I´m sitting here in a different world. With the following words I´m writing a letter back to that known world and I´m not sure if it will translate. Nonetheless, I´m writing these words because I´m hoping for them to be a reminder to myself and others when we read them. A reminder that there is magic in this world. A kind of magic that surrounds us wherever we go. This magic wants to be seen, and most importantly it wants to be interacted with. Because by doing so, we interact with the truest part of ourselves. We reach into the deepest chambers of our hearts.
I had this ceremony planned for a while. My intention was set but I felt like doing things a little bit different compared to previous ofrendas at the water. I decided to go with the flow. I didn´t get all the usual bits and pieces to offer to the water. I went with my intuition.
On the day of the ceremony I woke up aggravated. For a moment I considered not doing the ceremony all together. This was a familiar feeling. Some part of me was triggered by whatever was about to happen today. Sometimes we feel overly aggravated, sad or happy or even feel physical pain before opening our energy field to the sacred space.
I left the house this morning, to do the veg – and bread pick up, as I had promised my husband. I felt very introverted and, well annoyed to be completely honest. As I arrive at the little wooden shack that sells the local produce, a very bubbly and excited young girl starts whirling around me. She impersonated the exact oppostite energy of mine in that moment.
Again I felt annoyed but at the same time I felt the awareness of choice rising within my heart. And I choose to accept the fact that I was annoyed but also to find softness and expansion in my heart. So I invited the little girl, to help put my produce into my shopping bag, which she loved and it strangely calmed her down. She just wanted to help. Be a part of whatever the grown ups were doing.
Her mum formed a “thank you” on her lips and told me that the father of the girl had been away for two weeks. “It´s been a loooong two weeks for us”, she shared.
From then on I basked in this place in my heart that was soft and wide.
I continued to the bread store, one of the most practical and least aesthetic places I know. I have been to this place several times and not once has there been anything decorative there. As I wait for the freshly baked bread to be baged, I notice a huge bouquet of flowers standing there. Not any kind of flowers though. The most beautiful carnations I had seen in a long time.
Carnations, you must know, are the flowers a peruvian shaman told me to use whenever I go visit the water for ceremony. I had planned to go with the flow in this ceremony and had decided not to do any extra shopping but clearly life wanted me to bring this magnificent, fragrant flower to Pakarina that day.
Back home I gathered all the things I felt where needed alongside the carnation to open my sacred space and go into ceremony. I had a place in mind I wanted to check out for a while but it turned out to be very hard to access, had an unfriendly energy and was, according to the signs there, “very dangerous”. I didn´t hesitate and just continued down the winding road, the carnation on the seat beside me assuring me that we will end up right where we need to be. When I saw a litte left turn down a bumpy dirt road, I went for it. It just felt right. Every bumpy, every shake felt reassuring.
The thing with magical places is we like to say we found them, when in fact they are sending out a frequency that matches ours, to find us.
I ended up parking on a layby on this dirt track, grabbed my bags and walked with firm steps as if I´d been here a hundred times before. Who knows, maybe I have...
A few short minutes later I saw, through the eucalyptus tree and the dense bushes, a beautiful riverbed shaped b big white stones. I went straight there. And I mean straight there. Through bushes, trees, down a steep hill and a rocky wall.
And there it was.
The magnificant, magic place I knew I would end up at.
I had never seen a place quite like it in Portugal. The riverbed was formed by these big white stones and lush green grass (which is very rare in this country in August). Purple flowers where growing out of the spaces between the rocks and all this coninued into the water, where rocks layyed covered in moss and algae and peculiar little water plants growing out of them.
What happened in the actual ceremony is so very hard to describe but I will try and share a few moments here.
To me, going into sacred space feels a bit like everything around you is slowing down. You begin to notice this thin layer, like a curtain, that you gently pull aside to see all there is. It is always there, we are just too busy to see it most of the time.
Nature with all her elements begins to communicate with you. Or, to put it in more accurate terms, you begin to communicate with her. To listen. To really notice all there is.
On this day it was the animals that brough me messages from the divine.
When I carried an offering to the water with the intention of keeping our communication clear and regular, a huge hawk emerged from the forest on the other side of the vibrant green river and flew onto a bare tree about a hundred meters up from where I was sitting. I looked at him for as long as he stayed there. Majestically turning his head in my direction.
When he flew away, I remembered a very important encounter years before, when I was sitting in ceremony with my retreat group and the peruvian shaman that was there with us. Back then, at a river in Austria, I saw a crayfish. It was my first time seeing one and I was so excited and deeply felt something bigger comunicating with me in this moment.
Later in the ceremony, when I mentally prepared myself to go into the water, I realized I had to “release” some water first. I moved up the river a little bit and after my release went to the water´s edge there to check the temperature. Right then and there, accidentally, I almost touched a beautiful and huge … can you guess?
Crayfish.
They are very rare (the european ones especially, which was what I encountered that day) but as tears emerged from the corners of my eyes, I saw a second one. There it was again, this indiscribable feeling of something bigger comunicating with me.
Back at the ceremony spot I sat between two rocks in the water for a very long time. I began to realize that, although my love for the water is immense, there was fear present. Gazing at the deep, emerald green river, all sorts of warnings and dangerous stories from my childhood came up in m mind.
“How can we be so scared of something that is so close to our hearts?”,
I wondered. Something was holding me back but I knew my whole system wanted to be fully immersed in this lush, green water. I waited. And waited. And waited.
Then, out of nowhere a king fisher appeared and flew so close passed me, that if I would have had my arm streched out, I´m sure I could have touched him. He made the water dance with his peak before he was gone again, as quick as he had appeared.
It was then that I jumped into the water fully integrated the knowing that I was safe.
I don´t know if any of this can even begin to describe the magic that happened in ceremony that day. If you read until here, I suppose some spark jumped over. If so, I hope you finsih this article reminded, that there is a great magic waiting for you to take some time to see it, feel it, communicate with it.
I wish from the bottom of my heart that we all take more time to interact with this part of ourselves.
Please feel free to comment your questions and own experiences underneath this article or email me [antara_atelier@protonmail.com]. It is so important, the we begin to remember the magic that lies behind the veil and the connection it gives us to our truest selves. So we may begin to treat our surroundigns differently.
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