Descending into quiet

1.79 miles, 4564 steps, 697 feet in elevation, 7 chakras, 54 minutes, 500 years.

In the energy of the Full Moon, walking down the rocky jungle path of the Reef Bay Trail on St John, USVI, toward sea level, back in time, into the darkness of contemplation, toward the Ancestors.

Hermit crabs, deer, thrushes, doves, centipedes. Lime trees, mangos, ferns, flowers whose names I don’t yet know. Spider webs across the trail and onto my face. The old dead Bay Rum tree, with the weathered sign about its various uses. 

The giant Kapok Tree.

The ancient Kapok Tree receiving my embrace, embracing me, the first Ancestor to greet me, the first gate to open.

Down and down and down

Descending into the quiet of my mind

Watching and listening 

Listening listening 

Watching and seeing

Seeing the stone walls and ruins of buildings built hundreds of years ago by enslaved Africans. Feeling the despair and the power. Seeing the beauty they created under the most brutal of circumstances. Not just any walls, but walls of beauty. Bought with human lives. Feeling the complexity that is this land.

Breathing and feeling

Walking and meditating

Walking in meditation

Arriving at the sacred pool, where the Taino carved images of the Ancestors at the water line so that two sets of eyes watch over you. The spring fed pool where my mind’s eye has seen a little African girl coming for water. And where visions of a cruel white woman have wandered into my imagination. 

Across the pool, stone ledges carved with Ancestors, turtles, mushrooms. I am seated on the same ground as the Taino sat in ceremony centuries before Europeans and Africans arrived. Breathing, still.

Calling in the Directions and the Ancestors

Listening listening 

Feeling my grounded self, seated on the rocks by the sacred pool, my connection to this earth and to Them, the Ancestors of this land.

I offered a Chakra Ancestral healing meditation, beginning with Muladhara, the root. Breathing into my right to be born into this life, this Earth. Continuing through the energy centers.

At Vishuddha Chakra, the throat center, my intention was to listen and then to speak.

When I listened for what the Ancestors had to tell me, I heard “Get off this land.” It was clear and it was coming toward me but didn’t feel directed at me and I felt no hostility toward me.

I still felt welcome. I was confused, concerned. So I told the ancestor that I heard them but that I didn’t understand.

When it was my turn to speak to the Ancestors, I asked for forgiveness, healing and connection. Love. Just as I was offering this, my husband said, “Hello. Welcome” aloud to signal that others had arrived. I felt it was they to whom the Ancestors had spoken. I asked again for forgiveness, healing and compassion. And shared an energetic embrace. 

The tourists stayed just a couple of minutes. Never sat down. Looked around and left. Perhaps they also heard.

I completed my meditation and released the Directions and Ancestors, with gratitude.

On the way back up, we saw a woman posing with the sacred Kapok tree for a photo. My husband said, “that’s a special tree, isn’t it?” And she shrugged her shoulders and made a face to signal that to her it was not special. Just a prop for Instagram.

“Get off my land”

I embraced the Kapok Tree Ancestor and they hugged me back. I thanked them and said, “until next time.”