Being vs Doing - Costa Rica 3/28/11

Being in Costa Rica has been a rich healing experience for me. And I mean Being. That’s what it’s about, that’s my life learning. I’ve been a Doer my whole life, my identity has been focused on what I achieve and what I plan to achieve – I’m a 3 on the enneagram! It’s awesome being a manifester, but I’m learning more and more about what it means to manifest. When I am guided (“prompted”) to do something, then I take action. When I really feel into what feels good to manifest, then I am on the right track. It’s not about making something happen, but to cultivate what I am guided to do.

All said, what I’ve really needed is to Do nothing.

I don’t remember another time in my life when I really did this for more than a few days. when I was on vacation, I kept busy. When I was grieving, I was grieving. When I was doing a meditation retreat or pancha karma I was focused on the cleansing and meditation. There was always something to Do.

I’m listening more to what I need, what my soul needs, what my body needs, what my mind needs. I’m fasting for 2 days, and it might go to 3 or 4. I’ve never fasted for more than a day (for colonoscopy prep), and certainly without complaining!

I’ve reconnected to Source. After Jason died I stayed very connected, but since we’ve been on our travel journey with so much change, something shifted. I wasn’t as connected, and I was feeling unsettled and low. I was part of an earth-based healing ritual a few days ago that revived my Connection. I have been feeling embraced by the Mother, and I hold her inside me to embrace others. I’m reconnected to myself.

I’m doing nothing, Being (what/who) “I am”, and feeling so at peace with that for the first time in my life.

Living in Costa Rica

Our swimhole at Pedrogoso River

Our finca (farm) view

We are living in Costa Rica.

Pura Vida – that’s what the locals say. Pure Life

Tourists believe there is so much to do here.

There isn’t anything to do here. It just happens. Being is enough.

The gentle breeze is calming, the mountain stream is purifying, the sun is uplifting, the grazing cows are peaceful.

The land is sustainable. The way of life is sustainable. We feel at home.

In fact, we are at home because this will be our home for at least a year. We plan to move here in the fall after spending the spring here and the summer between MA and Oregon, getting ready for our drive back east and our move in September-October.

Enchanted Bamboo forest by our river

 “Here” in Costa Rica is the San Isidro area, 3 hours south of San Jose in the farming foothills of the Talamanca mountains (and the sacred Chirripo mountain) where it is a wonderful temperature, and the hotter beach is 45 minutes away. There are great neighborhoods with alternative-minded gringos who are healers and lovers of sustainability; we’ve met some great people. Our first weekend we landed here our friends Sheya and Owl and we went to our neighbor’s cool farm on the river for Cantando La Vida (Singing Alive) where we made some new friends.



Cantando La Vida at Finca Amrta

Here’s an email we wrote yesterday to some friends and family (wow, it's really happening):

Dear friends,

I’ve been thinking of all of you as we hang out here in Costa Rica. It’s been an amazing journey – it’s been tiring, bringing up stuff, integration, and a much needed R&R  in a piece of Paradise. We have “settled” for 2 weeks in a small cabin on a farm near San Isidro in the south; our neighbors are our dear friends Sheya and Owl from British Columbia who we met at the New Culture gathering in Seattle when we hit the west coast in September. They are looking for land and new culture community and we are enjoying being a community together cooking, relaxing, giving each other healing and massage, and sharing the possibilities of moving here to Costa Rica. We'll post photos later at www.kulemichelle.blogspot.com (also photos of our time in the Arenal volcano area we really love up north).

It feels we’ve made the decision to move here for a year starting after the summer. Yes, it’s really happening. It’s brought up some sadness about moving further from our long-term friends and family in New England and our new friends on the west coast. It’s also showing me that there is no such thing as one home. I feel we will have many homes.

Just as we open our home to others, others are opening their homes up to us. We want to find a place where we can host friends to stay with us a while, and to host workshops and retreats. It’s also an inspirational place to write! I may bring my corporate business here to train Costa Ricans how to do what I do, to help their economy and perhaps get me long-term residency (a many-year process). Kule has many opportunities as well.

There are wonderful artists, healers, and musicians here and a sense of community and self-responsibility that we are looking for; it’s a hub for alternative and sustainable-minded gringos. This area is not touristy, but it is within 45 minutes of the Dominical beach which is a hot creative tourist spot; we have yet to see the beach because we have enjoyed our last week here in the cooler air and rivers of the mountains. Next week we rent a car and head east to the beach and then west to the sacred mountain Chirripo and the cool community of friends there (that we met at a singing gathering last weekend).

I could see friends and family joining us here some day. Perhaps my mother would  move here, to be back with Spanish speaking people enjoying great weather and beaches, with good health care in close-by San Jose. My sister Mariana may come visit in April, I look forward to that!

There’s potentially lots to do to get ready for our move, but I feel it will be very easy and in a flow.

Here’s our tentative schedule:

Orlando – 1/31 to mid-Feb for the Avatar course

Costa Rica – mid-Feb to April

Oregon – May to August, to enjoy the beautiful summer at Lost Valley to learn more about permaculture, and do a bit more exploring on the west coast, visit my brother Al’s family, the Oregon State Fair that I don’t want to miss, and perhaps the New Culture West camp.

Massachusetts – June visit to start organizing our things, and final drive back east in September.

Costa Rica move – October

We will return every 3-6 months to get our home ready to sell and to update our visa (we can go to Panama or Nicaragua across the border to renew as well, every 3 months)

We’ll let you know our firmer plans to return to Massachusetts.

We’d love your support, and we are there for you as well.

Lots of love!!

Michelle y Julio (Kule’s name in Costa Rica)

Simplicity and Sustainability - Yurt living, Lost Valley, Oregon

We have found a home.

In other words, we have found a place to stay for more than a week, in this sweet yurt in Lost Valley, Oregon, http://www.lostvalley.org/ . This is a permaculture education center, and an intentional community that we had heard a lot about, and were glad to finally visit in early October. We fell in love with the land and made some good friends in nearby Eugene, so we magnetically were drawn back to rent here for a while, at least until Christmas, and perhaps beyond….

I’m enjoying living simply.

We are living with what fit in our car, with a few loaned kitchen and household items from friends to get us started.

Why did I think I needed so much STUFF in my old mainstream life? It was so freeing to get rid of stuff before we moved, and now I’m realizing we are happy using a small fraction of what we had before. It feels good to finally have everything out of our car, after 3 months of travel; seeing it all laid out on our kitchen floor before we put things away, we were amazed it had all fit in our car!

Our goal is to buy little, so we can move again easily. We are modern-day nomads!

We are enjoying our yurt – 30 ft diameter with small partitioned bedroom and bath and a large loft and skylight, less than 900 square feet total, luxury by our yurt standards (and we have wifi and cell phone coverage to boot). Others in this community have a one-room cabin or dorm room with community kitchen use, so we are fortunate to have the full kitchen. We could imagine buying a yurt (for less than 15K), and renting land to put it on until we decided where to dwell permanently.

Here are some other things we are enjoying in our simplified lifestyle:

v     Lower cost – With this type of lifestyle we can retire earlier.

v     Being closer to nature – This is like living in a huge tent with modern conveniences. We are embraced by the forest and sky.

v     Greater eco-awareness – Being closer to nature reminds me to conserve resources and reuse more as well as recycling, and to buy local stuff with low carbon footprint. We are reusing items stored in the junk shed such as lamps and Christmas lights.

v     Creativity – Instead of buying a coffee filter holder, I made one out of an aluminum pie plate, and it was fun to do! We are enjoying decorating our yurt with simple cloths and prayer flags we had with us all along. Jason’s photos are up, as well as our small altar.

v     Less cleaning – A smaller space is easier to maintain.

v     Composting – The land wants our food and human waste, and we are happy to oblige.

v     Sharing community land and resources, and having community meals every other day or so. The vegetarian food here is so nourishing, and we can supplement with meat and other meals in our own kitchen. It is fun getting to know others in the community.

v     Cozy fire – Our woodstove produces warmth in many ways, including splitting and stacking. We need it here in Oregon where there isn’t a lot of solar this time of year, and especially the night we arrived when we had unusual lows in the 20s. We would prefer supplementing with more solar… we will see where we end up…

P.S. Stay tuned for updates, as we watch Michelle starting to miss some of the old conveniences (?), and as we watch Kule building creative things to make our home even more interesting.....

Nevada City and Grass Valley, CA 11/15-19/10



Yuba River, near Nevada City, CA

This trip to Nevada City we focused on getting to know the community and the less-expensive nearby town of Grass Valley. We discovered a gem in the Sierras - a town not only beautiful and dedicated to preserving its gold-rush history and wild-west appeal, but also a leader in sustainability and spiritual and creative arts, and a friendly town. It reminds me a bit of New England, blended with the wild Sierras. Where else can you get a mix of fall foliage color with bamboo and palm trees? The weather offers a nice dose of sun with rare snow and mild summers (except in valley parts where it gets quite hot). 

We enjoyed our time in Nevada City, attending yoga and dance workshops, a sustainability seminar at APPLE (an awesome town-sponsored non-profit with a model green building and educational books and products), and the Tuesday night special lobster and steak dinner at the historic National hotel, with live piano and audience musician jamming. We even enjoyed our budget hotel the Nevada City Inn, with its quiet neighborhood and beautiful trees, across the street from a local funky cafe with great rice bowls, soup, and juice bar. We spent some time at Ananda Village, a 800-acre ashram (Paramahansa Yogananda lineage) with beautiful gardens at the Crystal Hermitage, which has a stunning view of Yuba valley; we manifested a private tour of the guru's hermitage by some residents.

We knew as soon as we arrived, when we checked out the local member-owned organic co-op and saw the bulletin board full of spiritual workshops and sacred music and cool dance and open mic gigs, that we found our kind of place. The town is also not far from engineering opportunities (for Kule) in Roseville and Sacramento. Nevada City has a vision to be part of the "solar belt" from San Francisco to Reno, including Truckee, where a lot of green building and solar engineering is leading the nation.

By the time we left we made semi-plans to come back in March to stay here for a while. Having arrived back in Eugene in Lost Valley (more to come on this blog), we are seeing opportunities here for us as well, so we shall see what happens....... It's great to have so many great options!

Marin and San Francisco Bay Area, CA - 10/22-11/10

We landed in Marin County, north of San Francisco a few days before heading to NY to do the Zegg Forum training and a whirlwind visit with relatives and friends in RI/MA. Going back East after being on the West was a bit strange, especially leaving our car here (our home is where our car is!). It was great to see my family and friends who we miss!

We had a wonderful stay with our friends Marcy and Kim in San Rafael, a sweet hillside town near the water with great vistas of San Francisco Bay and the live oaks on the hill trails. Kule knew Marcy from the Abode Sufi community days (in his 20s), and we got to hang with other Abodians in a special reunion at their home.

We were grateful to stay in a cozy inviting home for a week, hanging with our friends, catching up with business as well as exploring the urban and rural areas. We loved Pt Reyes, less than one hour from San Rafael with deer, elk, elephant seals, and sustainability consciousness in the community.

Chimney Rock, Pt Reyes, CA

Elephant Seals, Drakes Bay, Pt Reyes, CA

Elk, Pt Reyes, CA

We checked out nearby city life, including Five Rhythms dance in Sausalito (great to be with the dance community!), UC Berkeley, and Oakland areas. We could see living near the Bay Area, outside the high-price belt and close enough to have access to so much, including good weather. We've always liked the San Francisco area. Jason might have gone to college here, so I am thinking of him during my visit; he's encouraging me to move here!




Golden Gate bridge



Exploring Community

Exploring Community – where to settle?

I was feeling unsettled last week about not being settled in a home. After some reflection and Avatar practice, I realized I can feel settled wherever I am. We also don’t need to find a “home” right away; we make our home anywhere. We are looking forward to having a continuous place with enough space to meet our needs, probably a 1 BR to start, and definitely with a kitchen.

Before we left on our cross-country trip, we met with our New Culture community in VA and brainstormed characteristics of the community we would like to live in. Here are some of the topics, with a brief status on where we are. Kule and I are both looking for places with great spiritual community (sangha) and to develop our offerings of spiritual counseling and personal growth facilitation. The last two items (Aliveness and Purposeful Contribution) was added by us during our trip; it has left me feeling excited about where I am.

Climate – We want a climate that allows for passive solar and mild temperatures, to get away from dependence on fossil fuels. We love the Pacific northwest, and in the winter it is rainy and cloudy, making for less sun. We are drawn to Santa Cruz, CA and Ashland, OR for climate, so far. Port Townsend, WA and Nevada City, CA also look like great options with a lot of solar and rare snowfall. The Redwood forest in Santa Cruz is magical.

Water – There is plenty of water in the Pacific northwest and in the Sierras. That is a consideration for us, for sustainability. I don’t need to live right near the ocean as long as I have mountain streams and lakes. (Having said this, I do feel at home near the ocean, having lived near it my whole life!)

Transportation – Portland, CA Bay area and Seattle all have great transportation within the cities. Bike paths are everywhere, particularly in Portland and Eugene – if you live in the city you don’t need a car. Orcas Island is beautiful, but you really need a car to get around the island; this is true for the hills of Santa Cruz (Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek) as well.

City Size – Eugene is a cool small city with great accessibility, a sense of community (very friendly), and great street music and community markets. Santa Cruz is also a manageable city and right on the ocean. Portland has a great layout with its neighborhoods, but I wouldn’t choose to live right in the city in Portland, Seattle, or the Bay area. Ashland, Oregon is more like a town, very comfortable and worth more exploration than the ½ day we had there, although it is a bit pricey. We definitely want to live more in the country, but living on the edge of a city or in a country-like city dwelling is an option, perhaps in Eugene or Ashland where it is more affordable than CA.

Intentional Community – Would we share land with others? Perhaps. We have yet to find an intentional community we would jump to move into. We visited some with wonderful organic gardens, and I would love to be part of that. It definitely must be dedicated to personal growth, personal responsibility; spending time doing the Forum training in the Ganas community in NY has made that clear for me. So far Eugene strikes me as a town that has great community. We will continue to explore some ICs and co-housing on the west coast. We like the idea of shared resources and community center space. Spiritual loving community is important to us, and we are finding this in virtual networks in Santa Cruz, Eugene, and Marin areas. UC Santa Cruz has a degree in consciousness!

Music and Arts – I of course am gravitating to exploring cities and areas with great music and arts. Eugene and Santa Cruz have great opportunities for music jams and kirtan, as well as Marin county. I plan to get my sound healing gigs going here as well!

Food Growing – Organic gardening and permaculture are plentiful in the northwest and northern CA, with year-round gardening in greenhouses. Costa Rica is year-round; we plan to visit there in the spring. It was wonderful to spend a little time at Lost Valley, a permaculture education center; we plan to spend some time there in December.

Dedication to Sustainability – The Oregon areas we visited appeared to be the most dedicated to sustainability, with major town goals (such as Ashland) to reduce carbon footprint and fossil fuel usage, and promote buying local. The homes in Eugene are old and many are not equipped for low oil consumption; solar heating is not available most of the year, unfortunately.

Cost – California (especially the Bay area and coastal areas) is still expensive; Oregon is generally more affordable, although Ashland is like new California. I could see living closer to the city to get established, and then moving out more rural later on. Sharing property with others should be the least expensive path, but there is lot of work and it takes savvy to do it right; I’ve been reading Diane Christensen’s book Creating Community, an important primer on legal, social, and logistical advice to make a community work. We’re not ready to consider that now; it could change if we find the right combination of people and place, perhaps Costa Rica or other places in Central America are options for the least expensive place to live. Living in a more expensive place would make sense if money can be made easily doing what we love to do in a “retired” fashion.

Aliveness – I felt the aliveness and community resonance most in my experiences in Eugene and Santa Cruz, with a brief into to Marin County (Sebastopol and San Rafael). Orcas Island is also magical, with a much smaller community that does not always commit to doing things together. It is definitely an inspirational place, like a retreat center for me. One thing that I discovered the other day that is key to my aliveness is being able to be fully myself, with my Argentine blood, in an area that embraces diversity. New England has challenging for me, with its WASP culture.

Purposeful Contribution – I believe this another critical element in finding a home. Where can I feel I am making purposeful contributions in my life, to serve the world in some way and experience completeness and peace about who I am? I want to be inspired to play music with good musicians tuned into Spirit and record CDs. My primary goal is to get my book Messages from Jason published, along with his photography and getting his music out into the world. This could easily lead into a new path of spiritual counselor and channeler. Kule is looking to launch his personal growth facilitation practice. We both want to build community and facilitate Zegg Forum and other rich group practices.

I received a big insight about purposeful contribution yesterday on the plane from San Francisco to NY to complete our Forum training:

We build community; we aren’t necessarily looking for the perfect one. What gets us excited is to create community (home) wherever we are, and to assist others to do the same. We have been involved in many wonderful virtual communities, and have hosted gatherings at our home, so we are used to being in community without living with people full-time. I’m leaning toward finding the right culture, the right area in which we feel most alive and that inspires us to do more community building.

I will write more about this in a later article about Building Community. Kule and I are currently in NY doing a training on Zegg Forum to have another tool to help build community!

Santa Cruz, CA - 10/15-22/10

2000+ yr Granfather tree - 250 ft tall!

Santa Cruz is a cool place. We immediately loved the redwoods, the ocean, the old hippie-ness, the relaxed style, the diversity, and the center of consciousness exploration. We could see ourselves hanging here for a while, and we might be back in November after some more explorations north along the coast of CA and Oregon.

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I feel at home being near the ocean. The Pacific is wild and cold, and a great place for kitesurfers (see video – they fly!) A visit to Natural Bridges gave us not only a pretty coastline vista but also a not-to-be missed visit with thousands of monarch butterflies who winter over in the aromatic eucalyptus trees and feast on the local milkweed.

Nature is beautiful here. The walk among and inside the giant ancient redwoods was magical, and we got to hang with our buddy Rob who moved here from Gloucester 5 yrs ago; he loves it here.

Rob introduced us to Ahuti and Svargo, who rented us their backyard cabin in the redwoods. It was a retreat space for us, greatly appreciated after being on the road for 2 months. This one-week stay was the longest in any place since we left Ipswich, and it was a great temporary home. Ahuti is an acupuncturist and Svargo teaches zen art (http://www.svargozen.com/); they are long-time meditators and Osho disciples. We enjoyed getting to know them and following tips from them and Rob to get to know the area.

We went to an art show of a friend of Ahuti and Svargo, a woman named Coeleen Kiebert who lost her son several years ago. We talked about our grieving and her spiritual insights, and she showed us the sculptures she did to assist her in that process. Her latest series is the Bardo Navigators, whimsical characters outfitted in navigational equipment to move through the Bardo after death and before the next life.

Santa Cruz is a new age center, and that also makes us feel right at home and also inspired. We hung out for an afternoon with 80-year old silent Baba Hari Das at the Madonna Center on a Himalayan-style mountain and joined a ritual at the Hanuman temple.

Peggy Black's Water from 300+ sacred world places

We met an ex-surfer spiritual teacher named Moki, and reunited with Kule’s friends and NVC (Non-Violent Communication) leader Kelly Bryson (and his partner Torrie), as well as famous sound-healer and spiritual channeler Peggy Black (http://www.morningmessages.com/) who I knew through NESHRI (now Sound Healing Network).

I could see myself doing more sound healing and music here as well as networking for my book and getting Jason’s photography and music out there. Kule is also looking forward to launching is personal growth facilitator practice. This town has a graduate degree in consciousness!

Our next stop was Sebastopol to reunite and perform with Christine and Kem of our old healing music ensemble Bluegate, and to reunite with Kule’s friend Dakini from Sufi Abode days. We will post more about Marin county area in the next post….Now on the way to NY to do a training on Zegg Forum, a great tool to build community, something we love to do!