Saraguro

Saraguro is a little town up in the Andes mountains that sings spirituality. We went there as a group to experience some more of the incredibly well preserved indigenous cultures that exists here in Ecuador, but for me this weekend was less of an educational mind-opening and more of an inner rebirth.

Here was my view on Saturday...

This valley is now home to a couple negative aspects of my personality I have wanted to get rid of for a while now. All I had to do was close my eyes, take a breath, think about what I wanted gone and the mountains simply sucked all the bad right out through the top of my head. I could breathe here, I could feel here, and the time I spent on this cliff on Saturday marked the beginning of a heavy emotional transformation for me. There is something about remote valleys that completely remove you from your original perspective on life and provide for you a perspective of appreciation, gratitude, and suddenly you become overwhelmed with love: love for nature, for people, and especially for the wild chickens clucking around in the bushes next to you. This day was special for me and difficult to articulate, but Sunday was even more magical. Yes...magical.

To get where we were going on Sunday we unfortunately had to walk past this adorable little village:

Then continued to follow a long path through the woods...

Until we arrived in a very sacred spot to find this:

This is called la mesa; the table set out by the Shaman to begin the ritual of thanks to our Pachamama. To our mother Earth. The three sticks and the feather represent the four directions (N, S, E, W) as well as Mother Earth (N), the wind (S), the moon (W) and the sun (E). After making a circle, the ritual began with the Shaman taking a sip of an alcoholic beverage I simply can't describe and spitting it out onto the ground. Then we all faced North and the Shaman took another sip and spit it back out toward North. This was repeated for each of the directions and then we began our cleansing. I don't want to go into too much of this kind of detail, but briefly it went like this: we were given a handful of plants to rub on our bodies to be rid of bad energy, then we were each given a sip of the alcoholic beverage and gave thanks to something individually, then we took a sip of a lighter beverage, then we were each spit on while smoke from a fire of plants and flowers was blown around us. This description gives no justice to the beauty in which is was conducted, but that is because you would just have to see it being done. What I really want to talk about is how it made me feel...

A certain amount of the spirituality that was bursting from every one of my pores I cannot explain and that is simply because I don't understand what happened. Throughout this process, listening to the Shaman's prayers to mother Earth, I felt so connected to my surroundings my feet felt rooted into the ground. And you can't blame me when these were my surroundings...

Maybe it was the wind, but my person felt light, and the weight I felt I had lost came in the form of energy that was nearly tangible as it escaped my body and blew away. When I gave thanks I did so to those (including you) that support and provide for me to have experiences that open my mind as well as my heart and I meant it to the fullest. My heart felt so open it could have split in half, and my only human reaction to such mysticism was to cry. I found myself sending out genuine prayers to each and every person that I love, which is something I have never really done before. My mind underwent a drastic evolution, my heart opened itself up to anyone and everything, and my soul emptied itself of everything bad. If I can learn to remember this feeling and keep the knowledge I gained that didn't even really come to me in words, I know I will never have regrets.

So let me conclude this post by saying thank you, Andes mountains, for embodying such an abundance of strength and wisdom it flowed right into the hearts of your people.