While I am always somewhat anxious about going on a plane, I was
never the less extremely excited to go to Sedona Arizona after the holiday
season was over. I was very excited to explore the vortexes and see the
haunting beauty of this very unique section of desert. As we drove in from
Phoenix after landing you couldn’t’ see much as we happened to arrive in a
complete blizzard which whited out the normally red landscape. It was the
largest amounts of snow fall in many years and while it obscured our initial
view it was still pretty amazing to be experiencing something that only few
will see. As you cross through and over the large mountain range that separates
Phoenix and Sedona the landscape undergoes drastic transformations. From my
seat in the truck you could see small cacti, shrub, trees and an occasionally,
I was told, an imported Palm or three. Phoenix itself was clear, the storm had
already moved through but as we rose in elevation the storm thickened around us
obscuring the landscape all but for a few meters off the road. Eventually the
cacti no longer grew, they were replaced by juniper and other stunted trees
that littered the landscape along the highways. We came through the other side
and began our long downgrade to another valley that led us closer to where we
were staying.
An Emerging Vivid Landscape
Even thought the storm blocked everything
from view, it didn’t obscure the overwhelming sense of vibrating energy that
hit like a soft wall, which to me I felt like my legs were humming from the
inside out, as we crossed through a crag and emerged out into the Sedona Valley
and finally entered Oak Creek. Oak creek is a small community that lives along
a strip of road lined with small businesses. The people are extremely nice and
were very welcoming to us. We arrived in the dark and so we didn’t get to see
the splendor until the next morning. We woke to see the landscape in such
contrast that it was beautiful. The deep, rich reds, covered and blanketed in
the stark, unmarred white of the snow, the sky seemed so blue it hurt to look
at and the tops of the red rocks were blanketed in a sea of low laying clouds
that churned and twirled as they caressed the rock faces and the juniper and
pear cacti that grew along their tops. Pear cacti were abundant and seemed to
be one of the few cacti that still had a firm foothold in the region. That
first day I went on a trail up through the backcountry towards the very famous
bell rock where I managed to capture some pretty spectacular and rare photos of
a landscape that normally does not know thick snow. I also managed to capture
some pretty intense soakers as I slogged back down the highway towards home. We
as a family joked that after our brown Christmas we flew on a five-hour flight
with a toddler just to see snow in the desert.
The Artists Way
As the trip progressed I was also working
through a 12-week course known as ‘The Artists Way’ by Julia Cameron. I
could write an entire blog just about that experience but for now it had inspired
me to play with photography and to embrace the part of me that loves
exploration and adventure through trails and hiking. I tried as best I could to
meditate daily I managed to do my morning pages almost every day. Morning pages
are one of the tools of The Artists Way course that you do each morning as a
way to tune into and listen to ones self. I find them truly effective and
illuminating. This trip along with confirming once more my disdain for power
tourism also taught me many other things. I could go into great detail about
the amazing places I visited and the amazing things I saw, from the Grand
Canyon, which takes your breath away and defies your best efforts to comprehend
it to driving from Arizona to Nevada and exploring the Las Vegas Strip on a
Saturday night, with a brief stop over at the Hoover Damn. I will instead try
to stay on topic.
Bell Rock and Twisted Trees
By far one of the few things I loved the
most was hiking on the trails that are dappled over the landscape everywhere in
Sedona as it is located in the Coconino National Forest. They take you all over the valley and up to and sometimes on the great
red rocks. I spent time on their trails and visited a few of the vortexes. One
of the things I miss about Sedona was the smell; when I was out on the path to
Bell Rock I would notice how clean, how crisp the air was. It was perfumed with
Juniper and smelled like fire pit and fired clay. When we returned from our
cross-country drive a half-week into our trip the weather had returned more to
normal and we were enjoying 18 degree Celsius days. The snow had departed except
in areas where the deep shade never left and I was often stunned at just how
red the soil was and would watch as it changed shades with the movement of the
day. On one of my hikes I climbed half way up bell rock and was again able to
take some pretty amazing pictures along the way and of the valley floor below
me. The first time I climbed I not only found a waterfall flowing under a
cascade of ice but I was amazed at how strong the energies were and I actually
had to sit down because it felt like I would begin to fly off the ground. The
entire valley had a very different and uplifting energy to it and I have never
slept so well in my entire life.
Keys to Clarity
Which brings me finally to some of the
things I discovered on my trip. I noticed being back with my family of origin
just how true it is that old dynamics, which we associate with our family
member, have a hard time remaining when we ourselves are no longer being our
old selves. Some of my family members were having a hard time with one another;
I on the other hand didn’t notice the interactions degrading when it came to
those I personally shared with them. I realized I didn’t notice them being
their regular old selves because I had at no time become the old “Charlotte.”
While I had known this all along I had never been able to, for 9 days straight, choose not to participate in old dynamics. While I meditated on bell rock among
the twisted trees in the very corona of the vortex I also felt how easy it was
to completely let go of the weight that I would carry and the barriers I held
within myself. At first I attributed this to where I was but then as I
continued walking I realized that that had nothing to do with it, the vortex
was a catalyst in that my mind viewed it as a tool for transformation but the
ability was never outside of myself and never required some special kind of
tool or energy. I again saw with such vivid clarity how simple things are and
how hard we make things for ourselves. I truly miss Sedona Arizona, from the trail to as
I will always know it ‘Old Sedona’ where the shopping district is. During this trip I
finally found the key to unlocking my true potential for visioning and creating
the life I have been dreaming of and since I’ve been back things have been
moving at a remarkable speed. I am excited and grateful. If I could, I would
take people there on retreats because it is one of the truly spectacular places
that I have ever been.
In Spirit of this check out my new courses Click Here
In Spirit of this check out my new courses Click Here
~ Charlotte Brammer
Your post made me think of something Wayne Dyer said “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”.
ReplyDeleteIn this mornings meditation I asked myself what it would look like to live in the new way you describe, in a way where we can be in the state of freedom, allowing, and spontaneity, what would that look like?
To my surprise, I got the answer that it has nothing to do with thinking and everything to do with feeling. I felt myself open my heart and feel an expansion come over me with calm serene feeling. The corners of my mouth turned up a little with a slight smile on my face as my face softened. Warm loving emotions poured out, as the muscles in my body relaxed and I knew this is the state I need to live in.
If I can practice living in this loving state, in this feeling of expansion, gratitude, and compassion then situations won't trigger me, or I can see them in a different light and I won't become the old 'Ingrid'. So I am creating a new saying:
“When you change the way you feel about things, the things you feel change”, Ingrid Brammer.
I love it!!
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