Dispatch from A Sacred Darkness
Subtle divine moments in the belly of Mexico. Yellow Brick Road.
Welcome to Yellow Brick Road, an exploration of the guided path!!
"I speak of a darkness that is home to all that have lived. We were born in darkness. We return to darkness. The warm sable of the womb. The cool pitch of the grave. It is in darkness that creation itself resides. Ideas entwining in the recess of the skull. Lovers entwining in the night. The darkness that comes is the Death of stagnation, and the birth of creativity. "
— Catarina, Master of the Dead, Path of Exile (pre-version 3.5)
I’ve been traveling over the last month, namely on a Hot Girl Trip to Tulum and on a solo jaunt in Mexico City. My travels were soulgiving to say the least. You guys might remember my newsletter from Italy in August 2021 - my favorite newsletter to date because I told a few other people’s stories. Today, I’m going to tell a story about my experience with a tour guide named Santiago. This newsletter is a journey through the underworld, crouched between the stalagmite and stalactite teeth of Earth’s crust.
My friend Michelle and I planned to take a traditional cenote experience - trudge through the jungle, enter a cave, walk until you reach the coveted sinkhole to take a dive into fresh rainwater. A huge tourist attraction for visitors of this region, we expected the standard. That is, until we met our guide Santiago. Raised by two anthropologists, Santiago stored the connection between human, land, and culture in his bones. We laughed about the frivolity of dogma, exchanged Netflix and travel recommendations, discussed the cultural influence of Disney movies, and mused on the wonder of the multiverse all within the 30 minute ride from our AirBnb.
“I will tell you about the spiritual significance of the cenote…my own perspective,” Santiago smiled back at us from the passenger seat as the van pulled into the little slice of jungle where I’d leave many awe-inspired tears.
Santiago pioneered our descent down a hanging rope ladder until we touched ground beneath the limestone surface of Tulum. We entered the cave, flashlights tied to our vests and guiding our path through waist-deep water deposits. Itty bitty catfish swam at our feet. Quarter-sized, translucent lobster babies shuffled past us. The general vibe wasn’t too far off from the Harry Potter’s Chamber of Secrets. We reached a sandy shore inside the cave and sat to chat in the belly of Mexico.
I listened intently, sitting crosslegged and running my fingers back and forth through the fine calcium granules, letting the purity of this place rub off the rough and calloused parts of my exterior. “The people of this region associate entering the caves with the courage to wander through darkness and stillness…what you don’t want to see. It is associated with the growth that occurs in a womb,” he said. He drew a yin-yang in the sand with his pointer finger. “There are many global representations for duality…the relationship between light and dark…like this one. But you see in the dot on each side, nothing is pure. The jaguar is a special creature in Mexico. When people decide to enter the dark, we become the jaguar. This is the relationship between the caves and our world,” Santiago continued.
I considered the very Western idea of darkness, certainly pervasive enough to extend beyond the United States and the grip Christianity has on it, but particularly toxic in the society I know best. We often create a moral dichotomy. Darkness = bad. Lightness = good. In an act to dismantle this, I’ve identified the darkness as it operates in my own life and emotional experience as “that which I don’t have enough information or conscious awareness to see.” Or simply being human. The light operates as information, consciousness, and transcendence from the physical. Both necessary parts of being an infinite being in a finite reality.
The concept of being a jaguar - allowing myself to enter the darkest parts of my emotional body while feeling innate safety in doing so - was powerful to me. As a jaguar moves through darkness, it carries both dark and light spots on it’s back - it’s coat of protection consistent with balance. When searching for guidance in a place as dark as the jungle at night, all that can be seen is a jaguar’s eyes. In essence, the only light in a truly dark, still, and terrifyingly quiet place is our open eyes - our willingness to see what’s before us and also resign to the fact that some knowledge remains sight unseen.
We shut off our flashlights and laid where rainwater met calcium bank for a meditation. Instantly, the three of us were swallowed by nothingness. Little to no life around us, no sound but our own breathing patterns, eyes rendered useless. I closed my lids and was initially jarred by the fact that what was beyond them was just as dark as behind, and then I settled into the reality that my only adversaries down there were my thoughts. Any tension or fear was my own creation. My eyes fluttered opened after what seemed like several lifetimes and we all sat up, turning our flashlights on as we rose.
Santiago began to draw another image in the sand. He said, “in my opinion, the tree is a symbol for our existence here.” The roots break through the uppermost layer of Earth to find the dark, damp safety of the cave. We are born from this place - much like a womb or the liminality we go in between phases of our lives - despite our fear of entering its sacred holding space.
I imagined myself having entered many caves in the course of my life - kicking and screaming about having to hear my own thoughts and heartbeat alone - because I just wasn’t sure if I would survive the transformation of stillness. And we don’t survive it, but that’s the good news.
Then, Santiago drew the trunk. “This is us. This is the Earth realm and our connection to each other.” I imagined the trunk as food, dance, monuments, rituals, and all the things we do to sustain and remind us of life. It also was not lost on me that the trunk of a tree is often the only thing we humans will see in daily life unless we intend to climb above or decide to excavate was exists below. Finally, he drew the canopy. “This is the heavens and the spiritual realm,” he finished while driving his finger deeper into the sand at the final stroke.
“The darkness here in the cave is not suffering. The tree grows roots to find water source down here. We do the same. The tree grows taller and taller in the struggle for light against other trees. So do we.” Santiago cupped water in his hand, pushing it over his finger drawing and then the tree washed away.
As we finished our voyage through the underworld, a bright blue bird darted by our heads into the cave. Surely, they would get lost in there, I thought. We arrived to the freshwater sinkhole for a swim. Michelle dove to touch the bottom while I looked up to the sky and started to weep. There are moments when nature reminds you of your origin; your belonging to something so powerful, not even the will of self-sabotage or greed or control can destroy its wonder. This was one of those moments.
Santiago told us his wife was soon due to give birth to a baby boy. In the middle of our discussion, he glanced to the side of the mounted platform where he stood and crouched down to grab something from the water. A teal bird feather. We were all quiet for a moment. “Are you going to keep that, Santi? It’s a gift.” And then Michelle said exactly what we were all thinking, “Santi, you should give that to your son.”
“You know how they say you get goosebumps when god is speaking through other people?” Then Santiago shared that just the day before our tour he painted his son’s room the exact color of the feather our lost bird left behind in the cenote. I guess he wasn’t lost, but delivering an offering to Santi, sweet keeper of the underworld’s secrets.
Whew. What a journey <3