Whenever I go to Africa I am changed to my core. The journey is not always easy, but is consistently thrilling. There is an element of animism, a palpable sense of big spirit in all things including people, animals, and nature. There is also a sense of dynamism, a huge expression and interaction of the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water on a scale and magnitude that I have experienced nowhere else, and especially in wild East Africa.
The feeling is of a primordial Great Mother. This is a rich and dark space that bore the human race into being in ancient times after the conditions had been cultivated following eons of creative upheaval, yielding a terrain and terroir that could host our earliest ancestors. When I go to Africa I feel Her there, rejoicing in my presence and imbuing more life into me along our shared adventure.
I offer you this journal as a chronicle and recounting of my journey. This is part of my work which is shamanic in nature: I seek out places in consciousness and physicality where I experience personal transformation and bring these experiences back with insights gained with the hope of pointing you, my friends, toward what will be valuable on your own path of conscious evolution. It may be a simple glimpse of beauty that brings you a sense of well-being, or a musical piece recorded or derived from an episode that moved my soul and will likely move yours, or a deep written or spoken reflection, perhaps in a guided meditation, that sparks something within.
Part of my purpose being a conscious metaphysician is to chronicle and share those transcendent nuances that are often overlooked, taken for granted, or only unconsciously experienced as if they are happening to someone as opposed to purposefully participating. I embark on my odysseys with the intent of physical, emotional, mental, psychic, and spiritual enrichment, and this is ultimately what I seek to share.
We are a group of 14 people, and after 24 hours of travel including two long-haul flights, we arrived under the cover of night at Kilimanjaro Airport. We cleared immigration and gathered our many bags that were then piled on top of a bus. I stepped outside and reveled in the stars that greeted us: Arcturus, Vega, and Antares in Scorpio were all visible in the vast African sky.
I felt caressed and revived by the air as I breathed in the spirit of Afrika. The smoky, earthy smell greeted me like a long lost friend as soon as I had walked onto the tarmac, almost the way it did thirty years prior in 1992, weakening my knees upon my first arrival in Kenya. I had returned to East Africa in 2000 on another stunning expedition, and it would take me 19 years after that to come back to the continent for a South African safari and metaphysical workshop in 2019, which was my last time here.
As bats flitted and crickets delicately grated, I felt thankful and relieved to feel my feet on her soil again. After an hour-long ride and check-in we had dinner at 1am local time, and I calculated that my trip had been 27 hours door-to-door from home to the lodge in Arusha.
It took me some time to settle into bed and then relax after pottering around in my new surroundings. Even after getting into bed I popped out a couple of times to track the strange sounds and celestial lights outside. At almost 3am I found myself opening my patio door to look up into the sky and watch the interplay of the clouds, half Moon (really quarter moon, it only looks half in 2D), and Jupiter playing peekaboo as the wind blew.
There was already too much to take in for me to fully relax. I began to open myself up to the motion and noises of the night, which at the moment were the footsteps of a small creature walking on the thatched roof and the swelling and falling flow of air that caused the silhouettes of shrubbery to dance against the window shade. I resolved that these were winds of change portending another life-altering journey that had begun upon my arrival. Letting go into both the elemental chaos and the solid embrace of this stable place, I finally surrendered to sleep, grounded in the energy of the land. At some point during this night I shifted in my sleep, along with the local cosmos, into a new season. Winter would officially begin here the following day, yet it was uncertain what new season awaited me on a deeper level.
