Day 5: What rises… and reflection
“Sometimes I give myself the creeps. Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me…”
Courtney is so present on this trip. It’s funny how music can just put a person in great spirits or bring up memories from the past or even point you internally to places that you might ignore urging you to question with just a few words of a song lyric. Music can awaken things that lay dormant. Maybe Green Day is not how I should start my mornings. I love you Courtney, but I may need something a little softer, a little gentler.
On this journey I am allowing myself to feel everything. the climb yesterday was hard, we climbed for six hours. Yesterday, as I stood looking up at the sky at this incredible landscape I still can’t believe that I am here.
I am meditating on…
What would you have me do?
How would you have me serve?
Why do I allow myself to stay stuck?
These are the questions I am going to put out to the universe today. Today I ask for clarity. Today I am looking for direction. The one constant is that all answers point up… all answers point in. And so let’s go IN!
What would you have me do Olofi?
“Be obedient… remember your rituals… get back to you. You must keep going. Remember your rituals. Focus on what is important. Put yourself back together again…. And not because something in you is broken… there is nothing broken about you. You have been detached and disconnected. You have given so much of our heart and soul away. Your body is weak… feed yourself… strengthen your body… put good foods in your mouth. Feed your body and your mind and you will see all else will align.”
REFLECTION:
Are we being honest with ourselves?
That is what I woke up thinking about today. Are we being honest with those we love… with the people in our lives? Do they really know us? Today was not a good day on the mountain. Today I struggled a lot. There were moments I just was not in a good spirits. In fact, I was just angry a lot of the time. Today I am beginning to doubt and question myself… I slept terrible. I had so many dreams that disrupted my peacefulness. Or is peacefulness the mask?
Something happened today. Something shifted internally. Today I was pushed harder than I have ever been pushed and all of it made me angry. Why was I so angry? What is happening? I am being forced to see something in my life… the people in it… my relationships… my choices… where I live… where I’m at right now in my present day—this climb is intended to show me some very specific and intentional things… important things. And I guess that is what is making me so unhappy. There really isn’t a moment when our body doesn’t send us clues about what is going on with us and the choices we must make. Some people call this instinct or intuition. This climb is harder than I could ever imagine and I am being forced to take a deeper look at ME!
Yamuna and I had an interesting conversation today. She noticed that I was not in good spirits. She wanted to know why I was so agitated. Even as I held the rope to climb I was doing so with a tremendous amount of intensity and ferociousness that concerned her. She kept saying, “Alicia, breathe, hold on with intention… steady your grip… firm but focused. Whatever it is you are carrying… Whatever it is you are carrying it is excess… It is too much weight. It doesn’t belong to you. Breathe it out of your body. Take your time. we are not in a rush and you have nothing to prove!”
I am sitting with those words… in what ways in my life… which experiences have I felt that I constantly needed to prove something?
Today, I pray for blessings… and I thank you for all revelations. Please continue to guide and protect me, my teammates and all the other climbers. Maferefun todos los Santos. Creator I give thanks for this day.
Namaste~ And so it is~ Aché
Note to readers following our journey: Now that we have begun our climb I will not be posting to facebook as often. Please follow my blog at the top of this page. Thank you for your love and well wishes.
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Note to newcomers accepting the writing challenge! You can begin the challenge at any point. There is no right or wrong way to participate. You are not being graded or judged. This is a gift we are giving ourselves. So be gentle during this process. We are about to climb a mountain, YO! Remember that. Remember we must be present. Release all self-defeating thoughts. You can do this. I do want to remind the new climbers that no matter what day you decide to join the challenge please begin at the beginning. It’s important to prepare! Please remember to post your daily responses in my comments on my blog. Sending you all love. See you at the top of the mountain.
With all my love,
Alicia
The Writer and The Story 
Day 5: Who we are thinking about/missing
We opened our sleeping bags and prepared for a night in the arms of Makalu. We worked well as a team and made it to our first point as planned. By this time we made peace with the other’s quirks and nuisances so when we reached first destination we celebrated by hugging one another, clapping and smiling at each other. We worked hard. Even Anil and Peter demonstrated their own challenges while guiding. They too are human.
Before sneaking away into our own thoughts Anil and Peter had us sit in a circle. It was quiet. The night sky’s lullaby had us all in a trance and our bodies expanded with every breathe, now deliberately slow and purposeful and then Anil spoke, “I climb because this is home to me. My love, young, round and strong guided me here some many, many, moons ago. Our essence is here. We baptised here. We were made here but she didn’t make it past this point when we came. She can no longer grab my hand for the adventure, but my heart still feels the fire of her. I climb for the fire. What do you climb for? And when he asked that he passed a smooth pebble he had picked up along the way and handed it to Kamala.
Kamala took the pebble and a boom suddenly came out of her. She stood up, looked up into the sky and it was as if she cracked open and light came from within her in the form of a loud thunderous voice. She yelled long and hard into the polka dot night. No words. Just a hard sound full of hate, full of vulnerability, just full and when she finished she stood still looking into the night, far gone with tears in her eyes. No one dared move except for Zion who still sitting, touched Kamala’s hand gently, unclenched her sister’s fingers and removed the pebble from the cave of her palm. Kamala sat down, sniffling.
Zion looked at Kamala, smiled an embarrassed sort of smile at the rest of us and said, “we climb for our mother. She was stoned with pebbles just like this one” and she threw the pebble into the black night. She went quiet. Mr Lee Chen chimed in to tell them how sad he felt to hear that but Peter lifted his hand and made a gesture for him to be quiet. And then Anil and Peter both looked at Brandon who was next in the circle.
Brandon: “Who me? I just want to check this off my bucket list. I wanted to climb Mt. Everest, but mom said this is the mountain where abuelito hid all the family jewels or something like that,” he said sarcastically.
Claudia: “It is true!” She said in half hysteria and half anger. “My father, the great Bernardo Mauselio Galindo, master storyteller and poet of nuestra tierra de colores y vida escribio las verdades asi como se lo conto su abuelito a el. La verdad existe Brandon! Ya vas a ver! El lo escondio aqui y yo lo voy a buscar y lo voy a publicar! Ya veras!” She yelled frantically. All that sophistication went straight to hell. Her manicured fingernails painted the air in rainbow waves as she threw them to and fro while making her point.
Mr Chen fell asleep sitting up and the group bypassed him to looked at me. They waited. I didn’t know what to say…..
“I climb because…..I just wanted to get away I guess. I….wanted to get away from motherhood. I wanted to get away from my family, especially my father and I wanted to….um…..not quite sure what else.”
No one moved. They just waited, each one looking at me. Just looking. Waiting.
Again I took a stab at it.
“I climb because….no one talks. No one talks to each other anymore. I didn’t even know my dad felt that way. He was worried about me. I miss him. I miss the picture of what our relationship should have been like. I climb because…..I just dont know how to tell him that I love him. That I miss him. That I think he is a great man…..” and my voice trailed into nothingness as I realized heavinesss this one truth, out in the open, in front of strangers for the very first time.
Reflection:
I wrote my journal entry that night to Cassie and Papi. To Cassie I begged her never to give up on her openness. Her sharing with me. Her laughing with me. Her being her with me. Her relationship with me, her mother. I shared memories of when she was a toddler and how James Earl Jones saved her toddler lufe many, many times. His voice always stopped her crying.
To papi, still not knowing how to say the I love yous so I wrote him poems and quotes by other authors. I drew pictures of stick people holding hands. I wondered what they were both doing now. I wonder if he remembered to water the cacti on my windowsill. I wondered all night long until Peter gently rocked me awake. A new day before us and the mustard road ahead of us and I still dont have it in me to tell my father those important things.
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Wow… So beautiful. I am completely engaged. These characters each have important things to share. Climbing for mother and the pebble, baptism and I love you’s unspoken. Beautiful. Well done.
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As I sit here I am excited about all that will unfold. And James earl jones. Lovely
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Yes! James saved my forever crying baby’s life many times. Whenever she’d hear his voice she would just stop crying. That’s gold. 🙂
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Thank you.
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