San Marcos La Laguna

After a week in Xela, we returned to Lago de Atitlan, just 8 km downshore from San Juan in the small, new age, hippy town of San Marcos La Laguna. San Marcos is a mix bag of old hippies who have settled here, new age spiritualists, healers, yoga teachers, massage therapists, hypnotists, and artists. If you want to learn massage or reiki or stain glass or yoga, this is a great, inexpensive place to do so. There is a gringo section of town, and a moreno section of town. The only reason the two sections interact is commerce. The segregation is glaring, and the hostility palpable. I do not know how it got to be this way, but it is unnerving and puzzling. You would think that a community dedicated to the healing arts would have found a more ameable way to coexist with the locals, but they have not. That said, it is a beautiful, expressive, open, and uplifting community - I was fortunate to be a part of it for a brief time . . .

We spent a month here at "Las Pyramides," attending a yoga and meditation retreat. Our days started with Hatha yoga at 7am. At 10am, we attended a class on subjects varying from metaphysics, to lucid dreaming, to the 7 shakras and 7 corresponding dimensions, to the tree of life, to the emerald table, to astrology, to the kybalion, etc. We sat for meditation at 5pm each day. This schedule remained consistent throughout the entire month. The afternoons were ours, to cook or swim or take a massage or music class. The couse followed the lunar calender, so we started on the new moon and the course culminated on the full moon. The last week, we entered silence and fasted. I modified my fast after the first three days to include raw fruit and veggies, due to weakness and lightheadedness.

This picture was taken before the full moon ceremony, on the last night of the retreat. As you can see, we were required to wear all white for the final ritual.

This is what I took away from the course.

1) Knowledge, as a concept, evolved from something that is 'black and white' to something that is 'fluid and utilitarian'.
San Marcos is more than a little bit woo-woo, and so was this retreat: astral traveling, the tarot, the shakras, astrology are all part of this course, and are all things that I met with skepticism. But I nevertheless listened to the practitioners of these mystic practices, and worked to remain open. I learned that these practices are not as 'woo woo' as I thought, and I learned that skepticism is not always a useful disposition.
We spend 20 years in schools, and the constant, enduring lesson from our instructors is this: memorize and believe and have faith in what I am telling you, and disbelieve everything else - there is no value to what you cannot quantitatively measure. This is the faith we place in science. Science has been perverted into a new religion. Many of these 'mystic practices,' on the other hand, require no such blind faith. Rather, they require strong intention, effort, introspection, deep thought, self-awareness, self-knowledge. The 'answers' of the mystic have value only if they are discovered empirically on your owm, through direct personal experience. These answers may not be quantifiable or verfiable, but they are most certainly as useful as the pythagorean theory, for instance. In fact, the evolution of our ability to interpret these mystical experiences may coincide directly with our ability to interpret the pythagorean theorem. Well, I threw one way out there - anyone hungry, anyone biting?
Faith in science has brought us the cure for polio and the washing machine; it has also brought us weapons grade anthrax and the cluster bomb. Faith in religion has brought us the golden rule; it has also brought suicide bombings.

The way one approaches science can be more 'woo-woo' than the way one approaches the Kabbalah, for instance. An unwise, unbalanced, and blind faith in science brought us the atom bomb. There is nothing in this world more 'woo-woo' than the atom bomb. It is hard to believe that an unwise, unbalanced, and blind faith in the Kabbalah could bring us anything as awful as the atom bomb. So who is more woo-woo: Robert Oppenheimer or John Lennon?

So next time you look at a hippy and discount and dismiss him for being 'woo-woo', ask yourself a few questions:
"How has a blind faith in my 'rational' mind served me/ the world?"
"Are there belief structures that operate outside the realm of science that may serve me?"
"Why is it so important for me to discount mystical experience?"
Well, sorry for preaching there - I kind of got lost in that one. All I set out to say was this: many mystical practices have strong utilitarian value. Bam. Done.

2) I was reaffirmed in the value of self-awareness, of meditation and breathing practices. Every day since the retreat, I have noticed a structure or underpinning of my suffering that I would otherwise have been inaware of: whether it is a deep, hidden fear, or a mental delusion, or a negative physical habit. I was reaffirmed in the mantra of 'know thyself'.

3) The knowledge that I need more vitality in my life; the knowledge that I have the potential to create more vitality in my life.

4) Graditude, intense graditude, for my family.

5) The distinct and verifiable ability of humans to evolve . . . and the hope that that truth breeds.

6) Spirituality - its right fucking there.

7) The encompassing power of doubt

8) My monster is my guide

9) There is a distinct, verifiable, cross-cultural mental state or worldspace that is created by performing such rituals as yoga, meditation, and cleansing practicies in a quiet, relaxed environment. This worldspace is light, positive, hopeful, strong. It is a worry free state that has the taste of rising. A constant smile molds the face. A sense of joy, and a sense of awe at being in the world arises from within. Its a spiral upwards. There is no better state of being, for the self, for the world.

Below are the moonset/ sunrise after the final day of the course.