The gift

Louie and I recounted yesterday's adventures over and over. "I thought it was a piece of wood, until I saw it blink", I said about the owl. "I didn't know why you were running, I thought it was a piece of wood", Louie said about the snake. We both agreed that there's nothing like seeing a snake in the wild to bring you back into the present moment.

When I stayed at a curandera's house deep in the jungle of Oaxaca, the crashing sound of the river nearby was constant. I had to consciously tell my brain over and over that what I was hearing was a river, not traffic. It took half the night before my brain could truly accept that new reality.

All this reminds me of what the Indians saw when Spanish ships first came to shore. The people could see the ocean moving in strange ways, but they couldn't understand why. It was the Shaman that identified the ships, because he had the gift, the ability to see into other worlds. The people had never seen ships before. They could not physically see what they could not yet understand.