my soul sistah and i went to angel valley in sedona, arizona, to get our om on for the weekend.
no cell phone reception.
a cabin all to ourselves with a private bathroom just a stone's throw away.
freakin' spectacular view right outside our door.
beautiful, slightly warmer than seasonal, temps.
the only mode of transportation we had were our two legs.
three delicious, vegetarian meals a day that felt divine.
"felt"? yeah. see, i came down with the flu 2 days before i was supposed to fly out. talk about pulling every positive thought and healing affirmation out of your you-know-where. fortunately, i was well enough to fly, however, i completely lost all sense of taste and smell. completely. couldn't smell diddly squat. so i relied on how the foods felt--the textures--and they were divine. it wasn't until the last dinner of our stay that i regained my sense of taste and, oh! sweet baby jesus and lord ganesha...talk about your cosmic O.
the sun was down by 7 pm each evening. we grabbed our flashlights, headed from the dining hall to our cabins, and hit our beds by 7:30. sun woke up at 6:30 and so did we. it was all too easy to fall into the rhythmic timing of the land.
we hiked. we walked. we sat with our eyes closed. we sat with our eyes open. we sat and stared at nothing. we sat and stared at everything. we sat at a lot of vortexes (in simple terms, those are points on the Earth where She is at her most balanced or the most healthy). we walked some more. we hiked a lot more. sometimes on trails, sometimes not. we drank from wells. we listened to the creek rush by. we listened to leaves fall. we listened to leaves crunch under our shoes. she listened to me mutter, "i have nothing for you!" as i swatted those bees that wouldn't leave me alone the whole trip. we found our grandmother tree and marveled at the serpentine roots that shot from under her skirt.
we found the tail of some unknown dead (and probably eaten) animal. we got poked by a lot of pointy things. we wondered how long it took for this and that to form on the mountains around us. we wondered what kind of animal tracks we were staring at on our walks. we conquered a mountain...all 7200 feet of it (that's almost a mile and a half). with parts of it where the slope felt dead on vertical. you may call me Madame Bad Ass.
i learned that i'm much better at walking meditations than seated ones. put me in a labyrinth and i can clear my mind. sit me on a meditation pillow and i'm asleep in less than 5 minutes. i talked in my head. i listened to what talked back. i stopped talking and listened more. you'd expect something profound when you go on a spiritual retreat. some big secret to the Universe. not so. wanna know the deepest message i got?
you are here for no other purpose than to experience joy in life.
yup. that's it. verbatim as i received it. for aeons, people have pondered the meaning of life and there it is in fortune cookie form. the Universe didn't make our purpose here complicated. we did.
so now i'm back home. my poor husband couldn't even sleep next to his betrothed because i was hacking up a lung for a good part of my first night home (gotta love it when you're no longer sick yet still cough). my kid seems to have grown three inches since i left.
there ya have it. november is national blogging month and, since i've always been known to follow the crowd (ha), i'm taking a blogiday until the end of the month so peace out, yo. check back on november 30th.
here's the best shot of Rescue Kitty that i could get...remember i'm the mamarazzi and he's not keen on pics lately. "oh, look at the tiger," everyone would say, to which he responded, "i'm not a tiger, i'm a kitty." get it straight, people. poor kid.
however, everyone seemed pretty keen on the goodies i passed out. candy-free goodies at that.
i just put a few things inside balloons (keychain, ring, & tattoo), inflated them a bit, and tied them to silly straws. i think the parents liked them because they took up a lot of space in those trick-or-treat bags (= less candy for their kids to get). e was most definitely keen on the whole halloween fairy idea. he got a card from her/him/it before he went out for treats. the deal was: go trick-or-treat then pick out five pieces of favorite candy to keep and leave the rest out for the fairy (i can hear some people now, "only FIVE pieces???" hey, you don't pay for his dental visits so you got no leg to stand on). the fairy came to pick up the rest of the candy while he was sleeping, left a gift in its place, and brought the rest of the candy to monsters who promptly ate it all then their teeth rotted and fell out. how's that for a happy ending?
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