Why I Moved to a Small Town with Crappy Internet

It’s almost been a year since I did my last Ayahuasca Ceremony. There, in Costa Rica at Rythmia Life Advancement Centre, I met God. Yup. I also watched angels being born and became one of them. I stood at the gate of a dimension that I feared I would dissolve into and never return.

My experiences with Ayahuasca this time around was far more profound and beyond anything I could have imagined. These events blew me into a million pieces of confetti shot into the air only to try and reformat myself and reorganize a new me before I hit the ground and die at the end of this lifecycle. Almost a year later from floating in the middle of the universe feeling and seeing the unimaginable love and bliss emanating from it, I am still putting myself together and experiencing the constant drip of new realizations and aha-moments endlessly revealing themselves and making my evolution unceasingly expanding in personal growth.

The two biggest questions mankind has struggled with and have been at the forefront of human existence and almost every philosophical discussion are:

1-“Who am I?”

2-“why am I here?”

These two questions were profoundly answered during my last Ayahuasca ceremony where I left my physical body and went into the vacuum of space, through the quantum field to the centre of the universe where I saw God, not as a physical entity, but as an energy source emitting from what I can only describe as the most beautiful vision I have ever seen. This is where I witnessed physical beings transformed into angels by “getting their wings”; being encased in pure light and then shooting up into the cosmos and returning to where they were needed. I was able to feel a depth of love I have never experienced in my lifetime; it was so overwhelming it brought my physical body on earth, laying on a mattress during ceremony, to uncontrollable sobs of tears, as my friends later told me.

The most incredible experience of all during ceremony was the awakening of my consciousness that we are all here on the “earth-school” to learn that our very existence is eternal, that we are all here to guide and help each other wake-up and remember we are all star children from the cosmos and are returning home. Right then and there I found my purpose, everyone’s purpose, and that and is to become enlightened beings and help others find their way. If you don’t believe me now, in time, perhaps another lifetime, you will too understand that. Life is not about collecting “stuff” or cars, or houses, or how much money or “likes” we accumulate. It’s not why we are here.

It’s now 2020. It’s a significant year for change. Everything is already changing, and fast. As we watch the once stoic and revered institutions of science, politics, education, Wall Street, and religion all start to crumble, we go about daily life seemingly unconcerned with what will replace them. I have always questioned authority for some reason going back as early as childhood, and I always knew something was up behind all those rules and rituals and slick sales pitches for what’s good for us and why we must fall-in line. But, this is a different time coming. Things are going to show up that we had no foresight in seeing, no knowledge of either its existence or its making, or that it is coming whether you like it or not.

As we become more absorbed in technology and our gadgets, we drift farther from our centre, our connectedness to ourselves and the place where we come from. One could say that the more disconnected we are from this source, the unhappier and unhealthier we are. I agree, and have been there myself. For years, I have been lost in the illusion that the name of the game is “he who has the most toys win” and “you” and “I” are separate, not connected and it doesn’t matter to me what happens to you, and vice versa. Social media is proving this theory in spades- we’re so consumed with what others look like and the fun we’re not having, posting this and posting that, all in the desire to get people to “like” us. Sadly, we’re willing to lose ourselves and maybe even step on someone to get that temporary feeling of validation and importance.

Recently, on a trip back to the city, as I walked by a waiting room with thirty-two people in it, all but one were staring into their time-machines. I use this analogy because to me our phones suck away time and our attention to life in the here-and-now. Just watch people’s behaviour when they pull out their phones, it’s like they are being pulled into their phones, like smoke being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. This is especially noticeable with young children, it’s like they are emptying their heads into this hand-held blackhole. From my vantage point, looking at that room full of people gazing into their tiny screens, I could plainly see the madness in it. I haven’t been witness to this since I moved out to the country. Where I live, you don’t see mass digital zombies, just a handful spattered here and there at a coffee shop at best. Where I live, people talk. They laugh together. They commune.

I can attribute my Ayahuasca experience to waking-me-up and becoming increasingly aware of my limited time here on this beautiful blue dot floating in the eternal cosmos. Maybe I put a premium on time and my attention span, and filter out the mundane and the unimportant and realize the eternal “hear-and-now”, -is “here” and “now”, it’s not tomorrow or some other time.

Yes, I woke-up.

Like the many people that are becoming increasingly aware that the city life is just too fragmented, congested and chaotic, I started looking for an exit out of the madness. I could say the smell, the angry drivers, the smiles wiped off people’s faces walking down the streets are physical signs of the discomfort and disharmony of city life, but for me it’s more than just that which had turned my sights to moving out into the country. Don’t get me wrong, there are beautfil things and people to see in the city, and some wouldn’t live anywhere else, but I confess- it’s just not for me anymore

What did it for me is that I started to feel the city-life was drawing the life-force out of me. I started to feel the heaviness of the city and chaos. I started to experience a dull-ness, a type of haze wash over me, a feeling of accepting less and sucking it up and trying to be OK with my plight as if it was a life-sentence and I had to let the clock run out. I didn’t feel free and alive anymore. I knew the air I breathed was dirty, that I couldn’t escape the noise, that there were no places to swim anymore other than a chlorine filled pool. I knew in case of a big and more serious public emergency I could not escape the chaos and traffic to get onto higher ground. Yes, these things, and more kept me up at night.

Then I just did it. I moved.

Coincidentally set up by the universe, while I was away in Costa Rica I received a phone call informing me that I could help create and take a small ownership in building a retreat centre in a place called Prince Edward County. It seemed the stars aligned as I just had a complete emotional and phycological upgrade from my Ayahuasca experiences, and that I was regretfully coming back home to the city where I already was disenchanted and wanting to leave, plus my business and marital life wasn’t doing so well.

It just seemed like a ripe opportunity to pack and head to the country to start a new life in a small town. Prince Edward County Canada is like a small island of 1000 square kilometers, sticking out in Lake Ontario. It’s mainly all farmland with an increasing population of vineyards, wineries, breweries, restaurants and shops. In the summertime its bustling with tourists and is one of the most magical places I have been to. So, I said “yes! I’ll help build the retreat.”

Soon after I arrived, I quickly learned that the retreat centre wasn’t what I was hoping for, so I left and grabbed an apartment and haven’t looked back. The passed opportunity was my ticket to get me there in the country. That i am thankful for. My business is thriving here as I do contracting and light construction, mostly beautifying spaces and fixing up homes. There is plenty of business for me, and lots and lots of opportunities here for anyone as the population and tourism grows. It will be a while before it takes on anything I would consider as “city” problems, so I am quite content pitching my tent here for a long while.

I see more and more people coming here and setting up shop, bringing their talents and gifts and starting their own business and leaving the corporate world behind. Here, dinner with friends, a hike, a swim, a motorcycle ride in the country is my bliss. There is something special about seeing cows in a field, vegetable stands on the side roads, blue skies and people laughing and loving their lives.

Yes, I have arrived.

I’ll be writing more about living the life in the country. Stay tuned. gofindyourself.ca