Centred

Rid myself of purpose, in order to find my purpose.



This, in essence, was the purpose.


People ask me what I've been doing with myself, incredulous that I've spent so long not earning any money.

As if I was being offensively indulgent.

I want to tell them what I've learnt. I did write a list, but it is too long to be interesting to an outside eye.

Very few of the items would be in place on a CV. Sometimes this makes it difficult to communicate, people often needing things put in terms of 'doing' words.


A lot of the learning comes through meditation, often in combination with stunning natural beauty or ancient sites. I am often reluctant to dwell too much on this, for fear of what people might think. In doing so I am being untrue to myself and of course ignoring what I've learnt, for it seems this path has become my purpose.

****


Back in August I spent a month at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, during which time I was led, by a series of synchronous events, to La Finca de Yoga Mistica.


At the time it was a community in the making, deserted during the rainy season. Empty garden beds lay sodden from the rain, several small pelapa huts hunched dripping and empty, one large rancho semi-finished, smelling of fresh-cut wood.


It was the cleanest kind of peace.


I was a guest of my new friend Randi, who consolidated my daily yoga practise with calm words and dedicated sentiment. Every morning was ignited with meditation on the small dock, mist hanging heavy over the lake, the only noise the soft paddling of early fishermen in dugout canoes.

I fell in love with everything then; the lake, yoga, sitting still. Myself.


I left the farm calmer than I'd ever been, the clear water flowing through my veins. I knew I'd be back.


In the months following, there came an exchange of emails with the farm's coordinators, which resulted in an agreement. I was to receive a yoga and spiritual teacher training in exchange for time working on the farm.


One day I woke up to my soul's autopilot and realised I'd found something I not only really wanted, but had, almost without realising, made happen.


There, crystallising from a long, heavy mist, appeared the Purpose.


It was so simple. Yoga is the synthesis of body, mind and soul, with the ultimate goal of inner stillness. Far more than the commonly perceived 'stretching,' it was designed purely as a moving meditation to sink one deeper into other worlds.

Although I had practised on and off for five years, I had never considered it more than just a beautiful activity. It is still unbelievable that I took so long to realise this could be a life choice.

The more I did, the more the lines blurred between the physical and the perceived. I sank easily into postures, my mind settling like a sudden dropping of the wind.

Without movement of air, there is no wind. Without thought, there is no mind.

Now, early March, I find myself for the first time on a timescale. I pass through Mexico, Belize and Guatemala at speed, like a fly, darting randomly in seemingly useless directions but somehow making it to my goal with time to spare.

I ride a speedboat across the lake, swaying up and down with the rhythms of the waves, rushing into the unknown. Volcanoes tower over me on all sides and I realise the entire lake must be one supervolcano.

I am in the centre.

Caribbean kingdom

One minute I am eating tacos and chatting in lively Spanish, next I'm face to face with black, dreadlocked border officials, trying to decode the lingo.

Of course… I forgot. Belize is Commonwealth.  This lilting, smiling language is actually my own - or was, once.  I finger through to the underlying meaning and emerge with another stamp in the passport.

I climb up in to the ex-US schoolbus going down the only main road south.

People of all colours climb on, speaking their rhythmic islander's talk, speckled with unfamiliar slang.  I keep forgetting, asking questions in Spanish.  The bus driver plays reggae and I talk to a child next to me.

She is the smartest girl in her class.  She is also the oldest, with the one class serving children aged 8-11.  We hold up a five pound note against a ten dollar bill, comparing the Queens.

Her school is 'non-profit.'

Sea air frosts everything with a salty crust.

The landscape of northern Belize is flat, dry and less interesting than I had anticipated.  The settlements, however, are intriguing.  Wide, dusty roads, sprinkled with homes and jungle palms.  Run-down schools, labeled as Hurricane Shelters.  Wooden houses, paint peeling in the sun, propped up precariously on stilts. Some of them lean beyond reasonable stability. 

All in all, I feel very much like I've stepped back in time.  I cannot get over the language, and how it relates to my country.  I feel strangely like a modern-day pioneer, painting the Caribbean with my flag.

I am slightly embarrassed to be British.

I talk to an old woman, Mary-Lee, about my predicament.  When she was born the country was called British Honduras.  I ask her how it has changed. 

"Independence don't mean freedom," she says, with a sorry shake of her head.  "Dey keep telling us dey'll help us, but everyone lies.  No politician ever follows through.  It jus' gonna get worse and worse."

I tell her; "if its any comfort, politics are the same everywhere.  We have a new government and already they're breaking promises.  At least you have the sun!" 

She laughs and agrees.  "I spent ten years in England before I decided Belize was a better life.  Ain't so sweet over there either.

"But it be same everywhere.   World's covered in fire n' flood.  Evil be spreading."

I ask her what she means.  "Worlds endin', girl.  Jus' you wait."

The bus journey goes on for several hours, through towns seemingly named by fantasising children. Orange Walk. Cool Shade Camp. Ladyville.  Until finally I am in Belize City. 

It is tiny, yet energetic.  After the sprawl of Mexico it feels wrong to call this a city.

I had been nervous -- as usual, with no guide book, I am going on word of mouth.  Depending on the age of the adviser, this has not always been positive.  But five minutes into the city and I am relaxed.  Everyone here has a smile on their face.  The women move with an enviable rhythm.  The men are, in general, very attractive.  Everyone calls me baby. 

The wind keeps blowing.  I hear Belize is all about the coral islands. 

I have a little time. 

I buy a ticket for the last boat to Caye Caulker, enough food for a week, and sit in the sun to await my chariot.

God of Small Things

I'm on a bus heading south. Sitting across from me is a woman, perhaps 20 in age, with a small son who has no hair. She wants US dollars, I want Belize, so we swap and start talking.

She wants to know where I've been, and why I don't want to marry and settle down in my own country. I give her the standard spiel. The spanish rattles out freely and I enjoy the surprise on her face. 


***

Once upon a time, I watched football. I shamelessly supported the Mancs because they were the best and because my boyfriend did. We used to ritually tramp to Brixton's Elm Park Tavern, sun illuminating the pub in dust rays, pint of cider on the table, to pass a Saturday afternoon esconsed in drama and delight.

These days, although I love the game, I have no time and no patience for the delicate advertising-machines running the pitch. These are the glorified soap stars, paid sickening wages and supported by self-righteous masses. Without the pub and the boys I find it hard to take an interest.

***


The conversation moves over to her. She is Honduran, married to a Belizean. She doesn't speak English but is trying to learn for her son; given that they live in Belize, English will be his first language. She hasn't been home for four years because she doesn't have the money.


He is three years old and has cancer. The hospitals in Belize don't know what to do with him, so she's been taking the five hour round-trip border-hop up to Chetumal in Mexico to get his treatment.


I ask her how often she goes.


"Every day," she replies, with a smile. "Every day for a year."


My heart aches for them and I feel like a fool for my indulgent life and naïve cries for freedom. I feel desperate to help. I want to fly them to England and make him better. But I can't. That is the lesson I learn every day - that everyone has their own agenda. You can only ever give so much.

***

Going through my belongings, shapeless lumps in the attic of my father's house kept for reasons unknown, I uncover a Manchester United strip. I pause for a minute, pondering how to get rid of it. It's too small for any of my fellow fans to get away with. It would be a shame to send it to a charity shop.

Although now, to me, it symbolises the Dirty System, it once represented comraderie, love and a shared passion. And it might one day mean something else for someone out there.


So I bring it with me. They love football where I'm going. I know I'll find a home for it somewhere.


***

When she climbs down from the bus, halfway to Belize city, I pull the earrings from my ears and press them into her palm. With my other hand I give the Manchester United strip to the boy. He looks up at me with big eyes. He is huge for a three-year old but the t-shirt is still so big he will drown in it if he wears it right now.

Maybe she will sell it.


But maybe, if he grows older, he will play football in it one day.

Desert sun bleaching

I say goodbye to Luis, the quiet bringer from afar, almost two weeks later.

We have lived in the desert of Zacatecas.  This last, unplanned stop in my journey, although a whole day's drive away from where I met Luis, is reassuringly just a short drive from my first destination, Real de Catorce.  This does not surprise me.


I have lived the life of the chosen one, treated to presidential suites, gifts, tours; waited on hand and foot whilst being inducted into the Ways Of The Light. In just a short time he has become a father of sorts. From the centre of my pile of presents I feel much younger than twenty-five.
Like a sparkling snow dome, the information he places within my swelling skull needs time to settle before I am able to see my way through.

A delicate network of carefully constructed threads is forming, a throbbing organism, extending primordial limbs -- fleshy tentacles that incarnate my innate knowledge and seal form in a giant web, designed to catch even the tiniest wisp of instruction blown my way.

I feel simultaneously mighty and helpless. In our weeks together he has mentally skinned me alive and left me prostrate, my bared innards glistening juicily, pulsating, vulnerable and exposed in a way I have not experienced. I react with erratic waves of rage and exhileration, swooping easily through everything in between.

It is a complete mental scrub.

I cannot sleep.

When I do, my dreams tease me with half-formed shapes and moody premonitions. I long for next week, when my long-lost love will arrive with a suitcase full of normality and eyes widening with that warming resonance. My companion, my other half. I long for his company to share all of this with, his strength to walk by my side.
And yet I do not want this time to end, for I feel myself resonating with a clear harmony that I have never felt before.


When Luis and I part, it is under the knowledge that our separation is only temporary. At some point in the future, we have a journey to make. Only I will know when the time is right for that journey.

In the meantime, I have been instructed to empty my head before bed, slow my already lilting pace, and stay completely connected to the things around me.

As long as I relax, and carry on as I am, everything will unfold, just as it should.

I spend the last days before Michael's arrival in a Holiday Inn in Morelia, Michoacan, paid for by my new benefactor. I eat books with the same zeal as I had when reading Alice in Wonderland at the age of four. I must be the only guest ever to spend every evening alone in their room, dogmatically preparing salads in a camping pan with a blunt knife nicked from the downstairs restaurant, rinsing chilli and lime remains away in the shower.

I am a shaken champagne bottle. Any moment I feel I might explode, fizzing love over everything around me. My bottle would be refilled a thousand times over, never depleted, an eternally regenerating source of life.

I cannot remember ever being this happy.

I look down at my neck, where two silver amulets glint whitely in the sun. Purchased in shining Zacatecas, the desert oasis; salmon stones, windows glinting, raw scents of life in a barren earth. El serpento y el caracol. The snake, half of winged serpent Quetzalcoatl in a spiraling figure eight, representing oneness and connection with the earth; the snail, home on his back, undulating with sticky strength, slow enough to sense everything in the smallest gust of wind.

As I place them around my neck I am reminded of my words, borne from the depths of my loneliness, back in November:

"The snail's head of my intrigue retreats back into its shell, leaving only feelers, slowly waving."

Now my antennae extend powerfully ahead, muscled extensions of my senses. Nuance shades my perception in a thousand rainbow colours, the sun pressure-washing my mind, blasting away a crust of unnecessary memories, bringing innate sense into sharp relief.

For my last night alone, I return to Mexico City and the same hostel in which I started this looping journey.
 
Mi viaje solita is bracketed. The circle is closed.

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.

Breaking boundaries

My new best friend Dina runs past me down the beach, shouting and flapping her arms.

She is usually fairly dramatic. But then I notice a small boat approaching the shore through the gathering folds of darkness.

'I'm going to Sayulita! Someone sent a private boat!' She cries, beautiful eyes bulging with excitement. I look at my companions, preparing for a quiet night in front of the fire. Look down at the remains of my flame-toasted frankfurters.

It takes about fifty seconds before I am hauling myself over the side of the boat after her, laughing because I have no idea what we're about to do.

I just couldn't say no to a night-time panga ride.

I know it is the right decision the moment I sit back and introduce myself to the crew. Aside from Phillippe, our chaperone, there are two older people there who introduce themselves as Muck and Carrie, amidst peals of slightly maniacal laughter.

Carrie is all over Muck - evidently they have not seen each other for a while. She has several holes where teeth should be and talks a lot about their days touring with the Grateful Dead. Muck has a long, grey ponytail, a voice like Louis Armstrong and the glint of LSD in his eyes.

'Away we go!' cries Muck, and the wind whips my hair saltily. The air is soft on my skin and the stars peer at us in disapproval.

I am still confused as to why we have this boat, but it soon becomes clear that this is standard with Muck and Carrie - their stories being unerringly incomprehensible and bizarre. I find out later Muck 'got lost' in Sayulita for three days. When he came to that afternoon, he donned his knight's hat and commandeered a panga to fetch Carrie, who he'd left a hundred miles away in Yelapa, providing a convenient steed for my and Dina's adventure.

We swig Ricea - the local firewater - and laugh because it is all that good.

Bioluminescence sprays from the front of the boat like welding sparks. We put our hands in it, spellbound. The water feels warm. I bend backwards out of the boat so the spray is above my head and the starry bottom falls out of my world. I am soaked.

'I can see the light!' screams Muck in his half-voice, waving an imaginary lasso. Dina climbs onto the prow, picks up the painter and surfs her way to land.

Just like this movie-scene journey, the subsequent few days could never be justified on paper. I did try.

But how could I explain the speed with which Phillippe drove from Boca de Tomatlan up the coast to Sayulita? The glow that greeted us at the huge orange mansion that someone called Taylor was renting, purely for the purpose of 'picking up strays' like us? The magical brother/sister trio that was borne when Taylor, Dina and I were joined?

The dancing on the bar. The hole in my foot. The circuits around town in a golf buggy.

These events are best left to the imagination. For it is there that invention can draw freely, lavishing scenes with the deserved paint of legend.

I become Carrie's mascot. She even gives me a dress. I find out later she is bipolar, which wouldn't have bothered me had she not thrown all of my belongings down the stairs in a fit of rage and then called me baby afterwards. I then understood how it was that Muck could 'lose' her for three days.

For that moment, though, no one can stop smiling. Least of all me. I have taken the power back. I am Ju again. The world toasts me with another synchronicity.

Last week I read two random pages of a book about 2012 - two pages that happened to be about England.

Today I see the same book at Taylor's house and randomly open it. It falls apart at the same pages I read before. At the top of the page I find the following lines, that I hadn't noticed first time round.

'Ultimately, it boils down to what you, the observer, wants to see.'

Taylor tells me I can keep the book.

Serendipitous. Spontaneous. Extemporaneous.

Carrie was nervous about returning to Yelapa. Apparently this was because she accidentally stole a horse.

'But how can you accidentally steal a horse?' I ask.

'I don't know,' she replies, 'but I think it was the happiest hour of my entire life.'