Somewhere along the path I’ve walked the last few years, studying various spiritual disciplines, participating in both eastern and western practices to align mind, body, and heart, learning to be still enough to hear the small whispering wise voice inside even when I am moving, a strange thing happened in my perception. I try often to explain it but am never quite sure how to make it make sense to another. It is not a mentally calculated way of perceiving – the way you see an expression change or a body tense and deduce what created the change. It is a sensation, an actual physical sensation albeit a bit amorphous. It is akin to the feeling when you are in a large house and you sense a door has opened or closed to the outside – not because you hear it, but because you actually feel a change in the air on your skin or the shift in pressure somewhere inside your body. You can’t tell in that moment what door has opened or how it was opened or by whom. You can only feel some notable change in the invisible air around you. Then you can start deducing – ‘oh my wife must have just come home’ or ‘I must not have closed the back door’ but you can’t really be sure what it is until one of your other senses affirms it or you mentally deduce the cause.
I feel these shifts in people’s energy now. I can’t explain why they are there or what they are about, but I can feel them, literally feel them in my body. I feel hesitancy and engagedness and other subtle variations around what I can only term as being open or being closed - a pressure change when the door to their mind or heart closes or when it opens, when they have withdrawn or extended. Sometimes this energetic tuning receives feelings, though this happens far less and usually only where there is some strong personal connection. Interestingly, I can sense an evil intent more readily than sorrow or joy – a sense I’m sure has saved me from challenged situations many times during my travels. Perhaps it is simple intuition. Or perhaps intuition is simply the ability to perceptibly feel the energetic vibrations of others.
This perception, whatever it is, has become neon-light-like when I talk couchsurfing to strangers, which I do everywhere I go. It is astonishing the speed with which many people slam closed their minds to the possibility that couchsurfing gives to the world. Sometimes I sense fear in the air as the metaphorical door slams. For a long time, I thought it was the fear of being wronged, hurt, betrayed. I have begun to wonder though, whether it is actually fear of a world where such genuine openness and generosity is possible. After all, power, and money, can only be held by closing others out. What would our world come to, where would we turn for safety and security, if we were to open our hearts, our doors, our borders, our bank accounts?
The ones who slam the door never come around. They smile politely, they listen and nod. But they will never even look at the site. I know it before I finish the description. The ones who close the door for “safety’s sake” will listen incredulously, but they do listen. They can’t imagine such a world, convinced as they are that the world is dangerous and people in it are not trust worthy, but something in them would like to. Then there are the curious ones, the ones who want to be convinced. They open the door a tiny crack, giving you a small window of opportunity to share your experience, tell them that it works. They want to believe and some of these someday may just try it. And then there are those whose eyes light up at the possibility such a concept offers. I know when they walk away that they will create a profile in the next two days.
When people sign up I am filled with joy, excited anticipation for the experiences ahead of them. When people refuse the idea, tossing it in the trashcan where their faith in man lies wadded like an old piece of paper, it saddens me. I mourn the many wonderful experiences others will never have because they simply can’t contain the idea that this world is filled with kind, wonderful people who are eager to share a common bond with one another. I mourn too the isolation that comes from living in a world where one believes, fundamentally, that mankind does not warrant his own trust.
I think about the last ten little days of my life: the wonderful people I’ve met - Francesco, Flavio and the guys, Rositsa, Evan, Eldad, my wonderful new little family, Olrin, Ralitsa, Vladimir, Angel; the wonderful places I’ve been – looking out over the Roman sea, the view of St. Peter’s walking home with Francesco under a star filled sky, riding through the mountains of Bulgaria, dancing to Bulgarian MTV with my adopted family, walking the cobble stoned streets of Plovdiv, barefooted, with Ralitza by my side, and, of course, that glorious, heavenly, to-die-for pizza!
I left Ascoli just ten days ago, and in those ten days I have created a life time of memories, forged new lifetime friendships, and spent less than a dinner out at a nice restaurant back in the states. What a world this is when we open our hearts and minds to the possibility of genuine human exchange. You don’t have to cross an ocean to have these experiences. You don’t have to go to some exotic country. There are places, people in your own proverbial back yard who would love to meet and share stories over coffee, to show you their world through their eyes, to learn about yours through your eyes. Dreams of trips that were financially impossible quickly become possible when you take hotel costs out of the budget. Experiences are waiting to be had. Friendships are waiting to be made. So tell me. Why haven’t you created a profile?
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Posted by: malt whisky | November 10, 2013 at 06:24 PM