Costa Rica
I woke with the sunrise, only minding the ocean, never minding the time, and I had finally caught its rhythm. Salt burns on my elbows and knees were badges earned. They signified the struggle, paddle-out, stand-up, fall-off, fight the waves and ride-in again. Pleased with the morning, I grabbed my board and made my way through a small patch of jungle.
A lean striking man, with sun-kissed skin, wavy dark hair and steel-blue eyes walked toward me, he was wearing a simple turquoise V-neck t-shirt and well-worn brown leather flip-flops. I felt an overwhelming kindness emanating from him, it danced lightly on the warm breeze where I could almost feel it touching my skin.
He approached, carrying nothing but his 6-year-old son, little bronzed arms rested around his father’s shoulders, as if the two were one. The child in a faded red t-shirt looked into me with his deep brown eyes as if he belonged everywhere because he had been. His father gently spoke to him in Spanish, put him down stepped toward me and introduced himself.
He was Hugo, from Spain, he’d been living in Costa Rica for 16 years and then he asked me what I knew about synchronicity. We talked about the world, what it had been and what it may be. We spoke for what seemed hours.
In no particular order, we spoke of the exotic places we had seen, the people we met and the books we read, we spoke fast as if there was sand in an hourglass marking our place in time. The similarity of our inner landscape was, as if we had come from the dust of the same star; released in a supernova in different directions, to explore and yet still share the same energy, the same base, the same knowing. From our shared obsession with the soul’s journey to our wonder at the universe and the guiding force behind it, we were fellow travelers.
He told me that in Costa Rica, the frequency was strong, because there were no factories polluting the environment: ‘Pura Vida’. Then he stepped closer and as if looking into my soul said, “You can access this frequency this very moment, you don’t need anything but sunshine and rain. The trees glow and the air sparkles if you sit still long enough. All that you need are your eyes and your breath.”
All of a sudden that light that I saw dancing on the breeze made sense.
After those few hours, I walked away with a renewed understanding of myself. Hugo was in this place to give me a message, a reminder of the distractions of this world. He told me that what I have to offer the world is something I already possess and am, not something I must search for or ‘be’. I cannot lose sight of it. It had been with me through the ages, and is even still now.
This sojourn through the physical world is only part of an endless expansion that cannot be contained by form. I saw this secret deep in my mind in the mountains of Peru years earlier but I had become distracted and forgotten the power of this knowing.
Synchronicity brought me to that patch of jungle where Hugo blew celestine dust from his lips, into my soul and just like that, our contract was complete. Familiarity hung heavy in the air and at last we hugged as if we found each other again after many lifetimes, but in this particular life our first embrace was a familiar goodbye.
