I spent the month of March in Costa Rica. I went for a Holos retreat, then stayed on for another 3 weeks with a few from the group to integrate, bask in the post-retreat energy, nourish the lifelong connections that were sparked that week, and explore more of this magical country together.
What I learned and experienced that month was more transformative than all the internal work I’d done in the past year combined, I’ll share some of that with you in a few posts. Here’s the first.
Poems. Lessons from the past. Letters to my future self and partner. Lists of what gives me energy, and what drains it. Dried flowers from the jungle. Dreams. Desires. Drawings, symbols, visions. Intentions. Releases. These are what pepper the physical journal I carried everywhere with me in the week leading up to retreat and after. My journal writing usually lives in Bear, but I very intentionally entered a new mode of being in those first few days. A being most supportive for receiving something new. For crumbling old and seeding new. I was ready and pushy about it. Like most things, I was driven to get the most out of this trip, these experiences. I was going to do it right. Walks in nature. Meditation. Breathwork. Yoga. Writing. No devices. I will surrender to the experience, my journal read. I will be present and humble and bring my full self, traumas fears walls and all. So that I can meet them and move past them once and for all.
That’s what I’ve been doing these past three years. Finding walls and breaking them down. Finding, crumbling, shedding, rebuilding. I’ve come a long way. I know I have a ways to go. Occasional dark dreams and charged emotional psychedelic experiences remind me I have a ways to go. Have yet to truly meet and move through my shadows as they say.
Partly because I’ve been scared to go that deep. I almost have an awareness of them. Feel them there. Hovering, driving certain emotions like shame and fear that hold me back or steer me in certain directions.
Partly because I haven’t been able to go that deep. Haven’t had an experience that’s forced me to face the shadows. Get up close and personal with them. They say Aya will do that. Ruthlessly, choicelessly will do that. That’s why I’m here. To face the deepest darkness that I know will always linger over my shoulder, keep me hunched like a submissive slave to its desires that don’t serve me or the life I want, until I face them. Because facing them is what lets them go. Looking the darkness in the face, accepting it, then letting it go.
That’s how you move forward on this path.
To healing, enlightenment, self-actualization, realizing full potential, whatever you want to call it. Let the shadows go. The gripping of identities, stories in my head about who I am that I maintain even when it’s painful. Memories from the past with emotions tied to them that got stuck in my psyche and body, tender spots that get triggered and retract when experiencing familiar moments today.
I was ready. Or thought I was. I wanted to be. A year of isolation, self-discovery after self-discovery coming out of that isolation, days and months for space and thinking. I’m an energy and emotional sponge, a year of collective anxiety bled into internal anxiety. A familiar emotion in that time alone. Not a great combination. A swirling cycle of stacked bad combinations. I hit my limit. The universe responded. Brought a friend and the founder of Holos, Ian-Michael Hebert, to reach out to me, check in, invite me to Costa Rica. Then to retreat. Aya had been calling me, but invitations in the past didn’t pan out. This felt so timely and aligned. As if the reason all the others didn’t work was so that this one would.
I said yes with a sigh. A grateful heavy sigh that held the weight of the past year’s effect on me. An effect that grew so steadily and insidiously I didn’t know it myself. All that introspecting only takes you so far. Then you get in this warped awareness that becomes your own version of echoing reality. Takes being with other conscious heart-centered supporters to help you see it then work through it. I think that’s what also pulled me but I didn’t know it then. Being with others, a community of like-mindeds. Was longing for that. To connect and share and grow with others.
I got a one-way flight, arrived at SJO and began the drive to what Ian-Michael calls The Promise Land. A gem pocket of Earth painted with jungle and laced with waterfalls in the southern zone of Costa Rica near Dominical—Diamante Valley.
I spent a week with him on his land before the retreat. It was an important step leading up to it. I felt muscles relax a bit more every day. Waking up to rolling chaotic green, a song of cicadas and waterfalls, and wet warm jungle air. Morning meditations to music that invited my eyes to close and lips to curve, made on a steel drum from another new friend staying there, in his own form of meditation.
We collectively opened and flowed that week. Went about our days separate but together. Aligned and supportive. They helped me find a peace and calm I didn’t realize I’d been so far from. Unwound the coils, melt into the environment and the land and the still spaciousness that wove through it all. Be one with it, begin to mirror it.
We cooked and ate together, cross-legged on cushions around wood, amidst jungle. Food that came from this same jungle, warm on our plates and under our hands as we connected them in gratitude before eating. We shared and opened, about where we were and where we hope to go. I felt held in that space, at home in an odd foreign yet familiar way.
I watched them like an outsider in the beginning, watched a way of living and being that I’ve only seen and felt in dreams. Tranquil, flowing, calm, yet productive. Connected to heart and soul and land and community, growing together yet individually. I began to mirror it and feel into how to cultivate it. Always looking for a life most aligned with my truth, a life that feels good and resonant, I watched them to learn and internalize. To answer my questions, is this what I’m looking for? What would I need to do to feel and live this way? Can I bring this to LA? Do I want to return? Big questions began to gather as my observations did. What do I want from here? Then, I let go of what’s next…and let myself be in it.
It was easy to do here. I was given a chrysocolla necklace from a Tico that means peace in times of transition. I listened to Devi Prayer when laying down to sleep. I was deeply present and receptive. My senses enlivened, my mind emptied. I walked barefoot on hikes, swam naked with waterfalls, climbed rocks, leaped from the ledges, moved body in a way that met and surpassed my limits. To express in the way I most know how, through movement and physical connection to nature. All rooted in the promise to myself—to get what I came here for. To get closer if not right next to my truth. Discover who she is so I could realize how I’ve been hiding from her or not allowing her forth. So that I could leave with that knowledge to make the changes.
I care about feeling good in this life. I care about living a conscious, awake, heart-centered existence that understands we are all connected and I am simply one manifestation of that collective existence. I believe I have my own purpose for being in that existence, and I care about actualizing it. And I think that whatever that looks like, feels good and alive and vibrant. That is what I seek, and life is short so I’ve been impatient about finding it. I’ve spent the past 3 years since my first psychedelic experience inching closer to it. Some days are steps, some leaps, I’m here for a leap.