Marina Rose Travels

Energy

Monday’s are a lot like seeing the underside of a starfish. They are never what you expect, unless you expect them to be awful, because in that case they most certainly will be. It is one of those unspoken rules of the universe. If you have a bruise on your ankle, someone who you always see will accidentally hit it. If you are in a dark room, trying to find your friends, you’ll invariably be able to grab a hand despite the lack of light. Energy speaks in ways that we aren’t taught about, and it affects us every single day whether we are aware of it or not.

Like most of us, I came to understand the way the world truly works much later than when I learned my ABCs. I had to live my life in order to learn what it means to be alive. That took much more guts than getting up each day and going into a school, it took making mistakes and making good choices. It took hurting other people and hurting myself to learn how to not do those things. And each action I have taken over the course of my life has been quietly guided by that unspoken energy of the universe. 

Now some people will read that and say no, it was all of the atoms in your hand, your parasympathetic nervous system, your habits, or the trauma of your past that created the moment that you are in. I used to think that too. I used to search for the answers to my questions in the fields of biology, math, psychology, philosophy, or in logic. I used to scour the internet and bookshelves for the answers to why I couldn’t seem to be happy. Then I had to search more once that search led me to answers that logically made sense, but still didn’t feel like enough. 

Now what

Nothing has ever been enough for me. Certainly not myself. 

The thing about looking for answers in the work of other people, their books, teachings, philosophies, is that there is always going to be another perspective to look at the world from. For every person that exists there is another way people think is the right way to live. After searching for 10 years, I hit a breaking point. 

We will never find the answers that we are looking for in books. We won’t find them in conversations with brilliant people and we won’t find them in trying to fix ourselves every damn second of the day. Or trying to make ourselves better. We can’t find happiness by searching for happiness. 

Realizing this means that I have had to let go of every truth I thought I knew about life. 

In a world that is determined to make me forget about my values and make me feel less than, how can I let go of the idea of searching for something better. Won’t I just stay still? Won’t that be akin to giving up? And I would guess that there might be days where I am not running toward my destiny at the speed of light, but the reality is that no one was ever meant to sprint to their destiny. I always thought the goal was to grow as fast as possible, on the path of least resistance, to get to where I want to be right now. Time as a teacher taught me that step by step work, work that builds on itself, is what will get me to my goals. 

The problem is that the whole concept is flawed. It’s not about getting to goals out there in the world. Anything that happens in the world is a reflection of my inner state and the only way that I will find success externally is to take action daily, rather than have a large goal that I feel I must achieve to feel fulfilled. 

Eckhart Tolle says, “Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. The Inner Purpose concerns being, the journey to awaken. The Outer Purpose concerns doing, the journey to change over time.” 

Where humans tend to get things wrong is that we prefer right and wrong answers. We would rather something be decisively correct or incorrect so it is easier to make choices. We look at the situation outside or inside ourselves and ask for a logical answer that we can make sense of. That is how we make our choices and those choices are how we live our lives. 

Awakened Doing

I am realizing now that, “Whereas thinking cuts reality into Lifeless Fragments, we create an experience form for the enjoyment of it and through Awakened Doing” (Tolle ). 

At early stages of our spiritual or growth journeys, most of us must lean on the information shared to us by masters of the past or present. We have never heard of the concepts that they offer us and those new concepts are what open the world for us. But at a certain point, the point that I find myself at this moment, there is nothing left to ask for from the world’s minds. 

One month ago I asked the universe to give me an answer about a question that had been living in my subconscious for a while. Should I stay in this relationship or end it? Am I ready to settle down? I sat at my work computer and wrote those questions in my notebook and at the same moment the dot on the question mark was drawn, my stomach dropped. My body, connected to the world by matter, atoms, energy, and spirit all came together to tell me my answer, an answer that I had been dreading. The relationship had to end, and in the moment that realization traveled from my gut to my mind, the world opened before me. 

I had never been happy and single and healthy all at the same time. I thought I was going to have to wait a few more years before feeling stable enough to pursue the passions that I have had since I was very young. But with the gift of choice, more choices presented themselves and I saw my world for what it was becoming, open and inviting. That day I decided to figure out the best way to tell my person that I needed space to be alone again, and later that week I recorded a video describing the pull that had come over me. 

I didn’t want to live a life of monotony. I didn’t want something regular. I want to travel, explore, and feel alive in ways that I have never felt before. So I needed a plan. I needed to do what I could with what I had. And so the spark was lit.

 I am moving to Costa Rica, and this is how I’m going to do it…