Brazil Journal

February 18, 2006 [note, i am posting most recent updates at the top. for feb 17, scroll down]

First a couple of recollections from the trip here. In the Seattle Airport I ran into an old friend, Virginia Hoyte - Jungian psychologist and long time concerned person for the earth. We chatted re the state of the world side by side at the sinks in the ladies room. Her latest amazing book is Lester Brown's [title?] 2.0 so, having plenty of time, i went off to the main terminal to find it at Barnes and Noble. No luck, but just as I was giving up a woman came up to the counter and asked for YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE by Joe Dominguez! She'd been reading the simple living website and wanted THAT book for her flight. We chatted and, tho they didn~t have our book [it's been years since i've found it in airports... I used to visit it in all the airports I went through, just to have a cozy friendly feeling], I felt this little coincidence boded well for this trip. I prepare, prepare prepare and then, once out the door I just let go and allow the true purpose of any travel to reveal itself. Then, in Dulles Airport, on my way to the plane to Saõ Paulo, I saw a big billboard advertising France as a good place to do business. It read: FRANCE. SLOW FOOD AND FAST CARS. There it was again, affirmation that the simplicity movement with all it' cousins - frugality, slow food, sustainable living, take back your time - is alive and not only well, but spreading.

even as i glory in this place and the people, I am trying to understand, put words on, this experience. Of course, these are 75-100 very special Brazilians - they have taken time and money to attend a spiritual retreat. Even so, I am learning about the spirit in this country that so speaks to me waaaay below words. For example, Didi, my friend and the spiritual leader of this ecovillage, teaches in the most unusual way. She gave a lecture this morning about the Great Turning, acknowledging Joanna Macy who was here a few months ago to teach for a week. It was done with a powerpoint presentation projected on a huge wall - very few words, mostly stunning pictures, and frightening pictures. four times in the two hours, giant puppets or very stylized actors arrived to do a highly dramatic enactment of the point Didi was making. Apparently Brazilians are not a text oriented culture, so such artistic and dramatic approaches to teaching go right in. She also is my sister in the importance of conversation; after every section of teaching she had people talk to one another, and then a few share with the group.

And here~s something else so enchantingly different. We do a lot of chanting and dancing, all full of laughter and errors and heart. It~s like we are kindergarteners playing, even as we do sacred rituals. But when people get up to speak you understand how deeply they are informed about the state of the world, how substantial they are in their professions, how educated, how aware. We have had some very serious, lengthy whole group discussions about the teetery dollar, about politics, about 911, about the dark and light of the current moment in brazil... and then we dance and chant and laugh and hug and run through the rain getting soaked but so what.

we shall see how much of these first impressions hold when i am traveling around the country.]

all the facilitators and Didi and I met last night to plan our presentations for the tour. They know her teachings well (they teach them) and had had two days of listening to me. There was a bit of everyone talking at once, of course in Portuguese with me using Spanish to get across and Didi to translate - somehow, amidst the hubub, the tour was planned. I came to understand the gift of this tour even more; each facilitator is doing publicity to attract enough people to cover the costs of Didi's and my travel. I am very excited about the ever clearer ways the teachings I've been developing with NRM and through my own initiation dovetail down to great detail the teachings of Prakar and Ananda Marga - of course, my practices aren't traditional yoga, chanting and meditation (i could use more of all of them) but the essences are so similar. In part because Prakar was both a realized teacher AND a social philosopher. ahem, it's the social philosophy i'm talking about in saying we are similar, not that 'realized being' thang.

I've also been taking long solo walks; the vegetation is much like California but lusher as the humidity is thick. nothing dries out, at least not while i've been here. we eat food from their organic gardens - lots of fruit and vegetables, which is agreeing with me.

One more image before signing off... last night i left the circle dancing when my eyelids gave out. the chanting and laughing was still coming from the large meeting hall as i drifted off. then i hear what sounds like a bunch of drunks with guitars singing outside my window. I don't understand any of the Portuguese but i do understand every time they say 'vicki' and bang on the wall. so i get up, stick my head out the window and there are a dozen smiling faces singing to me. i just laughed and blew kisses. and today many people asked me slying if i enjoyed the seranade. would we dare do anything like this in the US. even my cool friends and more inhibited than these 'free and easy' folks. as rick ingrasci says, the future belongs to whoever throws a better party. i think the future might belong to brazil, then... this is some combo of a better party, a serious symposium, a spiritual retreat and who knows what else. gotta go, as tonight we are chanting all night and even tho it seems unlikely, i might make it at least for an hour or two. we've been on silence all afternoon to prepare.

ciao from a corner of paradise,
vicki

February 17, 2006
Day 3 at the Ecovillage about 2 hours outside of Sao Paulo, a spiritual center affiliated with the worldwide Ananda Marga movement founded by Prakar, an Indian guru and visionary social teacher. I am already fantasizing spending the rest of my days here. Not this eco village per se but here in Brazil. Honest, there is something very different in the people - a sweetness, an ease in their bodies, a joy, an affection... all infectious. Of course it helps that i have taught here for two days solid, so all eyes, ears and hearts have been attentive to me. It helps me feel so very welcome.

I am the guest of Didi, meaning teacher. Her American name is Susan Andrews and after a traditional Harvard education she met Prakar, became a nun and has been in love with the divine ever since. After his death, she came to Brazil and was inspired to start a center here. From that has grown a vast network of teachers throughout the country. There are 60 regional facilitators here now, and later in the month Didi and I will travel to 9 of their cities to give lectures.

Dear God, how did I get so lucky to end up here. Of course, by chance... and design. Didi and I met on the ferry back to Seattle after a gathering with some mutual friends. In that half hour, we recognized one another as sisters on this crazy path of spiritual AND social transformation. Several years later, a dear friend gifted me with a trip to the jungles of Ecuador to visit the Achuar people and learn about the work of the Pachamama Alliance, seeking to help these people preserve their way of life in their as yet unspoiled part of the Amazon headwaters. Well, having made it to South America, I wasn~t about to turn around and go home! I discovered news of the first world social forum somewhere on the web and even though no one i knew knew anything about it, off i went. since i was in Brazil, i visited the eco-miracle of Curitiba and made a side trip to see Didi's place. The friendship deepened, we went off to the WSF together and have stayed in touch ever since. She KNEW and I suspected we had more to do together so she patiently waited until i was done with cancer, done with writing my new book on freedom and then brought me here. based on the response of her students to both the Conversation Cafes and to YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE, her intution was spot on. Many are going to fan out across Brazil to start CCs - and they are now clamoring for a Portuguese translation of YMOYL. Fortunately, there is a summary of YMOYL on the YMOYL website, and a tech guru here has a translation program so ~very soon we'll have that up on the website. They also translated my two powerpoint presentations and between my fluent spanish and a great translator i was able to stand there for 6 hours solid speaking.

Friends, it~s been 3 years of inner adventure thanks to the cancer and the big job of writing a wee book about freedom. I have actually relished every minute of solitude and inner search and have learned lessons that have profoundly changed my life. Even as my health returned I had little appetite for anything but intimate, local, personal connections - i want to relate to people and things i can feel and touch and hug and smile at and comfort and learn from. Gone was the will to 'change the world' - to act on large global systems. Yet now, here, in Brazil, after two days of teaching to about 75 very eager learners, I feel welling up within NOT gradiosity about world changing but rather a feeling of love overflowing and a sense i will again be speaking and writing from love, not urgency. I could have lived the rest of my life without this impulse returning, but now that it is here, it feels natural and right and embodied (not heady).

It~s time for dinner. I will write more in a day or so.
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beisos
Vicki