Some ideas just won’t go away. For me, at this junction in my life, it’s Peru. I’m thinking about retreats for 2017 and from the minute I had the thought “I think I’ll do some retreats in 2017” Peru has been tugging at my sleeve. Picture Shrek… donkey jumping up and down… “Pick me! Me! Me! Pick me!” Well that’s Peru. I know well enough by now that when things tug that hard on my sleeve, they’re to be said yes to! So… I’ve said yes. There will be a retreat to Peru in 2017.
I’ve led retreats to Machu Picchu before and so I’ve been digging through old pictures. What a delicious journey into the past that’s been. I came across a video I want to share with you. It’s a little shaky and worn, but I think it speaks for itself… (If you’d rather read just scroll down for the transcript…)
Transcript of Peru firewalk video (ever so slightly edited)…
We had a firewalk last night that I wanted with talk with you about.
I’ve done a lot of firewalks and there was something about last night’s firewalk that was really excruciatingly difficult. It was absolutely the hardest firewalk I’ve ever done.
It was a beautiful fire. Every fire when you do a firewalk is different. Some are gentle and deep and some are playful and more tickly. Each one is different. This firewalk was very intense. It did have a playful energy from the beginning but also a very deep and intense energy.
There was a dynamic that was going on yesterday with the fire walk that I don’t usually have and that dynamic was that we had a film crew.
The group I have with me in Peru right now is a group that’s working on a documentary. And so there was this element that was present that’s not typically present. I’ve been thinking about this a lot today—what that kicked up and what that means to me, to you, to us.
I realized that part of what was going on was that the addition of the camera, the addition of the dynamic of being watched was almost like a representation of ego—and the negative part of ego at that. The sense of being watched; the sense of having to perform; having an idea of how we wanted it to look.
There were some very specific things that people wanted to have happen so that the camera could capture them on film and what that did was that it took us out of our authentic selves. It took us out of flow. It pushed us into a preformed mold which didn’t fit with what was happening.
When we were lighting the fire last night there was a woman who works here who was helping me, Leah. We were playing… getting all the rocks out of the way. We were making this fire and every time we would move close to the fire the fire would lick out at us like it was playing with us. And so there was this playful energy that was wanting to happen but when everybody came back and we had the cameras going it became this whole different issue.
I think this is something that happens a lot to us in our lives. We have this idea of how we want something to flow. We have this idea of what we’re supposed to be; who we’re supposed to be; how we’re supposed to be; how we’re supposed to show up in the world. We have this idea that we’re supposed to be this way but we’re not be that way. And that’s something I can tell you has really been rubbed in my face in the last 12 hours in terms of what happens when we just allow ourselves to show up as we are and we don’t have these preconceived notions and we don’t have this tiny little repertoire that we allow ourselves to have. What happens when we allow ourselves our entire range and we don’t have to look a certain way for the camera and we don’t have to have it unfold a certain way.
I wanted to share that with you. I wanted to really challenge you and to challenge myself to really think about this.
Where are we getting stuck in “performing for the camera”—whatever the camera is. The camera can just be our own idea of who we think it is we should be in this lifetime. When we do that—“perform for the camera”—we’re in trouble because we knock out 99% of the possibilities for ourselves. We get this idea of what love is supposed to look like and so we miss love when it’s staring us in the face. We miss a fire walk because we have an idea of how we wanted to show up on film. That’s a horrible thing to have happen and it’s a horrible waste of life.
So that’s my thought for you for today…
Namasté,
Rhégina
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©2016 Rhégina Sinozich
