“The neem tree scatters sun and shadow
across my skin,

My legs hang painted gold,
rooted, sure,
knowing Mother Earth’s fertility.

Take its medicine,
take my time.
Gestation, growth.

I reach out in wonder, touch its
leaves and blossom alongside,
wise.

I can still touch the sound of the ocean with my heart.
The echoes are the same there.
The echoes are the same there.”

 

I have never been more naked than I was in Mazunte.

I have never, either, been more quiet about it.

Never have I been more honest, done more letting go, found more ease, acceptance and value, got cozy in my heart, been eaten by more bugs, eaten more tortilla chips, digested, lived out paradoxes without being torn between two equally true truths, listened to the same song on repeat, listened to myself… If two weeks in Yelapa, Puerto Vallarta was womb-like, then the month I spent living in Mazunte, including the time in silent retreat, was where I released fully into a period of gestation, growth.

And here is the thing about growth: We can plant as many seeds as we like, offer water and sun, sing to them the sweetest of melodies, but if the soil is not richly fertile, those seeds will starve.

In other words, we cannot learn our lessons unless the willingness to do so provides the most fecund environment to nourish what we need to know—or rather, what we already do know.

You know all that you need to know. None of what you feel you need to learn comes from anyone else’s information for you, whether that be in conversation, written in books, broadcast from an alter, stage or podcast—those are the sun and the rain. Let them feed into your growth, let them provoke you, move you, resonate with you, but understand that the resonation comes because they are touching a piece of truth that already exists within you…and then seek to understand this truth as intimately as you can.

You become oh so fertile, oh so prepared to flourish when you get oh so clear on your very own version of the world and understanding of yourself within it. The spirit that courses through you is in everything you touch and see and exist in harmony with, every serendipitous connection with creation—get to know it, your spiritual awakening will birth your human awakening.

But before birth there must be a gestation time; digestion, or as was described in the silent retreat I participated in in Mazunte, a process of de-conditioning.

After having a pure experience, it is necessary to allow an awakened moment to set in, to keep it from the conditioned mind’s patterns so that it might settle more deeply, more purely, closer to the divine knowing of the heart.

When we feel something rock our beings on a soul level, we cannot ignore that that vibration needs to settle, otherwise the excess energy of it simply gets flung out into an abyss, robbing us of the nutrients it contains that grow us incrementally.

Example: falling in love. Ooh lala, delightful. Trance-like, a vortex that one can quickly lose oneself in and start to compromise one’s own identity for, the illusion that attraction, lust, desire, hope can persuade us with. We forget that love takes work, constant choosing, commitment, and requires a coaxing from the romance of it all into the great significance of what it can effortfully be; and so it goes for the level of intimacy we have with ourselves.

Ultimately, we need time to steep in our lessons, revelations, remembrances, and self-love, so that they might concentrate richly and as a developed part of us, so that when they are questioned we know if we are meant to hold steady, grounded in our roots, or bloom further, continue to expand, versify, die and be born again.

And when you do birth again after a proper, potent gestation, there is an urgency to living now, as you are meant to. Awake. In tune. Enraptured and rapturous. Provoked and provocative. Spacious and open. Continuously stoking your own fire so that you might do so for others.

You are not meant to please everyone, but to ask them to know themselves by how they are stirred by you. You are not meant to doubt or rush your own process, but to take your time in reverence of your epic formation. Aware of your worth. Trusting. Faithful to yourself and the knowing that all that can only exist uniquely within you makes you indispensable, alive, present. We are not meant to experience this world in any other way but through the intelligent absorption of our minds and bodies and wondrous experience of our hearts.

And, in fact, we do not need to know, at all, but to settle into experience contentedly, intuitive, feeling, uncompromisingly trusting in every bit of your being.

You do not have to spend six weeks under a Spanish sun, 10 days in silence, or hours listening to words that sound just as medicine heals…you just have to listen to you.

 

Author: Tiffany Anderson

Image: Maksim Million/Flickr

Editor: Emily Bartran