PBTWYDNL

A few days before Christmas I flew from Honolulu to Seoul, South Korea. I found it striking, having been reading about soulful travel, when the stewardess announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to S(e)oul”. With that omen I made a vow to make my time in Korea more soulful than my time in Hawaii was.

Unfortunately I failed.

I should have listened to some of the advice I had recently received – “pass by that which you do not love”.

Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoyed my time in Korea, made a decent bit of money and got to spend quite a bit of time with my sister Jalice and her new boyfriend Thor. Jalice and I had so many great moments, conversations, arguments and laughing fits that the time was well spent, though it could have been invested with a bit more of the divine.

The positive
• I continued my habit of doing a daily tarot reading, using the cards not so much as divination tools but as tools of self discovery. I also did many readings for Jalice and Thor and feel that my understanding of the cards, and myself, is improving.
• I was surrounded by kids, especially Juyoung, and if there is ever a reminder to live in the moment and to enjoy life, it can be found by watching children.
• I went to a Buddhist Temple for a temple stay (thanks Jalice!) and got a sense of the life of a monk. I was amazed by their dedication, their perseverance and their smiles. I left with two convictions – 1. I do not want to be a monk. Although it’s called spiritual practice and there is no better place or way to practice than a monastery, I do not reject the world. I am not trying to be a Buddha or a prophet, but merely to make the world a better place, for others and for myself. 2. I need to create/find/join a sangha, or holy community. To be surrounded by like – minded individuals who are working towards a spiritual life is incredibly helpful. This blog is part of the attempt towards this end. Do you ask yourself some of the same questions that I do? Then lets work together to discover the answers!

The rest –
• I had planned to be in Korea for at least two weeks, and found myself there for 6. The reason? $$$CA$H$MONEY$FUNDAGE$$$ I was able to pick up some classes teaching English for a good salary, and so once again was tempted, and failed. By being seduced by scraps of paper I was caught in a land that sought to heal all the wounds created by horrible war after war by working hand in hand with the American democracy&capitalism agenda. South Korea has wonderfully succeeded at this goal, skyrocketing up into a “first world nation” with an incredibly strong economy. However I feel that they have overshot the mark and never really healed the deep wounds in the psyche and heart of the people, instead they’ve covered them with glittering Band-Aids and distracted the people with all the stuff they could buy. It may be that I have never seen the extent from an outsider’s perspective, but their eagerness to buy things seems to outdo that even of Americans. Its as if they have decided to make up for all the time that they have missed in malls, all the auctions they never had a chance to compete for on eBay, and all the clutter that accompanies it – NOW. I have never been so overwhelmed by commercialism. By the time I left, it was all I could see around me.

So remember –

“pass by that which you do not love”

Reading Rainbow

Cousineau, Phil. The Art of Pilgrimage: A Seekers Guide to Making Travel Sacred
A week before I left on this journey I was walking through Powell’s with a mission – to buy a book for a friend and not spend any more money. (Un)fortunately my eye was caught by the title of this book and I lost the willpower roll. I bought it and am imminently glad that I did.

The Art of Pilgrimage is like many “self help” books, or books to help inspire your creativity. Many of the points, observations and ideas are common knowledge or obvious. If you’re anything like me though, you will agree that having them in print, expounded on, phrased from a slightly different point of view, more encompassing, ordered and just there make them that much more powerful. I feel that (and this is a definite catalyst for this blog) one often doesn’t understand how they feel or think about anything/person until they attempt to put those thoughts or feelings into words.

“all we need do is reimagine the way we travel. If we truly want to know the secret of soulful travel we need to believe that there is something sacred waiting to be discovered in virtually every journey”

“for a journey without challenge has no meaning, one without purpose has no soul”

“pass by that which you do not love”

The five excellent practices of pilgrimages –
practice the arts of attention and listening
practice renewing yourself every day
practice meandering towards the center of every place
practice the ritual of reading sacred texts
practice gratitude and praise – singing

For anyone undertaking any sort of travel I highly recommend this book. It has been my bible along my journey, acting as a touchstone to remind me to practice.

Hawaii

I went to Hawaii to wwoof on a farm (if you don’t know what that is, check out www.wwoof.org) with the intention of connecting more with the earth, learning to farm, getting my hands dirty and working to align my soul with that of the lands. Unfortunately that is not exactly what happened – the farm that I was on was a kava farm that had been fallow for years, and so rather than learning to farm I was mostly tearing up elephant grass by hand, cleaning out the hothouse and using the weedeater to destroy anything in my path. I worked enough to tire myself, had some great conversations with my hosts about Hawaii and had plenty of time to do whatever I chose. Here are a few things I accomplished during that time, some of them enhancing my spiritual mission, others much more earth based, or even hellish –

*I read the book “Little, Big” – faeries do exist! Thank you Ana – Coffee soon?

*Painted and created some gifts for friends

*Watched every season of “the Office”

*hiked, contemplated the ocean, allowed the moon and stars to fill my being

*Read my tarot every day, explored my new deck and was surprised at how many times I pulled the moon

There were two experiences, though, that stand out, and I would like to share.

The first was when we went to Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is one of the volcanoes on the big island of Hawaii and has a unique status in the world – because of its height and the fact that its in the middle of the ocean, the most remote island chain in the world if you believe the locals, it is one of the best observatories in the world. The top is filled with astronomy students and the giant telescopes they operate and treasure. Louie, Mel, Slade and I ventured up there in the truck, and it was epic! Here are the notes that I took atop the mountain -

Serpentine spiralling layers of two colored rockers – as if we were winding our way up a sleeping dragon, the jutting slate color its spine, spiraling up, as a cosmic stairway

To dr seuss landscapes filed with giant anthills – volcano sized with gorgeous rolling plains cloud layer upon cloud layer

Feel the magic of the mountaintop the home of pele I come to thank you goddess for allowing me to arrive at this moment

Like the sun is blowing smoke rings at me, the perfect platinum disk sinking beneath the spirit mountains, ghost of the fallen, Hawaiin valkyries sail past on wings of mist

The tao te ching dragons in the clouds a gold flying away from me and a silver passing by

Cotton candy colored sunset

The other was when I went scuba diving. The dives themselves were great, although not revolutionary. I saw a few octopi (uuuggghhh!), almost touched a manta ray, some nudibranch and a lionfish, but the site that touched me the most was the sunset. It was the first time I saw a sunset from underwater. I don’t have a picture to share with you, but imagine this –

Amber colored lights breaking apart into blues and greens, swirling back and forth, around and into each other. The golden colors tended to wander in the center of my vision, the rays of white light and the darker blues and purples towards the periphery, though at any moment they could choose to abandon their fellows and take a journey of their own. Occasionally pinks and peach colors would join the party, but all of it was transitory, shades and hues being born and dying, ecstatically, as the sun itself died that night. It was one of those moments in which I was truly alive, felt connected to the earth, to the water, to myself and to every living being in the cosmos.