Zen actually refers to nothing or the void.

People often ask me why it is that someone who is more advanced on their spiritual path has less problems or none at all. The answer is a zen answer.

You see, everyone has problems. Even those who are so advanced that they are masters. The difference isn’t in the problem (or lack of), but rather in the way the problem is dealt with.

Someone more advanced on their path tends to see things from the zen perspective, of nothing. They see that, although the problem is real in their experience and even though they need to handle it, they realize that from their Source’s perspective there is no problem. They also realize that when their Source looks down upon them, they may see that the person is experiencing a problem or a challenge, but the solution is given as well.

Therefore, a more advanced spiritual person doesn’t worry. They know that they are in the hands of their Source Energy, so they see the problem from a zen perspective: as no real problem at all. If there is something to handle or resolve, they know the solution has already been given.

Become zen with your life: decide that your problems aren’t real, so they don’t really affect you or your life. After all, how could they? Your Source provides the solution, when you allow it to come, making the problem innocuous.

In this zen light, life is wonderful because your life can then be about enjoying yourself and your experience. Worry-free.

~~~ This articles is actually taken from Kalyn’s new Flowing Towards Joy & Love newsletter for women. If you are a woman and would like to subscribe to receive this uplifting & insightfulnew newsletter, please visit http://golden-flow-system.com/joynews

One of my central focuses is on connecting with my being.

Doing, doing, doing can drive you crazy and it is a great way to drain yourself. Of course, life gets busy and it can feel as though life is encouraging us to do, do, do.

What it really comes down to is our priorities. A deeply spiritual person or master knows their priorities well. So, I am making time to be with myself daily.

I consider knowing your priorities to be imperative.  Call it a key to enlightenment, if you will.

Love & Light,

Kalyn

“If you enjoy your day and your experience, you are in your Golden Flow. You are more connected to your authenticity and your Source Energy. When you do not enjoy then you (and your Source Energy) are guiding you away from what you are not. In your Golden Flow you may not enjoy all of your life, but as you let it flow, you love your life. So, follow what brings you joy and flow your life to find yourself loving your life.”

The Oracle

Judgments are based in the belief that something is wrong or off, which is outside of our Source’s Golden Flow(TM). Today do your best to come from a basic belief of love. Decide that your life has love in it from your Source and that your life is as it should be. Embrace your life, even what you may deem “wrong”, “off”, etc.

Replacing judgments with love will put you in your Golden Flow(TM).

Have a Golden Day!

Love & Light,
Kalyn

Learn more about the Golden Flow System at www.golden-flow-system.com

See things as they are~

As you progress on a spiritual path you realize a few universal principals:

Blame only dis-empowers you and blocks the life of your dreams.

The past is an illusion and only weighs upon you.

If you are not being loving with others or in your life, you are not being loving with yourself.

Everything and anything you desire or prefer is in your love. When you experience love, you experience the universe. When you experience a lack of love, your world becomes very small.

~~~~~

Kalyn B Raphael, co-owner of The Golden Flow(TM) System of accelerated growth & enlightenment, Spiritual Life Coach & author (www.golden-flow-system.com & www.kalynraphael.com)

Today has been a fabulous day. The weather is wonderful and warm here in San Miguel de Allende. Plants have officially sprung, which has been wondrous since I’m accustomed to late springs in our high desert. There had been some trees on the property we are staying at that had lost their leaves for the winter and now they are being painted by nature. Cherry blossoms are already almost gone too! I think the jacarandas are the only blooms we won’t see because it seems that a frost got them first. It’s too bad, we were really looking forward to lavendar trees again.

My poor Charlie (my small dog) is recovering well now.  Still missing an eye, of course… Two surgeries later he still has a whole in his abdomen where I think he could have used another stitch! I’ll have my dad look at it tomorrow. But, Charlie is eating, drinking using nature’s facilities and is walking around.  He looks better and he is not leaking blood, the way he had been. His spirits are higher and he tends
to watch everywhere I go.  He knows that I stayed and protected him when he was attacked by the rot wiler several years ago and I think he knows that we came home to Santa Fe for him. Now that we’ve had him with us for a week, minus the two days he was in the hospital here for surgery #2, he is getting more comfortable. He has taken comfort in realizing that he is traveling with us.

Charlie even went with us to Jalisco. We had met some friends in December and have become very good friends. She is American & he is Mexican, which is fun because I can speak to him in Spanish and ask
him questions, like how do you say zebra in Spanish? Of course, she is great because I love having cool girlfriends. We went to his family’s ranch and stopped by and visited a tequila factory on our way. He is partnering up with the owner to create a new tequila, so the owner set a tour up for us. It was great having a private tour and learning more about the tequila-making process. The samples were just
fine too!

Sunday he is having a party, that is supposed to be a surprise but she knows, for her birthday, which we are looking forward to. We are attending a lecture on Tuesday by a Mayan Mystic named Ac Tah about
2012, who we met him last Monday. I spoke with him and liked him and his energy, so it will be good to see him again.

We have less than a week here before we start to head out for California. It has been a magical and transformational trip with many gifts. I’m grateful and enjoying our last few days.

I have always loved the idea of the Valentine’s Day holiday. Growing up it was a time of hearts, candy and Valentine cards for everyone in school. Even in High School Valentine-grams were sold as a fund raiser by some school groups. The idea: send a card and heart-shaped sucker to all your friends, your sweetie too, if you like.

As an adult, however, the function and the experience of Valentine’s Day is completely different. Valentine’s Day becomes a measure of your success at romantic love. It is a great reminder that you couldn’t get a date one day out of the year. It is a great judge of whether your company is romantic enough and whether they treat you like you are something special. Or not. It is a ruler with which to measure how much love you receive in the shapes of chocolates, roses, diamonds…. After all, if you didn’t receive a diamond, it’s not true love.

This was, at least, traditionally true. Thank goodness things seem to be changing. Now, for those of us on a spiritual path we see this holiday in a whole other light. Because we know that everything is about energy and about shifting our energy in the direction we prefer, we know that no day can measure our romantic love. We know that feelings of not being loved enough or not being romanced properly are actually only a reflection of our energy, our own love. For most of my adult life Valentine’s Day has been a celebration of love. The love you have inside, not the love that someone may give you.

As a celebration of love, I have traditionally participated and held Valentine group dinners, a chance to gather with friends, lovers, family, all. Everyone I love. Sure, receiving a rose is touching and appreciated, but sharing love and joy with many people is a far greater celebration. It becomes more festive, more energized and more grandiose.

Just ask everyone at the Jardin here in San Migule de Allende. I don’t know if all of Mexico is like this or not, but yesterday I was egged upon entering the plaza. To our great surprise the whole town seemed to be out celebrating with music, confetti-filled colored eggs, paper flowers and paper puppet clowns. Everyone was downtown: lovers, families, children and friends. Kids of all ages ran around breaking the eggs on one another, on strangers (like me!), laughing and having a great time. People sat before a concert in front of the cathedral. Families sat on a bench eating fresh corn. Everyone seemed to have received a balloon, clown or paper flower. Everyone was laughing and celebrating. Now that is what Valentine’s Day is really all about when you are on a spiritual path: it is about celebrating Love and Life, with all.

Love & Light, Kalyn

~~~

Kristopher & Kalyn Raphael, or K2, have been spiritual life coaches for ten years. They work directly with people taking them on journeys, cruises, leading classes on the internet and coaching groups. They are both published authors and are the founders of The Golden Flow(TM)system of accelerated enlightenment and The Toltec Mystery School. Follow Kalyn’s blog by subscribing at KalynRaphael.com/blog

(short story about crossroads & probabilites)

She looked at him sadly. He had saved her, in his own way by proposing marriage, allowing her to stay in the country and have a place to belong, which she’d never truly had.

He looked up at her, with a deepness that hurt. She had saved him, in her own way, by bringing a special love he had never known into his life.

And yet now, when she looked at him all she saw were the deep gashes left behind by a tiger that had shred him apart. Or was she the one who had been shredded up? She couldn’t tell. Her heart was so heavy and felt each of those gashes so deeply that she couldn’t see the physical state of either of them, but the pain… the pain she felt ran through every valley and crevice of those deep wounds.

She focused on him, forcing her eyes to see what was right before her instead of pain. He was blank, numb and only half alive. He processed the scene slowly because it cost him so much just to stay present in his experience. He couldn’t take the pain and the truth of what their lives had become anymore.

The years passed. Nothing changed, yet everything was lost. They had worked through their destructive fighting and had found a way to stay out of each others way. They had found a way not to rip each other up, making the reoccurring arguments half as intense. He thought this meant that things had smoothed out. As he walked down the alley a man sitting up against a dumpster caught his eye. Then he saw the needle on the ground.

Like a flash of lighting recognition struck him. Looking at this heroine addict strung out, he saw himself sitting there. He recognized the numb look on his face that came from checking out. He recognized the betrayal to himself of his addiction to her approval. He recognized the punished feeling bestowed upon him by a cruel god who would allow such misery, shame and humiliation. For the first time in a long time he felt the pain of knowing that he had brought this on himself by allowing himself to become addicted to this dysfunctional love. He had left his easy-going, joyful and creative self behind. Far behind.

It was too late to look back, he thought to himself. Looking at the drug addict he now recognized the same desire to have a quick death instead of drawing out this hell he called life.

Death? Death? The thought shook him. It brought him back to the room where she was yelling at him, again, saying that he never listens to her. This had to be an exaggerated daydream, he said to himself with hope. Just because we fight it can’t lead me to praying for my own death- his thought was interrupted by her escalating anger. She was beginning to hit the pillows. She is not a violent person, and yet she’s going from screaming to physically expressing her anger again. I’m not a drug addict, but I’m getting numb again. Is this really what I want for my life? Is this who I want to be?

Suddenly she stopped, frozen, as if a ghost had walked in the room. It was as though he had been possessed because his glossed-over eyes recovered their color. His limp body stood up straight and looked larger. And, he looked straight at her. Was he going to begin disparaging her and calling her names? No. He was calm, rather calm.

He spoke “For the first time in a long time,” he began, “I can see that we are not coming from love. We are not taking love into account. We haven’t had love present in ourselves or in our marriage for more time than I care to recall.

“For the first time in my life, I want to do something for myself out of love. I want to do something for you out of love. We tried saving each other, thinking it was loving, but we hadn’t saved ourselves. We began fighting to be loved by the other without loving ourselves or the other. We began fighting more and more. We have both left our beautiful, joyous and divine selves behind in those fights. In those moments when we chose to demand that we be loved instead of being loving.

For a moment his voice quieted with the wave of sadness that his own words brought to him. For a moment he looked down, wondering what he would say now, wondering what he needed to do.

He raised his head and looked in her eyes again. “I now choose love. We have been fighting for so long that I feel as though that is the only way we know to relate. Even when we try to change things we can’t seem to. It feels the way it did the other day when we drove through the mud and got stuck. The more I tried to drive on through, the more the wheels would spin and the more stuck we became. We couldn’t change the fact that we were stuck and we had to get towed to another road without mud. We need to have lives without mud.

“It is time to get out of the stuck car.” He spoke with sadness and yet, a sense of relief came over him that he was doing the loving thing.

“I know. My heart is so heavy and I love you so much,” she replied, “but I feel like all there is between us is pain and hurt. That is not who I am. I can’t imagine not being with you, and the thought of it hurts. But you are right. We have not had love in our hearts for some time. We have only had anger at not feeling loved by the other. I choose love too. I choose another road in which I am the free spirit I used to feel inside my happy heart.”

The years passed. He came out of a bar after meeting a client on a business trip. To his right he noticed an empty alley. His spirits were high because he enjoyed his work and was finding a new friend in the client. Finding new friends was nothing new to this jovial man. Life was good. On his left something caught his eye. A young man stopped at a red light on his motorcycle with a beautiful young lady holding on behind him. The couple looked like they were having a wonderful time, and he recognized that feeling, that love.

Then he was struck. He had to squeeze his eyes and lean his head forward again to be certain. Was that the drug addict he had seen in that daydream all those years ago? No. It couldn’t be, could it?

That reminded him, he had received an email from his ex-wife. It was great that they had been able to develop a friendship after everything. He would reply to her message and tell her that he was doing very well. Life is good, he thought. And I’m in love. He headed down the street to meet his dinner date, the love of his life.

Looking Back

So, today, on the day of the anniversary of my birth, I had gratitude. I talked with a friend and business partner who I’d been trying to catch on the phone for a couple weeks and who caught me during the only five minutes I was online all week, and I was grateful. I hugged my husband and my daughter and told my dad and his wife how grateful I am to be here traveling with them all. I bought a small gift for some girlfriends who I will see in a few weeks and I was grateful to have fun doing so. I loved my last morning in Mérida, where we had breakfast and then walked downtown. We found a new church whose energy was refreshing and revitalizing, and I prayed about my gratitude.

Now on the plane I am thinking about the many gifts and the whispered secrets life has generously given me; I think about the pelican, about the magical places I’ve seen, the new adventures that will come to me because of this trip and I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I know.

I’m grateful to be in my Golden Flow™ and to know that gratitude will keep me soaring in the wind and in my life. I know who I am, the person who allows and flows with life. I know what I want my life to be like and I know how to get there. And I know that my flow and my knowingness will continue to expand and unfold, brining me greater adventures, dreams and experiences in my life.

That is what knowingness can be like in the flow state.

I Know

Kris & I just recorded a video on don Miguel Ruiz’s Fith Agreement, so I thought I’d share more about one of the gifts that this agreement holds for me.

As old students of don Miguel’s, Kris and I used to hear him tell us all “don’t believe me, don’t believe anyone else and don’t believe your self”.  There are many aspects to this agreement, but don Miguel primarily meant that we shouldn’t hold beliefs because they can be limiting.

One significant point about beliefs for me is that they are not the same as something we know. In other words, we need to distinguish between what we believe and what we know.

When we know something, it isn’t a matter of information it is a matter of experience.

Knowing something does not come from the process of our mental bodies, or our minds, taking in information or even observing something, the way beliefs do. Knowingness instead comes from our experience. That encounter can come from within, like a meditation, or without, an experience. For example, people can describe freezing weather and water that freezes, turns white and comes down slowly, or snow. Even if you haven’t experienced snow you can still understand the idea of it and appreciate pictures of snow. You may even think that you’d like to make a snow man.

On the other hand, going and being in the cold, seeing the sights of the falling snow and feeling snow in your hands give you the actual experience. At that point, you know how you feel about the snow, you know what it is like and you know what this experience means to you.

We only know our own divinity and our own Golden Flow™ through experience. You may recall an experience similar to your first seeing snow or experiencing nature. For many people this can be a divine and spiritual experience.

This is because they are in that place of knowingness, as opposed to knowledge, beliefs or ideas. Be certain to allow yourself plenty of experiences, allowing yourself to know.

~~~

Kristopher & Kalyn Raphael, or K2, have been spiritual life coaches for ten years. They work directly with people taking them on journeys, cruises, leading classes on the internet and coaching groups. They are both published authors and are the founders of The Golden Flow(TM)system of accelerated enlightenment and The Toltec Mystery School. Follow Kalyn’s blog by subscribing at KalynRaphael.com/blog

Life brings us problems all of the time. Emergencies, difficulties, bothers, things to anger us, to worry us and so on. As I sit here in Starbucks in San Miguel de Allende there is a man at the next coffee table speaking with a young lady making a big to do about nothing. He’s American, but keeps saying things in English and then in Spanish, emphasizing how dramatic his story is by saying it twice. He is loud and boisterous, taking up a lot of energetic space and sound space, meaning that we can all hear him better than our own table’s conversations. Needless to say, he is going on and on about how “shocked” he was about how people have treated him. No doubt.

We all have problems and although some problems seem worse than others, we can’t really compare because we don’t know what energy another person has and what they are attracting to their lives. So, we all need to turn our problems into lemonade. After all, “no es para tanto.”

The gentleman at the next table is taking himself further and further out of his flow by going on and on about how it’s someone else’s fault; about how he was wronged. He is enhancing the energy of being wronged and, no doubt, in his life people will continue to wrong him (in his eyes).

To get into our flow we all need to truly have our experience. For example, the man I have used as an example would need to experience what he has called being wronged and truly be with that experience. By feeling what it feels like to be thus mistreated, he would allow his experience and flow it. This alone would change him and his life. It would change how he sees his own story so that he would begin to recognize that he has had a part in it all.

He has attracted and created this just as much as the person he feels wronged him. He would begin to see that throwing all the blame on another is irresponsible because it takes away his opportunity to change himself and make a correction in his life. Flowing is a process: we welcome what we are thinking, feeling and experiencing so that we are truly experiencing our lives. When we remember something or re-experience the same thing then we need to flow it again. As this man flows the memories when they return, he might even see how he actually imposes himself on other as well, doing to others what he is claiming has been done to him.

Life is short, though when we are continually focused on what makes us bitter then we often feel like the pain of life goes on forever. Life can be cruel, but only when we choose to remain in a painful place, like the place where we are victimized.

On the other hand, life can be sweet, like when we take responsibility for our lives and we allow our experience to be with us; when we feel the way we feel. Then life flows and even sadness or pain become transformed, yielding joy and a new day filled with new possibilities, new love and new happiness. At that point, our Golden Flow™ from our Source Energy turns our lives into lemonade!
~~~

Learn more about getting into your flow & the Golden Flow™ system at www.golden-flow-system.com

Sitting on top of the Sun

Greetings!

I wanted to share some of my experiences over the last few weeks here, because they have been quite magical.

We held a workshop here in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The workshop included a day trip to Teotihuacan and a New Moon ceremony with a shaman. The workshop went extremely well, undoubtedly the best ever. Everyone had a great process, truly worked in the world of energy and saw the energetic probability, or possibility, before them that they wanted to attract or manifest in their lives. Everything was magical, from the space that the men opened in the room we held the workshop in to the trip to Teotihuacan. It was fantastic! I was also very pleasantly surprised at all the secrets and information that Teotihuacan opened to us. As you can see in the photo above, we really were under a magical spell.

The journey was followed by a women’s gathering for the next 3 days, which was a very pleasant treat for us ladies. It gave us the opportunity to then focus on topics personal to ourselves and it also gave us the time to work on our the dream and probability we are focusing on even more.

The above pictures are from an experience we had at the Botanical Garden. I had the ladies get themselves some candy and a container to bless and to imbue with the energy of their dream, so that they may taste and eat from the sweetness of their desires every day, connecting them to their dreams. This was followed by a healing process. We opened to the energy of our Source and of the garden to allow healing love and light to come into our bodies, which I facilitated.

We then took the healing one step further the next day: each woman received a Shamanic Egg Cleansing and some healing work. Everyone commented on how nice it was to feel their bodies open, expand and receive healing to any aligments.

All in all, both the Journey and the Women’s Gathering were fulfilling to everyone. We all felt our hearts being opened by Teotihuacan and we all felt the energy coming in to us.

Every participant was a wonderful addition to our group and each person really has their own essence, their own gift and their own piece that they come to shift and refine on the journey. In this, they really are a part of a puzzle when we all come together and each piece is needed and appreciated. It is great to have a whole experience in this way.

Now I’m looking forward to our next journey at the end of May. Not only will we be taking on another pyramid in the Mayan Caribbean, but our we are then inviting journey participants, our family and friends to come to our vow renewals, a ceremony that will be held on the beach and performed by a Mayan shaman. This too is promising to be quite an event!

Love & Light,

Kalyn

~~~

Kristopher & Kalyn Raphael, or K2, have been spiritual life coaches for ten years. They work directly with people taking them on journeys, cruises, leading classes on the internet and coaching groups. They are both published authors and are the founders of The Golden Flow(TM)system of accelerated enlightenment and The Toltec Mystery School.

Sunshine

On this trip we did a lot of driving from one city to another, from one site to the next. What a blessing! I was so grateful to get to see to pyramids, which I love seeing. Their energy is always so magical. I feel loved, supported; in my flow. I feel empowered, impacted and able. I am more of myself. I had already known that sacred sites tap me right into my Source Flow.

Focusing on the many things I was discovering and enjoying on this trip has made it easy to stay in my flow this week. Even my dad and his wife’s custom to keep a full schedule, which wore me down quickly from a lack of time to connect with myself didn’t knock me out of my flow.

My dad’s wife, on the other hand, had a harder time than I did at times due to the heat and due to a few little spats between them. She is pretty sensitive to the sun and the heat. Being in the sun for too long gives her headaches, puts her in a bad mood and generally gives her body a hard time. In the car, I’m the opposite. The air conditioning tends to chill me so I prefer the sunny side of the car. Sitting in the back of the car we were a perfect match! I’d warm up in the sun and she’d cool down in the shade. However, being as bothered with the sun as she was, she tended to attract the sunny side of the car, no matter what. She would ask which direction we were driving in to try to avoid the sun or she would trade me sides when we stopped for gas but, inevitably, her side of the car would be hot. While I kept warm with my shall, she got headaches and grumpy.

Once again I couldn’t help but see what life was putting right in front of me. How could I miss it? I heard my father’s wife struggle with the sun every day. Here what struck me most was the fact that it didn’t matter what she did to try to stay shaded because, in her lack of flow, her efforts were fruitless. On the contrary, I was fine. I had brought my crocheting, which I quickly pulled out at the beginning of our road trip to entertain myself. This really helped the time in the car go by quickly for me, putting me in my flow. My dad’s wife, unfortunately, saw me take my crocheting out, sighed and told me that my dad had told her not to take up space by carrying hers since we were flying. Now she longingly looked at my yarn and crochet hook and sighed again. I suggested she buy some yarn and a hook the first chance she could, which she did. Clearly this helped her entertain herself in the car, but she still struggled with being over-heated.

Life’s point this time was a pronounced example of how we really do attract experiences that reflect our energy. She and I each had temperature sensitivity issues and we each crochet, but my experience was far more pleasant than hers. I know that I need to make the choices in life that are most in my flow. I need to allow.

This was a great, illustrated example. So often people talk about being in the flow or having had a great time on a vacation, but they are often comparing apples and oranges. In this life example, she and I are both saying that we had a great vacation and a great time. Nevertheless, I had a completely different experience than she did in many ways, namely by feeling light, enjoying, welcoming the experiences that came my way, even the long day trips that I didn’t prefer or some negativity towards life my dad expressed. Whereas she was grumpy at least once a day, she often said she was having a good time but obviously didn’t mean it and felt ill a few times. Now, I’m not saying she didn’t have a good time, I’m just saying that we had very distinct experiences and that, in my flow state I allowed joy, adventure and knowingness in my experience. Quite a juxtaposition to her journey’s challenges.

Part Two:

The Pelican’s Glide

As the co-founder of The Golden Flow™ system, I know quite a bit about being in my flow, about what the flow state is and about using the energy of Source to create my life. Nevertheless, while visiting Celestún I had a great flowing experience.

We’d come here to see the mangroves, pink flamingos, pelicans and other wild birds that live here. After buying our tickets we walked to the end of the dock, stepped carefully into a boat that sat up to ten passengers and waited for our guide to start the engine. This area of Mexico tends to be very hot and muggy, but this mid-December day was beautiful and pleasant. We began admiring the red water (a natural phenomenon that occurs this time of year when the red tree trunks from the mangrove paint the water) as we waited patiently for our guide to try to start the boat’s engine. After the first three or four tries I wondered if we’d have to change boats. Another couple of tries and we were off! It wasn’t long before the peninsula brought us to several large birds on the mangroves, in the water and some flying by.

To my surprise, one pelican seemed to be flying in the same direction we were traveling in. The boat was traveling quickly, but the pelican not only kept up with us, but even started going faster than us. The pelican didn’t flap its wings and it wasn’t a windy day. This bird truly caught my eye because he was clearly showing me still more about the power of being in the flow state. The bird clearly illustrated to me something profound about life.

I couldn’t help but notice the side-by-side comparison life was placing before me. While we traveled in this loud, bumpy boat whose engine, no doubt, burned more than it’s share of gas, this pelican flew effortlessly, more smoothly and traveled faster than we did.

All the efforts of our man-made boat, mechanical engine and our ability to travel quickly on the water to a bird sanctuary looked small next to this pelican. Our efforts seemed huge while the pelican’s gliding was smooth, divine. I also noticed that with our intelligence, humanity had found a way to break a natural law by traveling on water through the invention of the boat. Well, the pelican naturally broke a law of mine because it traveled on air. While our invention took efforting and ingenuity, which is great, the pelican’s flight only took allowing the flow, which turned out to be more powerful.

The message was clear. The pelican had more grace, more elegance and more power because she was using the flow state. She was allowing life to carry her, to guide her and to give her more than we had. She was saving her energy, whereas we were using ours in the form of money for the tour, gas for the boat and so on.

Again, I am reminded of my teachers because I know the impact of this message. It is telling me to increase my allowing in my life; to get further still into my flow and to effort less in my life. I know that if I do so, my life will bring me even more with even less work on my part. My life will also bring me more than I could ever create on my own.

It’s not that this was an esoteric secret, it’s just that I’d never thought to think about the fact that there are things I know inherently somehow, things that I have a good idea about and many more that I just don’t know.

So many things in life are uncertain. Most of the time, at best, we make an educated guess, we do our best and hope things work out. But sometimes we know. And when we know, then we also know what to do and where that will lead us. This was their point, when I know, then I should let nothing stop me from using my knowingness.

Today is the anniversary of the day I was born. You may call it my birthday, but since I celebrate my birthday at a different time of year I think of this as a time of year when life seems to open to me. And this week has opened to me.

This week we met my father and his wife in Mexico City and we flew to the Campeche and Yucatan area. We are spending time together, of course, but part of the intent of the trip was for me to see some of my roots, some of my father’s heritage.

The trip has been, unexpectedly, very tourist-like. We have gone and seen Mérida, Campeche, the pyramid sites of Edzná, Uxmal, the city where my dad was born called Ciudad del Carmen; we also went to a small ecological area called Celestún. We saw some family in Ciudad del Carmen and drove around the neighborhood where my father grew up and went to school. We saw his local church and another church who had acquired their land as a donation by one of my father’s uncles. (This uncle had bequeathed quite a bit of land, donating several plots of land to various religions, no doubt to cover his basis!) The only thing that we didn’t get to do was to see my grandparents and great-grand parent’s graves.

Even with all of these sites, nothing stirred me, nothing touched me or felt like it was a part of me or my past. It was as if I were the complete stranger to these places that I am.

Still, I came to a place of knowingness several times on this trip.