At one with the serpent

With the juggle being nature’s most biodiverse region, you have to watch out for snakes. Costa Rica’s deadliest snake is the Terciopelo. If you happen to run into one, it could spell the end of your travels.

The Toricopelo. 

Jungle snakes in general tend to come out at night, and are often found near water, but you never really know where one may be lurking. As such, you’d be wise to watch where you step.

Leon, my good friend whom I was visiting at Mastatal Ranch, warned me about these snakes. He told me it helps him stay present.

I liked that way of thinking about it.

Staying present in the land of snakes is a practical requirement for survival. It also seems like a good metaphor for life, that extends far beyond the scope of the jungle.

Stay present to avoid the snake. 

Staying present, while sounding simple, is in actuality an incredibly difficult task. We spend about half of our day distracted. Studies have borne this out.

This objectively seems like a horrible statistic about ourselves. How are we to make the most of our beings, if half of our waking hours we can’t focus on what’s directly in front of us?

 

Lack of presence is why we get bitten by the snake. 

Raising our awareness and elevating our collective consciousness is something I hear everyone talking about. Yet, I don’t see people practicing it on an individual level. Personally, I don’t see how we can advance without starting individually, from within. 

I don’t pretend to hold the answers, but I’ve found that by going deep within, I’ve been  better able to presence my mind, and thus bring forward my best self.

Cultivating a presence of mind has helped bring me peace and order. It also allows me to carry on through hard times, and not allow chaotic or despairing thoughts to pervade through my psyche.

Meditating, of course, has helped with this. While it is in no way a panacea, it does challenge me to sit for long periods of time, and focus on just my breath. It might sound easy, but it isn’t. It’s one hell of a task.

Nothing exposes me to the chaos of my mind more than sitting still and trying to tame it. But practice stokes patience. And slowly I’ve noticed my brain muscles more capable of focusing on the tasks in front of me for longer periods of time.

Plus, meditation doubly has the effect of slowing me down and getting myself centered in this fast paced, over stimulized world. I’ve found dignity in thought again, by just sitting back and allowing thoughts to come to me as they may. No longer am I distracted by anything that comes my way, nor getting myself lost in portals of digital information.

Like a sensei, I like to think of mediation as my teacher, teaching me how to live, while strengthening my core, inner abilities. And the best part? It can be applied at all times, in all manners of life.

Another way to think about this is mythologically, whereby you are riding on the back of the snake of chaos. The ride slithers and whips around, and can be filled with peril. However, a present mind has the craft to enjoy it, on the edge of life. A riddled mind on the other hand is apt to be fearful and succumb to the spirally depths of chaos.

This myth is born from our coevolution with snakes. We’re biologically hard-wired to jump and run at the sight of a snake. They threaten our existence. Yet, in the civilized world, where snakes don’t concern us, we still find ourselves governed by the same snake-like, threat-circuitry from old.

So then, analogously, it’s appropriate to think of our potential threats in the world, as potential snakes that lie around us.

It’s for that reason that I’ve learned to presence the snake, and to be at one with it. It offers me the chance to cool my limbic systems, and acquaint myself with my fear-activated centers, so that I can carry on in this world with grace, and find the friend in the slithery foe.

It ain’t easy, but then, what worthwhile thing ever is?

It’s presence of mind that brings us vitality and life; vibrancy and sunlight.

You can inspect it with veracity, and discover its boundless flow.

And above all, you can love and value the life that endures through it all.

 

JS

 

The bamboo hut I stayed in, all alone, me and my mind.

 

The Thief & The Chief (Part 3)

The Thief & The Chief (Part 1)

The Thief & The Chief (Part 2)

The sun was scorching and the asphalt painfully reflected it. My prior sense of elevation was firmly gone as a few of those worst scenario thoughts cropped up.

If I can’t find this bus: Where will I stay, where will I go, what will I do? 

I watered them down with cool thoughts and pleasant music, and decided to go back to the one place that looked like it may have promise — a cafe I had passed about 20 minutes prior.

Luckily, my intuition was right. Upon entering the cafe there was a man, about twice my size, speaking English to a couple women he was with. He had long, salt and pepper hair and looked like he knew the place well.

I wasted no time.

“Hey you speak English!” I interjected. “I need some help.”

“Yeah” he laughed, “What’s up?”

“I’m trying to get to Mastatal? Have you heard of it?”

“Oh yeah yeah — it’s just around the corner. I can show you. It doesn’t leave till 3 though” he said looking at the clock, “so you got a couple hours.”

Wow, I thought, feeling thoroughly relieved. That was easy. 

Then we got to talking. He told me about the cycles of the moon and the orbit of the planet. I suppose it was his way of talking about the weather.

“The Cosmos series man… Neil DeGrasse Tyson… It’s all so fascinating. We’re watching it all the time out here, I gotta show people you know, you wouldn’t believe the kinda things people believe out here.”

I laughed. “Oh I believe it,” I said. “Science has trouble getting the word out.”

He laughed and stuck out his hand, “What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Josh”, I replied, shaking his hand.

“Oh, great name! Want to see it in [some indecipherable native language] ?”

He then rolled up his sleeve and showed me his inscribed ink on his tricep.

“Wait, your name’s Josh too?” I said, putting two and two together.

“Yep, Joshua!” he exclaimed proudly. “You know what Joshua means in the Bible right?”

“Well, I’ve heard conflicting accounts.” I replied, somewhat sheepishly, “what do you got for me?”

“Joshua” he said with triumph, “Is the one that booms and bellows at The Man! Refusing to succumb to the wills of a tyrant!”

I smiled. “Huh, I think it fits — I’ll stick with it!” I said, raising a fist in good spirit.

“It’s powerful” he grinned.

He told me a bit about himself. He grew up in Oregon, and came out to Costa Rica 14 years ago, to get a fresh start. Now he owns a large farm and runs a business that works with the land and its inhabitants to better the conditions and build sustainable, regenerative structures — permaculture, essentially.

He’s been to Ojai (my hometown) too — which is always a surprise to me. And he also plans on making a run for Oregon’s governor chair in the perhaps not-so-distant future — or so he claims.

He said that since I’m out here, I should stop by his farm; they were going to be hosting a group event, and I would be more than welcome to join.

I told him sadly that I couldn’t. My destination points had already been screwed in pretty tightly.

“Where are you off to next?” he then asked.

“Well — after Mastatal, I’m off to an event… in Puriscal actually (the region we were currently in), and then I’m off to this festival called Envision.”

“What’s the name of the Puriscal farm?” he queried.

“Oh, I’m not sure.” I said, pausing to think about it. “I just know the event is called NuSeed.”

“Yep! That’s my farm! I thought you might be joining us!”

“Whoa no way?!” I said, taken aback. “What are the chances?”

“Yep!” he proclaimed. “And then we’re all off to Envision too, it’s going to be fun, glad you’ll be with us for the ride!”

Wow, I thought. 

The entire thing was absurd. Here I was, just moments earlier, lost and out of breath, recovering from yesterday’s theft, unsure of my path, only for it to lead here — to a man that shared my name, held my answers, and owned the farm of which spurred me  coming out here in the first place.

Yeah, it’s a small, strange world. 

“Here, I’ll show you the bus stop!” he exclaimed, before I could fully take in the moment.

He then rushed me off around the corner. While we were walking he told me about his farm.

“It’s far off the grid” he said, “no wifi, so come prepared!”.

I told him I would, and that I had been looking to get offline anyway.

He then proceeded to tell me how out of control its gotten with some of his visitor’s and their internet addiction. Apparently, some have spent days of their time going back and forth between the farm and the town just to update their statuses and check themselves in online. The addiction levels had reached all time highs recently, he said.

“Yeah, I know the problem well” I responded. “It affected our elections too. All those propaganda bots”.

“Yeah…” He blew out a sigh. “Donald Trump…” he paused for a second or two and looked over at me. “You know, I don’t cry very often, but these past few weeks man, I’ve felt it. Even all the way out here… It’s heavy, you know?”

I did.

But then he lit up, placing his purple aviator shades over his eyes. “You know though, I’ve been preachin’ Revolution for 25 years brother! It’s time for the people to wake up! It’s now or never man!”

I laughed, feeling like that would be something I would say.

“It’s gotta be parallel infrastructures”, he said. “That’s the only way we’re going to do it.”

Parallel infrastructures?

I had never heard such a term used before in that context — and so naturally I was curious. It’s rare that I hear someone preach revolution and actually seem to have a plan as to how we do it.

There’s that ever elusive ideal: Revolutionizing our systems, without having a bloody revolution on the ground… perhaps we can find a way?

But then, just as I was about to ask him…

“That’s your bus there!” he shouted, over the noise of the street. “You’ll want to get on it a little early, it can fill up.”

And then, before I could mutter another word, “Alright Josh” he said, turning to me “I gotta run, but I’ll see you next week!”

We shook hands, and I thanked him again. I guess parallel infrastructures was going to have to wait.

As for now, I was finally on my way to Mastatal.

What had began with a thief, had concluded with a chief, and my adventure had just begun.

JS

“…But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out…” —

The Beatles; Revolution 

The Thief & The Chief (Part 2)

Continuation of: The Thief & The Chief (Part 1)

I arose that next morning with every intention to leave San Jose. The hustle and bustle, the smog and the theft, had left me with bitter resentment toward the city. It should be much better in the countryside, I thought.

 

I packed up my stuff and quickly left. I set out for Mastatal, a small village up in the jungly mountains on the Western side. My good friend — I call him my soul bro — is interning there for the year, and from everything I had see thus far, it seemed like a magical place to be.

I taxied to the bus stop and prepped for a long day of travel. The local transit system, especially in third world countries, is far from smooth sailing. All things considered, Costa Rica’s buses weren’t too bad. And at least the city was paved.

I went straight for the back of the bus. The back offers the most relaxing travel, mostly because you aren’t subject to the absolute chaos of the roads. Not to mention cliffs.

As I sat waiting for the bus to take off, I thought about my tribulations thus far. I had little cash on me, no means to withdraw from an ATM, and very little clothes too. Naively I had thought I could purchase clothes on the cheap right away, like I had in SE Asia. Of course, I was wrong, once again.

I was beating myself up. Few things get to me more than lapsing on the same damn mistakes twice. I tried to be grateful — I was wholly intact, and as a traveler that’s about all that matters. Well that, and having a solid head on your shoulders. 

Once the bus got rolling, I took in the developing city and came to appreciate it a little more. I felt empathetic to those before me, to those that had to live in such conditions and endure this kind of environment. I don’t envy them and admire their will to live. I also enjoyed seeing some of the graffiti art that had emerged because of it. A fair amount of intricate designs were around, and I could tell that some good life had emerged from here.

After exiting the city, we hit a long stretch of road, and I turned my attention to the book I had in hand. (For the record: you should always have a book when traveling.)

For me, I returned to my philosophical roots, and brought along an anthology of Friedrich Nietzsche’s work. It remarkably helped to contextualize my life. It felt as if it were expressly written to me, commenting on my recent trifles and affairs. The Gay Science was the specific book I was reading at the time, and it made for some timely, lesson-filled reading — the best sort.

But as the bus began whipping around the mountainsides, I was had to put my reading eyes to rest. I peered out at the jungly landscape that surrounded me and tapped into a more internal mode of being. The beauty was sweeping, but I could feel still residual anger in me that was only bogging me down. I wished to transform it into a state of positivity.

So, meditate, I told myself. Meditate on anger; on its utility, on its presence.

“Anger makes us blind” says the Dalai Lama. And blindness causes us to lose our way.

So, as such, I engaged in a wide-eyed meditation. It’s an off shoot from the more common closed eye approach, but just as effective.

A few minutes past, and then I felt something hit my shorts. It was a McDonald’s french fry, blotched with ketchup. The lady sitting next me, and her husband, had boarded the bus with a large bag full of McDonalds, and weren’t exactly being tidy about it.

She apologized, and I could tell she felt bad. I smiled and told her it was ok. The Gods must have been smiting me I figured.

 

I then tried again. I took a deep breath and dropped into a trance-like, meditative state. The minutes began to pass by and then, with a sense of elevation, I could feel the cool washing away of my negative emotions while it transposed itself into a serene state of tranquility.

While not entirely uncommon while meditating, it was rare that I felt quite so high from the practice. My eyes, being fully open, added another layer to the exotic feeling.

The goal of meditation, insofar as I can tell, is to quiet the mind. For me, I find that it helps me regulate my emotive states as well as grants me firmer control of my temperament. It demands my time and attention, and as such, is not easy. In fact, it requires much practice and patience, much presence and poise. But in time it lends way to dispassionate power and mind over matter.

I would encourage everyone to give it a try. Or, that is, to try not to try. There’s a great book by that title, — Trying Not To Try — on meditation, that helped me get into the practice and understand the paradoxical nature of it. It’s by Edward Slingerland, and I’d recommend it to those that are interested.

Metaphorically, I think of us as possessing internal hydraulic systems, whereby we have fire hydrants within us that are there to put out the fire when it arrives. Part of our evolution has been the mastery of fire. It bears upon us to ensure we don’t lose sight it. We need to control our fire — the fire. When we do so, voila — we can play with fire a bit;  put on a show and whatnot.

But when we’re not careful — well, then we may be fired. And we’re seeing what happens when that happens. 

So then, proper maintenance of our hydrants is key, for with a bit of care, we can work to ensure our inhabitants don’t go down in ablaze of fire. Wild fires of fear and loathing are sparked daily, and it’s our job not be implicated by them, and to help those fires cool down where we can. So power up those hydraulics and sit with the meditative practice.

As to how that relates here, all can say is that by my meditating I felt wholesale newer. Regenerated. I had achieved and retained a higher spiritual order of self and did so for the continued duration of the lengthy bus ride. I would observe my thoughts with exaltation, totally detached from them, from afar, and watch as they would rise and fall, and exit and enter.

To some extent, this experience is why I travel. To observe and understand. To interact and explore. To feel exquisite and alone, while yet feeling at one with the greater whole. It’s all there.

Abstracting from particulars. Swirling amongst and amidst the throes of chaos, while  maintaining order from within. Finding love and compassion that endures through all.

Perhaps most notably too — traveling allows me to establish a deep trust in humanity, as I am forced to rely on others when in need, just as they are with me. It’s part of that comfort with the unknown that I oft talk about.

And, it’s a marvel really what crops up while traveling. It’s never what I expect, yet wholly better than what I thought it would be. My good friend puts it best, “Why set expectations, when they continually are exceeded anyway?” To which all I can say is touché.

With such a diverse and wonderful array of thoughts, why would I want to travel any other way? It offers me the spirit of life, and many an art to transpose.

Again though, the ups really do come with the downs. And here, as the bus came to an abrupt halt, I disembarked and discovered I hadn’t a clue where I was. The instructions that had been given to me didn’t seem to match up, and the locals hadn’t a clue what I was talking about with my nonexistent point of reference I had on hand. My lack of Spanish wasn’t helping either, as I felt like I was half the man I wasn’t.

I was, once again, utterly lost.

So I did the only thing I could do: I strapped on my backpack and took to the town square, on a mission in the unknown.

The Thief & The Chief (Part 1)

Whenever I embark on a new journey, I feel like I’m on top of the world. Flying high up in the sky, looking out at the curvature of the earth has that effect.

In addition, I find that there are few things more distinctly new than the attendance of a place unknown. A sense of novelty follows from it and helps keep things fresh and new in your life.

The nature of the unknown means you don’t know what is coming. You get the good with the bad, the bad with the good. It’s that volatility  — traveling without a plan — that lends way to many a variant and an unmatched experiential potency.

For me this is what keeps it so exciting. Maintaining freedom and surrendering control are part and parcel of traveling and exploring. Because really, is it considered exploring — if you already know where you’re going and what is to come?

Suspending those expectations and giving way to the unknown goes a long way.

The implications of this though can sometimes make for wild transgressions as well place you in less than ideal situations. However, as it is in life, it’s rare you get to enjoy all of the benefits without bearing at least some of the costs. So embrace the uncertainty, and travel abundantly, both solo and with companions, and lean into that unknown with some vigor and enthusiasm.

And then be prepared for the times that it backfires, as it did for me here. The start of my Costa Rican travels could not have been much worse — ok well, I suppose they could have, as anything can always be a whole lot worse — but still, all things considered, my travels got off to a pretty turbulent start.

So here I’ll tell the story of my opening travails in Costa Rica (& it’s incredible conclusion in the third part of the entry) while leaving you with this: The second you get too comfortable, and believe you are secure in your surroundings, is the same second you become the most vulnerable to potential attacks. This is especially true on the road. That’s why it can be good to remind yourself that danger (in some form or another) may  lurk around every corner. Cover your tracks, and you are less likely to succumb to the allure of  rainbows and unicorns or the Witch of Hansel and Gretel.

**

The Thief

It marked my first night in Costa Rica.

I had spent it out with some travelers in the metropolis of San Jose, returning to my hostel a bit buzzed and planning on continuing the good night with newly formed international friends.

When I arrived back to the hostel though, I was bombarded with text messages informing me from friends and family that my credit cards had been compromised.

I couldn’t believe it. I had been sure to lock my wallet in my locker before going out. When I went up to check though, I found that — while my wallet was sure enough there — it was missing my credit cards as well as $200 dollars. That clever thief… I thought. 

I tried to rack my mind as to how and when it could have happened. I concluded it was nuts…

I had been writing at the corner desk hostel, and had left my wallet out in plain sight. This thief must have been cooly watching me, waiting for their moment to pounce, and got it when I had gotten up briefly to grab some nuts from upstairs. I had gotten too comfortable…

. 

They then took the credit cards and most the cash and left the wallet there, hoping I wouldn’t notice anytime soon. They we’re right…

I was in disbelief. I then sat down at a nearby couch and took out my phone to assess my bank account and the damage done.

Nearly $1,000 dollars had been spent, it read. I scrolled to see what it was spent on.

KFC … $200. 

It took awhile to fully process  … $200 bucks…  at a Kentucky Fried Chicken… in the middle of Costa Rica. Seriously? 

First of all what a chicken this thief was — because they stole, which is an act of a chicken — a coward! And second because you are what you eat, and this thief just managed to eat $200 dollars worth of fried chicken so, I rest my case.

I then tried to envision just how preposterous an order it must have been. The poor KFC cashier faced by such gargantuan an order, the beleaguered kitchen, the line frenzy that must have formed in its wake, etc…

Then I sat there wanting to believe the money was spent on the maximum amount of people. Perhaps feeding the whole family — or the entire block even, given the sheer magnitude of the order.

But then I realized that in good faith I could never wish for that. For to wish that, I would have to acknowledge that I’d be wishing rancid oil-caked, quite possibly antibiotic-fed, most definitely caged, KFC trademarked chicken on the people. And never in the most treacherous of dreams would I want to do such a thing. Just imagining their stomachs raving as the fullness of KFC’s carcinogenic potential was once again realized, proliferating and wrecking joyful havoc on the biochemical states of the poor unassuming block-party bodies was just altogether too horrid a thought.

So if I can’t even wish for that, I thought fecklessly, I hope this bloody miscreant then scarfed it all down, all $200 of it — that’ll bloody well show ‘em why gluttony is so deadly a sin. 

Of course, after a series of thoughts like this,  I realized that such psychological menace was doing me more harm than good and was getting me nowhere fast.

I tried to counteract it and with some good thoughts — but it was difficult. I was staring at a purchase of over $600 dollars from a nearby mall now, where this damn thief had apparently gone on quite a shopping spree.

My entire Costa Rican experience had been hereby compromised. Everything I had seen had been tainted, and San Jose, with its litany of fast food restaurants and overstuffed mauls, gave me nothing but disdain for the place.

Did all of our American crap have to have spill over here?  Is this really a necessary part of our progress? By the looks of it, consumerist fast-food America had devoured this Costa Rican land faster than Joey Chestnut consumes his hot-dogs, or this thief downs their chicken. Further thoughts of grease-filled horror filled my psyche.

Figuring then, that there was no sense of me persisting in such dreadful a state, and decided I’d do best to call it a night.

I quietly crawled into bed, closed my little surrounding bed curtains and tucked myself into my equally small bunk bed, saying not a word to anyone — not wanting to burden anyone with such trifles nor arouse any unneeded sympathy.

Thus, I concluded the night feeling a mere speck the size as what I had when I boarded that flight out, high and mighty.

Well — Yin & Yang, I told myself, while falling swiftly asleep.

Yin & Yang.