Spiritual Travel Journey: Pt. I - Death & Unraveling
After I said goodbye to my home in Tulum, I returned to the states for one week to sort, clear and pack up all of my belongings for storage. And to say goodbye to my childhood home, recently sold to another family. On the last night I quickly finished packing my bags for what would become my year of travel across Latin America. I left my childhood home once more, this time, it would be the last.
I flew back to the Yucatan Penninsula and spent one month touring over 15+ Mayan archaelogical sites and cenotes across the states of Yucatan and Campeche. I swam with whale sharks, toured the Ruta Puuc, watched the fall equinox sunrise at Dzibilchaltun, cenote-hopped in Homun, and had the grounds of Dzibanche, Calakmul, Edzna and Santa Rosa Xtampak all to myself. I stood on top of ruins thousands of years old, high above large expanses of the jungle canopy, to witness peace and hear the songs of birds. Wandering through the ruins and jungle sancturaries of long-forgotten civilizations of the Maya. It has already been an amazing first month of my year of travel.
It’s October now and I’m sitting in my apartment in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. I have a two-floor apartment filled with sunlight and overlooks a garden courtyard. It’s a few blocks south from calle real de guadalupe and the main plazas. It’s quite chilly here and I’m huddled near the space heater in the upstairs loft. The vibrancy and warmth of the Yucatan peninsula is behind me and I’m feeling a bit drab. All is quiet and still now. I am missing the warmth, humidity and color of my life in Tulum. The air here is cooler and drier than I’m used to. I feel a sense of retreating, drawing inward. I feel a sense of panic inside wondering what I’m doing here in this cold apartment in Chiapas. Without a home, on the road with everything I need in a duffel and a small suitcase. The states no longer feels like home. The familiarity of the Yucatan is gone. And now I am just here. Living in the present moment, day by day. Oh how exciting and yet terrifying it all is.
As the days pass by, the uncertainty grows and I’m feeling less myself than ever. I’m actually not even sure who I am anymore. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I’m doing. And I don’t know where I’m going. I feel lost. The intensity of the first cycle of my spiritual awakening process has waned, and now all is quiet and empty. It is the culmination of the unraveling of my old identity and life. And now, I feel like I am nothing and no one. I feel like I am dying inside. It’s a feeling of personal death. A process that began since the end of last year. And now, I’m at the final end of the cycle. The final call to let go and lay it all to rest. The moment of death in which all disappears, and all goes quiet. There is nothing to do, other than just be in the blank space.
Winter has come, and I fade into it. I grieve my final death. In my first conscious winter, I learn to accept it, let go, and surrender to nothingness. I contemplate the meaning of this very natural process. Understanding that I unraveled the person I once was, to prepare for re-knitting into the person I am becoming. I die to be re-born, just as nature does every season. That life is a continuous process of knitting, unraveling, and re-knitting. Nothing is ever final and nothing is ever fixed. As soon as something is knit together, it’s time to re-work it. We continuously re-create and refine ourselves as a process of greater perfection in embodiment of life.