A picturesque, happy ending to the trip: a boat ride to St. Peter’s Castle for a sunset John-Roger birthday dinner with live music, impressive cuisine, an invocation by J-R companion/caretaker/bodyguard/entertainer Jsu Garcia, Matt Van Fossen performance of “Love Song for the Mystical Traveler,” thanking of our very knowledgeable, sweet and funny Turkish guides, a birthday cake, and lovely, heartfelt reminiscences about J-R. The celebration concludes with a walk back down the castle stairs to our waiting vans, and on the way John stops our van to get out and give some money to a disabled guy begging on the street.
The level of caring and attention to detail and that’s gone into this trip has been off the charts. I’ve watched John huddling with his top generals (our Turkish guides) just about every day, in what looks like the planning of military maneuvers. J-R started these mass excursions in the 1980s with the PAT IV trips, taking people out of their familiar surroundings to change the ingrained patterns of their consciousness while also affecting the consciousness/unconsciousness of the region. John was involved in the planning and execution of the trips and has continued the tradition-smashing tradition. If you watch J-R’s “Christ My Man for Eternity” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amixNe6py7U J-R talks about how Moses took the Israelites out into the desert to change their genetic patterning. These trips seem similar to me—but we do it in a whole lot more comfort.
At the end of the evening we were all invited to get up and tell our favorite J-R story. I told one about the time I was putting J-R’s microphone on him when I was doing sound at a workshop, and he looked awful—red-faced and puffy, with bloodshot watery eyes—like he often did when taking people’s karma through his body. I was concerned and disturbed by the situation, and he looked at me and started cracking up laughing…and then I started cracking up, and we both stood there laughing. I couldn’t tell you why we were laughing and yet at the same time we both knew exactly why. We were both the jokers and the butt of the crazy cosmic joke of being in a limited body in this unlimited universe.
Every one of these trips has been transformational for me. Because there’s such a dramatic break from the past it’s difficult to define exactly how and what changed, but there seem to be themes for each trip related to my/our karma. For me this trip has been about awareness of how I create limitations in my life—from car limitations at the beginning to colon/cold/congestion limitations during the trip, to even the tiniest details like not taking enough camera batteries on an outing, to a final ending where I want to continue on with the Traveler to Europe while creating all kinds of limitations on how much money I can spend. Each limitation has been revealed to be delusional, and passing through it has been a release and an expansion. Then it’s on to storming the castle of the next limitation. (“Have fun storming the castle,” a quote from the movie “The Princess Bride,” has been a recurring joke on this trip when we go to visit some castle ruins.)
This energy is addictive. It’s a high like no other. It’s a vacation not just from my daily life, but from my karma, which is the mold from which my days are manufactured like the identical trinkets that the street vendors sell us in the various towns we travel to. And I have a great life, so great that I can’t figure out how to improve it without one aspect of the greatness impinging on another…except there’s something greater than a great life that can’t fit into my great life, that makes it thunder and roar even in the quietest, most ordinary moments.
I’ve been huddling with my equivalent of John’s generals—my online army of travel websites—running to the edge of my limitations and then back again, trying to negotiate a plan to get to France and England while getting enough rest to recuperate from the toil of the last couple of weeks, the ubiquitous secondhand cigarette smoke and the raw vegetable bowel booby traps. I was scheduled to get on a plane back to the States a few hours ago and I just couldn’t do it. I was stopped cold. The trip isn’t over even though I want to declare it over. I’m booking flights and hotel rooms and cancelling them like they’re as disposable as the blizzard of kleenex that’s helping me clear my lungs. In the end there’s no other option except doing whatever is most spiritually uplifting, happy and healthy without inventing any kind of lid on my expansion.
And occasionally I devolve into thinking I can’t possibly afford to do this. I have no idea what “afford” means—it’s a mindless term. It’s about as informative as the word “just” that seems to pepper everybody’s speech nowadays in a nonstop whining limitation lamentation. “I just want to tell you one thing…” “I just thought you’d be OK with that…” “I just want one more piece of cake” “I just wish I had enough money to…” etc.)
I’ve run out of justs. We’ll see if I get to Europe. Bon voyage.
