and the balance of interaction, I am disorientated by so many closed people, determinedly on their own missions. I feel my soul can only really put out its feelers when surrounded by natural beauty.

But in this moment, this city seems different, somehow. With 4 million people, it is second in Mexico only to el D.F. The numbers are daunting but the centre is small, old, and throbbing with a colourful pulse of art, splayed decadently over the entirety of the old town.

I am greeted to the Hostelito by a friendly Beagle called Brandy, who takes her time sniffing every part of myself and my belongings before settling herself down on my lap. The owner, Frank, tells me "my missis is from Manchester, innit. Come to the terrace for a drink, sister."


So I do.

Two weeks later and I'm still here in this beautiful oasis. Part of the family, you might say. I've taught Frank and his other half, Tracey, how to hula hoop. I've entertained their son, Jack. I've fallen out and made up with Brandy a number of times. I've had the dorm to myself, the cafe next door for hooping, the sound system to rig up tunes, and a city to explore.

And no pressure because I hadn't even expected to be here.


I have hours to wander tiny streets lined with orange trees, or spend bemused at the sheer number of shoe shops. Synchronicities tell me to stay, the first of which is the mural trail.

On my first wander I am sucked into the open door of the Palacio del Gobierno, where I find a huge, red mural, leering down on me with freedom fighters, justice, and death. The Mexican saviour, Padre Hidalgo, rages from the centre. I stop on the stairs until my neck cricks. I am overwhelmed. It is just so, well, imposing.

I remember reading somewhere that Mexico is famous for its murals. This provides some indication why.


An hour or so later, I uncharacteristically wander into a museum after a man on the street tells me I should go. I am confused - there does not seem to be anything in the museum; just courtyard after sunny white courtyard, boxed with locked wooden doors and a path that leads to nowhere. I wonder if anyone else understands this place; whether I am the only one who is still trying the doors even after half an hour of systematic failure.

Perhaps the purpose of the museum is to make one appreciate the simple things - the punch of an orange tree in a still courtyard; the shock of sunlight on a whitewashed wall.

The only thing I find in this warren is a mural. The second mural by the same artist - José Clemente Orozco. It screams over several panels and domed ceiling vaults. Supposedly it deals with the interplay between external forces and the indigenous peoples of modern-day Mexico. It is like a war above me; reds and blacks and all the fire of a deep flowing blood, with a burning man as centrepiece in what has become known as 'The Cistine Chapel of Mexico'.


I lie on my back on a bench to consider. Rather than the expected 'good/bad' eternal symbolism, it looks like the artist sees the ugliness in everyone he paints and intends to illustrate them all as equals, warring in the dirt.

Half people, half machines menace the arches above me, quite out of place surrounded by the mysteriously still squares of cobbles visible through the open doors.


Apparently Orozco painted three in this city. Now that I have accidentally seen two, it would be interesting to see the third to complete the set (I ponder). I am in no hurry to find it, but the next day I go to the university to ask about Spanish classes (the romantic in me wanting to be a real student, just for a week). On the way back I see a big, white dome, ornately beckoning me. Impulsively, I cross the street and walk confidently past the security guard.

I enter to find an empty lecture hall and the third mural.


Three murals. Two days. No effort. So I look up the artist. "Through his art Orozco shared his trauma and his anger, which he insisted over and over, in many forms, is our trauma and should be our anger," I read. He attacked, in the words of his own political metaphor, "the pestilential shadows of closed rooms."

In other words, he worked to expose the truth, away from the ego that attempts to label things 'good' and 'bad.' Apparently, this is the key. To see, without attaching the labels of opinion.

I decide against studying Spanish. Instead, I am handed another challenge.

The Mayans come to Yelapa

It so happens that when I finally get really sick - amazingly not until 2 months after my arrival in Mexico, I am lying in a real, double bed with real, crisp sheets and a real live pillow.

This is no ordinary room. It is a penthouse. It squats above the Yacht Club over in town; a name that suggests much more glamour than the corrugated plastic roof and concrete floor in fact impart, but a fitting name all the same, for this building balances itself directly over the water, and the sea is as much a part of its existence as the bricks it is made of.

Looking out through the glassless, iron barred windowframes from the comfort of my sick bed is like looking from the window of a boat. I am just a few metres away from gently folding, turquoise waves.

The sea explodes against the beach below; wakes me gently every half an hour from delirious dreams. The breeze strokes me to sleep, fluttering coloured scarves at the windows that float around me like Mexican spinning dancers.

Now I am alone with my blue sky and my stomach spasms, attempting to order my increasingly unfamiliar brain. I feel like my body is doing this to me to force me to think about these things and address the things I am struggling to digest.

Dan showed up yesterday. His original plan was to travel for a year, interviewing people to make a film about the shifts that are occurring to our world. Instead he has been on the road for four years, following coincidences like me, on a looping, curious path seemingly seeded the entire way through by the person he last interviewed.

On his doorstep in Canada awaits a pile of film; everything from shamans, to Nobel prize winners, to scientists, to people he picks up on the street whose eyes shine a particular light. His battered van has taken him from the Arctic, through Canada, the States and half of Mexico, and will eventually drop him in Panama. Along the way he has lived with several different groups of indigenous people, been given a dog, gained and recently lost a love, and been sent well on his way to enlightenment. (You can read his story here).

Confidence and understanding seeps from his pores. He distils things so simply. I want to resist, want to be sceptical, but I am drawn in because I know I have to be.

We spend days in conversation. I learn more from him than I have perhaps the entire journey. Here is someone who truly has the voice of the people; the truth we are so protected from. And it is clear to him that the world is in flux and is due a serious change, very soon.


Yet again, the prophecies of the Mayans are the centre of the conversation. Yet again, we find ourselves dissecting the possibilities.

Most people believe the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012. This is not true. In actual fact, the messages they left actually show a calendar that ends on December 21, 2012. This date corresponds with the date that the sun will eclipse the galactic centre.

The following is taken from Daniel Pinchbeck's book 2012: The Return of Quetzacoatl. (This is the book that came to me from Taylor, following the coincidence I had in Sayulita.)


On the winter solstice of December 21, 2012, the Sun will rise within the dark rift at the center of the Milky way galaxy, an event that occurs every 25,800 years. As John Major Jenkins describes in Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, this alignment represents a "union" of the Cosmic Mother (the Milky Way) with the First Father (the December solstice sun)." Mayan hieroglyphs describe the center of this dark rift as the "Hole in the Sky," cosmic womb, or "black hole," through which their wizard-kings entered other dimensions, accessed sacred knowledge, or toured across the vast reaches of the cosmos. In September 2002, astronomers verified the existence of a massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, naming it "Sagittarius B."


Most people also believe that this is just the prediction of one civilisation. This is also untrue. There are many other ancient civilisations who also talked of the end of an age in 2012.


The Mayan calendars were divided into a number of 'eras' of varying lengths, that grow shorter the closer we get to 2012. These are encoded into the pyramids at Palenque,Mexico; Chichen Itza, Mexico, and Tikal, Guatemala. Each of these eras represent a different stage of consciousness.

In brief - (again, borrowed from Daniel Pinchbeck's book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl).

The initial level, 16.4 billion years ago, proceeds from the inception of matter in the "Big Bang," through the development of cellular life on Earth. During the second step, beginning 820 million years, ago, animal life evolved out of cells. The third underworld, starting 41 million years ago, saw the evolution of primates and the first, rudimentary use of tools by human ancestors. During the fourth underworld, beginning 2 million years ago, tribal organization began among the ancestors of Homo sapiens. During the next underworld, 102,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged developing spoken language. The next sixth underworld, beginning 5,125 years before the approaching birth date, when we created patriarchal civilization, law, and written language. The seventh step, beginning in AD 1755, introduced industrialization, electricity, technology, modern democracy, gene splicing, and the atom bomb.


The current era started in 1999, and corresponded with the birth of the internet - a global connectivity unlike anything seen before.

Time is 'speeding up.' Things are happening faster.

The next and final era of this age of history begins in April 2012 and ends in December later that year. There is much speculation as to what this final stage will bring. Many believe there will be a fundamental change in the way we think, and the way we connect to each other and the world - a connection to the 'global consciousness'.

Certainly in every era there is an increase in consciousness. And certainly the signs of this can already be seen.


The end of the calendar could mean many things, but the consensus is that there will be huge change, marked most likely by increase in frequency and intensity of natural disasters. While I am slightly sceptical that something can happen so quickly, I only need take a look at recent history to tell me things are already starting to shift.

In terms of what will actually happen on December 21st, 2012, opinions are hugely divided, ranging from anything from meteor collision or volcano eruptions to the arrival of extraterrestrial Mayans (the glyphs in several temples show what seem to be spaceships...). Others speculate that crossing the 'dark rift' of the galaxy could cause a magnetic pole reversal, as the earth spins in an external field.

Again the consensus is that society is going to change completely and in the process shed a huge number of people and their constructions.

Maybe nothing will happen in 2012. But if not then, it seems clear that something is going to happen soon, and the better prepared we are, the more chance we have of staying alive to see the change occur.


Dan is preaching self-sufficiency. From what he has seen and heard, it seems to be the only way to attempt survival through the coming eruptions. It rings with the voices deep inside me that have been urging me to keep going, whilst keeping one eye half out for a piece of land on which to create my nest. Whenever I start to worry about money I make myself relax, for I know that if it is right, the money will arrive.


We start getting into 'headfuck' area when we move on to the Law of Attraction, and the very real possibility that 2012 is a self-fulfilling prophecy. For if the world brings us what we think about most, it shouldn't be so far-fetched to suggest that the increased awareness will breed the things that we most fear.

My mind is swollen with conflicting emotions; acceptance and resistance, understanding and confusion.

I lie in bed, shivering with the aches of a mild Dengue fever, feeling my body process the information it has been loaded with in the last few days. I am forced to become one with my thoughts and to truly consider what path to take. I could view all this as hysterics; for after all, have there not been several occasions in the past when a small group proclaiming the end of the world have been proved wrong, again and again? Besides, it is far easier to ignore it and carry on planning a future of security.  As the philosopher Neitzche pointed out, our tendency to be drawn towards the mundane and the secure and ignore the things that seem outlandish or scary is vital for our survival.

But how much does it blind us?

My instincts are shouting at me. Listen! There really is a lot of truth behind all of this. The Mayan prophecies have actually all been right so far. To the extent that they even predicted the date the prophecies themselves would be discovered. And even if the Mayans were wrong, how long is the Earth going to put up with what we are doing to it? It is not so far fetched to believe that a serious shift could occur in my lifetime.  We are accelerating. Technology and development are speeding up. Can we really expect this exponential curve to go on infinitely?

If I really think about it, I know this is why I'm here.

I'm not here to 'see the world'. I don't care about cathedrals or museums or 'canopy tours'. I'm here because I know I have to do something. I have no idea what.  But I'm here because on some level I've tuned into something that told me I need to be here. I don't see it as a coincidence that the place I'm in is at the very heart of these prophecies. Arguably, if I was in Africa I would be hearing African prophecies. But I have been brought here, so these are the ones I have to hear. I wanted to know about all this. I NEEDED to know about all this.

Whether any of this is true or not, this is part of my personal journey.  Bizarre as it all seems, I´m confident that it will all become clear in time.

In the meantime, I feel like I am to collect and distribute information. Take it as you will.

A few days later, when I have stopped shaking, I leave Yelapa. Once again, I don't know where I'm going. Only that it is time to go.