the traveling white belt

I Hate Goodbyes, Farewell Ecuador

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Thinking about leaving fills me with a feeling of being caught so intensly between sadness and excitement that I remain firmly in the centre of the two, in a purgatory of experience. Lost In the false protection of avoidance, I fool myself into thinking that I am ready.

I’m leaving home once again, only this time It’s Ecuador, and not Colombia, or Australia that I’m leaving behind. over the last six months I’ve explored Ecuador’s unique and diverse landscape and culture. I experienced so much and so intensely that I could only ever appreciate it in retrospect.

Traveling is a whirlwind of discovery and goodbyes so much so that the goodbyes seem to become almost routine. We miss the point of them.

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Psychedelic Coffee

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After six months of living in Colombia I still had not been to the coffee region. I am a self proclaimed coffee addict and I am always looking for the next best coffee wherever I go. On my brief return to Colombia I definitely couldn’t pass up the opportunity to experience some of the most beautiful country side Colombia has to offer, coupled with as much organically grown Colombian coffee as I could drink.

So shortly after arriving in Bogota I boarded a night bus headed to Armenia. The bus took roughly nine hours due to some battles with Bogota peak hour. After a short nap in the Armenia bus station I was in a smaller bus headed for the small mountain town of Salento.

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The Healing Plants Part III: Madre Ayahuasca

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My final lesson with the plant medicines in Guadalajara has come to a close. Don Luis and his wife Norma, along with their friends and family, have built a community of love and healing that is truly inspirational. I feel truly blessed to have found them in my time in Mexico and I am still carrying a part of their love with me as I travel to Colombia.

In the final ceremony I would be reunited with an old friend, Madre Ayahuasca. This came as a surprise to me, I certainly wasn’t planning on participating in another ceremony so soon, having taken part in one only 4 months ago in Colombia. Nonetheless it felt right, the people, the setting and an opportunity to work with two shamans who had flown from Colombia with a combined total of almost 100 years working with the medicine. Continue reading →

The Healing Plants Part II: The Women of Yopo

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Love. Unconditional, unadulterated, uninhibited love. The air was so thick with the stuff, between it and the smoke I could hardly breathe. My head was spinning, the colours around me were dancing and this beautiful feeling swelling deep inside my heart was counteracting the intense nausea. I’d broken through the pain with a deep, connected and pure love for the strangers, especially the women around me.

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The Healing Plants Part I: Peyote

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If you have been following my blog for a while you might have realised that I am a big advocate of the profound benefits of working with psychedelics and indigenous plant medicine. I have personally experienced and witnessed incredible personal breakthroughs and mental healing from their non-recreational use.

You can check out my three-part post on a journey I took with Ayahuasca here.

Or

A positive experience with LSD in the mountains of Boulder, Colorado here.

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Top 5 spots in North America You Might Not Have Thought to Go

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My close to 15,000 kilometres (over 9,000 miles) journey through the United States and Canada via car, bus and train has come to an end. What an experience! I was completely blown away by the diversity and beauty of the continent and there are countless places I still need to see or return to.

I cannot thank enough all of the amazing people who drove me, housed me, fed me, or just kept me company on this adventure. Looking back in retrospect I don’t think I had a single bad experience on my travels. I hit most of the major landmarks from New York to San Francisco and many more, though five places in particular stood out to me, as hidden gems and my top five favourite spots in North America.   Continue reading →

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop!

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I’m back, my laptop returned, life as I know it restored. But in all seriousness existing without my laptop really was not that dramatic. In fact I enjoyed it a lot, apart from the sinking feeling at the possibility of having lost all my posts and pictures. I didn’t let any of it stop me from enjoying life in Mexico.

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The Day I Flew!

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Jet Pack Ride

Sitting by the window as I watched the California coastline rush by from the top carriage of the Cali’ Surf-liner, I still couldn’t really believe it. Today, I was going to fly!

Over a week ago now I was overwhelmed by the generosity of a fellow blogger and inspiration of mine, Lesley Carter from Bucket List Publications; I noticed a competition she had been running about winning a jet-pack ride over the beautiful sun-kissed beaches of Newport, Southern California.

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The Great North American Road Trip Part III: The Video

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Check out the story here:

This is the GoPro video i finally finished about the road trip with my two Danish amigos. It is my first attempt at something like this so hope you all like it.

 

Part I

Part II

 

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I’m Feeling Inspired & Generous

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I have been following Lesley’s blog since i first started blogging way back in December right before i started on this crazy adventure. She has been an inspiration to me achieving so many of her goals in life and proving to others that happiness is possible.

I can hardly express how much this means to me, not just the jet pack ride, but to be acknowledged and told you’re doing it right, that’s what really means the world to me.

Check out her blog and her amazing experiences they might make you jealous but hopefully they will inspire you to go for what you want in life.

Girls, Hope and Mountains

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Today I leave Colorado, I leave Boulder a town at the start of the Rocky Mountain range that feels as much like home as anywhere.

A lot happened to me in Boulder that shaped my experience from the people, the mountains, the smiles, the infectious open mindedness and some of the greatest nights partying in my life. But two things In particular gave me a renewed sense of clarity on who I want to be and what makes life so beautiful. The first was a psychedelic experience with LSD under the stars up in the mountains, and the second was a girl.

I planned on staying a couple of days in Boulder but that soon turned into a couple of weeks. The town seems to embody the adventuring spirit and maybe its the 300 plus sunny days a year, but you cannot help but feel happy from the moment you wake up to the time your smile hits the pillow. I felt a connection with Boulder that I hadn’t felt since Colombia or Australia.

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The Great North American Road Trip Part II

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20140712_101423 There is a strange allure to the life of a vagabond. With no where in particular to be and all the time in the world to get there, life is a constant adventure. Every heartbeat, every breath, every experience is meaningful. When the numbness of existence is countered by the flow of the blood through your veins you awaken to a broader perspective of life. You can not help but smile and be happy for the chance to be alive and appreciate the moments that create your story so far. Continue reading →

The Great North American Road Trip Part I

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The road trip is over. We travelled almost 6,000 kilometres (roughly 3,800 miles), we stayed in Mansions, in student housing, in tents, in the car, in hostels and strangers houses. We visited over 20 major cities and small towns over two countries. We partied, hiked, chilled, walked, talked, got high, swam, worked, got naked (I can explain!) and had the time of our freaking lives. We did it all in just over a month and finally I can breathe again!

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Detroit, Motor City They Don’t Make ’em Like They Use To

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20140630_201010My original plan was to write a post after this one-month road trip had ended. So I would have plenty of stories to tell, lessons learnt and even a GoPro video I have been working on. But, I couldn’t not write about Detroit. I was so in awe of the city and felt that it deserved its own separate post. That and I just needed to share my experience in Detroit right away. Continue reading →

New York, Now I Can Make it Anywhere

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20140616_143859New York, New freaking York what can I really say, I never expected to be here in this stage of life and it has made quite an impression. Honestly, though I was not expecting the culture shock I would get from America, and the land of the almighty dollar.

Part of me wants to proclaim it the greatest city in the world, the modern Babylon a testament to human achievement, and in many ways it is. A city that never sleep,s a beautiful, diverse, quirky metropolis where there is a place for anything and everything.

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Colombia, The Country That Made Me Cry, and Laugh, and Smile, And Cry Again

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How do I even contain this in such a small platform? Where do I start? How do I finish? Colombia was the best thing that ever happened to me, period.

I went there with expectations, ideas of how things would go, worries, pressures from myself, from back home, nervousness, and negative beliefs. And absolutely nothing went to plan.

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Psychedelics, Life Decisions and The Other Side of The Rabbit Hole Part III: The Journey

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It is nightfall now, the group has just descended from the mountain where we sat, talked, joked and meditated. We sit in silence, huddled in a circle surrounding the fire, anxiously awaiting the instructions of Maestro Adonias our Shaman.

Without warning the Shaman speaks, he tells us to not be afraid, to trust in the medicine, trust in him and you will be fine, that we may confront our fears, our deepest problems, even death but we are safe. We are all starving, weary, but ready. We introduce ourselves formally to the group along with our intentions for the night. We eagerly follow the Shaman over to a table supporting a bottle of a thick dark brown liquid.

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Psychedelics, Life Decisions and The Other Side of The Rabbit Hole Part II: The Diet

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No sex. No masturbation. No Alcohol. No drugs of any kind (even coffee). No salt. No sugar. No chili. No dairy. No pork. No red meat.

For the past week this has been my life, more or less, in preparation for the Ayahuasca ceremony tomorrow night.

This week has been tough to say the least it was my final week of exams whilst on exchange. Many of the friends I have made over my last 6 months in Colombia are heading home. My family is pressuring me to come up with a return date for next year, to attend a wedding. And to top it off I have all but ended a relationship with a girl I have been in love with for over two years.

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Psychedelics, Life Decisions and The Other Side of The Rabbit Hole

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Last Tuesday I had a truly profound LSD experience with my friend in Bogota. Two days later I am still riding the afterglow of the experience. It came on rather slowly and we laughed and talked to our other friends about girlfriends, love and “let’s see” decisions and were just thankful for the life we are living right now.

We were lucky enough to be offered an Ayahuasca ceremony earlier in the week with a highly respected and recommended shaman from Peru who is currently working in Colombia. We will start the diet next week and have the ceremony Saturday the 31st of May. Naturally our conversation turned to this ceremony.

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You Are Not Your Mask

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The truth is, it is hard to be honest, it is hard to trust in who you are, it is hard to guess how others will feel about you and it is hard to overcome the fear that the truth will not be enough.

You are having a conversation with a friend, a stranger, a girl you like, and they ask you a question, your opinion on something. Suddenly you freeze. What should I say? What if they think I am weird? How could they understand what I actually feel?

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If You Cannot be Happy, then What else is There?

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I am always looking for inspiration and advice on how to be my best, how to squeeze every bit of experience out of a situation and most importantly how to be happy. This youtube channel has some great content, compilations of talks from some really intelligent thinkers like Tony Robbins, and Leslie Brown. This video is my favourite, it reinforces this idea that pain, failure and defeat are both temporary and necessary. On your journey to be the person you want to be you can not sit still, you need to move towards what you want. Happiness is working towards something that means something to You!

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Are You Prepared to Die?

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Steel Workers Have lunch on top of a New York Skyscraper

What would you do to experience something truly Beautiful?

To touch, see, hear, smell and breathe in a moment, a single moment so intense and full of Awe and Wonder that you could cry. An experience that challenges what you thought it meant to be alive and your understanding of real.

Would you leave your home, your family, your friends, that one girl whose very name fills you with Joy and rescues you from sorrow? For just a chance at something greater than yourself.

Would you be prepared to die?

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Awaken from a Dream in the Caribbean

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Back in Bogota once again and not long left now, roughly six weeks, until I head to New York City for a completely different Adventure. I am absolutely exhausted from my trip to the Caribbean but i’ve got another story to tell and I am happy. Once again I am amazed at this planets’ ability to continue to teach me about it, its people, and myself.

In my last update I mentioned my excitement about my trip to Providencia Island, it did not disappoint and it may of clawed its way into my top 5 favourite places I have visited. The island has a rich history of English colonisation, piracy and in more recent history the emergence of a Rastafarian culture.

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The Pursuit of Happiness

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What i have learnt over this past year is that Happiness is a choice, a decision we can all consciously make. It is true that sometimes it is hard to Choose to be happy, but we are all capable of experiencing our own unique happiness. This has inspired me to try and understand happiness, to listen to other peoples perspectives to collaborate and grow.

So I asked some friends and people that inspire me what is happiness? What creates happiness? And what makes YOU happy? My first guest post is from a close friend of mine who recently started her spirituality and well-being blog, Meg from Adventuring Home. Meg is an amazing human being with a unique and loving perspective on being the best human being you can. She inspires me with her positivity and passion for life. I really loved reading her perspective on happiness and i know you will too.

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