I was in Guatemala last week, spending time at Mayan sites and connecting more deeply with spirit.
For part of my visit, I was in Peten, a tropical jungle area of the country with a large Mayan/indigenous population. I visited Uaxactun, a sacred site about 12 miles north of Tikal that is considered one of the oldest Mayan cities in Guatemala.
The site is extremely isolated and not easy to get to. When archeologists were excavating at Uaxactun, they built an airplane landing strip in the center of the ruins. In the 1970s a road was cleared to get from Tikal to Uaxactun. The road is dirt and stone, and often turns into mud, making it necessary to push the car if it gets stuck. It took my guide and me an hour to drive the 12 miles. On our way out of Uaxactun, we had to stop and remove a tree that had fallen and blocked the road.
Today there is a small community of Mayans that live in the center of the site, around the landing strip. A once-daily bus allows the residents to travel to Flores; other than that, the community is fairly isolated.
And beautiful.
The surrounding jungle is filled with parrots, toucans and other exotic birds. We saw spider monkeys and heard howler monkeys. Jaguar, coati, ocellated turkeys and other animals live there. All of these are housed in a lush, dense, humid jungle.
Time slows down in the jungle for me. The heat alone causes me to slow down my pace, but the calls of the cicada beat out a lazy rhythm that my soul can’t help but respond to and match. My breathing becomes deeper and slower, and I am quietly alert –without the mind chatter distracting me. I just “Be.” I begin to see the energy of the plants shimmering off of them, and connect more deeply not only with them, but also Source and unconditional love. In this state, I can absorb the wisdom of nature and get insights into whatever it is that I am dealing with in my life.
How do you connect with the wisdom of nature?
Photos (c) Jennifer Monahan, 2016.
