Life Tuition

Reflections from Last Summer’s Six Months of Solo Living Abroad  

There were times of elation, and times of challenge.  Through it all, there was always something to be gained.  

I wish to share with you some of the things I’ve learned on a personal level and also, what travel like this can inspire in anyone.  

Below are Ten Things I’ve Gained from this Journey: 

• Sense of Achievement.  I had achieved my dream and fulfilled my inner guidance for getting to Spain.  When you put your mind to something, take the actions and follow through–no doubt about it–a deeper sense of achievement surfaces, and you are forever-more, marked with this upleveling.  From there, this emboldened achievement filters out into other areas of your life, and even spills over, rippling out to others for their own upleveling.     

• Attainability.  I never thought I’d make it to see the Pacific Northwest.  I never thought I’d visit as many national parks as I did across the United States.  Making it back to Europe after 17 years, for an entire summer seemed like a far-off unattainable dream.  Things I once thought out of reach, were in fact, more attainable than they seemed, and my boyfriend at the time, and I, traversed the entire width and length of the States in a glampervan, and saw more than we ever thought possible.  It is interesting to me the wall or space we humans put up between what our minds see as a fantasy, daydreams, or places or achievements out of reach because maybe we didn’t feel worthy enough, or maybe we let money belief systems navigate our choices.  Whatever the reason, the only thing stopping anyone from realizing these far-away dreams or destinations is the notion of stopping itself– these walls we build.  When we get clear and focus in on what we know our heart is truly desiring, only then can we open up to the divine plan of our life to allow that thing to unfold.  Things are a lot more attainably in our grip than we accept.

• Joy-Level Expansion.  It is quite easy to live life through complacency, and if that serves you and is your thing, then more power to you.  I too can get stuck in my routines of daily work of what I’m accomplishing with my writing, feeding my body, and exercising regimens, that it’s easy to coast within our comfort of what’s easy.  Yet being in Spain and places in Europe, I could feel the difference between the society I came from, focused solely on work, and then living, and the society before me that honors living while also working.  Spain’s siesta time (2pm-5pm), and countless festivals throughout the year are examples of this honoring living.  With that flavor burning in the air, as I strolled along boardwalks filled with people at cafes and restaurants, I marveled at the normalcy of people communing, conversing and sipping their drinks in accord.  What seemed central were relationships, laughter, and the enjoyment of food.  I tapped into this strain and allowed my joy level to expand, letting go of the rigidity of my guilty conditioning telling me that if I’m not working, I’m not living.  Of course, I’m not saying we don’t need to work or earn a living, the point is, the joy level for life should take more priority than many of us are accustomed to letting live.

• Liberating Authenticity.  When you’re in a foreign place and no one knows you, or your past, it allows a certain freedom and incentive to be all of who you are in this particular life walk, as well as more of who you want to be.  It is also similar to how individuals leaving their “home” countries to reside somewhere else where there are certain freedoms aligning with their values, whether religious, or socially, subsist.  This change in atmosphere creates more incentive on freedom and allowance to be one’s self outside the narrative of who you are with your family, friends or social groups.  This existence is beyond whatever preconceived notions people have created about you.  I didn’t have to conform to a certain structure, I could be the fullness of whoever I created myself to be for how I was feeling necessary for life’s present chapter.    

• How to See More.  There are so many things in our surroundings, near and far, that we simply accept and don’t bother to see or appreciate.  We are so geared at looking down at our phones, that we in fact miss so much of what is around us.  Even looking out at a view comes with its own misperceptions and limitations.  Try staring out at a horizon and notice what you observe initially, and how long it actually takes you to absorb all the facets of what is really painted there. Even science confirms, that our capacity for taking in visually and receiving data is a fraction of all that is really there.  You could walk down the same street for years, and suddenly, one day notice the sycamore tree in all its beauty that rests on the corner.  There is so much we can observe.  Colors, textures, highs, lows, patterns in nature, paintings on walls, depth of field…  Traveling and seeing new places for the first time has opened up my senses and allowed my eyes to see more and more of what is all around, and appreciate what I am taking in.

• I know I know nothing.  The biggest aha that hit hardest on my consciousness, is throughout everything I’ve learned and gained throughout my travels being on my own, coupled with self contemplation, is that there is so much beyond me, that I realize I have no conception of just how much I don’t even know.  This awakening hit me with a blow.  To think, how limited we are, how unadvanced we truly are!  My mind recalls Plato’s account of Socrates, as expressing, “For I was conscious that I knew practically nothing.”  I know that I know nothing is the phrase associated to him, and he accepted his wisdom only in that he recognized that he knew nothing, whereas others did not.  So too, is there an importance of recognizing our own ignorance, as well as the inflation of ego and how humans, particularly western society, thinks so superiorly of themselves.  Visit some ancient ruins, or sacred temple sites of advanced civilizations. Their connection with the cosmos was evident, and so was their connection to the deeper part of our beings and our universe, that many leave unexplored.  You will be amazed at the evidence and clues of spiritual technologies they understood that we are only beginning to uncover.  There is always more to know.  

• Confidence.  Setting out solo, and even as a female has its own set of tasks or insecurities.  Anything can happen.  Accidents happen all the time.  Danger exists within the shadows, and uncertainty rests at any corner.  My girlfriend asked me about my next upcoming trip adventure, “…and you’re just fine going by yourself there…?” to which I ecstatically replied, “YES!”  I could feel the libation rising within me as I could already tap in and gather the deep long inhale and exhale, a projection in time, of being on foot in a place completely unknown, and savoring that breath of satisfaction that was a creation of my life.  At least 4 of the countries I had traveled last summer I had been completely on my own, and after putting myself out there, I was so excited to do it again and see what magic I’d be mingling with.  Looking back, despite a few tears here and there, when language barriers meant mean male taxi drivers, or I couldn’t find my way to a place and exhaustion or summer heat stroke had set in, while simultaneously shlepping all of my luggage, I had pulled up my big girl britches and powered through as I could only do.  I gained a confidence I hadn’t yet garnered. It was a confidence earned.

• Appearances Often Lie.  This next one is a life lesson, and although spoon fed throughout my past in baby sized portions, it wasn’t until this point in my life where I was fed the whole serving, and then poised with the decision to digest its nourishment.  The lesson is on how appearances lie.  From the external, the picture can look intriguing, and the momentum of a new person, exciting.  They talk about certain topics that you share a mutual interest or passion in, they touch on certain ways they think the world can be better for all, you have similar food requirements, enjoy the same music, understand things about the universe that most others don’t see, blah blah blah.  Fast forward… Let me tell you:  actions speak louder than words– alas, the old saying.  In the words of the great Maya Angelou, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”  When it comes to love interests, I’ve really had to learn how to better acknowledge and pay attention to the red flags and signs, because they are there and these intuitive hits will let you know a lot about the person at hand– I don’t care how gorgeous you are.  You will know if someone is not right for you if you find that you have to sacrifice a part of yourself, or dim the light of your being in order to suit someone else.  To wrap it up, know when you’ve been handed a gift, yet also, know to heed the signs; it can save some heartbreak and major disappointment.

• Sacrifice.  Another spoonful of hard but necessary medicine to swallow.  I’m sure all of us can relate to being in situations where although it wasn’t the situation or person we’d at all like to be rendezvousing with, we end up following through with something because there’s something they have that we want.  Whether it’s for business or sales, or a romantic interest, this stipend makes it even easier to ignore the voice in the head or the feeling in the gut encouraging you against it.  Over this summer and beyond, I found myself in more than a few situations where golden carrots were dangled.  Being invited on that yacht, or to that island, or those VIP passes, or this chef job opportunity to this dream country or that.  Often, we know our answer before it is even spoken.  I didn’t really like the guy, but––   Other times it can be as simple as going through with something even though we have to lower our own vibration in order to have resonance with this other person or atmosphere.  Ultimately, we are sacrificing something within ourselves, and the body keeps score.  This one will continue to be a practice for me and I have progressed by adding in my own stipulation of voicing boundaries.  Boundaries are always helpful for letting the other person know precisely what your own intentions are and are not!  This way if you still choose to move forward you already have ground-rules laid out.  If in the end the boundaries are breached, you can take the step and bounce.

• Every Choice Has a Cost.  It’s a simple yet difficult law of the universe.  I do this, I get this on the “upside,” and also this on the “downside.”  I choose to live my life in the way I best see fit, there will be others who will not understand and judge me for it.  I get to have my sovereignty traveling on my own, with it comes times of loneliness.  I don’t have a set plan in two months’ time, with it comes insecurity.  The list goes on… Seeing this, understanding it, and accepting it has brought new dimension to my perspective and made me more realistic.  With all of this though, it is still my choice on how I choose to see the world.  I will keep paying my cost.  

The Year of Contrast

When I think back on this year, it was one I can distinctly describe in terms of an elevation of contrast.  Right there on the life stage in front of me I was seeing clearly a depiction of sets of opposites, a play of duality depicted in their striking extremes with perfect form.  Contrast.  It’s actually a word I picked up from Abraham Hicks and wound into my word basket.  It’s that pair of both forces playing out on the life scale.  It’s that difficult force that plays its black or white hand, referred to in our everyday conversational speech as “ya know, like when bad things happen.”  But what I did pick up from Abraham Hicks teaching was that this thing was brought into your experience so that you can come to learn and find out knowing what you don’t want, so that you can learn what you do want.  It can be seen as for our benefit.  Surely, though, it can also be seen as choosing life experience “up-stream.”  Also in their teaching, is that because we are co-creators in our life experience and because the whole world is energy, we draw to us the experiences that we are energetically asking for:  aka…we create our reality and its experiences, aka… I drew learning through hardship into my experience.  

For my personal path it seems I consistently have to remind myself that contrast isn’t bad. Isn’t it interesting how I naturally unwelcome it from my experience?  See post on At One with Crete.

And without further ado . . .

The beginning of my year started off with distinct spectrums.  I’m in a loving relationship moving forward and formulating happy plans for the future.  Months later the relationship ends, I forfeit what was my home and have to come up with a new plan to move forwards to.  A shift in opposite direction.  As I said before, as much as contrast can be verbalized as different spectrums, it can also be classified as extremes or difficulty.  Fast forward, my life was full of possibility and I was in motion on creating the experience that would sustain me as a writer while granting me the dedication to working on my novel series.  The next romantic encounter turned out to be another fail, a tragic, quick split, and because of certain circumstances, quite hard to process.  Little did I know the man I was dealing with had a MAJOR sexually contractable auto immune disease and had been dealt the Addict archetype card.  Top him off with the Scorpio stings.  That kind of experience does something to ya, and it did me.  Gravely.

I made it to Spain.  On my own and in a coworking villa on the Balearic Island of Mallorca.  Bliss.  Personal sovereignty.  Satisfaction like never before experienced.  Stimulation that suited my thriving.  I soon worked on a dream sailboat, sailing the Greek Isles fulfilling a life-long yearning.  In the intimacy department I had some grace with a French lover 8 years younger and even developed affection for him. But ultimately, I had attracted a wrong fit and things with lover divert on another path and we decide to end it.  I go through the pain of it, what I felt as rejection, which fed from years of past trauma relationship (buried within my pain body) of previous “rejections” or “failures” that bubbled up for me.  My heart felt broken and come to find out, this pain came so I could heal some shit, once and for all, and I was projected into a difficult contrast cleansing process.    

But heal I did.  Everyday I cleansed and purifying in the Libyan part of the great Mediterranean Sea, per my received guidance.  I was alchemizing and transmuting layers, depths that bubbled up and surfaced for me– certainly a challenging “contrast” experience.  Yet, also in this time was a positive duality, my hermit mode time, where I created like never before.  I was nonstop on the novel and even finally started a website and the launching of this very blog which I speak through now.  I remember greatly the darkness of this time, amidst the ridiculous luminosity, the days of my magical tiny house in the olive orchard, backed by busty, dry mountains and steps from the whirring sea.  The gifted kittens crawling around and playing at my feet.  Grace.  My Circe days. 

From there I whizzed into another brief relationship which was the antithesis of what I was receiving from the last one.  Where the previous wanted his space and I had seemingly felt pushed away, I had entered into a realm where the new one was in love at first sight, and soon didn’t want me to leave his country, then vowed he would follow or meet me anywhere in the world.  He handed me his ridiculously huge heart on a silver platter.  But I came to find him taken to the extreme.  It was a lot.  Reflecting, I think it too was actually just another step in my healing.  His presence had actually infiltrated my cracked heart opening me to wanting to receive love again.  A quick fast-forward to the next encounter where a beautiful connection was laid out, but then only to be hit with the unfortunate truth that again it was not a right fit.  The summer had strung in and out of impossible romances.

All this to say that contrast is a real thing.  Sometimes we’re floating high in the current of the ups, and at other times we feel pulled down and drowned in the low undertow.  Sometimes we’re swimming in certainty and at other times waves of uncertainty. Without contrasts’ healing medicine we wouldn’t know the difference between accepting what life has coming our way and tapping into the flow of the current guiding our life in the direction pointing to our ultimate fulfillment.  Everything carries its roots from a certain tuition or donation cost.  We just have to radically accept its transformative ability in helping us create the fulfilling lives we intend. 

To close this six-month period, I of course found and understood a deeper part of myself. People are often excited by my travels and the way I live my life.  Others of course do not get it nor accept it– even some of my own family.  But the truth is simply that I am a rare bird who devours life and desires her freedom.  I cannot help it for these are the feathers I bare.  So, although some of you fawn for it, at your core, you really do not.  The illusion is strong but your animal is different.  And by different, I mean unique, in the grandest of terms.  Throughout this journey I have met other beautiful, rare birds, donning their own unique feathers, and following their own current streams as well. Their resonance illuminates my own trails.  

And as always, I leave you with a poem.  I hope it resonates. 
Much love, <3
Cris



Morning’s Breath

  The breath of dawn greets me like a wave 
  and I am 
    still 
 in her silence
  a looming admirer devout 
			to sink into 
	 	   hollow 	spaces of her 
feathered remembrances 

 barely able to speak the semblances 
			of her peaking head
 for her talons grab on to another 
  residing bell tolling 
in the distant peaks 
 singing of another time
	another space
			looming 
 and answering the call 
that breezes back to my doorstep this morning
 as I set out

 again
the dawn
that trickles
 welcomes me into her lungs