Hi, what’s up?

I’m here to tell you about our trip last weekend and what I brought with me.

We went to the Kaweka Forest ParkBut this time it was a little different, as we arrived and left the forest in a helicopter, which was nice because we went to cabins that were quite far from the parking lot, and it would have taken two days to get there on foot.

Our first night was at Manson HutOn the second night we had planned to go camping, but as the weather was very unstable we decided to spend another night in the Manson Hut (although Daniel tried to convince me to camp anyway lol). On the third day we continued our journey to Rocks Ahead Hut8.5km of walking with stops and lunch in between, a very pleasant walk. Then the third night we spent at Rocks Ahead and the next morning the helicopter came back to pick us up.

I really needed a break. A break. All the time in the world, in fact, not to see time go by. And this trip came at a good time. I think that if I looked at the clock twice a day, it was a lot. I planned to tell you more about the trip and the place in this post, but I feel more like telling you about what the trip gave me than about the trip itself. So here we go.

I was saying that I needed a break, because lately I’ve been feeling stressed and there comes a time when sometimes it’s no use reading good things, listening to advice, repeating mantras, being positive, or things like that, I need to live what I read, what I listen to, what I say.

Not hearing the phone ring, not seeing messages, not following anyone’s orders, not satisfying anyone, not watching the newspaper, not having to worry about anything, taking a vacation from your ghosts, simply being and being, that’s what I’m talking about.

Life in society makes an immense number of demands on us that overwhelm us without us realizing it. I was reminded of one of Nitiren Daishonin’s Buddhist teachings, which says that we don’t need to distance ourselves from society to find the state of Buddha/Nirvana/Dharma or whatever you want to call it, like the monks high up in the Himalayan mountains and/or other monks from different branches of Buddhism.

But the truth is that it’s much easier to be at peace when you’re away from the crowd. Searching for a spiritual path without the hundreds of stimuli that we only have in a day, insatiable desires, insatisfactions, worries, requests, needs, complaints, demands, orders, expectations and so on… is tremendously easier. I don’t want to generalize and say that there will always be peace in these circumstances (because it’s all inside you).

Although I constantly try to remember what is essential, my spirit really needs to live what is essential.

The fact is that observing the clouds passing by, the sun appearing and disappearing, the leaves on the trees dancing with the wind, the whistling of the wind, the rain hitting the roof, the darkness taking over the sky, the river flowing, the sound of the force of the water, the singing of the birds, observing all these phenomena, all these miracles reminds us that we are not just parts of nature, we are nature and that nature is perfect, so everything is perfect and everything fits perfectly and everything is always, always fine, even when our mind struggles to believe it.

I’m immensely grateful for the time I had on this trip and to my travel partner Daniel for introducing me to nature like never before.

These were some of the moments we experienced there…

I hope you enjoyed it!

A big kiss

Cha