September 3, 2012
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| Image source: laits.utexas.edu |
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
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