Integration
Our learning journey to Bolivia began on the Winter Solstice (Southern Hemisphere), the moon went from new to full during the time that we were here. The stars were aligned in our favor. Bolivia is a place like no other, the group dynamic was uniquely generative. This really has been one of the best learning journeys I have facilitated.
This journey was immediately proceeded by the first ever Evolutionary Leadership Workshop and by a very powerful Social Change Institute, both at Hollyhock, in Cortes Island, British Columbia, my very favorite place to work.
I have been on an incredible heart expanding journey and the pace has been relentless. Amazing as it all has been, I needed integration, I needed a way to bring it all back in, to bring myself back together. And that is the gift I was given. I trusted my friend Thom Kruse, and boy did my man deliver!
Early in the morning that followed the evening closing circle for the Barr Fellows, I was picked up by a taxi and drove two and a half hours to Lake Titicaca. Thom, his first mate Juan Pablo, and I went on the sail the sacred waters all day long. There were no other boats visible on the most expansive part of the lake. This is the place from which the Inca origin story emanates. It is the highest navigable lake in the world, and Pachamama is most generous here.
Thom invited me to walk in silence up an isolated hill from which I could get the most spectacular view of the sacred lake. It was like seeing the face of God. I could feel her tending to me, receiving all that I carried, the good and the bad without discrimination. It truly was a sacramental experience.
On top of it all, I got to spend time with the remarkable human that is Thom Kruse, a fellow traveller. I am in awe of his biography, of his lifetime commitment to justice. And here we were, with our hearts focused on the spiritual journey, mutually vulnerable, seeking ways to bring it all together, earth, spirit, justice.
It could all have ended there, but the goddess still had a few treats waiting for me. Converging with us in Bolivia was the amazing Mallika Dutt, truly a shero in the ongoing battle to end violence against women. A healer who has just spent a month immersed in the sacred traditions of the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands. She is so vividly in the FIRE of awakening. I spent the next day in her blessed company. We didn’t need a boat or lake, we communed with each other in the coffee shops of La Paz. I cannot describe the power of her transmission. It was like both of our journeys were converging at exactly the right moment in exactly the right place. I felt like I was receiving downloads of grace, that I was somehow reaping the benefits of her courageous inner work. Some of us are part of the same soul group and Grace always gives us the chance to connect. We absolutely seized the moment.
That of course could have been more than enough, but Grace is flowing with great power these days. That same evening we all converged for the 90th birthday of Don Julio, who is father of the radiant Pamela, the gorgeous soul that Thom gets to call his wife. It was nothing short of amazing to close my stay in Bolivia in celebration of such a remarkable elder. There were so many people there, so much good food and good music. It was potent to contemplate the life of a man who was born in a mining town in a very poor country, had to leave school by age three but went on to teach himself everything and not only bring his family out of poverty (against unbelievable odds) but also create a space of love around him that was joyfully celebrated on his birthday.
I am deeply grateful for the blessings that have been shed upon me, for the opportunity to integrate these lessons and for the calling that brings me to this work. This is the Grace that follows the opening of the heart. We are waking up. We are blessed. And I will continue to surrender.