Reminders For The Journey

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek."

"Today is your day to let go of things that no longer serve you."

"If someone shows you their true colours, don't try to repaint them."

Reflection Letter

Cover letters throws you into a state of reflection of your past events, separating you temporarily from the current moment, soaring up into the heights to look down below from a distance.  I recently took on the task to write one, out of necessity, out of spontaneous inspiration.  My letter began with reference to a past leap of faith as a means to signify yet another leap, today, right now.  I leap, I jump, I fall finally into an embrace for the overwhelming desire to work with coffee, with food and hold tightly against my heaving chest the sharp, intense, stabbing pains of fear, terror, anxiety which inevitably bubble up whenever reorienting towards a more honest, more fulfilling truth.

Liberation starts here in the now, with compassion, with an embrace, with an acceptance.

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Last year I did something special, remarkable, brave and compassionate for myself.  It was time.  It was right.  It was profound.  I took a deep breath, took a leap of faith, jumped, and truly began digging beneath the surface, beneath layers and layers of accumulated fat, comfort, habit, expectations, complacency, fear.  The remarkable wasn’t in regards to quitting my high-paying, comfortable, highly sought-out job at Google.  No.  This leap of faith pertained to an active decision to constantly be choosing, reorienting, observing, accepting, moving towards activities and experiences which resonate deeply within.  Having embarked on travel for eight months throughout several countries around the world and having explored, investigated, inquired, observed, listened to myself throughout, I bore witness to an arising exposure of desires.

I want to work with food.  I want to serve people.  I want to engage with locals, visitors, foreigners, strangers.  I want to increase use of my hands, body, senses, intuition, instincts.  I want to be learning, growing constantly.  I want to foster community potent with meaning, substance, truth.  I want to feel the heartbeat of places, neighbourhoods, cities.  I want to every day accept, embrace, honour unpredictability and change as a distinct quality of life.

I connect with food, viscerally.  This includes coffee where my journey with it began almost 4 years ago inside an office and a twin rumba espresso machine.  I learned, read, researched, practiced, experimented, tasted, and repeated this on a daily basis.  I looked for any opportunity to engage with coffee.  I openly offered to prepare beverages for others, co-workers, friends, colleagues, even strangers as a means to increase practice.  I eventually grew curious and began exploring other brew methods, french presses, clover machines, aeropresses, pour-overs, which further immersed me into the world of coffee, of single-origin beans, of differing roasting characteristics, of various brewing equipments and techniques.  Over the years, I’ve operated a variety of espresso machines, including lever machines in Australia, Switzerland, and India.  My first cupping experience took place in a local coffee shop while traveling in Berlin.

Today, I still brew myself a pour-over cup every morning using a v60 glass dripper, preferably with single-origin beans from Ethiopia.  I still experiment with grind settings while maintaining a 1:15 or 1:16 coffee to water ratio depending on the bean, roasting date, and origin.  I still want to serve coffee and food to people, engage, exchange, relate with them while continuing my humbling journey towards food and coffee.  I still find myself seeking out specialty coffee shops when venturing to new places, cities, countries.  I still intend to visit, volunteer, meet with, live on various coffee plantations as I continue studying Spanish and eventually travel south through Mexico, Central and South America.

Thank you in advance for any opportunity to enrich this already incredible journey.  I look forward to meeting you along the way.

The Return Home

"In the name of the past we carry out the greatest deceits in the present"

"Doesn't it happen to you, that sometimes you confide much more in just anybody?"

"We're satisfied with too little. When friends understand each other well, when families understand each other well, then we think that everything is harmonious. Pure illusion, a mirror for larks. Sometimes I feel that there's more understanding between two people punching each other in the face than among those who are there looking on from outside."

-- Julio Cortázar

I've embarked on a particular journey which has no end.  The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which moves a hundred steps away with every hundred steps towards it.  The pot of gold contains the eternal spirit, inner most being.  However, it isn't externally visible.  It cannot be touched, seen, smelled, tasted, heard.  It lies buried deep within, beneath all the layers, beneath the ceaselessly rolling waves, beneath the heaps of dirt, dust, grime.

The journey home is unique in that we never left it.  Imagine setting out to look for, to find, to discover the shelter while existing from within the shelter itself.

What is this journey home?  Where am I going?  From where am I leaving?  What is the source?  Who is the source?  How important is my reaching it?  My tasting, seeing, hearing, smelling, touching it?  How long must I go?  How deep do I dig?  Will I fall into the vast field of emptiness upon arrival?  What am I afraid of?  What is the source of my fear?  Who do I fear?  Who is afraid?

The past is a novel of old stories, ones we know of intimately by heart.  We can recite them verbatim, word for word, replicate the emotion to be felt, the responses to be had, the phenomena to be experienced.  We reference our old stories to understand our present.  Rephrase.  We reference our old stories to convince ourselves that we understand our present.

Does the present require any understanding?  What is there to be understood?  Why is understanding a goal?  For whom do we understand?  To whom do we understand for?  How do we understand the present?  Is understanding possible without old stories to continue from?

We reference our old stories to convince ourselves we are in understanding with our present.  To convince ourselves, implies, implying understanding is merely a continuation of something we choose to believe in.  Faith.  Belief.  Illusion.  Delusion.  False.  Mirage.  Mirror.  Our old stories are a reflection of our interpretation of the present.  Not a very good one.  More historically good rather than authentic.

How many historians would you trust in their word of the accounts which they deemed factual had actually happened?  How different would history be if told by this person, that person, them, we, you, I instead of the historian?

Old stories requires perspective.  Perspective feeds a point of view.  A point of view reinforces a single source of viewing.  A single source of viewing implies a single seer.  A single seer has one pair of eyes.  One eye.  One I.  One.  I.  Eye.  I.  Eye.  I.  I.

Our old stories paves way for fictional stories in our present.  A stranger who knows no past, no history, no old stories has no deceit, no preference, no delusion, no falseness, no single eye, no I.  A blank slate.  A fresh palate.  A new smell.  A new ear.  A new tongue.  A new nose.  A new hand.

Complacency is a condition of preferring old stories as opposed to new ones.  Past times are replayed like old VCR tapes of family home videos.  Remember when...  Remember how...  Remember who...  I'm a stranger.  I don't remember who, what, when, how.  Who are you?  I want to know.  Why are you?  I'd like to understand.  What is you?  Lets figure this out together.

Past time.  Present time.  Past time.  Present time.  Past.  Present.  Old.  New.  Not new.  Now.  Was.  Is.  Old.  Was.  Now.  Is.

Black Book

We walked into a black coffee co-op with my intention to buy a coffee.  Judging a place solely by its name guided me there.  I didn't care too much for the cup, but it brought me to the table.  On the table rested a collection of journals, diaries, black books branded with a number, which I later found to represent volume.  No less than an instant, I grasped it.

Concept.  Community.  Communal.  Communicate.  Collective.

Idea.  Sharing.  Expression.

It something I've thought about in the past, seen examples of elsewhere, felt longing for during moments of suspended travel.  Flipping through the first volume my hand landed on, the first page couldn't have been more fitting, a page I could very well have authored, torn straight from the middle of my own black book, diary, journal.  With a theme relating to FREEDOM, I already noticed my brain drawing comparisons, comparing observations, looking beyond the words, wanting to catch a glimpse of the precise moment where and from whom these markings took place.  I envisioned myself sitting down there, with travelling mentality, a desire to create something in the world leaving a clue, a breadcrumb to leave one curious of its root.  I felt my heart already motioning, compelling itself forwards for a space, where it too could leave a mark, a breadcrumb, a clue, a hidden opportunity to make its way into another soul with the same bit of mystery.

No signing.  No credit.  No attribution.

Those don't matter.  Focus is on the audience, the viewer, and the picture they pull, push, form, blow into view.  Its the seer to contemplate and participate to complete the message, to drop their own breadcrumb in the spot they could swear they saw one, had stepped on, felt, had heard.  Its their journey.  Not mine.  Not yours.  Theirs.

Fueled by my own desire to question my heart, I place the very breadcrumb back into my own heart the moment I pull it out.  The question still burns me, taunts me, haunts me.  Reminds me of the choice I continue to have, have always had, and am always empowered with.

I, we, you have the freedom.  To be.  Anywhere.  Always.  To be.

Impermanence

Transience.

It implies a quality which is not meant to last.  Its synonymous with impermanence.  If you've ever observed a sunset, a sunrise, a full moon, a cool breeze on a hot summer day, you've experienced something quite enriching, quite peaceful perhaps, beautiful, nurturing, timeless.  Compare this positive feeling with a moment you've received an outstanding compliment from your boss on the last project completed, a compliment on your hair from a cute person working the coffee shop counter, the feeling of seeing a 98 on your final exam.  They both stimulate an arising of feelings from within.  They both feel seemingly positive, nurturing, fortifying.  Yet, they are both transient feelings.  They do not last.  They are impermanent.

Does one feel more fleeting than the other?  Less pure perhaps?  Riddled with a desire to prolong it, to repeat it, to hold on to it, to wish for it to stay indefinitely?  Have you ever found yourself replaying, reliving one moment in your head over and over?  A smile originating from within, from your own heart and nothing else compared to that smile forming out of a reaction to something outside of you?

That cute girl, cute boy across the counter.  You smile.  A reflection to them.  A reaction from you.  A cause.  An effect.  A feeding to them.  A giving from you.  A giving from them.  A feeding to you.  You're hungry.  So are they.  Who wants more?  I do.  You do.  They do.  We do.

That sunrise.  You smile.  A reflection to whom?  To no one.  No one is there.  Nature.  Your smile fades from the face yet stays imprinted on your heart.  No one to reflect to.  It is just you.  Alone.  Communing with Nature, with yourself.  That smile is yours, from yours, to yours.

Every moment, every attachment, every emotion, every sensation, every phenomena, every feeling.  Joy, sorry, pain, pleasure, excitement, love, longing, lust, desire, vulnerability, hurt, shame, apathy, anxiety, exhaustion.

Transient states.  Human phenomena.

We are living in a transient world.  All of the waking life is surrounded by constant transience, constant change.  Nothing is unchanging.  Everything is changing.  The moment we conceive of one thought, one idea, one word, another exists.  What appears unchanging is merely a reflection of our mind desiring, willing, yearning, hoping to understand, to know, and stay understanding, stay knowing.  To become, "all" knowing.

There is no such thing.  We are ever-changing.  Every cell, atom, every deed.  Realising the truth behind impermanence was and is continually the most grounding, connecting, truthful revelation I have ever conceived of.  The truth was always there.  I worked diligently to uncover it from beneath layers of deception.  Piece by piece.  Layer by layer.  Uncover every lie, every fairytale, every old story through endless, persistent, penetrating observation and attention.

Awareness is your weapon.  See.  Through the lies, the patterns, the falseness.  Beneath it all is a never-ending source of peace, joy.  And one can't help but smile.

Thy Will Be Done

The exercise was simple. Begin something. Create something. Not just anything. Something. Your, thing. You. An expression, ultimately, since any and all actions ultimately begin and end rooted as one. Here is a blank slate. Here is the s-p-a-c-e. Here is the intention.

What is your desire? What is next? What is previous?

There is no shared coffee table, no pen, no paper, no black book, no diary, no canvas. There is simply a space, a movement, a set of colours, lines, connecting, disconnecting, flowing, freely.

Here you are. Here we are. Here I are.

Don't you have something you want to say?