September 13 — It’s Safe for Me to Love
Sunday Morning in Lima
I woke up early Sunday morning in my apartment in Barranco, and I was still very much in that strange space between the retreat and regular life. I had some coca tea, yogurt and water, dealt with more laundry, checked my email, and was generally trying to get myself situated. Having clean, dry clothes still felt incredibly luxurious after being in the humidity of the jungle all week.
Mystery School was at 10 a.m. Central time. I was really grateful that I had these couple of days in Lima after the retreat because I was still so deeply in the experience of everything that had happened. I wasn’t ready to just immediately get on several airplanes and go home.
It’s Safe for Me to Love
Maestro Hamilton led a long ceremony during Mystery School, and I went very deep back into the medicine. We were grounding ourselves in the universe and in our bodies, feeling gratitude for our bodies and gratitude for ourselves, and he kept coming back to safety and turning our fear off. This realization came through clearly:
It’s safe for me to love.
It felt enormous. Not you should feel safe to love. Not performing, pretending or telling myself that I feel safe to love. A full body knowing that it is safe for me to love.
I realize that often when people talk about opening your heart, I hear it as a command. I must open my heart. But my heart doesn’t actually open on command. It’s always a process of softening and allowing. My body holds such deep wisdom and discernment and requires impeccably safe conditions. I understand it as an internal choice that comes more with the blessing of my body than my brain-mind.
I had already begun understanding this during Thursday night’s ceremony, but the language for it had yet to arise from inside me. I had experienced such an enormous amount of love during that ceremony, and part of what I have historically done when I experience love in connection with another person is immediately start trying to understand what it means. Does this mean attraction? Does this mean intimacy? Does this mean romance? Does it mean I want this person, or they want me, or something is supposed to happen? Does it mean partnership or reciprocity or being chosen or some kind of future?
And what I was starting to understand was that maybe love doesn’t have to mean any of those things. And all the questions swirling around inside me act like a shield deflecting the love that is so powerful and all-consuming.
That doesn’t mean that I am supposed to love everybody romantically, or that relationships don’t have boundaries, or that I don’t get to want reciprocity in relationships where reciprocity matters. It was something much simpler and, for me, much more radical than that. I can feel love without immediately requiring it to become something else. I can allow love to exist as love.
There were moments during the ceremony where I felt tears coming because I wasn’t physically near Maestro Hamilton anymore. I had spent this whole week in ceremony with him and the rest of the group, and there had been this extraordinary aliveness to being in that space together, and now I was alone in an apartment on the 18th floor in Lima. I felt sadness, but I also felt like I had shown up. I had done all that I could do. I had received what I was there to receive, and now I had to let the experience become mine and begin integrating it.
The teachings during Mystery School felt very personal to me that morning, even though I understood that Maestro Hamilton was teaching everyone. That distinction felt important. I didn’t need to make something being deeply meaningful to me into evidence that it was somehow specifically intended for me. I could simply receive it.
At one point he said something like, “Tell the universe exactly how you want it to treat you,” and I knew immediately what my answer was.
So kind. So loving. So gentle. So slow.
That is how I want to be treated by the universe. That is how I want to be treated by other people. And, probably most importantly, that is how I want to learn to treat myself.
He kept talking about safety, and I could feel the words in, through and all around me. I am safe and it is safe for me to love landing somewhere much deeper than an intellectual idea. It felt like something my body was beginning to understand. My cells were taking it in, recalibrating and adjusting to this new reality.
I also kept thinking about something Maestro Hamilton says all the time: little by little.
I don’t need to come home from Peru and suddenly change my entire life. I don’t need to understand everything that happened this week immediately. I don’t need to figure out what every vision or experience means or make some enormous decision because I had an enormous experience. Little by little feels very right to me.
Being a Kindergartner Again
I also found myself thinking a lot about dieta and apprenticeship.
Before the retreat, and even during parts of it, I think I had some ego around dieta. I already feel like I have relationships with trees and plants. I already communicate with nature in my own way. There was a part of me that wondered whether I really needed to go sit with one tree for weeks in order to learn something I already understood.
By Sunday morning I felt almost embarrassingly differently about that.
I felt like a kindergartner.
Not in the sense that everything I already know or have experienced is meaningless, but in the sense that I suddenly had some awareness of how enormous the field of knowledge is and how very little of it I understand. There are things I know deeply in certain areas of my life, and there are also things here where I am at the very beginning.
I started imagining what it might be like to come back next year and do the three-week immersion and dieta.
Even the dietary restrictions began to look different to me. Instead of thinking of them as deprivation or some arbitrary list of things I wasn’t allowed to eat, I started understanding how they could be part of aligning myself with a larger intention. If I am choosing to enter into a particular relationship or learning process, then the restrictions aren’t necessarily punishment. They are part of the choice.
The apprenticeship experience from the retreat was still very much alive for me too. I don’t know what that means yet, and I don’t want to turn it into something more concrete than it is. I do feel as though something may be beginning for me, even if what apprenticeship means right now is simply approaching what I am learning as an apprentice: paying attention, showing up, practicing, coming back, being teachable and seeing what unfolds.
During the meditation Maestro Hamilton whistled for a long time, and I started whistling along with him. I was listening really carefully because it sounded to me like he was making sound on both the inhale and the exhale. I have been so curious about how he breathes while singing ever since listening to him during ceremony. There is something extraordinary about the way I experienced the listening itself as a teaching. I began to have the slightest idea of how it happens, and I understand it’s similar to seeing with my eyes mostly closed in the medicine, attempting to just be in the present moment without thinking about it. There’s a letting go while intentionally focusing, where the body can ride the waves of energy, but I can see how it might take a long time to learn that style of navigation. I feel it beginning though. That is exciting to me.
At another point he slowly sang an ícaro that sounded to me something like “limpia, limpia, medicina,” and I sang along. My voice still felt small, but I could feel the vibration of making the sound myself, and that felt important. I wasn’t just listening to someone else create the sound. I was making sound too.
I shed so many tears during that 90-minute ceremony held on Zoom. My body felt so alive and blissful. I could still hear echoes of the jungle soundscape. I could still feel the medicinal purge coming out of my pores. I was still vibrating with the ícaros.
Walking Through Barranco
After Mystery School I decided to go out for lunch.
I put on my tiger’s-eye mala necklace. I wear this necklace when I need a bit more strength and protection. It helps me feel confident, proud, available to meet whatever life brings my way. I walked about fourteen minutes through Barranco to UKAW, the cacao restaurant/shop I had visited before. I felt very slow and happy walking through the neighborhood. I felt safe. I felt confident. There was something really lovely about simply moving through Lima by myself and realizing that I was starting to know where I was and how to exist there.
I ordered ceremonial cacao and a beautiful paiche salad that had these tiny pieces of quinoa, avocado, incredibly thin spinach, broccoli, tomato, nuts, and I think maybe cranberries or goji berries. It was gorgeous and really good. I ate about half of it and had them pack the rest para llevar.
I noticed that even as I was telling people I don’t speak Spanish, I was still speaking Spanish a bit. I continued to make an effort to communicate in Spanish as much as possible even though most people speak at least some English.
I also bought four bars of ceremonial cacao to bring home as gifts.
Afterward I found this little artisan street market nearby and wandered through the booths. One vendor had these tiny framed butterfly artworks that were made out of flower petals, and I thought they were so sweet. I bought four of them. The artist selling them was so lovely. He let me take my time choosing which ones I wanted and we had a wonderful chat while we were waiting for the credit card transaction to go through. He asked if he could take a picture of me holding the flower petal butterfly art I bought for his Instagram. I said yes.
At another booth I found these three-eyed jaguar designs that I loved. There was a woman being helped before me. She was so confident, entitled maybe, about asking for everything exactly as she wanted it, then changing her mind, then changing it again. I was in awe of the way she committed to each and every whim and thought that entered her mind and commanded the space to fully express herself. The artist whose booth it was seemed very apologetic when it was finally my turn. I bought 2 T-shirts and a journal, and she gave me some postcards as a gift. Then I bought two little essential-oil roll-ons from another very sweet vendor. I had such a good time connecting with the vendors, and it made the shopping experience so much more fun and meaningful. I just love directly supporting artists and makers in a way that hopefully allows them to make the most profit.
By the time I walked back to the apartment I was sweaty and tired, but I was so happy. It was exactly the kind of wandering-around-by-myself discovering new things afternoon that I love.
Twenty-One Floors Up
When I got back I put on my swimsuit and went upstairs to the rooftop on the 21st floor because I thought maybe I would swim. The pool was way too cold, though, and it was starting to get chilly outside, so I didn’t end up getting in. I had been so excited to stay somewhere with a pool, but it ended up not being as great as I imagined it might be.
I wandered around the communal areas and looked out over the city and the ocean.
There were these enormous, beautiful black hawks gliding around the buildings. The ocean breeze moving through the tall buildings must create amazing thermals for them to ride. There were paragliders floating past too. From that high up, I could just watch everything moving around in the evening breeze and witness all the activity happening below from a birds-eye view.
I called my mom while I was up there, and she told me that my sister and the rest of the family had gotten a lot accomplished moving her into assisted living while I had been gone. There were still things I could help with once I got home, but it sounded like they had managed a huge amount. That was wonderful to hear.
I had gone to Peru. I had allowed other people to handle things. And things had been handled.
While I was talking to my mom, I watched the sun set over the ocean. It was unbelievably gorgeous.
Starting to Feel at Home Right Before Leaving
I did some work later, ate the rest of my paiche salad and some of the leftover pizza, and eventually went downstairs to Tambo again for more water and yogurt.
I was realizing that I was finally getting the hang of Lima.
I knew how to walk around Barranco. I knew where I could get water. I knew where the little stores were. I could go have lunch or cacao by myself, wander through an artisan market, come home, go upstairs and watch the ocean. There was a rhythm beginning to form, and of course that was happening just as I was getting ready to leave.
I felt sad about that. I was sad that the retreat was over, and I was sad that my time in Peru was almost over. But I was also ready to go home. And I really missed Frank and Ricky.
