Journals from the Jungle XIII: Following the feelings that know
Maybe it’s about not needing to know. Maybe I don’t have to know what I’m doing.
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Welcome to Journals from the Jungle—a series of stories from my recent travels, drawn straight from the pages of my journals. These are reflections on breaking free from a life of structure, convention, and societal expectations, and finding my way back to an embodied, authentic self. Through journeys in nature—and into the nature of self—through adventure, challenge, rest, and the dramatic dismantling of old beliefs, I explore themes of freedom, pleasure, love, and the strength that comes from shedding what no longer serves us. I hope these stories inspire you to embrace change, reclaim your vitality, and live more freely.
5/25/24 continued
I walk home from the cafe in this heavy jungle air, again feeling the animalistic nature of life here. Creatures, all of us.
As I’m writing down words, trying to find a synonym, I realize that this is also how I live: Trying things in order to reach the right one, or the right way. That it takes actually writing down words to arrive at the one sought. And that in that process, much more always emerges than we realized was there. In other words, I believe in doing the thing in order to know it, which is often by feeling—or experience—because we truly cannot know how it will be, or who we will be, or how it will go, until we do. (Someone said, “The how often gets in the way of the now.”)
I feel alone …
… but also that I am relying on and trusting and so accompanied by other versions of myself—the ones who felt when they did and decided when they did and chose when they did. I realize that this whole process, which has been nothing but good, has shown me that things can actually be that: just good and right and fully, entirely well, without a catch.
I am so happy. I am so grateful. I am so excited. This feels comparable only to the way getting the book deal felt. What a time, what a life. Thank you everything. Thank you Dad.
~
I love: No clothes necessary, ever. Days, nights, events, nothing. I love: Tuk tuks, especially at night. I love: Motos. I love: The bad music. I love: How this whole place is one single organism, mixing and morphing and multiplying from within and yet always a whole.
~
I wonder if I should just stop asking why and feel what I feel. This feels … significant.
I like to follow things to see where they lead, but my thoughts here expand out into some kind of nothingness that’s increasingly harder to track, and exerting that effort feels increasingly less important. Maybe that disintegration is what this next chapter is about: following the feelings that know, rather than knowing first. Maybe it’s about not knowing. Not needing to know. Could I give up understanding, which has been some sort of lifeline for me, especially through challenge? Could I give up what seems to have been one of my primary purposes? By opening more, letting, and going … with less consideration? Maybe I don’t have to know what I’m doing.
5/26?/24
Sitting outside topless feeling … hot. Everything here is sexy. The sun on skin, the warm breeze finding its way in, the water doing the same, the wild jungle, the bodies everywhere—wet and strong and casually comfortable just being. It’s embodiment. It’s a naked meeting of man and nature. It’s dances of power, which I continue to consider. Dad was my first encounter with power and since him, I’ve had to fight to reclaim mine. Now that I have it, I’ve realized, I like to play with that fire; I enjoy having my power taken away, but on my own terms. Or stolen by someone, or something, that I trust. This, I realize, is why I like edges. I can push myself to an edge, or hand myself over to a force more powerful than I am, in order to dance along that line of being in or out of power, in or out of control. It’s about safety and risk, security and freedom, composure and spontaneity, or even “recklessness.” And after a lifetime of training—physically and mentally—to strengthen myself to the point of feeling safe giving up my power, I realize that I’ve built the ability to live on, or at least near, that line—to be tumbled in the froth of the waves—which I need in order to feel alive.
11am: Nothing like a spreadsheet to kill the vibe. I need a walk, and a swim. I tell my friend that I can’t work down here. She says, “Then don’t. Figure it out when you get back.”
I have been responsible, literally my whole entire life. Like, skipping childhood to grow up too soon, working as soon as I was able, and not stopping until, well, now. Maybe I just don’t have to be that way anymore.
~
There is something interesting about my relationship with time and how closely I’ve always held it. But here, it’s pura vida—Don’t worry about tomorrow, it’s all only today, just be here now. (So dharma.)
Sitting alone on the beach at sunset trying to feel if I’m truly content. And is there any way to know if this kind of contentment lasts without living through it to find out? Of course not, like anything. But I am an age at which I know enough about what I like and want (though maybe not who I am?!) to know some things. And if Wendy is any testament—or the locals who’ve lived here their entire lives and still gawk at the sunset every night—it’s definitely possible. To be simply happy with just this, that is.
A neighbor interrupts my unnecessary rumination and sits down to chat. He’s been here 10 years. Said he got tired of leaving …
~
The next day: I am so peaceful. My mind is so quiet. I feel warm and sweet. I feel like I do after surfing: silenced. The feeling is one of having exactly what I want. I walk the beach in a blissful daze. For now, everything feels complete—exactly as it should be. I know my impatience, or desire for more, will rise again (or maybe it won’t?) but for now, everything is perfect. Simple, and also very complicated, but also simple. Aquí. Ahora.
I only wish that, in life, there were any way to preserve the completeness—the complexity, the details, the feelings, the everything—of memories. I suppose that’s why I write.
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