September « 2015 « The Gypsy Life

I had surgery once where I thought the panic attack would kill me before the surgery did. I clung to the nurse’s arm and squeaked out, “I need a Valium”. Now, let me say that I don’t take valium, nor have I ever. But I saw all the shows on TV for decades where that little pill seemed to be all too friendly with women to help them sleep, manage stress or simply just check out from being a Stepford Wife. My nurse said, “Oh, honey, we’ve got something far better than that for you,” as she hooked me to an IV drip and I was out in LA LA land in four seconds.

Costa Rica is my IV drip.

I arrived here in a hurry. I arrived here living a hurried, fast paced type A life. I had no clue how to do it otherwise. And pretty much upon landing, setting my toes deep in the hot sand and sipping agua de pipa, I unplugged from a power source that in almost every way, I had become addicted to.

Suddenly, I was drifting off to a deep sleep at 8pm once the blackest curtain of dark was drawn over the jungle, precisely at 6pm. For a girl who had never thought to see 4am, I was up with the first spark of pink light. My gate slowed, my needs of the day thinned out like plucking weeds from an overgrown garden, to reveal the fact that I could get it all done today, or maybe get it done manana. It did not matter.

Now, five months later, I am not only type B, but I am not concerned with moving to any particular destination in my day. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I work, I see a dozen clients a week on Skype, edit a half-dozen books, write my own stories and yet there is no inner coil of tension from the decades of living in urban life and off a grid of energy that never shuts down. I can be in the thick of writing a scene and not lose my place when I pause to watch the scarlet Macaws fly over. I just take the bliss of that moment and pump it all into the next sentence I write.

Here there is no need for Valium, or vodka tonics, or having to read Eckhart Tolle for the hundredth time on how to be here now. I am here now. Nature requires it and her grid of energy is so powerful that unless you let her reboot you, you will simply go back to where you traveled from.

Nature is my drug of choice. Nature never leaves me with a hangover in life. She simply returns me to the rhythm that is innately humane.

Full Definition of PARADISE

a : eden 2

b : an intermediate place or state where the souls of the righteous await resurrection and the final judgment

c : heaven

2: a place or state of bliss, felicity, or delight

— par·a·dis·ial \ˌper-ə-ˈdi-sē-əl, -zē-, ˌpa-rə-\ also par·a·dis·i·cal \-si-kəl, -zi-\adjective

Well, Elysium Fields, Avalon, the Garden of Eden are not what comes to mind here in Costa Rica. And since I am not a big believer in Heaven anyway this Webster’s definition seems totally archaic. So how would I talk about Paradise?

Simply put, paradise is a place that is as close to the natural order of the earth as any human can get. And here in Costa Rica the opportunity to remember the natural order of things, the rhythm of the earth and allow yourself to entrain you heart to the heart of the planet, is abundant and ever-present.

But my mind says,

”Maya you have to go back to the states for about a zillion reasons!”

My answer? “Mañana, or maybe not even Mañana.”

Paradise is heart centered, heart driven and insists on using the communication of the heart to do just about everything. From a chop wood carry water approach to life here, squeezing the papayas to see how they “feel, or closing your eyes countless times a day to smell something, taste something, listen to the call of a hawk or feel the change in the air telling you a storm is coming and to unplug your computer, paradise is all sensory. Which translates to, paradise is all about the body and the heart. The mind is forced to take a back seat.

And for me, this melding into an earth based daily life is totally the opposite to my years of living in a metropolis, to sitting in traffic and getting heart palpitations and wondering why living next to a cell phone tower was contributing to my insomnia.

Remembering being human and what being human is about, is what living in paradise offers. It is nothing about learning to walk on the earth as a heart centered human being, it is simply about becoming unconditioned, stripped of the habits and beliefs about life that insulate us from our own true humanity. Paradise is simply the elixir that jogs the mind out of its psychosis and jumpstarts the heart.

And if I take an honest look at what is happening around the globe it is not hard to see that our civilized world has lost heart. Has forgotten about humanity. It is changing little by little. But it all starts with that incredibly brave step to stopping what is simply inhumane in each of our lives and asking the question, “who am I really?”

I stumbled on paradise. I had neither intention, nor goal in mind by coming here to Costa Rica, yet once here, it was clear that this is home. Not because of the place, but because of my place I am in myself. They say home is where the heart is. I would say home is where the heart is alive and well and strong. We all need to remember who we are. The rest of the swirling life we have created is simply the illusion that makes us forget who we are.