Letter 5 from the Camino

On the Way Home-Last Official Update

These stone fences, probably built in the Middle Ages, show the Irish tradition of stone building and were built by Irish pilgrims who stayed in the area after walking the Camino. I think this picture shows you what a Walker comes to as an inspiring reward after climbing very difficult hills and walking through challenging valleys.  It is the presence of The Camino!

As we spend our last day here in Santiago, we know we are so going to miss hearing Castilian Spanish and speaking it better each day; eating such a variety of unusually prepared and not always digestible food; the unforgettable mysticism and challenge of the Camino Road; the small chapels along the road where we rested and wiped up our sweat; drinking Aquarius, a life saving electrolyte drink; saying over and over again to fellow travelers - “BUEN CAMINO” (which means “have a good Camino”); having to eat dinner at 9pm  and feeling sheepish that we asked to be served earlier; facing our shadow selves together; laughing and crying together...and so much more that just can't be accessed yet in us because we have yet to digest it all.

One of the best things about being here in Santiago is everyone feels like they are desiring to ascend out of the ordinary into the extraordinary in some way.

Even the very strong masculine, tight lipped way of being of most of the people is affected here by the Santiago, the St James promise of ´the way of the Christ shall Lift Us All Out Of Our Own Way.

While the students are being guided by Marshall to Finisterre by the Ocean to do their guided Ceremony of Release, I´m taking all of the wishes today to the Cathedral of St James for you all.  It is such a privilege to be doing that.  There is a very beautiful and small chapel in the Cathedral where I will read all of the wishes quietly and ask for the Divine Intervention of St James, as well as all other divinities to hear and respond to our personal and transpersonal prayers.  I ask you all to be open to receiving what you have asked for from this day on....kind of like noticing how your blessing of The Camino is happening for you because you asked for it!

I am looking forward to having just a little time in Madrid, hoping to get tickets for the Flamenco in our last evening...we shall see what Mother Madrid wants for me!!!
We know you are praying for our safe return...as so, so appreciate all of the support you have given us.

Love,  Phaeryn

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First Letter from the Camino

Letter 4 from the Camino

Walking the Camino
September 13, 2012 

Enjoy the flat road for walking -  just around the corner, thru that dark space, is another incline!

Well, all of our walking is coming into a major culmination tomorrow...we will be walking into Santiago De Compostela.  I am trying to console myself because I injured my knees enough two days ago that I won´t be able to walk...just ride into Santiago.  This injury has sourced me in facing some resistances in my life I wasn´t aware of until now.  I can say though that I walked all but two days of our journey and it has been A CHALLENGING ENDLESSLY INSPIRING WALK.

Some of our team will walk a short way because they too are a bit sore and too weary, some will walk all the way with their packs on their backs, some will walk all of the way without their packs and some will ride with me.  We have had four channeled sessions preparing us for the important adventure of laying all of everyone´s wishes at the foot of St James statue, touching the Pilgrim’s column as we walk into the enormous Cathedral of St James  and, for ourselves doing a ceremony to let go of our human ways of loving in order to embrace the divined ones.

Santiago is a very old university town filled with romantic, medieval pubs, restaurants, rare items shops and places all over where Celtic music is being performed. We are intending to take in some of the Art and Historic sites as well as spend a good period of reflective time just sitting in the Cathedral in prayer.

 
As you probably know, when anyone is close to the finish line, there are all kinds of energies that can tend to cause mischief so we ask you to think about us in this more than once tomorrow.  Pictures of all of this are coming!!!

Thank you all for sending us your wishes and prayers.  We will very carefully tender each one in this sacred atmosphere.
 

Pausing to catch our breath. Left to Right: Jane, Susie (sitting), Catherine

Next Update: Letter 5 from the Camino

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Update: Letter 3 from the Camino

Image source: http://www.thespainscoop.com/camino-de-santiago-tips-spain

Tuesday 9/11/12

I haven’t mentioned our experience of the Spaniards so far in these shares because I/we are still kind of scratching our heads striving to make some worthy observations about them.

I think we would all agree though that Spain is a man’s world and the women simply seem to just be their appendages. Of course that is infuriating to us all here because we all come from a country that is so revolutionized in this regard. It seems like the women and the dogs that can physically wander free, seem sad.  The women seem to almost be too sad to be angry.  Of course, I want to underline the word seem because these are just my first observations.

I realize how much the beauty and presence of women uplifts the overall vibration of a place. I believe, when the men respectfully and admiringly hold the heart of the spirit of the women - then any place is full of everything that Light represents.

The synergistic dance between the masculine and feminine is still where the secrets of magic and enchantment are found...what we all embodied to find and become, I believe! That is sorely missing here. The relief is Mother Earth here. She is nakedly feminine and masculine in such a raw and wild way. 

There are many magical forests hiding in and out of the rolling pastures that are divided off by the old Irish tradition of fences which are of stone...and many of the villages we walk through reek of cow and horse dung, of fresh hay, of growing corn and a giant broccoli like plant they feed the pigs. I wonder sometimes if anyone lives in these villages because they seem to have been built so long ago. In my walking trance I have half expected peasant-like people to peek out at us.

I don’t know if I ever have experienced the kind of masculine energy that pervades here. The men often gather in the bars together and talk loudly and in a rowdy way. There’s still a lot of smoking happening here, so there is that smell we basically rarely smell in our country now, given how we have stopped smoking. The old men sit around mostly and seem to argue in the local dialect which is called Gallego.

This country seems to be very well run.  Hotels, motels, etc tend to be almost nicer than ours. They still have the individual stores instead of supermarkets which I love and they all take snoozes in the afternoon and come back to work around 4 pm and stay open until dinner time which is 9pm.

Because we eat earlier in the day, we are the first people in the restaurants at 9pm

and by the time we leave the restaurants are all filled up! We were impressed by their food at first, but now we are struggling because our stomachs are used to more varieties of food. They eat a lot of red meat, very little chicken, and very little vegetables except iceberg lettuce salad.  Sometimes we sound like little rabbits in a garden chopping away at the lettuce!

Pilgrims pausing on the Camino.

 Left to right: Pierre Rouzaud, Jane Barthelemy, Nancy Morin, Susie Baron, Phaeryn Sheehan, Catherine Henderson. Behind the camera: Marshall Estner.

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Previous: Letter 2 from the Camino

Update: Letter 2 from the Camino

A pilgrim statue and yellow arrow mark the way on the Camino de Santiago.

Source: britannica.com

Thursday 9/6/2012

I am not sure whether it was divinely designed to walk 13-14 miles two days in a row or absolute insanity, but we did it!  Thank Goddess Marshall walked with me yesterday because I was needing his masculine protection and stamina.  We made a mistake in calculating the time it would take to get to our destination of Portomarin, so we actually had to walk side by side with a flashlight showing us where to step.  By that time, after 11 hours of walking, we were surreally surrendered, kind of feeling like some other part of our bodies was turned on to put one foot in front of the other carefully but constantly.

Because it was too dark, our team called us and picked us up with a cab from a mile long bridge we had to cross. There are so many interesting people on the road and we all seem to speak the same language even though we don´t!  The knowing looks we seem to automatically share between each other of how grueling this road is, is very comforting.

At one stop, a so blessed stop that seemed to be the only oasis for at least 6 miles, was full of Flemish, German, English, Italian, Spanish and some other language I couldn´t identify...and though we couldn´t understand each other, we were ´doing´´ for each other. Like bringing the other the beer they ordered as we picked up our own...or making space at our table for someone who had just come off the road and was trying to peel their backpack off of themselves.  

There is such a longing in all of us to connect and get close....it really moves me to tears sometimes as I walk.  It seems clear to me we all have to find ways to be together like this because then we see how much alike we are, and how much we want to create the many blessings there are to being alive instead of the opposite.  There are no conversations about politics, religion, or what our countries are going through; but instead conversations about walking the Camino and why we are walking it.

I can´t help but wonder if the scenery has changed much since the Camino began, because many of the villages that we walk through  feel like they have been in existence for a very long time.  The corn, the pigs, food and other vegetables are almost ready to pick, taking in the last vestiges of Sept sun to be ripe.  Apples are falling off of the trees and berries of all sorts are growing everywhere.  You can see that the Irish spiritual seekers clearly migrated here long ago because their craft of building with stone shows up everywhere.
Evidently when an Irishman decided to walk the Camino, he knew he would never return to Ireland because it was such an enormous effort to get here and then walk it!

Today we have had our day off for washing, channeling and pondering, So, tomorrow we are off on the road again.  We will walk around 9 miles. Except for yesterday, I am finding that the miles walked don´t seem to make much difference in regards to my energy. But what does make a difference is my practice of surrendering to the earth step by step.  In other words when I just give into the next hill I see coming up rather than tightening up, it happens as it happens.  Very Zen.  It´s also interesting that my body can hurt so much at the end of the day but feel fine the next morning!  Something beyond is afoot!  Must have something to do with all of your prayers!

Love Phaeryn

Next Update: Letter 3 from the Camino

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Letter 1 from the Camino

September 3, 2012

Image source: laits.utexas.edu

The first night that we spent in Madrid consisted mainly of us coming together and having a meal.  We were told by a cab driver to try Casa De Juan restaurant which was such a great recommendation.  It´s not easy to explain and describe how elegant that meal was for us.  The food here is not only really tasty but beautifully arranged, and the servers are uniquely professional.  It must take several years to learn how to be such a masterful waiter and waitress as we observed them being!
 
The supposedly 2 star hotels would easily be 5 star in our country.  Everything again is elegant and beautiful.  The Spanish are not interested or able to speak English so there are three of us who do a pretty decent job of communicating.  They aren´t negative with us at all but very gentle, just must feel that when in their country, speak their language. It is also interesting to see that there are not places that are run down.  It feels as if everyone is doing their job of keeping their homes, towns and cities beautiful.
 
Our first day of walking was beyond exhausting.  It really pushed us to the limit of our endurance.  Pierre and Diane and Catherine fared better than the rest of us but they were challenged too.  The scenery we walked through was soothing.  The towns we walked through are very old towns and thus radiating that old European charm of cobbled streets, baskets of geraniums flowing from traditionally designed apartments and businesses.  Each town has a chapel that really grabs your heart because you can ´feel´ the many prayers that have been said there by simple, devoted people of the town.
 
We walked 14 miles that first day.  I literally pulled my backpack and my shoes off and lay like a wounded bird on the bed for an hour.  I didn´t move a muscle because it hurt too much. What was and is still interesting is that as sore as I might ´get´ each day, the next morning it is gone!! Thank Goddess!!
 
The second day, yesterday, we only had to walk 5 miles but it was almost as difficult as walking the 14 miles before because it was all uphill, and I mean walking up a steep incline.  It´s interesting to put oneself in this predicament because you can´t get out of it.....can´t take a cab, call for help or whatever else.  You have to keep putting one foot in front of the other over and over again. It really activates and eventually shuts the mind up because your body tends to take over, kind of like finding yourself in a bearable painful trance.
 
Throughout the two days so far, I have had the thoughts about my own embodiment, my history and my actual versus my wishful relationship with Godliness within me and without.  I thought about the Pilgrims who walked this Camino much earlier, like a lot of the Irish who felt their only way to really connect to Jesus as God was to get to Santiago, Spain where the relics of St James were.  I wondered how passionate was their desire to be close to the energy of an apostle of Jesus, St James.
 
It came to me that people after Jesus death in the western world had only to look forward to the promises Jesus spoke in order to experience some happiness in life.  There just weren´t the comforts and diversions of our time to soothe them and make them forget that life isn´t a happy experience without that connection to some representative of the divine.
 
That realization humbled me.  I stopped complaining for a while about how much my body hurt, and even cried when I walked into a grove of old trees because I had a flash of an experience of my own Goddessness.  I love being moved to burst into tears because I am deeply moved!!
 
Today we are in Triacastela and have been taxied here.  No walking today.  We are getting our wash done, buying some supplies and having a channeling.
 
It is getting clear that we are on this Camino to get a very real connection to our own Self we have never had before so we do have everything at stake....so your prayers for us would be that we realize this purpose. 
 
Our Spiritual Warriorship is being activated and causing us to realize that the first principle of Being A Warrior Is Not Being Afraid Of Who we Are and what ´´Being Who We Are” demands of us....especially changing, letting go, surrendering, falling in love over and over again, staying true to this Path and so on.
 
With Love,
Phaeryn

Next: Letter 2, an update from the Camino