My van got broken into a couple weeks back.. they kindly broke the small window... and stole my stereo and a bag of pens. The stereo was a 40$ deal I bought at a junkyard, and now it looks like there's even less to steal.

The message to me... time for some silence and contemplation. The universe is so kind ;-)

peace,d

Friday, January 29, 2010

So where have I been. Well after Liz left back to Colorado I headed back out to Yelapa where I stayed for a few days meditating and thinking about my film. I met some great people there who gave me some perspective and took me on a great little trip up river to the waterfall. I brought my camera’s along to shoot some footage but mostly I just sat uninspired. On the second to last day I took a hike back into the jungle and captured some nice footage of old guys carting firewood on donkeys.

There are so many images down here. So much to capture and share, but I’m proceeding slowly and with caution, feeling things out, being careful not to offend.

I found myself stuck in Yelapa by a rough ocean that prevented me from taking a panga back to Puerto Vallarta. I made it out the next day and packed up my stuff and left the city behind heading north to Sayulita. That’s where I am now, chilling in a campsite waiting for a meeting in Guadalajara on Tuesday.

What strikes me most about Sayulita and Puerto Vallarta is how Americanized they are. They are pieces of American influence in Mexico. On many levels it’s a real shame, since they were probably much more beautiful once. However, like always, there’s no black and white and with America have also come jobs, money, and 10$ cheeseburgers. The Americans (and Canadians) just keep on coming, it reminds me of a guy I met way back in Costa Rica who, as we watched a bus of tourists unload, exclaimed Carne Fresca (fresh meat). And if it weren’t for cool little surfer hangouts like this, most of them would probably never come in the first place… whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing, I’m in no place to judge.

peace,
d

pics: yelapa

I feel like I’ve returned to an old hermitage up on a mountain that I left a while back. If it were to be a real place I’d say it’s a small humble quiet shack built with a frame of sturdy beams and a solid rock foundation. But now as I return, I see that while I’ve been out on pilgrimage gathering new tools and firewood, some things have fallen into disrepair, there’s a few nails to hammer back into place, and although the interior beams are still solid, the rest of the structure needs some tender love and care. And there’s only one person who is able to do the work… me.

When I was younger I had a really great teacher who used to tell me that whenever we dream of buildings they represent the self. So that’s where I’m going with this. I have returned to my hermitage on the mountaintop only to realize that there’s a bigger mountain next-door and before I can head out on that next quest this hermitage needs just a little more work.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Not a word… Not this time around. They say silence is golden, so let there be silence… not only around us but also emanating from deep inside our being, outwards into the world.

I was watching today, laying in a hammock, watching people chatter on the beach, me being disconnected, removed, and alone. I’ve been working to reconnect to my own personal silence, away from it all, back outside the circle for the first time in a long time.

Quite a few people have remarked that the past month has already seemed like an entire year. It almost seems as though we’re cramming more and more into each day as things continue to speed up all around us. It’s not that the world is speeding up in terms of economy, job stress, or errands to run… to me it seems like there’s a sense of urgency in the world that is beginning to grab hold.

Studies have been done of why people aren’t reacting to the threat of Global Warming, and it’s been found that human evolution has hinged on our fight or flight instincts. We’ve evolved to react to immediate threats but not to those further down the line. This is the reason why, although the world as we know it may be slowly ending, we all continue with business as usual.

But I feel something. It seems there’s a sense of urgency that IS actually beginning to get through to some people. It seems there is a increasing sense that every action DOES count and EVERY thought or intention may hold the potential for dramatic affects down the line. It’s time for us all to get REAL and do it NOW since how we behave towards one another and most importantly how we treat ourselves likely holds the key to the future.

So how do we get real? I’m reading a book that talks about how everything is exactly where it needs to be. Every action, reaction, pattern, or belief is all an expression of divine perfection. So given this realization, one would think that we don’t have to do anything… AND THAT’S EXACTLY RIGHT!!! But the problem is, we’re all so busy getting in our own way, not to mention the way of everyone around us. Everything IS perfect but our patterns and behaviors (mostly in the form of desire and attachment) can tend to interfere with that perfection. So what do we do?

Let go.

It’s really the only answer. We need to let go of all of our programming and experiential knowledge that’s taught us how the world really is. Because frankly the world IS NOT what we usually tend to think it is. It’s actually so much more. It’s a living breathing flowing magical singularity that doesn’t need us to fix it, set it straight or meddle in any way. What it really needs us to do is have faith, and let go. Not just pretend to let go, but actually let go and fall into the perfection of the flow.

Let go and fall into the perfection of the flow. I like that… I should put it on a t-shirt.

So on this end, things have been difficult, since I'm re-examining the road I've been on, but rather than resist that difficulty I’m making peace with it and accepting it. Letting go of how my ego thought things were supposed to be. Letting go of the program I myself wrote, invested in, and then became attached to.

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” –John Lennon

So in the wake of all this letting go I’ve been struggling a little. The ego keeps resurfacing and grabbing at me. But I think I’ve found a solution. Since my mind and my emotions have been a bit out of whack, I’m working on creating a space of true silence and getting back in the body. The body is easy, since as you push, it grows and becomes stronger. I rented a surfboard and have been sitting in waves trying to regain my balance. And when I haven’t been sitting I’ve been paddling working out my shoulders and strengthening my core. People invite me to have a drink and hang out… but I just read, meditate, and surf. It’s what I need right now before I get back on the road to Guadalajara to my next interview… I’d like to be balance when I meet this man.

The reading is also important for me, since I don’t have all the answers, and never have. At a young age I guess I was lucky to have self-help books all around me… the right book can make all the difference in how we see and approach the world. And why not, why should we as individuals have to recreate epiphanies that are often hard come by… why should we have to lose everything to gain perspective, when others have already gone through those cycles and grown and then written about it. The book I’m reading now, The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is the perfect example of the right book at the right time. Sometimes they come to you by way of other people and sometimes it pays to just get over our egos and go spend some time in the self-help section of bookstores until they jump out at us… or call our name as books often do.

But there’s still always the other option, to trudge along and figure everything out for ourselves… but as far as I’m concerned, why waste a perfectly good lifetime struggling when the answers to many of our questions lay in waiting. They wait in meditation, they wait in friends, and they wait in a few good books.

I guess to sum up, what I’m trying to say is, now is the time to get real, let go, take responsibility and take care of ourselves in the best way we know how, because when the time comes, it’ll serve us well to be ready. It’s not up to US... it’s up to every single one of us… it’s up to me... and it’s up to you.

peace,d

http://www.eatrealeatlocal.ca/

It's nice to see big companies putting their energy behind the fundamental truths of our current predicament. I'm grateful for my pops for sending me this video.



peace,d

So what have I been up to? I've been spending time with Liz talking about the nature of the universe and discussing our personal patterns and processes, while taking in some sunshine, and doing everything we can that is virtually free (which isn't much since this place is a tourist trap). So we spend our days in the market buying fresh produce and fish that comes cheap, and window shopping for all the things we would buy if we actually had money. On a few occasions I've haggled with vendors and talked them down as much as 50% and bought some items, still feeling I've been taken for a ride on the price.

Last week we decided to get out of Puerto Vallarta yet again this time to Yelapa, a small town just down the coast by boat. There is no way to get there by car and the town only got electricity six years ago. So it's pretty much a virgin of high-maintenance tourists and fancy storefronts. The town is a maze of small cobblestone and concrete walkways between buildings built from the land or concrete brought in by boat. Mostly the homes are palapa style open to the ocean breeze and the elements. We rented a small place with two friends who came to visit from Denver and from there we explored, played cards, or just hung out in hammocks.

The pace of Yelapa is completely in line with my view of how reality could be. It's a vision of a world without cars and the speed the technology brings with it. In Yelapa you still see trim healthy boys carting stuff across town with wheel barrows, older men leading donkeys loaded with concrete, women baking bread while their ten year old daughters care for the babies. Back at our palapa we cook in a open air kitchen, have to clean and put everything away for fear of racoons, lizards, and who knows what else.. and then lay in a hammock reading by a sparse arrangement of lights.

This place seems to be a favorite for fire spinning artist poet hermit types from around the world as we met quite a few during our short stay. They have ample people to entertain as the water taxis run all day bringing in Carne Fresca (fresh meat..ie tourists) for day trips.. but all in all it's mostly just free-ky people trying to get some solace from their daily lives back in wherever it is they've come from.

Liz and I are talking about going back for a few days if we can swing it before she leaves.. I'd like to do some actually filming there and maybe even an interview or two about the merits of living without car cares.

peace,d

Been in and out of Puerto Vallarta with Liz over the holidays and haven't had much time to sit down and write. But today is the day that I start the transition process back into work-nomad-mode. It's always hard for me to sit still and just BE in one place but it's also important to balance life on the road with life in general... it's a strange dichotomy and sometimes I feel a bit schizophrenic but that's how it is and that's how it goes.

Last week I spent some quality time with Veronica using a jack to push out her front end; the impact site of our highway horse encounter. Then it was off to the yonke (junk) yard to look for parts. Mexico mechanico processes remind me a lot of life on the Blackfoot Reservation where you make due with what you have, try to avoid new costly parts, and oftentimes fix things in strange but creative/innovative ways.

As I've been fixing V I've been thinking about my encounter with the horse and what it means, if anything. Horse represents power and bay horse is said to represent joy and a lighter approach to life. I've been questioning whether or not I've been to heavy lately and/or if I need to re-examine my relationship with power and how I approach it. There's not too much clarity in this for me since crashing into the ass end of a horse at 60km/hr isn't a sign that you can translate literally... it's more of a... hmm I wonder what that meant... or rather... maybe you should be paying attention right now. Well I am.

Here are some pics of Veronica Post fix-up and the yonke yard :-)

peace,d

The Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline project has received the stamp of approval from a seven-member panel weighing in on the environmental and social impact of the 1,200-kilometre project headed by Imperial Oil Ltd.

"The panel is confident that the project as filed, if built and operated with full implementation of the panel's recommendations, would deliver valuable and lasting overall benefits and avoid significant adverse environmental impacts," the Joint Review Panel said in a statement.

It added the project "would provide the foundation for a durable and sustainable future in the Mackenzie Valley and the Beaufort Delta regions, adding that this future would be a better one than a future without the project."

The Mackenzie pipeline project would ship up to 1.9 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from the edge of the Beaufort Sea down to Alberta and southern markets. It is seen by many in the Northwest Territories as a means of achieving economic independence, but by others as an environmental and cultural threat.

The panel was created in 2001 to streamline regulatory processes around the pipe-line. It launched public hearings in the Northwest Territories on Feb. 14, 2006, with the expectation of submitting a report by mid-2007, but the deadline was extended at least twice as the panel analyzed the findings.

Recently, TransCanada Corp. chief executive Hal Kvisle estimated regulatory delays have added $3 billion to the project's bottom line.

The Mackenzie Valley pipeline was announced in 2000 by a consortium of four oil and gas companies led by Imperial and including aboriginal partners. They have lobbied for federal support of the project since Day 1, boosting efforts after filing the pipeline application with regulators in 2004.

In January, federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced Ottawa would support the pipeline through infrastructure funding and other undisclosed means. However, discussions with the consortium have been at a stalemate for most of this year.