Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
I am sitting in a room with two glass walls and a beautiful, lush garden with all the colors of the rainbow in front of me. It is cool and the soft air that blows in through the door is as sweet as the sound of the fountain water and music flooding in with it.
I am in Mexico, for the first time, and loving it more than I knew I would. I admit I knew it would be very special, and at the same time of its difficulties and drawbacks, but I didn’t know what it would be like to see images of Frida Khalo looking at me everywhere I go, and an array of colors that almost rival India in their richness and vibrance. Life is everywhere. It isn’t as tucked-in as it is in my native country, and isn’t in most of the rest of the world.
I find it hard to leave my island home every time. Like leaving Avalon, or our own private Shire. But somehow I cannot avoid being a child of the world, and it draws me back into its open arms every time. It shows me that no matter how harsh the circumstances, or how kind, it is all the same wild and radiant world and there is only more and more of it to love. The heart of the world is my heart, and traveling, both in the inner lands and the outer, stretch it to the point that I can hardly differentiate mine from its own.
Living in one place that you love is almost as special and rare as meeting a true love. And I have found that it becomes the thing I grow around, like a winding vine. Leaving it to far-off lands is like being unwound from everything that has let me become what I am, and gives me nothing to hold onto. And then nothing itself becomes that support, and one lives on a kind of prana or energy that has no bounds. You trade comfort for freedom, and in doing so you find you can have both.
This does not just refer to travel…it refers to how we handle change, and we are right in the midst of so much. Every energy point is like a major curve in a very specific road of destiny. We have put everything on the line, and it is terrifying, and freeing, both at once. We must drink the most subtle nectars of the flowers of hope and beauty if we are to keep our great hearts beating through the changes.
I have found that no matter how my circumstances change, I am not diminished. I may be weathered and even close to feeling rubbed out into the great fabric of all things, but my soul shines bright as any star, in the darkest of nights. On those dark nights only the stars…the tiniest points of light, can bring back faith, but there is no night without them.
This solstice, make a promise to your own heart, to make it the holiest ruler of your life, and to trust that if everything seems to be dissolving at this time, it is because there is something so magical coming into being that your vision is not yet vast enough to imagine its beauty. I am not exagerating…I truly mean every word, and believe wholeheartedly in magic’s complete and predestined return.
I was once given a card which had an anonymous quote on it, “I will never be the same having seen the moon from the other side of the world.” I dreamed of the day I would do so, having never left the country at the time. Having now visited some 20 countries, I would say that the words are more than true, and at the same time it speaks even more deeply of the other side of the world within us, and our view of the inner moon from the other side of transformation.
Trust your process…trust the changes going on in your life…and most of all trust your great, infinite, and unimaginably gorgeous heart. It knows all.
Love, (and flowers of all colors)
Jennifer
