ACMindworks

Category: Uncategorized

  • Sun at the Mountain Top

    Nov 20: I’ve spent the last few days in a city called Nicoya, not too far from where my previous workaway was, getting some writing done and chilling in my own space. Got a simple little airbnb close by to all the good stuff, run by a very sweet host and neighbored next to a really awesome guy (out here living his dream!) It’s all be pretty low key and easy going, but I did have a fairly special experience today. The host at the previous workaway pointed me in the direction of a half hour hike up a small mountain just a little bit out of the city. At the top was promised a big cross (of the christian variety) and a stellar view.

    I had postponed setting off towards it due to rain during the morning, but the dry air I thought I was venturing into turned to rain once again when I started up the trail. It never really got to be much more than a sprinkle, which was actually something of a blessing. Costa Rica is on the cusp of entering into dry season and man, when that sun is out it is hot. I actually got a bit burned today from it. So the rain cooled things down for the hike quite nicely.

    Even still, since it was an incline the entire way up I was sweating regardless of the rain. I had set a kind of spiritual intention for this hike, seeing as how the local ticos viewed it as something somewhat sacred and there being that cross at the end, and I felt the rain actually added a nice element to the proceedings. The waters of heaven mixed with the waters of my earth, cleansing me in a sense for what I would find at the top.

    I found the level of effort required perfect, keeping me breathing heavy throughout, clearing my interior with life rich air as the rain did something similar for my exterior. I kept a steady pace all the way until I reached the cross. It certainly wasn’t anything fancy in its construction. Quite the opposite in fact, made from rusted metal and missing a few pieces. But in this context that didn’t really matter. It’s what the symbol represents that holds the significance, not the nature of its form.

    I meditated next to it for a while, tuning myself into the interpretation of the Christ essence I resonate with. I identify with no religion and take plenty of umbrage with orthodox Christianity. I was actually brought up in a subsystem of christian theology that I could only describe, diplomatically speaking, as dissonant to my own nature. But I have come to deeply appreciate what the Christ image represents, genuinely believing in the energy and essence behind it. I actually felt myself getting somewhat emotional during that little meditation, for reasons meant only for me and whoever or whatever I was tuning into.

    As I felt myself coming to the end of the meditation, the sky began to clear and the sun started shining on me. In esoteric thought, Christ (and all messianic figures) correspond to the sun (the sun of God), it being the energy of the divine’s holy emanation, or that which expresses light, warmth and goodness. A fitting and honestly affirming moment. Numerous names and initials has been inscribed into the cross and I figured I would do the same, etching an A and a C.

    Having accomplished what I set out for, I began to make my way back down. Now that the rain had stopped and the sun was out, countless butterflies were flitting about all over. So many different colors and shapes. An especially large one swooped right past me, its impressive wings colored a vibrant, shimmering blue. Seeing all these lovely little critters only added to the significance of this experience for me, as I had drawn the star card from my tarot deck two days in a row recently, and butterflies are a part of its symbolism. I was feeling so much lighter and more peaceful as I made my way down that mini mountain.

    There was just one more part to this process I felt I needed to fulfill. One of Costa RIca’s oldest churches is in the heart of Nicoya, and I felt compelled to sit in there for a time in order to ground my experience. In my view (again, not being religious and having been negatively affected by religion), there really is something of a hallowed sense in these old churches. I might not subscribe to the exact symbolic arrangements they use or the metaphysical interpretations they follow, but a resonant spiritual energy permeates these places. So many people have expressed their honor and devotion towards God, or spirit or source or whatever, in places like that, and when you really open yourself up to it, can you ever feel it. It’s like a highly charged stillness. I let myself flow with the space for a while, giving thanks and praise and sharing some of what I had received at the cross on the mountain with the church. Once I felt the process was complete, I quietly got up and left.

    I have to admit I was hesitant to share this story; mindful of potentially diminishing the experience I had in any way by allowing my ego to exploit it for its own benefit. I find it incredibly distasteful when people boast of their spiritual experiences. But it is part of my journey here in Costa Rica, and a piece of my own story, of which the telling is the entire purpose of this blog. Since I’ll have written this out long before posting it, perhaps I will opt to omit it after all. I suppose you’ll know if you’re reading it now. In any case, I encourage all of you to find similar types of moments in your life, where you allow yourself to tune into and receive the blessing of something greater. Something sublime. The touch of the divine.

  • Odds and Ends

    Nov 17: It’s my final full day at the workaway I had been staying at. It’s been an enjoyable time, no doubt, but I’m very much ready to leave. One thing I’m learning about myself already through this trip is that the work trade arrangement has a far lesser appeal to me than it did when I was younger. It’s undeniably a good way to save money when traveling, and it does afford some good opportunities to get to know people in a more intimate type of setting, but you’re effectively forced to give up a fair bit of autonomy and control over your life while doing it. You are living in someone else’s home, after all, so there’s obviously going to be lines and limits regarding certain things. And maybe this one’s more so on me and my own disposition, but since the host is providing food and accommodations I’m very mindful that I never slip into any sort of deficit in the energetic exchange, meaning I make myself more accessible than is my norm. I’d rather give more of my self than not enough.

    Maintaining that position wears me out in a way it didn’t use to, probably partly due to being at the beginning of my mid-life and partly due to my becoming more of an introvert as I get older. I can play the extrovert easy enough for the most part, but it is not my preferred orientation. Honestly, at this stage I’m somewhat questioning how much of this workaway biz I actually want to engage in. Both my intuition and my tarot readings (yes, I practise tarot) have strongly been indicating that I need a greater degree of control over my own life and the way it is directed, which I think is an aspect of the age element previously mentioned as well as the requirements rooted in the stage of life I’m currently in.

    I’ve spent much of my adult life swinging between free flowing flexible adaptation and highly private, secluded hermitization. My sense is that I need to find a greater balance between those two polarized states of being, and I’m currently questioning whether giving my life over to other people’s dreams and ambitions is the way to achieve that. I have something of a tendency towards codependency, letting others overtake my will for their own means. I’ve reigned that in big time in the last few years but I do still default towards it too easily.

    In astrological terms, for those who speak that language, I’ve got a south node and ascendant in Libra that works contrary to my north node and sun in Aries. Simply put, that means I get swayed by other people’s wants at first and then abandon ship as soon as my own inner fires start feeling the loss of personal autonomy too much. There’s an element involved in actualizing myself as the man I sense I’m meant to be that isn’t congruent with relinquishing that level of authority to others.

    So for now, I’m putting a hold on continuing the work trade thing, at least for a few days so I can delve further into my feelings. Like I said, it saves a lot of money, and I still find it a preferable way to connect with people while traveling, since I have zero interest in bars and clubs or partying anymore. In all honesty, I find myself somewhat questioning whether I even want to continue this trip through Costa RIca…

    Well, I don’t need to find an answer right this moment. I’ll finish this post with a little anecdote regarding this particular workaway. There’s a swimming pool here currently filled with tilapia fish. The host is putting together a fairly ambitious aquaponics system involving them and a bunch of raised garden beds. We’ve made multiple attempts at catching some of the big ones for dinner, but to no avail. First we tried a method of cornering them with a fence like thing I (very jankily) built and then trying to catch them with a net. No es bueno… Then he got a weighted throwing net. My first attempt… nada. My second attempt came with a single moderate success, but one fish isn’t enough for a meal. Finally the host caved in and recruited the support of some of the local fishermen. Mucho pescado! So after all that effort I got to have a taste and muy delicioso it was. The story had a happy ending. Well, for me at least, not so much for the fish. But it’s in a better place now, my belly.

    And here’s a fun bit of trivia for you. There are scorpions here. I actually had one scurry right past my wrist while working on a rock wall. So lucky it didn’t sting me. I’m allergic to bees and wasps (full on anaphylactic shock), so there’s the possibility my bod would not have such a good time taking in that venom. But a neato thing about them is that they glow in the dark when under the ultraviolet shine of a black light. They’re like little ravers! What a weird thing for their evolution to include. And thus concludes today’s fun fact as well as this post. Hope you had a good one!

  • Causality in Connection

    Nov 16: I’m coming up to the end of my time at the workaway I’d been writing from. The German girls I mentioned in the last post already left. I’m not entirely certain why they chose to opt out early, but I suspect the experience being offered here wasn’t what they were wanting. Being so young, chances are they were looking for something a little more exciting, and this place is very low key and chill. That’s actually something I’ve enjoyed about it. But I’ll admit I’m about ready for a change of pace as well.

    It was nice having the added presence of the girls here, and their loveliness was absolutely appreciated, but more often than not everyone would just wind up speaking German, and since my tongue does not come equipped with that language, I often felt somewhat left out. I completely understood why the conversational flow would veer that way so often, as one of the girls clearly wasn’t all that comfortable speaking English and the host’s mother doesn’t speak it at all, so from a democratic point of view, German did make the most sense. I wouldn’t necessarily say it bothered me all that much, but it did touch on my difficulties with communication somewhat.

    It’s funny how the universe almost seems to conspire in placing us in situations where are weak spots are challenged. I sometimes wonder if that specifically happens just to test us, affording us an opportunity to measure where we’re at with our inner resolve.

    About ten years ago I decided to do a cross Canada hitchhike, simply as a kind of challenge to myself. I could fill numerous blog posts with that experience, but for now I only want to touch in on one aspect of it. Perhaps I’ll weave more of that story throughout this blog project. For those who don’t know, there’s one section of the country, Quebec, where French is the primary language, and since I’m deficient in effectively all languages except English, that part of the journey had some added challenges to it. Especially when I would get picked up by someone who didn’t really speak English. I gotta say, despite all of that, I made my way through Quebec remarkably smooth and easy. The vast majority of people I came across were incredibly helpful, a few folks being so kind as to offer me places to stay while I was in Montreal and Quebec city. Both are fantastic cities, by the way. Real highlights of the trip.

    But back to what I’m trying to actually get at here. I did a work trade on a farm northwest of Montreal that involved about two dozen people and for the vast majority of the time everyone there spoke French, despite being able to speak English. Some of the more considerate folks would make it a point to speak English at time to keep me involved (much like the host of my current workaway did while the girls were here), but that made up a pretty small percentage of communication time. I was much more self-conscious about the linguistic discrepancy in that situation compared to this more recent one, so I suppose it goes to show growth on my part. And that touches in on what I meant by the universe conspiring to create situations that test us.

    As I said previously, overcoming obstacles requires engagement with those challenges, so you can retrain your energetic flow to dispel the negative effect it holds over you. See, I don’t really believe in random chance, but rather in an unfathomably complex system of energetic cause and effect working to maintain an immeasurable equilibrium. Everything that happens is the result of the way the collective field of energy was effected by any given choice or action. I think the tendency to see events as random is the result of ignorance- and I don’t mean to evoke that word in a judgemental sort of way, but rather in the sense that we literally just can’t see all the nuances of cause and effect taking place in our lives and in life as a greater whole.

    We also tend towards two other patterns of behavior that veer us away from viewing life processes in this way. One, we like to think we’re in control of our lives, or at least that we could be in control. And two, I think we tend to want to avoid taking full responsibility for ourselves. Both of these behaviors correlate to left brain/egoistic functions, and the capacity to recognize a greater holistic operation of unavoidable cause and effect is more so the function of the right brain, something our current cultural orientation is in heavy resistance towards- to our own personal and collective detriment.

    No matter how badly you may wish to believe it, the reality of life’s operations won’t change just because you think something different. That’s pretty much the foundation of superstitious thinking, and despite our insistence that science is ridding us of superstitious thought, I’d argue that it’s only cultivating a different flavor of it.

    Anyways, I’m going off on a side tangent here- but I suppose that’s part of the intention behind this blog, to simply let my mind run free and without tight constraint, so expect this rambly type of arrangement to be the norm. I do have some more tightly curated things I plan on plaiting through this online space, but the majority is just gonna be my mind running without a leash.

    My point is, I think it’s better to recognize that triggering situations are most likely emerging to provide you with an opportunity to free your energetic system from a negative thought/emotion leech, and due to the inescapable and universal nature of energetic cause and effect, you’ll attract this shit to you whether you like it or not. That is unless you want to bury yourself away inside of a tiny box both internally and externally, which does seem to be a growing orientation for a lot of folks.

    (Editor Aodhan here: There’s a whole lot of yous in that previous paragraph that could come across as fairly accusatory. They’re really meant to be mes and Is, as I’m primarily preaching to myself, but that doesn’t flow quite as well in the rhythms of wordcraft.)  

    Personally speaking, I’ve tried to wrap myself up in the seemingly comfy cloak of victimization plenty of times in the past and I would say doing so provided me with a full zero of good. More and more I find that looking for wherever I am contributing to the dissonances and dysfunctions in my life, and actually acting accordingly in attempting to resolve them head on, has been far more beneficial in freeing me from negativity and cultivating a much more functional version of myself. Such a view is central to all the mystical, esoteric traditions and I very much believe it. It doesn’t makes problems go away, and it isn’t always easy to maintain that mental state, but it does make those problems far more manageable whenever you succeed at managing your mind that way. For anyone who genuinely wants to feel more empowered, there’s a solid step to take.

    Okay, that’s enough preaching. I’m gonna end this post by mentioning something really nice and thoughtful that the host here gave me as a gift. It’s a bracelet he made, braiding the strap himself out of a kind of durable cord, that has a small compass, a whistle and a piece of flint all in the clip. It’s something of a protective talisman and an incredibly thoughtful item to have given me. You never really know the kind of effect you can have on people simply by being sincere, open and welcoming with your presence, but I think I may have achieved something along those lines here. Hope you’re all having a good day.

  • Splendid Trees and Spiritual Traps

    Nov 11: That jungle I mentioned in my last post proved to be a lovely place. I’ve always been partial to submersing myself in the realm of trees, so it’s a real treat to venture through a very different kind of densely verdant environment. I’m from the west coast of Canada so I’m well versed in beautiful forestscapes. My family has a property in an area called the Okanagan that is so very alive with nature’s abundant touch. Trees cover the majority of the property, ranging from pine to fir to birch, and whenever I was there I would often spend much of my time out in them. Down in a valley at the far end is a clear, flowing river, and that was my favorite place of all. It held a genuinely potent magic.

    There are three separate streams flowing through the place I’m currently at, none as notable as the one back home, but they’re nice all the same. All flowing water is. There’s an especially special spot where one of the streams curves and winds in a really neat way. Hidden under a bush near there are a pair of containers holding old Incan clay pieces, the remains of cups, bowls and other such things. There’s even part of a ball from their games. The local folk hold to a superstition that having things like that present on a property leads to bad luck, so the host placed them just outside his property lines, despite not being a superstitious sort. Better safe than sorry. He claims to have noticed a shift towards the positive after having done that, so maybe there really is something to it after all. Life remains a very mysterious thing, despite any arrogant claims to the contrary.

    My intention in heading to that spot today was to partake in a meditation there and tune myself in a little more deeply with the land, but the dogs here have all taken a real liking to me and a trio of them opted to tag along. It was a fun time for all, but silence and stillness are not qualities to be cultivated when a bunch of puppers are playing around. One of them in particular, Roxie, tries to stick her tongue in my face any chance she gets. I resigned myself to the reality that I would not be given an opportunity for folding myself into a comfy lotus position and letting my mind drift off into nothingness.

    Same thing happened yesterday when I went to a different part of the jungle. The most majestic tree stands tall at the end of the trail, hanging out with and over another of the streams. Apparently it had been remarked by others in the past that the tree seemed straight out of Avatar, so that gives you a bit of an idea of its stature. Needless to say, that place is absolutely teeming with lifeforce. In that particular instance it wasn’t so much the dogs that maintained my mind’s earthly orientation, but rather the howler monkeys hooping it up in the trees. I decided to respond to them just for fun. It was neat how they’d go quiet while I said my piece and then they’d start up all over again. I didn’t really get the chance to peep their forms, unfortunately, but I’ll still be here for another week, so there’s plenty of time yet for that.

    I suppose I haven’t actually explained why it is I’m at this fun and fancy free finca. Whenever I’m travelling I find I prefer to do work trades along the way. Wwoofing, workaway, whatever. Not only does it save money, but it provides opportunities to see and experience how life is actually lived in whatever environments I wind up in. Even more, I’ve met a lot of really great people and had some very affecting experiences mixing this into my travels. I’m not really one for walking the tourist type trails. Even when I do engage with the tourist attractions that attract my attention, I’d much rather do it in my own way and at my own pace rather than through a guided tour or something curated like that.

    Obviously not all work trades are made equal, but I wouldn’t say any of the numerous ones I’ve partaken of have been negative. Some are more exciting, some are more laid back, some involve large numbers of people and in some instances it’s just me and the host. Thus far I’d been the sole volunteer here, but two (very pretty) German girls just arrived. A change in people always equates a change in the dynamics, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out here.

    This is not, in fact, my first workaway since landing in Costa Rica, but rather a last minute exchange. While the truth of my statement that none of these experiences have been negative still holds, the one I was synced up with before this place could very well have turned in that direction. My intuition was heavily implying as much. The host was a follower of a particular Indian guru, though he was not at all of that heritage. He oriented his life pretty much exclusively on the guru’s teachings, believing the guy to be truly enlightened. I have no intention in bringing names to the table here, but I will say if you did know this guru’s designation and googled him you would not be presented with a character profile that the majority would call enlightened. Since the host exclusively arranged his life around those teachings, it meant that the entire workaway experience was rooted in these teachings too. That was, in fact, the point of him arranging the workaway in the first place, to further spread his guru’s word. I knew this coming in, so it wasn’t as if he sideswiped me with any of that stuff. My cat nature simply got the better of me, causing me to give into my curiosity.

    As always when it comes to people’s beliefs (even when they strike me as bonkers), I made it a point to remain respectful towards his, putting forth an effort in engaging with the process this guru had designed in how to heal and clear out one’s life. I don’t want to linger on any of the details, but needless to say, the state of the host’s life and the degree to which I worked with this guru guy’s teachings quickly made it apparent that this was not the path to enlightenment. In my opinion, it would only lead a person in misguided direction. This is not the time to delve any deeper into this, but I’m not exactly lacking in esoteric experience or spiritual contemplation. I wouldn’t dream of claiming divine answers, but I’m pretty confident in saying that this situation wasn’t about to reveal them to me.

    I have one final thing to say on the subject and then I’m gonna wrap this post up. Something I would consider a red flag in regards to a potentiality that you may be dealing with a cult is when any individual or group claiming a greater spiritual understanding pushes you to expose your pain and vulnerabilities too quickly with the promise of healing it. You see this dynamic play out in cults all the time. Lost, hurting people looking for relief, to be seen and heard, encouraged to share deeply of their suffering and sorrows. The cult and its leader pounces on this and causes the individual to become trauma bonded to them. Things can get very obfuscated and weird once that happens. From my point of view, I felt my experience with that previous host heading in a similar sort of direction. I hold no ill will towards him, as I think he doesn’t entirely know what he is doing, but I’m very glad to be where I am now instead.

    Well, it’s just about dinner time here, so I’m gonna sign off. Thanks again for reading.

  • Pressing Start on a New Adventure

    Nov 09: A nice, chill beat is keeping time with a smooth, flowing melody, their shared musical dynamic pouring through my ears. It’s a perfect soundtrack to match the peaceful vibe of the little pocket of paradise I’m currently residing in. The five dogs who make their home here are all conked out at different parts of the property, and I can only assume the cat, who I catch just the briefest glimpses of, is in a similar state. Looking out through the palm trees and other tropical foliage, the sky paints an overcast coverage, as if to suggest it too just wants to take it easy for the moment.

    It’s within this current arrangement of my freshly found environment that I have decided to start this blog. For now I simply intended it as a way to organize my thoughts and feelings in relation to my currently undertaken adventure through Costa Rica, but eventually I mean to weave all manner of my mental maneuverings and creative contemplations throughout.

    You see, I really enjoy writing, both in the imaginative, narrative sense and as a way to work through my own inner experiences. And while doing so for my own enjoyment is certainly motivation enough for me, I figure why not share what I write with those that might find it interesting to read. So here I am, during this relaxed, low key moment in Costa Rica, doing just that.

    In a sense, the initial evolutionary stage of this potentially (hopefully) ongoing, long term project was as a journal; effectively me talking to myself so I had some outlet for reliable, consistent communicating. Due to my own mental laziness, my capacity to speak Spanish is borderline non-existent outside the odd needed or common word, despite having spent plenty of time in both Mexico and Guatemala. I enjoy the act and art of communicating, so being in an environment where that is extremely strained by linguistic barriers is certainly something of a challenge. Not just in the practical sense of getting around or simply staying alive, but on an emotional level as well. It can feel very lonely and isolating sometimes not being able to communicate with those around you on even the most basic level.

    Those kinds of feelings tend to follow me around like an unwelcome lifeforce leech even on my own English speaking home turf, so you can bet they get amplified in places like this. Any time I throw myself into situations where communication is a rocky, steeply inclined battle, a part of my mind very loudly interrogates the rest of my mental council on just what the hell we’re doing in a place like that in the first place. In a weird way, it almost kind of hurts not being able to speak. But I suppose embracing uncomfortable challenges and exploring one’s various edges is part of growth and expansion, and perhaps a wiser part of that mental council knows it’s to the benefit of the greater whole that is my being to do these sorts of things.

    By putting oneself into situations where your weak or vulnerable points are out in the open with no option of running or hiding from them gives you an opportunity to really get to know them. To feel a fuller extent of the ways in which they affect you. It’s so much easier to orient one’s life in such a way where you don’t ever truly feel into those challenging or painful parts of yourself, and then there’s never an opportunity to potentially transmute them. Fear remains wherever attention refuses to tread. The mold of mental disorder grows in the darkness of avoidance, and it is only through courageous acts of shining the light of conscious consideration into those neglected zones that wholeness and healing can do their thing.

    Okay, so that’s kind of dramatizing all of this somewhat, but in certain moments those inner challenges can make the self feel pretty damn dramatic. I had some of that flaring up during my journey to the particular paradisaical placement I’m penning this out in. Trying to make my way here using the bus system of Costa Rica lead to a few mistakes in planning, and since I had no way of accurately explaining myself to any of the very non-English speaking locals, I couldn’t ask anyone for help. That more dramatic part of my mind was very much ready to call it quits on this whole travelling endeavor just out of pure frustration with being unable to voice myself in an understandable way, and potentially getting myself stranded out in the middle of nowhere as a result (in the rain no less). Ultimately, thankfully, through the help of a few lovely older ladies that managed to pierce through my Spanishless speech (seriously, thank you forces of the universe for guiding those angels to me), I caught the last bus that lead me to my end goal.

    It was during that bus ride that the initial thought of journal writing evolved into its more expansive expression of blog posting. Thus another challenge was concocted by my mental council: share those things you would have recorded in journal form with the online realm and allow others to engage. I tend to be fairly guarded with my inner experiences, sharing them only with those who have proven to parse my particular puzzles of trustworthiness, and the various story beats as to why that is will be weaved throughout this ongoing narrative. But for now, I’m going to bring this first post to a close. There’s a jungle in my backyard to explore, and I’m itching to check it out. To anyone out there who actually read this, know that you are appreciated and that I hope you have yourself a very nice day.