I crested the hill and the windshield transitioned from the pale blue of the sky to dark blue. The rocky mountains on which I was driving, gave way to the surf. The late afternoon shadows starting to give depth to the browns and reds of their ridgelines. Diving into the Sea of Cortes, extending to the horizon. The downhill slope and a vista of crashing blue of surf was breathtaking. The gravity of the moment took my breath away through divine laughter.
Then it hit me.
‘I’ve seen this view before…’
It came to me in a dream.
The car kept rolling down the highway. The waves continued into the rocky beaches. My mind worked to recall the dream.
It occurred maybe four or five years ago. I was walking on foot in the dream, in a slightly different part of the landscape, closer to the water, looking parallel to the beach. But I had been here before. The color palette matched my memory. Only the reds were more intense in the dream, but the sun’s intensity was similar.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath.
‘Thank you’
It was a wild intellectual feeling – my mind racing with trying to answer, ‘How is this possible?’
And at the same time, a deep sense of peace and understanding washed through my body.
I knew it was real. It was true.
After setting up my trailer several hours later, preparing for my first night in Baja, I walked the beach. I was the only human out there and I took in the breezes and the birds. On my return trip back to the camper, I looked up in front of me and a seagull matched my pace and strolled about 15 feet in front of me. It looked back curiously – it’s yellow eyes locking with my green.
We kept walking forward and staring at each other. Curious. Familiar.
‘Wait a sec…’
This also came to me in a dream.
That dream happened just a few months ago. Of a gull with a pet like familiarity, strolling in front of me peering back as we walked the same path. The feeling in the dream was of awe, friendship, and guidance. Those emotions transmuted to that beach as we stepped together into the sand. I tried to approach more closely, but the gull flew off.
Their wings catching the sea breeze and the current of life continued.
The pet gull. So familiar….
From a dream, but also from longer ago. My mind worked in recalling another divine presence.
It was four years ago in the streets of Casablanca. Wandering small alleys in Morocco’s ancient port medina. Amongst all the earth tone house faces, we had came across a brightly muraled alley way. There were several cats lounging and at the end of the passage, a shady patio. There a man sat in a simple chair. He looked up and cast a giant smile over us, lifting our cheeks into smiling back. The smile invited our approach. His skin was deep caramel, furrowed with lines earned by a long life. He was a large guy but wore small spectacles. There was a sense of deep peace and calm around his patio. He sat in the doorway of patterned tiles, potted plants and at least a dozen more cats laying about. Then we saw it, he was nursing a kitten the size of a tennis ball. The cat – and the bottle from which it drank – looked even more miniscule in his large hands. You could feel the love in his aura and witnessing the tenderness pour into the mouth of a kitten, a sense of tranquility washed over us.
Then a gull came walking through the iron gate onto the patio. It was very suspicious of us but familiar with the man – eyes darting from our faces to a longer peering to the man. Asking for the ‘all clear?’. The man connected eyes back to the bird, ‘Don’t worry.’ Even with a small smile, the bird wasn’t convinced and turned to walk down the alley – in doing so revealing a missing wing. In a wonderful mix of Arabic, French, and English, the man communicated that he had found the bird deeply wounded. Its wing had been taken off by a dog in some sort of medina street brawl. He had now taken the flightless gull in as a pet and a deep friendship endured. The bird’s name, he told us,
‘Mon ami’ Love of mine
We were all frozen in that divine moment. God was so present and palpable on that patio. In the heart of that man and the creatures he cared for and in the feeling of light that captured all of us. A pure feeling of love that spread through the alley. We said our goodbyes and knew that we had just been imprinted with a lifelong memory.
Little did I know the strolling gull would come back to me on a beach in Baja.
In the past two years, I’ve come into greater connection with the universe and God. Of the currents and energy that lay in all things. In the divine of our individual paths. Of our profound unity to all else.
I’ve found that God, Spirit, Self, Source – whatever name you choose – provides signs and messages in pairs, triples, or groups. That is the case for me at least. Maybe it’s their deep understanding of my ability to intellectualize things. Write them off as mere coincidence. Find a scientific mechanism that made it possible. So God works in multiples – literally hitting me in the face to get my attention (a story for another day).
So my first day in Mexico – which started with a prayer for safe passage and considerable anxiety over my solo trip across the border into the unknown – God provided so many blessings and messages of reassurance. Some of which were given years ago. Some in the dream world. Some in the tangible.
I was following the path that I had been led to. A trail that claimed so much, that forced me to let go of a great deal of valuables. But also one that I knew deep within, was right and true. Intuitively knowing that following these divine cairns would lead me to abundance.
A conscious surrender to the undeniable gravity of this magical strip of land.
I laid in my camper, the waning moon rising over the watery horizon.
‘May you guide me to the magic of Baja and give me the courage to accept those signs.’
A few deep breaths.
‘Thank you’
