The Altar of Grandmother Ocean in San Blas

"No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts, abilities and possibilities. It is a shame to waste those, by doing what someone else has done." Joseph Campbell.

Having deciding to extend my trip a few more weeks I was able to stay an extra 4 days in Puerta Vallarta with Masauke and Linda and the contingent of people we had met in Vallarta. The journey from Puerta Vallarta back to the desert was to take us 3 days, stopping at the altar of the ocean in San Blas and an energy vortex known as the foco tonal in Ocotlan. Masauke, Linda and I were joined on the return journey by a young couple who were going to the desert seeking their paths. They were Javier, my spiritual bro Julian's roommate and Javier's girlfriend, Michelle. How Javier and Michelle ended up in the van, going back to the desert with us is typical of what Masauke would call the mathematics of the Great Spirit.

The day before we left Puerta Vallerta, Javier and Michelle were to accompany Masauke, Linda and myself to the house of Lala, a local traditional healer who has studied the massage techniques of the Purepeche, a group of indigenous people from Michocan, and heals with different forms of energy. Javier and Michelle were accompanying us to Lala's home/treatment centre, as we had only vague directions and were not familiar with the neighbouring town. On the way we stopped to buy a nieve or snowcone, from a roadside vendor. As we were all standing around, each ordering our nieve, Masauke, out of the blue, invited Javier and Michelle to come to the desert to 'take a spiritual step up'. We were leaving a day and a half later.

As the lovely mathematics would have it, Javier and Michelle were planning to take a 1-2 month leave of absence from their respective jobs so that they could go to Mexico City to study with a spiritual leader who was going to be facilitating a session somewhere outside of the city. They had planned to leave the next day but had found out that morning that the spiritual leader had broken his ankle and that the session was postponed. At the time that Masauke had issued his invitation he did not know that Javier and Michelle had their bags almost packed ready to head off on a spiritual adventure, only to find out that they had nowhere to go. The timing of his invitation was impeccable. The young couple decided to ponder the invitation overnight and get back to Masauke the next day. As you can no doubt guess from my earlier comment not only was their answer to Masauke's invitation yes, but they were very excited at the great opportunity!

The rest of the afternoon was spent with Masauke sharing his traditional healing techniques with Lala by doing a session on her. His techniques were very different from the techniques that she works with and Lala spent an equal amount of time telling us about the work that she does and how she does it. She invited us all to a local resteraunt where the conversation about spirituality and healing continued. During the course of the meal Lala mentioned a visit she had made to a well known energy vortex site in a town called Ocotlan, somewhere between Puerta Vallarta and the Wirricuta desert. Her story about her experience at this site was so intriguing that we ended up taking the long way home so that we could visit the Foco Tonal in Ocotlan. That is the topic of another blogentry.

The next day Julian, the young scuba diver instructor, as a goodbye present, arranged for Linda and myself to go diving in a beautiful cove about half an hours drive outside of Puerta Vallarta. It was a very healing experience for both of us for different reasons, me because it helped me to let go of an old trauma I had been carrying around for almost 40 years, of having nearly drown after being pushed under water by a competitor at my first swimming race after my first semester of swimming lessons when I was 7 years old. Although I had gone through scuba training almost 20 years ago I had never been able to do it without experiencing that I'm going to drown feeling [feel the fear but do it anyway was also my motto then].

This time when the ocean floor dropped off and I felt the wall of cold deep water hit me I again felt that panicky "I will never make it to the surface before I run out of air feeling" that I knew so well from my other scuba diving experiences. I had told Julian about my childhood near drowning experience while in the pool training, so when I began to signal that I needed to go to the surface, he signalled asking if I was out of air, then if I was sure that I had to go up. I hesitated a few seconds before responding yes. I am sure that it was because of the hesitation that he realized the reason for my sudden urge to surface. At that point he took my hand indicated that we should swim back towards shore, but underwater. We headed back, only gradually surfacing. It was then that we say the most beautiful stingrays and several large fish. They were my reward for not panicking and staying under water until the wave of panic had subsided! I was letting go of 40 year old traumas and it felt great.

We left Puerta Vallarta later that day and drove to San Blas to leave an offering for Tataearamara, Grandmother Ocean. It was quite fitting that we were to visit this altar after my healing in the ocean only the day before. We slept out on the beach at San Blas and were nearly devoured by tiny mosquitoes which made their way to the beach from the swampy marshland close by. Very early the next morning we found one of the local fisherman who was willing to take us to the altar. it is a half an hour boat ride from the fishing dock, past the numerous small boats with early morning fishermen reeling in their catch that dotted the shoreline. We past the fishing boats and headed out towards a large apparently white rock that looked like a snow covered mountain sticking out of the ocean.

Even from a distance the flocks and flocks of brown pelicans crowding the surface of the large rock were very evident, as were several other species of somewhat smaller water birds. The sacred rock, altar to Grandmother Ocean, as barren as it was, was home to an incredible amount of wildlife. We neared the rock and circled it as the fisherman attempted to get the boat as close as possible to the huge rock on which it was now possible to see the statue of a female deity that had been placed on the top of the what looked like 30-40 foot rock.

Linda, as the elder female, had collected all our offerings and wrapped them in a red cloth. She mad her way to the fron of the boat as Michelle and I held on to her so that she would not become an offering to Grandmother Ocean herself as she tried to place our offerings on the tiny ledge on the side of the large rock without falling out of the boat. The boat approached the rock Linda reached out. We held her. She could not reach either the ledge or the long rope that dangled from the top of the rock clearly a recent addition to steady the boats so that pilgrims could leave their offerings without the waves crashing the boat into the side of the roack. The second approach was successful. She grabbed on to the dangling rope with one hand while trying to place the offering on the ledge with the other hand. Michelle and I were hanging on to her arms and her skirt for dear life.

With Masauke, the only one of us who had made previous pilgrimage to this altar, calling out instructions ... no not there , over there. Eventually Linda placed the offerings in exactly the right spot just as the waves swept the boat back out to sea forcing Linda to let go of the dangling rope. It was done. the offering to Grandmother Ocean completed. We spent several minutes in silence, each with our own prayers, before the gentle ocean breezes and the beauty of the pelicans gliding over the ocean was to bring me back to the here and now of being in a small boat on my way back to the dock at San Blas.

Lessons learned: 1) Always pay attention to the mathematics of every situation, 2) Everything is mathematics, 3) Feel the fear, but do it anyway.

Stay Tuned [my entries are not as regular, but I will continue to fill you dear readers in on the remainder of the lessons learned on the first portion of my travels with Spirit]. staywell and Travel with Spirit, Spirit Traveller.