No matter where you go in the world, there are people just living out their lives...  Entire cultures that you may never have interacted with and may never have know about until you stumble across them.  When you are in a village in Southern France, watching people go to the local market to buy their artisan bread, you realize that they are totally oblivious to someone halfway around the globe in Nicaragua who is taking a bath out of a water bucket in their tin roof shack.  So many of these mini societies of people on earth are so isolated from the rest, they feel like the only reality when you are in them.  You can live in them and not even know that other realities exist.  The reality of the average person in New York would be unfathomable to the reality that a person in Puerto Vallarta accepts as normal for example.

I have been in the rural mountains of Costa Rica for the last 6 days.  By rural, I mean that I have been without cell phone service the whole time, driving on mostly dirt roads.  I came here to scout out potential spots for upcoming retreats I’m planning for next year.  I also came here to visit and stay with my friend Kaypacha who is a very well known astrologer.  We met when we were both hired to speak at a 5-D conference in Florida some years ago. 

I am flying home today.  My heart sank to hear that I missed the first snow where I live.  I love the first snow.  My custom is to go out into it so that I can let it hit my bare chest.  It would feel so strange to live in a place with no real seasons.  I’m excited that I get to have a taste of the Winter before going on European tour again in November.       

Costa Rica is unlike any place I have ever been.  Upon landing, I was assaulted by the humidity and by the rows of taxi drivers aggressively trying to get tourists into their cabs.  In between them, men who grab your bag without asking you in order to take them to the taxis so you can then give them some money for their completely un-asked for service.  It felt a bit like a financial opportunity feeding frenzy; a horrible welcome to the country.  I began to regret the trip immediately.  But upon continuing, I would find that the worst part about Costa Rica was the airport experience. 

 The first day in Costa Rica, we made our way around San Jose.  As a foreigner what impacted me the most is that the doors and windows of every single house and shop is either covered in protective bars or protected by a gate, many of which are topped with razor wire.  It looked like the whole city was in self-imposed prison.  Prison designed to keep the criminals out instead of in.  As a foreigner it is not possible to see that and not feel unsafe.  The kind of unsafe that makes you feel like you have gotten in way, way over your head. 

In the days that followed I came to understand that in general, Costa Rica is in fact a peace-loving country.  It is not as violent as the look of the city would make you believe.  It is one of the safest developing countries in the world.  Jokingly the locals explained that when you live in Costa Rica, you just have to pretend that the police don’t really exist.  There is so much freedom and so little infrastructure and so little enforceable rules that unless something really, really serious happens; you’re kinda on your own to do something about it.  You’re also on your own to guard against it.  I can attest to this because the police in this country don’t even bat an eye when people pass them on a double yellow line highway going 30 miles over the speed limit.  In fact, I do not understand what security professionals do in this country exactly... except for stand by tellers when they take the cash out of their registers.  Costa Rica is really a land of petty crime.        

Many people say they love San Jose.  Perhaps given enough time, I could come to find things I like about the city as well.  But this time I could not get away from it fast enough.  And so, I did.

We drove west into the hills and mountains.  What I found was enchantment.  Costa Rica is notorious for its allure.  People who partake in shamanic medicines will tell you that the medicines begin to call to you and that is how you know it is time to learn from them.  For example, when Kambo begins to call you, frogs begin to show up everywhere in your reality.  Costa Rica is like that.  It comes to you in dreams.  It comes to you in visions.  It shows up in conversations.  It calls you.  And Costa Rica has been calling people who are on the path of awakening (especially teachers of awakening) for the last few years with ardent determination.  That is why I came here.  I have never heard anything about Costa Rica.  Before coming here, I knew nothing about it.  It was never on my list of places I wanted to visit or felt called to before.  But about 6 months ago, it started to show up in my visions.  I kept getting the message, “This is the place”.  And so, because I follow callings no matter what, I came.

Costa Rica is widely considered to be the best site on the planet for permaculture.  It is also a prime location for intentional communities.  Having been here, I can attest to how true that is.  Costa Rica is the kind of place where if you throw a seed out the window on accident, three weeks later it is a tree.  The amount of vital force here is actually painful to the senses.  Between the tropical, jungle like vegetation and the reptiles and the insects and the mammals and the rich vitality of the soil, this place is overflowing with abundant life.  There is so much life force here that it is bursting at the seams and energetically encroaches on your personal space.  Being in this much life force energy is intense.  Emotionally it feels the same way as when you’re little and your mom tries to help you to take a drink, but tips the cup upside down for too long so you can barely keep it from spilling everywhere.  You end up with so much in your mouth that it is hard to swallow.  There is so much fruit here as well.  There is fruit everywhere you turn.  After only 4 days, I was sick of fruit.  The kind of exotic, tropical fruits that I throw a conniption fit of excitement about when I see them in the grocery store back home, are literally like weeds here.      

Sleeping here at night with all this life I thought to myself, there is no way that someone who lived here their whole life could conceptualize of the sound of silence.  The nighttime is nothing short of a chorus of insects and amphibians outside.  Also, it is so humid that there is no way that someone who lived here their whole life could conceptualize of what it means to be dry.  Being here, means being damp… All the time.  You have to get used to the texture of moist skin.  Every hug you get or give feels sticky. 

October is the rainy season.  It rains every afternoon here.  A few times since being here, it has rained like I’ve never seen before in my life.  Rain like you would think the house will just start moving off its foundation with a flood current.  Because of the wetness in combination with the perfect temperatures here, houses are built to remain open to the air.  But open to the air, means open to insects (not just little insects, big insects).  I spent some time this morning sitting with and then rescuing a cockroach that was the size of my hand who had found her way into the kitchen sink.  Two minutes later, I heard a buzzing and a loud smack.  I walked across the room to find a brilliant opalescent colored beetle the size of a silver dollar who had flown into the wall and become stuck on his back.  I think with my personality and subsequent “no kill” philosophy towards bugs, my life in Costa Rica could easily turn into an all day rescue mission for insects stranded in the house.       

Dispersed amongst the tropical mountains and valleys beyond San Jose are little pockets of individual towns.  Every single one has a different feel.  Some feel dark, primal and predatory.  Some feel angelic and exalted.  The roads in these rural parts of Costa Rica are like a roller coaster.  It feels like you take your life into your hands every time you get behind the wheel.  In Costa Rica, road rules seem to be nothing more than a mild suggestion.  This includes which lane you are supposed to be driving in.  People whip around the blind corners and careen through the steepness with buses and covered trucks that take up both lanes of the road…  Roads where one side is a vertical mountainside covered in vines and the other is a thousand foot drop off.  Costa Ricans also think nothing of stopping in the middle of these roads.  They don’t bother to move their cars out of the way to stop at one of the many tiny fruit vender stands that line the rural roads.

I have fallen in love with these high mountain towns.  When the sun shines, they are like I would imagine paradise to be.  And when the fog rolls in with the rain, they are shrouded in mystery.             

Instead of doing an energetic diagnosis of a specific city or town in Costa Rica, I have decided I am going to do an energetic diagnosis of Costa Rica as a whole. 

The dominant negative vibration of Costa Rica is:  Unconcerned.  In general, the Costa Rican people demonstrate a lack of worry and a lack of interest in things that other people from around the world would really be interested in or worry about.  Things like standing right in the middle of a two-lane highway opposite a blind curve for example.  Or having no army.  Or showing up on time.  It is surprising how laid back the people here are.  Coming to Costa Rica means learning patience every single day.  Shops are often closed mid-day for siesta.  When they say “See you tomorrow”, that could mean tomorrow or next week or any arbitrary time of their choosing.  Though very welcoming, the people here do not seem bothered by the idea of letting someone else down.  It is not the most ‘responsible’ culture.  Things that should take no time can take weeks or even years here.  In general, because the people are so unconcerned, they lack discipline and drive to advance.  They live simply, VERY simply.  This is not necessarily a bad thing because often the most driven countries are the least present and the unhappiest countries.  And Costa Rica is comparatively a happy country.

Because of how unconcerned the people of Costa Rica are there is very little momentum here.  Scarcity drives desire and desire creates momentum so perhaps that is why there is so little momentum here.  People live simply and so they do not want for much.  Costa Rica feels cut off from the rest of the hustle and bustle of the world and the world’s various regimes.  Visionaries who want to make a difference stick out like a sore thumb or a foreign species amongst the general population that seems resigned to the way things are.  The dominant religion is Catholicism.  But unlike many of the South American countries, where being zealous about religion is what keeps people emotionally afloat, Costa Ricans feel more like they are trying to be Catholic.  

The dominant positive vibration of Costa Rica is: Fecundity.  Fecundity is basically fruitfulness and fertility.  The ability to produce abundant healthy growth or offspring.  It refers to a powerful productivity, usually in the area of natural growth, either from the earth or by human creation.  The dominant positive vibration of the country of Costa Rica is quite different to many countries because it is not a vibration contributed by the people.  It is a vibration contributed by the land itself.  After coming here, I am now convinced that this (along with the peace-loving culture here) is why Costa Rica is showing up for so many seers as an epicenter for The New Earth. 

The life force energy in Costa Rica is so unbelievable, it’s something you have to see for yourself to believe.  Rural Costa Rica would be a wonderful place to come spend time if you were struggling with infertility or tissue degeneration.  The dominant vibration of this place forces you into vitality and reproductive ripeness on all levels.  This fecundity creates a lush, pillowy energy field across the whole country.  The country is blanketed in vegetation too dense to walk through.  The result is the most incredible oxygen saturated air.  This air is so healing to the body to breathe.  The national slogan is “Pura Vida”.  It essentially means ‘pure life’.  And aside from the infiltration of American Consumer products and many third world country type environmental behaviors,  the country lives up to the name.  It would be possible to live a pure life here in Costa Rica.  A life that is unpolluted by so many of the detrimental influences that exist in the rest of the world.

Since being here, I have not felt the sense of impending doom that I feel in so much of the world at this time.  Instead it is in the distance, like an emotional earthquake happening in a foreign land.  Several places around the world are becoming more unsafe by the minute.  And when individual countries (especially countries that are in power) go into defense mode that makes the whole world unsafe.  Conflict in the world is heating up and heating up.  Unfortunately, like usual, the citizens of the world have no idea what is going on underneath the surface charade they are seeing through the media.  Most of which is in fact pure façade.

Being here, I am even more convinced that what we must do individually is to decide what it is that we WANT.  We are focusing so much on what we don’t want in the world.  We think that knowing what we don’t want is the same as knowing what we want.  It isn’t.  We can use our awareness of what we don’t want to point us in the direction of what we want.  But each one of us needs to get really clear about what it is that we want.  And instead of just thinking about it, we need to start acting on it.  We have to stop making our ideal life a hypothetical and actually go for it.  We also need to begin to involve other people, with a compatible vision for themselves, in the building process of our true desires. 

Today, I ask you not to just read this blog.  Instead, I ask you to sit down and get clear about what you really want.  And tomorrow, I ask you to start putting it into action.  The time to do it is now… not later.  The world is waiting for you, don’t make it wait.