The African Man-I heart the Huckabees

If you haven't seen i heart the huckabees, i strongly recommend seeing it. It is definitely one of my favorite movies...
Anyway, I had a similar experience to the main character of i heart the huckabees, which is that when I first arrived in Chiang Mai, I kept seeing this African guy everywhere...he was tall, dreads, lite black skin, so I guess that he could have reallly been from anywhere, but i thought that he had an Arican vibe... I would always try and make eye contact with him just because I saw him so often, but he always looked down at the ground, despite being quite tall... Anyway, I consistently saw him everywhere in Chiang Mai for about 6 weeks in November and December, and then around Chirstmas time, I saw him in Bangkok as well.
Anyway, after not having seen him for a couple of months, I saw him again about a week ago while I was walking through the Sunday market with my friend Lut... and she said that when keep running into the same person like that than that means that he has a message for you, so she recommended that the next time I see him to go up to him and ask, "Do you have a message for me?"
So a couple days later, I was invited to hang out at my friend Jonas's chill guest house, when low and behold, who is there but the African guy..
So I say to him, "I have seen you everywhere, do you have a message for me?"
I guess that I freaked him out by being so direct because he was like, "Absoutely not!" I guess that that is a lot of pressure to put on someone... would have made a great story though, ehh? I didn't really feel a strong connection with him though, and I guess that there is a pretty popular tourist circut, so its not that big of a deal to run into someone consistenly like that, but still I've probably seen this guy about 15 seperate times... Perhaps he'll have a message for me in the future! Turns out he is from Ethiopia...crazy!!

Blind Massage

It was funny, (not really) because after my 26 day massage course, my right foot became numb, I think from sitting in meditation so much, and for days I was hobbling around town, in pain.
The last couple days of the massage course I had decided to go for a run, and borrowed someone's shoes, and I had ended up with this huge blister. Later that same day we went for a hike and the blister popped... this time I was wearing flip flops and it was super painful.
About this time, I got bed bugs, or fleas or something, and my feet completely swelled up with numerous bites...
Our massages were always uneven too because we would just focus on one part and leave the rest out... and somehow the whole left side of my body felt off, like my left foot was an inch shorter than my right foot or something like that...
Anyway, so I once again arrived back in town feeling beat up and limping around...
Someone told me about this excellent bling masseur named Nutt, who was supposed to give brilliant massages.
I signed up!! This man was absolutely amazing, probably the best massage that I've ever gotten!! He would go in soft and gentle and then continue to add more and more pressure to problem areas until it was painful in a good way... I told him that I had sensitive knees, thinking that he would avoid them, but he worked them a lot starting slowly and then adding more and more pressure like I previously described, until I was almost screaming, "That hurts!" I would say... He was so calm, "Yeah, need to heal, pain good!" he would say.
Most of the other thai massages I've had though, they yanked you around like a rag doll, really quickly, this was so different.
Good thing that I didn't know this to begin with, but he cracked my neck and back on the sly when I wasn't expecting, like a chiropractor... it felt so good... good thing that he has a lot of experience!
Anyway... I went in completely beat up, and two and a half hours later, I left walking straight, standing tall, and feeling good!

Butterflies

I've had these amazing experiences with butterflies lately!!
I haven't seen huge amounts of butterflies, but when I was in Pai, I went for a hike and at one point was surrounded on all sides by butterflies, like they were encircling me.
I didn't think much about it except when I was coming back, I ran into someone I had met earlier, and she was reading a book on animal tarot, and she asked me to name an animal that had some significance for me.
I couldn't think of anything right off, and then I remembered being surrounded by the butterflies... They represent transformation, and I feel like I've been going through a lot of transformation lately: the butterflly starts out as an egg, and than has to go inward into the cocoon before it can emerge transformed as the butterfly.
At the massage course one day I was lying down receiving a massage, wearing this tank top that has some flowers embroidered on it, and three times the same butterfly landed on me, and tried pollinating the flower.
The next day a butterfly landed on my yoga mat and stayed there for about 5 minutes while we were doing our morning yoga practice.
And then just a few days ago, I was at an Internet shop which was air-conditioned and all the doors were closed, and this butterfly was in the shop and it kept going back and forth between me and the screne... Lovely!

Confused now more than ever-read 7th

Living in all these different places has stretched my brain, and now I am thoroughly confused... The Lahu’s all live in these one bedroom bamboo hut type things, they all sleep on the floor together, they all have one outfit, they are always together, community seems to be a big thing. There is very little sense of privacy, they all wonder into each other’s homes. The babies are all carried around on people’s backs, family or not..
It’s not a big deal to show one’s breasts as they are considered just a normal part of the body that feeds and nourishes a baby. However, we were not allowed to show our knees because those are considered to be sexually charged. The story that we heard is that since there is relatively little time and privacy to make love, and since its possible that someone will enter your house without knocking, the woman and man both remain clothed while making love, the man is on the bottom, and the woman is straddling him on top, and she just lifts her skirt, revealing her knees...
The women of the village all seem to be overweight while all the men seem to be 1/3 their size. They live off the food that they grow and feed the pigs that they raise all of their leftover scraps. The chickens and dogs seem to be on their own, and there were lots of dogs that looked in especially bad shape everywhere.
The children were all so cute, and seemed to go off and play in groups.
There was one girl in the village whose father was dutch and her mother was Lahu, and they had both passed away, and she, I guess had been to visit family in Holland a couple of times, and attends thai boarding school thanks to the Dutch families money that they send, but she absolutely refuses to live over there. She instead lives with an adopted Lahu family....
It’s interesting how here it is all about family, and how in the west one’s independence is so much more important. I remember a college professor gave this really profound lecture on how we tend to be so much more isolated in western culture daily life, all of us on the highways heading to work in our cars, we can all see each other, yet we can’t make any contact, how we work such long hours, communicate by e-mail, and the phone, etc...How we are so bound by time that we wear watches on our wrists... Yet, are we all longing for real contact, real touch? It makes me think of that movie crash (which I didn’t really care for) where the man says that in Los Angeles, people are so hungry for touch that they crash into one another. I don’t know the answers... I enjoy my independence which is allowing me to travel, yet still keep in touch with people via e-mail and the phone...interesting, ehh... It’s all God....
I think that perhaps in every time period, in every place in the world, there are always obstacles to overcome. Perhaps for the Lahu’s, there struggles have to do with basic health and food concerns, while in the west, most of us don’t have to worry about that because of technology advancements, but those advancements also bring other problems...

Moderation in Moderation-read 6th

It’s funny speaking about health and all that good stuff because I feel like in the past I’ve been persecuted for being too healthy. I remember being a freshman in college and having just come from Belgium where I felt like I was constantly force-fed all fried food, so I come back to the US with this desire to really eat healthfully. Anyway, my college roommate was always telling me how I needed to eat more junk food like she did...
Anyway, so at the massage course, there seemed to be a lot of people who were really health-oriented. There was also a Lahu man who grew and roasted his own coffee beans and set up a sort of “coffee shop” in front of his hut, and the coffee was absolutely delicious. He charged about .30 cents a cup and would just let you keep a running tab and pay at the end...
It started becoming a big deal like, “Ohh meagan, you’ve had so many coffees since you’ve been here,” yada, yada, yada... Our group of roommates were the bad kids, we’d go for coffee after breakfast and lunch, and rebellion formed, one day we even had coffee after dinner too... As Dave says (I got so many good quotes from him) “Moderation in moderation!”
It’s funny too though, the intention that you put food into your body with...we were talking about those people who seem to drink and smoke, yet never get sick... something to think about...
The last night we even threw this little party, one of the guys in the class was a DJ, and had his computer with him, and I’ve never felt such a strong desire to really let loose, dance, drink, get a little crazy.... good times... and “moderation in moderation!”

It's already happening!!-read 4th

We would close our days with some type of group activity for complete closure. The teacher was having problems coming up with activities, so Dave filled in a couple of days and did some tai chi, and other fun energy/movement exercises.
One day he did a Kundalini/Tantra yoga meditation exercise which involved us breathing in deeply and exhaling wonderfully orgasmic, “Ahhhhh,” breaths... It wasn’t too weird or even directly sexual, but a lot of fun... Dave kept saying, don’t worry because, “It is already happening, It’s already happening.” The whole thing was more comical than anything else, especially Dave’s enthusiasm, and the funniest part was that for the rest of the evening whenever we passed a Lahu they would smile at us and let out a big, “Ahhh!” Good times!

I don't get it- read 3rd

What I don’t quite get is this desire to be ego-less, and reach enlightenment... it’s like and then what? what is there?
Buddhism states that the ego is what we are trying to rid ourselves of to a certain degree so that you don’t need to be reincarnated again, right?
And what about the body, and all the wonderful things you can experience in the body? relationships? people? love? making love? chocolate? fresh fruit? All of these things can only be touched in the body, with the ego...
I don’t know about having children and the whole white-picket fence, but I do see myself settling down, with a partner, friends, community, home, career, etc... and it seems like none of that is important if you are enlightened, i.e. ego-less
Dave and I were discussing this, and how our ego does serve us in so many ways, and perhaps its better to strive to have a healthy ego than to be ego-less...
Dave has been a yoga teacher, tai chi teacher, and was once a body piercer, and big raver, he knows about and seems to know a lot about a lot, but it was more like his enthusiasm and joy that seemed to touch me...
After sharing some personal experience with Dave, I’ve decided to pursue meditation in a more balanced way, perhaps not at all, and instead do things like chi gong and tai chi, yoga, etc... that bring you more into the body because I tend to space out and get really involved in my mental thought processes, and meditation seems to encourage that sense of the world getting smaller, and can be somewhat repressive... anyway, we’ll see...
I guess I also enjoy and can’t deny my Christian roots. I’ve had a couple direct experiences lately where I’ve said a prayer and it has been answered directly... I like saying prayers to something bigger than me... not accepting something, but asking for help with it, alas... its all God... I guess its like I’m just taking little nibbles from everything that I’m learning about to make it my own... If that makes any sense at all?

It's all God-It's all o.k.- It's all awesomely o.k.-read2nd

Dave and Lut both coincidentally happened to be followers of the advaita philosophy. Whereas taoism holds that there are two universal dualities: yin and yang that need to be balanced and in harmony to have a satisfying life, Advaita holds that there is no duality and that everything is perfect the way it is, that everything is God... the plants, animals, pollution, cars, ocean, it’s all God...We had this whole conversation the first night about it, and I don’t think that I quite understand everything, but I was struck by this lightness and joy and all down-to-earth quality that Lut and Dave both had... They both had these awesome senses of humor and we laughed a lot...
It’s wierd when you think about it though, and the philosophy causes lots of conflicts: “George Bush is God,” “The child abuser is God.” “The starving man is God.” All non-duality, all existing at once, good and bad, light and dark, etc...
I kept saying,
“Yeah, I get it, but I still believe in a source, a God that I like to pray to,” and Dave kind of through up his arms and was like,
“But who are you praying to?”
“God, of course,” I answered.
“But its all God!”
We laughed and went to bed. Conceptually I understand it, but it is an overwhelming thought. However, advaita continued to creep into my thoughts the following days, and I was thinking about some of the harder experiences I’ve had in the last 5-6 years, and how it is all God, and it does bring some peace, some happiness to it...
And I still don’t quite get it...

Lahu Life-read 1st

So I arrived at the massage school where we departed from to find three couples also signed up for the course, and I was thinking, ohh great! This is going to be fun! Me and three couples all taking the massage course.... Anyway, there was some confusion about the time that we were supposed to meet and about an hour later 6 other people showed up. I ended up chatting and really connecting with this English woman, Madeline, in her early 30's, a Belgian woman Lut, in her early 40's, and another English guy Dave, in his early 40's. Lut has been traveling and living in India for the last 15 years, and Dave has been traveling/living abroad for the last couple of years too, and Madeline is on a two month Holiday where she is going to learn Tai Chi and massage.
So, transportation consisted of all 15 of us packed into the back of 2 small pick-up trucks... Again, I had that fear thing come up... what if they crash? what if I die? etc...It's quite common to see that here in Thailand, but in the US, it is of course illegal...I feel like the US is such a fear culture though too... Anyway, we drove into the mountains, with lots of winding turns: I realizing again how afraid I am of heights, but I survived! And then we then turned off the main road and had a couple miles of a dirt road before we arrived in the village... I felt beat up upon arriving...
We were divided between different bamboo huts throughout the village, and I ended up rooming with Dave, Madeline, and Lut: what a blessing...
The food pretty much consisted of all carbohydrates: fruit and sticky rice for breakfast, sticky rice and veggies for lunch and dinner... Luckily our massage teacher brought brown rice and some beans as supplements, but I definitely noticed the all carb diet isn't super beneficial for my energy levels, but I tried not to put too much energy into it. There was a little shop where they sold eggs and coconuts though, so I supplemented my diet with those foods.
There were common squat toliets (I am a fan! They really are better for you!) and gas heated showers, which worked sporadically, but a nice cold shower was often more refreshing than a hot shower.
We started off the mornings at 6:15 a.m. with yoga and meditation, but we all commented on how much louder the village was than the city: about 4 a.m. the village was alive with roosters and pigs loud and awake! It took me a couple of days to adjust, but I was able to start sleeping through all of that. Our massage practice consisted of 3 hours in the morning, a 2 hour break, and then 3 hours in the evening. It was pretty intense, and disorienting having all of these semi-massages with people who didn’t quite know what they were doing, but overall, it was a great experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything!