Heavenly threads, from thine to mine

Last night, when we had no where to go, a man invited us to his house and told us to cook ourselves a meal from his cupboards. We sat on the veranda in well-apportioned rocking chairs, watching the flick-flick of pink lightning silhouetting the volcanoes across the lake.

Just when you think life couldn't get any sweeter, she gives you a meal and a veranda.

Tonight we walk up the hill to look for rice and beans. The afternoon rain has just started and my trousers are instantly sodden. They flap against my legs and I look down at rapids of brown water gurgling over my feet as I walk. We search for half an hour, wandering slowly in the rain, before we finally concede there to be no hot food in this town.

The last time I saw Nick was in the final months of high school. It seems hard to believe that was nine years ago.

Our reunion is spontaneous. As if we'd expect anything else.

He is drawn to Lake Atitlan in the same way we all are. The spirit of the lake wraps her wispy whirlpools around the hearts of those she desires, seducing them into her volcano-ringed embrace. Once landed, she holds tight, captivates them with her beauty and her mystery.

And so I find him, just two days in to Guatemala and already captured in a volunteer exchange in Santa Cruz, on the opposite side of the lake to the farm.

He speaks and I realise I had forgotten his voice. He moves and I realise I had forgotten his height. At six foot six he easily wraps me up and I feel instantly calm in his presence.

A strange experience, meeting someone again. Often I leave these reunions slightly disappointed, for the person I am and the person I meet are rarely linked by anything more than aging photographs. I tend now to avoid such meetings, to skirt around the dull awareness of being so very far away from my childhood that even stories regaled of past skirmishes are not enough.

But this time dives deep. Instead of creeping around stories of the past to try and forge new links, we get to know each other as we are now, two nomads bumping together on the seas of self-discovery. Rarely do I meet anyone with whom I instantly connect so profoundly.

From the beginning the world seems eager to encourage. It turns into one of those elongated moments in which our surroundings seem somehow constructed solely for our personal pleasure.

Hence the veranda.

Tonight, in lieu of rice and beans, we buy a pile of tortilla chips and elotitos, stuffing plastic packets into our pockets until we find ourselves a den in which to consume. We bless our food with smiles, thanking the world for delivering us nourishment of such vibrant colours.

At some point, the rain clears.

On our way back from town we stop at the top of the hill to look over the lake. Rain still falls blurrily at the edges. The view here is different again and we look across the surface at the Santiago bay.

Just behind Volcan San Pedro, across the bay from Santiago Atitlan, lies the farm. The sky above it is tinted pink with the sunset, reflecting from behind the mountains. Sausage-shaped clouds part in blues and greys, revealing the mouth of the bay and the path to my home. It looks like a painting of Heaven.

Here, now

I find myself thinking momentarily of my mother, of how I should call her and tell her my news. The realisation is fleeting, as always, before I remember that she is no longer here.

I am left with a feeling of warmth within as I see my progress from her point of view. Wherever she is, if she ever could know, she would be looking down at her daughter, grown up, finally fulfilled. Yoga teacher. Chef. Gardener. Healer. Sharer of truths.

I take a group through a meditative yoga class, every move flowing with the breath, blurring the lines between the mental and the physical as we inhale, extend and exhale, surrender to gravity.

But how could I ever explain to anyone other than a yoga teacher how it feels to close a class?

I could say it is like coming down from a hallucinogenic trip. My students, dragging themselves up from their final resting posture, pulling themselves from within, hair tousled, eyes closed, swaying to their own rhythmic breathing. Me, colours swirling, noise muffled, re-surfacing from my zone to realise the sun is shining and the birds have been singing all along.

My daily reality is becoming more and more dreamy, the edges of my mind becoming blurred.

At long last, I am me. I feel myself reaching into all those new roles, played with the solid step of inner guidance.

Echoes of those previous journeys ripple out through time and space and wash back over me in my new expression of myself. An old healer looking at my palm, comparing it to her own. An old man waiting for me, calling me a shaman he must teach. A voice telling me to study energy, another telling me to go to the lake. The labels cease to fit as the energy begins to flow in its own gush.

Every morning in front of the volcanoes I heal. Myself, the lake, anyone else. The dog or cat on my lap. Bathed in the ethereal light of the lake, I beam this energy out in hot, white lines. With my mind I focus positivity to flow through the lives of those it hits, and I feel my core searing with heat as I do so.

Who knows what I am doing, if anything. But this feeling is strongly, purely, positive.

I am not weird, I am not special. I just channel life in my own way. The purpose finds the owner, provided the owner allows space for that purpose to rise.

As the clear note of the singing bowl hums to close out meditation I dive back into my body, pulling on my skin like a glove, my soul peering out through the eyes as I realise that here, for now, I am three dimensional. Here, for now, I am happy.

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.