I've been in Brasil for 10 days now. It feels so much longer than that! I can't find the question mark on this keyboard to save my life. I swear it's not here. I am in Brasilia now. I followed the flow and came with Sarathi, her son, and our friend Jiva who was also staying at her house in Alto to visit her guru from India.
After three days in Brasilia with Sarathi and company I made what at the time felt like an escape to stay with a lovely new friend Cae and his girlfriend (sua namorada) Jaya. Tonight we will go to my first ayahuasca ceremony in Brasil. It is with a non-traditional group led by a woman. Cae tells me this groups "does very high work with angels and archangels." Cae and Jaya both speaks zero English. It's challenging and great. I am learning so much.
The first week with Sarathi in Alto Paraiso (High Paradise) was a lot of sleeping, feeling groggy, and acclimating to an immediate shift into summer and long days of daylight. I met Sarathi in Oregon, where we had a lovely and deep connection. Here we have had some good talks and time together, but it has been different. She has become a Hare Krshna devotee since we last saw each other, and she is very immersed in the bhakti right now, wanting to spend her time studying, chanting, and making prayers. The other day I remembered my dear friend Ethan talking about how there are different branches of activism, each one holding equal importance. The one in particular I was thinking of I think he just calls spiritual activism, where people are led by Spirit to spend every moment of their lives in prayer and spiritual practice. Maybe that is what Sarathi is becoming. I see how for myself, I so much value and aspire to have profound spiritual experience and connection with the Divine that serves to make me more and more effective on the physical plane, balanced in ability to affect change in energetic realms as well as material. I am not sure if Ethan has a name for that branch.
The Hare Krshna experience was super interesting. Now that I'm not in it I feel like I absorbed some great vibrations from being there. In the moment I enjoyed only the singing and dancing. Maharaj, the guru, talking for hours on end while my blood sugar plummeted to excruciating depths was enough to give me a short term eating disorder. Not supposed to eat until after the teaching and everyone dances and sings and someone shakes a white fluffy pom pom and a peacock feather fan at the alter, blows a horn, etc, which all finally happens at almost 11 at night. I could barely understand Maharaj's English, and not much of the rapidly translated Portuguese. I tried to meditate or look up words in the dictionary, but often I just felt narcoleptic during the talks. At times I was reminded of attitudes I've experienced in fundamental Christian circles. I had the underlying impression that I was expected to be a Krshna devotee, that I wasn't quite up to par spiritually since I wasn't, and that the devotees hoped that I would have an awakening one day and find my guru.
Despite all of this I did feel mostly relaxed throughout the whole thing, slept as late as my body asked of me though everyone else woke up at 4am for morning prayers, left the talks when my knees and hips were screaming about sitting too long, and snuck out to go running in my short shorts that are of course not allowed in the temple. I loved the woman who was preparing the food. I helped her in the kitchen, cleaned up around the house, and felt happy and grateful to be of service to a group of people who were having spiritual experiences of high importance to them, even though I wasn't having that experience myself.
Maharaj questioned me in the kitchen the other day, why was I not wearing tulsi beads. Well, I don't have any (and I actually still don't know the significance). Oh, he will give me some. Brings them to me, and asks am I vegetarian, and to my surprise I find myself immediately answering yes!! Maybe my mind was spontaneously giving the answer that I know was expected, or maybe now I am vegetarian. Who knows. It is probably terrible karma to lie to a guru. I really didn't mean to though; I have no idea what came over me. Anyway, now I have some super special tulsi beads from a guru that supposedly I can only wear if I am vegetarian. Fine. I am vegetarian in Brasil so far.
If someone gives me an unidentifiable food to try, most likely it is sweet. Next most common is salty, then neutral. I haven't tasted any of the other flavors here yet. Brasilians love sugar and bread, even those who seem on the healthy living path. (Hare Krshnas serve the most amazing cake after every dinner, and some kind of other desert after every lunch) I am amazed the whole country does not have candida. Maybe they do, I don't know.
Here are some other things I have found.
Bathrooms are for getting very very wet. Usually the whole room is tiled, and the shower is just on one side the room, with no separate enclosure. Floor mop-sized squeegees are for pulling water towards the drain afterwards. The only hot water anywhere is in the shower. Every sink has one option: cool-warmish.
In Brasilia, full-on urban areas meet full-on country at a single intersection. It's wild. Turn a corner, and you leave pavement and shop-lined streets for green rolling hills and trees. All over the city, people use donkeys or horses and carts to haul construction materials.
If you are driving and want to pass the car ahead of you, the thing to do is ride their tail at a distance of 10 feet, filling your car with deisel exhaust until you have an opportunity to speed by. Stop signs are a casual suggestion.
If you are ironing your clothes, try not to touch the cord because you may be able to feel the electrical current running through it, and it will give you the willies.
Brasilian culture is so different. Maybe the phone works, the broken thing will get fixed, and maybe not. Maybe you will talk to your friend tomorrow, or in ten years. People like to know what things cost in the US, and compare prices. Cell phones and internet are very expensive here. So is gasoline. It cost one of my hosts the equivalent of $80 US to fill the tank of a very compact SUV.
Brasilians hold incredibly consistent deep eye contact that is sometimes too intense for even me. They stand or sit twice as close to one another, to me, as people do in the States. And they are very welcoming, with everything.
I have made some hilarious language mistakes so far. My first attempts at "what time is it" (que horas sao) was more like "what prayers" (que oracoes) and trying to say "that's funny!" (ingressada) came out as "churches!" (ingreijas) My hosts crack up. I have however, had no problems saying bread :)
Sending you all much love from the country that I am told "is the heart". Grande abracos!
