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Friday, March 18.........Antigua, Guatemala
Some weeks have passed since I had the urge and took the time to add to these writings. I have also been a bit lazy. As mentioned before, writing is for me a slow and laborious endeavor and one that wearies me with its practice. Yet, I feel a certain responsibility to communicate some of the things I have learned from visiting and studying the sacred sites. So, I am compelled to write. But, do not get me wrong, I love the act of writing, when it is happening. I only wish it happened with less effort on my part.
There are, in fact, a number of reasons that make me wish I could write more rapidly. Primary among them is the desire to communicate the greater variety and the greater depth of thinking that I have done regarding certain subjects and concepts. Because of my extensive world travels, the variety of my research studies, and the rare magic done to me by the powers and spirits of the sacred places (mix all these things together), my brain has some interesting stuff running through its conceptual channels. One of the things I love most about this gift of human life is the ability and the opportunity to converse deeply about issues and ideas. When one travels the way I am doing now - slowly, hanging out, open to chance meetings - then one meets fine and thoughtful people. Many times recently, talking over wine or coffee, tequila or ganja (all these wonderful plant gifts from the Earth), I have wished I was tape recording the discussions. The ideas, their articulation, and the poetry of cascading sentences were often exquisitely beautiful. I first felt this way about words when I began reading the works of W. Somerset Maughm. That great English author of the mid-twentieth century had the knack of saying things in such a way that the mere arrangement of words was sensuous and satisfying to read. It didn’t matter so much if I were even interested in the particular subject matter he was discussing. The choice and cadence of his words was the thrilling thing. I aspire to write that way too. But, I am still a long way off.
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Adding new paintings to my pilgrimage van.
I drove into Guatemala, after a bit of corruption and bribery at the border. There were approximately fifteen sites I had chosen to visit for my research. As had been the case in Mexico, these Guatemalan sacred sites and power places were evenly distributed between Pre-Columbian and Postcolombian, or between archaic and Christian. My first stop was the church of Our Lady of the Candles at Chiantla, near to Huehuetanango. The town and church were quiet and I had the place nearly all to myself. Chiantla is neither an old pilgrimage place nor a well-known one, thus visitors do not arrive in great numbers as at major sites like Guadalupe in Mexico City. Local peasants and a few tourists each week are all the visitors that the church receives (the place is not even mentioned in the various guide books that foreigners use). April 10 and 11 are the primary celebratory days of the shrine. It would surely be fine to experience Chiantla at that time, along with fifty thousand other pilgrims who come for the pilgrimage festivities, but I don’t imagine I will come this way again at just that time. The world is a big place and there are so many places one can go. To add the complication of timing all my visits to particular days is something I have not been able to do. Nor really wanted to do. Much more enjoyable is the unfolding of the unexpected when I am on the pilgrim’s trail; letting the Earth Spirits occasionally gift me with fantastic festivals such as I had experienced in San Juan de los Lagos a few months ago.
From Chiantla I traveled to Fuentes Georgina, the site of Guatemala’s most celebrated and beautiful hot springs. They are set deep back in an impossibly steep mountain valley, eight kilometers along a bumpy, dirt road. Driving there, in first gear the entire way, vapors of sulfur and clouds of mist hinted at magic soon to come. Parking, walking, turning a bend in the path, and the pool is finally discovered. Some forty feet in diameter, from two to four feet deep, the pool’s waters flow ever so slowly. Great ferns and an erotic profusion of wet, glistening, dripping plants drape themselves lazily over the steaming waters. A chipped and crumbling statue of a nearly nude Greek goddess stands upon a rock in the middle of the pool. Her expression is one of peace and ease. And, that is the behavioral channel the waters switched me to after a few moments in their heated embrace. The place slowed me down, filled me with serenity. Additionally, the energy or presence of the site stimulated an amorous and erotic response throughout my whole being. In English, at least in its American way of speaking, we have a word called ‘horny’. It means the wanting of sex, the yearning for the experience of sexual play and intercourse. Fuentes Georgina evoked nearly that same feeling in me. Given the celibate life of my recent travels, this was an enjoyable (though somewhat frustrating) experience. Beneath the evening stars and then again as the sun rose, I spent long hours soaking in the sultry waters.
My next destination was the town of Quetzaltenango. This place has such a wonderful and intriguing sound, and I had been wanting to visit it for over twenty years. But, driving in, I was appalled at the great quantity of garbage in the streets. Once again, I found that the imagination I had of a place was a better view than seeing the real thing. Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Calcutta - all these places are like that. Their names are far lovelier than the cities themselves. So, departing with a flurry, I headed to the celebrated, high mountain lake of Atitlan. This lake, another place I had dreamed of visiting since childhood, beckoned me to a few days of peace and quiet, distance swimming and good food. Or, so I thought and hoped. But, yet again, the stuff of my imagination was not the "reality I created." Instead, the lake was dirtier than I expected (because the locals and the local government don’t care enough to keep it clean) and some robbers broke into and stole things from my van.
The van had been parked in the supposedly secure driveway of the small hotel I was staying in. The robbery probably happened around two or three in the morning. A front vent window was pried open and a box full of tools, a sleeping bag, and a large pack were stolen. The criminals first broke the lock off the tool box and then, finding a bolt-cutter within, cut through the cable holding the box to the van chassis. If they had had more time, they could have used the tools to get into other locked boxes to find cameras and computers and money.
I discovered the robbery early in the morning, on my way to the lake for a sunrise swim. At the moment of discovery I had a vivid memory of another robbery that had happened to me in Mexico ten years ago. During that previous robbery, more extensive and violent than this current one, I had tried to relate to the entire event and its repercussions as a meditative practice. That had been a valuable experience and I decided to attempt the practice again. Sitting within the van, I entered a meditative state in order to activate my awareness so that I could more precisely observe all my mental reactions to the robbery and its aftermath. It may be hard to believe, if you have not experienced a robbery and concurrently meditated through it, but being fully present with your anger and grief, your sense of violation and loss, actually helps to mitigate the intensity of those feelings. It does not mean that you do not feel the feelings. No, they are felt even more deeply. They just do not leave so painful or long-lasting a scar.
In a country whose police and military are thoroughly corrupt after recent years of terrorism and war, there is little to be gained from seeking official help with a crime. So, in hopes of retrieving the stolen items, I attempted to make an appeal to the robbers to return them in exchange for money. While the stolen goods were valued at over $1500, I knew that the thieves would not be able to get this much on the street. They would almost certainly try to sell them - waiting a few days until the event had been forgotten and I had left town - but they might get fifty dollars at most. Panajachel, where the robbery took place, is a small town. I thought I might be able to get a message to the robbers asking them to sell my things back to me for more than they could get on the street. Within thirty minutes of discovering the robbery I distributed around Panajachel forty copies of a hand-written notice stating my offer of a $200 cash buy-back. Then, finding the local radio station, I paid for two days of announcements communicating the same information as the flyers. Over the next two days I traveled to several nearby towns hoping to find the items offered for sale in black markets or back alleys.
I never retrieved any of the stolen items but the days searching for them were otherwise well spent. Sadness, anger, and violence arose frequently in my mind and I was able to observe their comings and goings. Studying this passage of moods, thoughts, and emotions, I once again clearly recognized that I, the watcher, am distinct from the transitory mental stuff that meanders through my mind. Where do these thoughts arise from? That is one of the great unsolved mysteries of life. Thoughts endlessly arise and there is nothing much we can do about this. But, we do have great choice concerning how we react or respond to the random passage of thoughts through our heads. We can be thrown around by them, getting bruised in many a way. Or, we can instead choose to dispassionately watch the thoughts - their origin, passing, and inevitable disappearance. Watching thoughts in this way, distancing ourselves from them, we see that they are a part of us but at the same time they are not the real us. They are like mosquitoes buzzing around and we do not have to let them be the determiner of our state of emotional being. Most people are prisoners of their own minds, exhibiting very little real ability to rise above mental chatter and attain true peace within. While it is an easy subject to discuss in a shallow new-age sort of way, the actual cultivation of this skill takes serious discipline and perseverance (entire monastic systems have been founded on this practice). Occasionally, however, life offers each of us ‘crash courses’ in the meditative practice of observing and detaching from mind chatter. The two days following my robbery in Panajachel were one of those times. I am sorry to have lost the tools and camping gear but I am deeply happy to have gained a greater detachment and non-reactivity in regards to passing thoughts and emotions.
