Here's an email I sent to some friends back home regarding my trip. Not surprisingly they could not grasp the profoundness of the camino. One of them even responded dully "I'm glad you enjoyed your vacation, see you soon." Read the last three paragraphs if it's too much...
Overall it has been an incredibly moving experience. Along the way I´ve met a shaman, a healer, an alchemist, a witch, a giant, a soothsayer, a monk, a knight, a demon, a saint and among others even an angel. Once you get over the physical pain, forget about the bullshit that divides ourselves (race, age, sex, religion, work, money etc), and you clean your soul and life of sin (greed, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony, wrath and especially pride/ego) your spirit rises and not only are you able to see the synchronicities (coincidences that have meaning) in your life but truley magical things start happening.
You ask the Camino (consciously or subconsciously) and it gives, it happens every day whether you realize it or not. One day in Leon I had something troubling on my mind so I went to sit on the bench by the Cathedral and asked for a sign, sure enough my prayers were answered and the issue had been resolved. One day I lost my towel and I asked the Camino for another one and the next day I found one laying on he path as I walked to my destination. Even things that you ask before starting the Camino come to you as you walk the way. These examples Ill just keep to myself however.
Most important though is the people you meet and bond with. There is a lesson to be learned from everyone you meet, for some people you are the teacher and other times you are the student. Early on the lessons were about the physical aspects about walking the Camino later its about the mental and spiritual. Countless times you get the feeling that the meeting of a certain person was predetermined, as if you were meant to do the Camino to guide this person or vice versa, you were meant to do the Camino to learn from another).
Another crazy phenomena is the reliving of dreams. It´s strange, for as long as I can remember I´ve always had dreams of walking in uncharted distant lands and during the Camino I would see and experience things that I could recall from past dreams. Ive had this one recuring dream in particular where I´m climbing a steep slope off in some far away place a Spanish like land where it´s cloudy and there are no trees around. I´m leading a couple others and there is this sense of a great journey as a Spanish guitar music playing. One day I lived this same exact dream that I´ve had for as long as I remember.
Everything that happened that day and the day before felt like it was planned. I wont go into the details because I can write all day about the syncronicities etc. Anyways we had just left Burgos and entered the Spanish Meseta, which is a huge mesa in the center of Spain that goes on for hundreds of kilometers which is void of trees and has few roads with cars. On the second day walking the Meseta there is this very steep hill ( found after Castrojeriz) and what's quite strange is that the Camino goes over this hill and not around it which would make sense because there are no other hills in the area.
Anyways just before the climb one of my fellow companeros turns to me and says we are going to fly over this mountain. And my other companero Giacomo, italian for Santiago (again there were many synchronicites regarding him that I wont go into), turns to me and says "here borrow my MP3 player for inspiration as you make the climb." Sure enough it was Spanish guitar music and as I made the climb I felt nothing of my feet and backpack as I was entranced by the landscape which was a spitting image of this recurring dream, in fact I was living the dream. Everything about it, the landscape, the weather, the music, the climb, had been in this dream. At one point I turn around and see my companeros a bit behind with the castle off in the distance and I'm nearly moved to tears as the song "Spanish Caravan" by The Doors begins playing which is an adaptation of Albeniz Isaac's "Asturias". I walk the rest of the way in a total trance, again not feeling any physical discomfort in fact not a physical presence at all...
Overall it has been an incredibly moving experience. Along the way I´ve met a shaman, a healer, an alchemist, a witch, a giant, a soothsayer, a monk, a knight, a demon, a saint and among others even an angel. Once you get over the physical pain, forget about the bullshit that divides ourselves (race, age, sex, religion, work, money etc), and you clean your soul and life of sin (greed, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony, wrath and especially pride/ego) your spirit rises and not only are you able to see the synchronicities (coincidences that have meaning) in your life but truley magical things start happening.
You ask the Camino (consciously or subconsciously) and it gives, it happens every day whether you realize it or not. One day in Leon I had something troubling on my mind so I went to sit on the bench by the Cathedral and asked for a sign, sure enough my prayers were answered and the issue had been resolved. One day I lost my towel and I asked the Camino for another one and the next day I found one laying on he path as I walked to my destination. Even things that you ask before starting the Camino come to you as you walk the way. These examples Ill just keep to myself however.
Most important though is the people you meet and bond with. There is a lesson to be learned from everyone you meet, for some people you are the teacher and other times you are the student. Early on the lessons were about the physical aspects about walking the Camino later its about the mental and spiritual. Countless times you get the feeling that the meeting of a certain person was predetermined, as if you were meant to do the Camino to guide this person or vice versa, you were meant to do the Camino to learn from another).
Another crazy phenomena is the reliving of dreams. It´s strange, for as long as I can remember I´ve always had dreams of walking in uncharted distant lands and during the Camino I would see and experience things that I could recall from past dreams. Ive had this one recuring dream in particular where I´m climbing a steep slope off in some far away place a Spanish like land where it´s cloudy and there are no trees around. I´m leading a couple others and there is this sense of a great journey as a Spanish guitar music playing. One day I lived this same exact dream that I´ve had for as long as I remember.
Everything that happened that day and the day before felt like it was planned. I wont go into the details because I can write all day about the syncronicities etc. Anyways we had just left Burgos and entered the Spanish Meseta, which is a huge mesa in the center of Spain that goes on for hundreds of kilometers which is void of trees and has few roads with cars. On the second day walking the Meseta there is this very steep hill ( found after Castrojeriz) and what's quite strange is that the Camino goes over this hill and not around it which would make sense because there are no other hills in the area.
Anyways just before the climb one of my fellow companeros turns to me and says we are going to fly over this mountain. And my other companero Giacomo, italian for Santiago (again there were many synchronicites regarding him that I wont go into), turns to me and says "here borrow my MP3 player for inspiration as you make the climb." Sure enough it was Spanish guitar music and as I made the climb I felt nothing of my feet and backpack as I was entranced by the landscape which was a spitting image of this recurring dream, in fact I was living the dream. Everything about it, the landscape, the weather, the music, the climb, had been in this dream. At one point I turn around and see my companeros a bit behind with the castle off in the distance and I'm nearly moved to tears as the song "Spanish Caravan" by The Doors begins playing which is an adaptation of Albeniz Isaac's "Asturias". I walk the rest of the way in a total trance, again not feeling any physical discomfort in fact not a physical presence at all...
