At the End of the Universe
Handing the Steering Wheel to God
Hi friends! I am currently on a 10-day women’s rite of passage deep in the wilderness of North Carolina. This is not the first time that I’ve gone on walkabout in order to retrieve something sacred from the void – and as I step outside of this reality to dance with the mystery, I wanted to leave you with something to chew on regarding the role fear can play in our lives and minds. The following story is from a 9-month walkabout I did in 2019, which took me to the foot of Mexico, one of my forever soul homes. May you find some adventures this summer that help you confront your limiting beliefs and open up new vistas of possibility.
A beautiful stranger walks into town – and it’s me.
I fly into Cancun and take the ADO bus from the airport to the muggy transfer station where I buy a soda and sip it in the heat next to a sad fan. Another bus will take me two hours south to Tulum, where I will spend the night in a funky hostel before making my way to Bacalar the following morning. I am following the water to a small village at the end of one of the most spectacular lakes in the world. It is five hours further south, in the sweaty foot of Mexico, where few tourists go.
Spoiler alert: I do not get murdered.
Most people snooze on the bus. I have a seat to myself and free wifi. I text my family and assure them I am still alive, just a little hungover, as we cruise through miles of endless green with flashing pockets of color when we pass by a sleepy village. There is the occasional thatched turret and brown women with soft smiles who sell fresh piña along the desolate country highway.
I munch greasy chips and watch a movie about a primitive man hunting in the wild with an injured wolf. There’s no subtitles because there’s no words; instead just a desolate landscape I watch him navigate for hours in order to finally reach his home. There seems to be no escape from his struggle: he is wounded, he is starving, he is lost. He almost dies several times. I ponder the significance of this preview myth when I reach my final destination and discover that my phone is no longer working.
I am dumped unceremoniously at a dusty pizza stand next to a gas station in what looks like the middle of nowhere.
Another test has arrived, for there is no cell service and no car that fits the description provided earlier by Simon, a friend of a friend who I’ve never met. He is my only connection here and the owner of a magic bus that I will be staying in for the next two weeks in a private compound just outside of town. I pace for a few minutes outside the OXXO gas station, amused by my own predicament. Barely five minutes into Mexico and here I am, a woman on her own without a clue as to how I get to my new home.
Thankfully, I flag down the last idling taxi driver and he recognizes the address I offer. I am taken several miles down a long dirt road with no sign or address. Just when I wonder if I’ve been abducted, we arrive at a bright red adobe entrance where I am met by a pack of barking dogs and Greta, the feisty madam of this property.
Originally a New Yorker birthed in the Bronx, Greta found her way to Bacalar when most gringos didn’t venture further than Cancún. She built the house with her hands in the 80s, back when you had to defend your land from corrupt government agents with a machete. She is a grumpy woman with a tender side who sold earring organizers online, made millions, and then officially retired to the jungle, where she now rents a few luxury cabanas to tan European families.
Her real estate investment has paid off and it’s easy to see why: several acres of sweating Eden along the pristine Bacalar lake shore. It is windy the day I arrive and I can hear the soft lick of waves as I walk down the long path that cuts through bee-infested trees to the house, and further beyond, the water below. Greta lives alone in the large main house with a sweeping veranda that perfectly frames the horizon. The walls are lined with elaborate African masks and imported furniture from Japan; an eclectic space that bears evidence of her former lives – of which there are clearly several.
The long white bus I will sleep in for the next two weeks is parked against the far garden wall which runs the entire length of the property. Simon and his wife Eliza drove the iconic bus down when the dot com boom went bust and now manage the property for Greta while operating a small watersports business on the side.
When he finally arrives, I met him. Simon is a former corporate servant with a rowdy streak; a fun-loving rogue with a booming laugh who traveled through Central America back when there were only paperback guides that were usually out of date by the time he called the numbers listed inside. Parasites and plot twists were a fact of life. He tells me gory stories over shots of his good tequila, regaling me with tales of the good old days when he slept in dirty huts on the beach.
Getting fucked up was part of the ride.
His words, not mine.
•
I spend my days writing in the garden and tooling around the lake in Simon’s electric green speedboat with him and his seven hounds.
La canícula, the locals call July – the dog days of summer.
Although more narrow and shallow than a sea, Lake Bacalar is still home to some beasts. I am not just speaking of me. Alligators lurk in the freshwater lake. Sometimes you can see them sunning on the reedy sandbars where boating parties drop anchor to drink cervezas and swim in the clear shallows.
Simon gives me the lowdown on the local culture as we cruise up and down the entire length of the several-mile-long lake n a day, blaring bad boy anthems and burning our faces to shiny tomatoes in the process. He does donuts in the middle, pulling back and then driving the throttle to cut through the hard chop, spanking the water with gusto until I scream out.
Simon’s perfect white teeth gleam in his All-American smile as we burn south toward the cenotes.
An iris from above, these ancient watery cave systems are renowned for their depth. There are three cenotes at the far end of the lake, perfect circles leading to somewhere, but perhaps no one will ever know for sure. Many skilled divers had drowned trying to reach the elusive bottom. We’re not here to be heroes, so Simon and I putter into the deep along with the rest of the party boats. He cuts the engine right over the black center but doesn’t let down anchor.
Instead we drift, listening to other people laugh.
Later, I make a stitch in my mind for these memories. I am writing every day by the water but I cannot capture everything as it happens. I’m collecting details, still on the ride. I trust that I will know at a future time what is essential. For now I am just the observer.
But also – somehow the offering too.
I consider what this means as I ritually bathe one evening in the lake under the ripe full moon.
I didn’t know it when I left but it appears I came here to baptize myself in the clear blue, to finally honor the other side of my name: Pure One. I end each day by greeting the night from the creaking dock, absorbing the sounds of Lake Bacalar: her heave, her weep, her breathing. I shout into the darkness. I go swimming in her, quivering. Even as the water whispers: Go further, you are not done unfolding.
Such is the lotus opening.
I am a painted constellation of sacred symbols, decorated like the primordial caves that keep surfacing in my dreams. Where the ancestral sage goes to behold destiny dance in the shadows of the sacred flame. Each tattoo etched into my skin is a way to map the teachings I have received along the way. I embed each new truth in my body so I will remember them later.
Just in case I forget again.
In the first dream: I crawl down a hole until I land in the belly of the universe. I am naked and wet, streaked with birth and dirt. Alone. I stand up inside a glittering grotto. Before me stretches an endless black body of water, thick as the night with no light, disappearing into the guts of the cave. It laps at the shore just a few inches from my feet. I behold it with terror; like some monstrous, undefinable enemy. Fear does this to a mind: warps the landscape of memory. Turns data points into landmines. Then I remember: I can transform whatever is in front of me if I choose to look at it differently.
All around me, prismatic blackness winks back. I watch myself take a deep breath and walk into the water: the only thing left that I refuse to face.
What is darkness anyway?
Only when I am fully submerged does the world underwater explode into full color, revealing its essential nature. I am in awe of the life that exists on the other side, where I didn’t dare tread a few minutes earlier.
Then out of the depths emerge two alien creatures: metallic black orbs with long, mechanical tentacles. They remind me of the skittering water spiders that walked on the surface of freshwater lakes back home. How magical and strange they seemed then – insects impersonating the illumined. The dream arachnids start wrapping me up in a thick, sticky web that starts to suffocate me.
Finally, I scream: I am free.
Only then do I awaken from the dream.
•
Later, I write you a letter sitting on the tiled terraza, dripping in the heat, a flower fragrant with delicious venom. Now that I am transforming my pain it no longer lives in me as a poison but a power source. I listen to the magical waters of Lake Bacalar reaching for shore. So thirsty for more. It is not insignificant that I have traveled many hours to bathe in this freshwater lake, one of the largest in the world; that I’m here alone to adorn myself in the colors of the jungle.
I am following my fear to find out what is true.
The water takes me next to Tulum. I rent a single room in a colorful painted building in the middle of town for a few weeks, right behind a small restaurant that opens out into the main street. Tulum has two centers split by the beach road. The actual town is a long bike ride or ten-dollar taxi from the tourist beaches along the expensive hotel esplanade, yet worlds away in terms of how I spend my days. I am not on a “sabbatical from my sabbatical” as my brother will refer to this time later, nor is this a vacation. I am here to discover something, I just don’t know what yet.
I have decided that I will know the message when I receive it.
Paradise reeks something terribly. The once pristine beaches are now soiled with rotting sargasso; an invasive seagrass infestation of massive proportions. Even the hot stink of traffic in town is preferable to the noxious sulfur fumes that choke out unsuspecting tourists. Tulum’s seaweed problem has intensified with the warming sea temperatures and more of it continues to roll ashore each day, so much that multiple sweating men can’t clear it away fast enough.
It smells like ripe death for miles.
My apartment is a sterile concrete room; nothing like the expensive cabanas on the beach where people are paying 1800 bucks a night to huff the farts of the devil incarnate. I have an air conditioner and a clean bed, a private bathroom and two towels. More of a gracious cell than anything else, but it serves me perfectly. Most days I am out walking, discovering pockets of life and watching people in various outdoor cafes, waiting for life to direct me.
In other words: listening deeply, logic be damned.
Each morning I rise to the sounds of a crackling fire being started in the horno next door. I do my chanting and calisthenics while the servers drink their coffee at their regular morning meeting in the garden outside. Just a few feet from them, next to my door, is a small table where I smoke cigarettes and drink bitter Negronis in the evening dusk, as though I am waiting for someone to arrive.
Then one morning, someone does.
I find a tiny abuelita sitting in my chair when I open my door to leave for the day. I am trying to understand what she wants, but neither of us speak the other’s language beyond the casual pleasantries. We are at a loss for words until Eduardo walks around the corner in a crisp linen shirt. He is elegant and meticulous, with a full head of white hair and lightly-accented English. My mother, he smiles, and says something to her in Spanish. She nods and heads into the cafe, disappearing behind the oven smoke, and he sits down in her place.
Are you a writer? He asks, looking at the journal under my arm.
He motions for me to join him, introducing himself as the owner of the building. A few minutes into our conversation, I find myself sharing with him the intimate details of why I am here. I am traveling to write my book, I share, but the truth is that the book is writing me and I am just following its commands.
You don’t look like a tourist, he says.
I explain how the book already knows the end of the story, even if I don’t, and it is up to me to discover what I am supposed to do with the data it provides. Other than that, I am following my whimsy. He is intrigued by my honesty. You are a teacher too, he notes, I can tell. Before I leave to begin my day, he puts an invitation on the table; asking if he might show me a special place – a retreat center he’s building just outside of town. I will take you there, he promises. Now it is my turn to be intrigued. The temptation of “there” and all that could mean. Would I like to go tomorrow? He has time in the morning to show me around.
I say yes without thinking deeply about it. After all, he is in his seventies.
•
I wake up the next morning at 8am in a cold sweat. I do my regular lunges in front of the mirror as the worried voice of my brother worms through my brain, convincing me that once again I’ve gone and done something unforgivable. Am I unhinged, ensuring my own immolation? One could argue yes. But underneath that is something more true: I’m still learning where the line exists between following the story and utter foolishness.
I trust that I know what to do.
Eduardo is five minutes early. I finish my coffee and breakfast while he sips on water without ice. Although I am feeling nauseous with anxiety, I have decided that fear will not rule my path. Sorry brother, I think to myself as I hop in the mud-streaked ranch truck parked outside the restaurant. I might be foolish sometimes, but I’m not blind stupid – although certainly some would disagree.
As we start our drive I make a vigorous scan of the vehicle out of the corner of my eyes, keeping up a conversation as I do so. I make note of what items in the car could be weaponized and watch the passing road signs in order to demarcate the path back.
What details will make or break you later?
We arrive at the last major intersection at the edge of Tulum. If you go east, you hit the beach within a matter of minutes. Go any other direction and the road eats through raw jungle for hours. We head west towards Cobá, an ancient Mayan city known for its interlocking web of stone paths laid over the tropical swamp. The largest nexus of this kind in the world, these crumbling channels allowed people to navigate the impassable.
In Mexico, the two-lane highways that are not tolled are called carreteras libres, or free roads.
I reflect on the irony of this as I mentally review my escape checklist just in case this nice man decides to reveal a monster. I am paying attention as if my life depends on it and so I hear him when he says something important amidst his chattering. It pops like a bubble in my ear, releasing a clogged energy.
I have never felt fear.
He pauses and thinks. Maybe once, he admits. When he almost drowned scuba diving off of the Great Barrier Reef back in the 90s, at the peak of his globetrotting. Almost ran out of air, he says, shrugging his shoulders. Eduardo doesn’t seem to think that his lack of fear is anything abnormal or special. It is a simple fact of life for him whereas I, on the other hand, am floored by this admission. I feel strangely exposed next to him. His operating assumptions were an alien universe to me.
I literally could not understand that reality, and it exposed the crumbling bedrock of my own. His perspective, though wildly privileged, also struck me as both innocent and radical.
Eduardo continues talking, oblivious to my internal calculations which are re-computing rapidly; factoring this new data into the situation in order to determine what, exactly, is happening. I can’t read his output because now something in the DNA of our exchange has drastically shifted. Suddenly I’m aware of the fact that he’s operating within a completely different reality.
Who would I be if fear didn’t stop me?
Still –
I don’t trust him.
We make several turns, leaving the paved stretches of civilization behind as we penetrate deeper into the messy jungle, leafy and incomprehensible. Just when I lose track of where we are the truck pulls up to a locked gate leading deeper into the green abyss.
We’ve been bumping down a rural country road, but now the gravel dwindles into two ruts cut in the rough dirt. Large gnarled branches blot out the noon sun and long dripping vines smack the windshield as we drive. There are more butterflies than I thought possible in one place. Finally, we pull to a stop in a clearing where several buildings still under construction are perched around a slimy lagoon. Our private cenote, Eduardo exclaims gaily.
He spreads his arms open as he surveys the land.
I think about my mother back home and how I am all alone with a strange man in the middle of a jungle. He shows me the half-finished kitchen area and describes in detail the compost setup. Calling the space an eco-lodge might be gratuitous for what I see, but the rustic structures certainly promised a true wilderness experience. That is the whole point, Eduardo reminds me, to reconnect with the primal self.
I can’t help but agree, whatever his intentions may be.
We climb a winding staircase with raw pieces of frayed rebar poking out of the unfinished stairs to the top of the largest structure, a 3-story concrete block that will serve as the group dormitories. I can feel how my body is anticipating the arrival of something – perhaps a catalytic message that will jolt me out of reverie and remind me where I am.
What will that be? Admittedly, there is a part of me that has come to expect a certain violence as part of the process. It’s as though my soul knows that the knowledge I seek will undo me.
For in order to shed the story that imprisons me, I must destroy it completely.
Sometimes life punches through the familiar narrative that’s running our mind like a movie reel. The unexpected moment confronts us like a beast on the path, snorting with glee. It says GO THIS WAY with a blinking arrow pointing straight at the heart of our wildness. Like so many others before, you will walk forward into foreign terrain that by all existing definitions is dangerous – but only because it remains unexplored.
Then you must hand the steering wheel to God and grab your machete.
•
The rooftop reveals a stunning panorama: a sea of green that stretches for what feels like forever. Out here, nothing competes with the fertile power and purity of nature.
Look at me: being gifted a view that few have seen.
I hear the resounding growl of an animal echoing in the distance. The workers out here have seen two jaguars in the last week, Eduardo comments from under his straw fedora. Medicine creatures. The talismans are all around me. I understand that I am being shown some mythical parallel; the paradox at the heart of my quest. It is only when I go past everything that has felt easy and safe, when I scale the ziggurat and zoom out, that I can see the immensity of territory I have traversed.
As though in summiting this singular edifice, I have already won something.
I sense it will take me some time to truly understand the nature of the gift he has given me. Eduardo and I stand in silence before the blazing sun as the wind moves like an invisible hand through the trees below.
For a moment I indulge myself; envisioning this scene as though I were an ancient human beholding the endless horizon for the first time in history.
It sends a shiver down my spine, deep into the roots of my being.
I breathe a sigh of relief when Eduardo turns to me and asks if I might like to enjoy a coffee on our way back to town. We drive thirty minutes to an empty, open-air restaurant where he eats a small pizza and I drink a sweating Coca-Cola as the light warms my trembling back. I am still wondering what the message is when Eduardo, as if sensing my thoughts, starts to speak.
He beholds me like a tender father, and I, a wriggling baby. Indeed, his words are strange milk, for they soothe a burn that has been building all day. You are very brave, he says kindly. He goes on to share what he has witnessed in me: a fearlessness that has taken me to the very ends of the world alone; to the very edge of my soul and back. Why? He laughs.
Because you dare to, simple as that.
It is here, at the border between the known world and the mystery, that I meet myself, outside and beyond what I thought were my definitions; my identity prisons. It is not easy to do what you are here to do, he acknowledges, as though he’s finally realized that accepting a stranger’s invitation to venture into the unknown is, in some places, a death sentence – especially for a woman.
Then he says something I will never forget. Eduardo looks into my soul and smiles. You will receive everything you want, he declares, and the transmission lands.
In that moment I swear I can hear God laugh.
What is the measure of courage anyway?
Is it the scope of the journey or the height of the mountain? Is it the depth of the ocean or the brightness in the darkness? Besides, how would you know unless you’ve tried each one? I go down the list of things I have done – the lessons learned, the places I have visited, the wounds incurred.
By now you must be asking: Was it worth it?
Once again I have gone where others are too afraid to go, but is that enough on its own? I hold the stones I’ve collected in my pocket as I trace the outline of this story in my travel logs, reaching across space and time to breathe flesh onto these skeletons of memory.
Apparently it is my divine duty to love the blood of my darkness just as much as I ride the light. Dancing the edge is how we develop our unequivocal yes: the resilient essence.
Learning how to surf the waves is just part of the practice.
The desire to surrender oneself to the immensity is both subversive and sacred. It is the true desire of anyone who walks up the mountain or crawls into the sea on their knees. The Russians have a different word for this holy immolation. Translated roughly, тоска means a yearning for something beyond human comprehension; a spiritual anguish born from that which we long for but cannot define.
That night, I have a dream that I’m pulling a string of wooden beads from my throat: a rosary. Each bead is the size of my fist. I pull it out like a lure and I am a fish, throbbing in that moment between life and death. On each orb: an incantation I have imprinted upon the universe, a spell that I’ve cast backwards to seal the holes opened before I knew the scent of a wound bleeding. I am completed when I pull it out for each prayer is a perfect circle. I close the loop of the past and bless all the hooks, then cast it back into the rippling water and watch as it disappears into the black.
I make an oath: If I am profane, so be it. If I am too loud, you will allow me. Whatever is beyond me breathes me, and now I know that is everything.
That is enough.
Calling all sacred troublemakers, witches, wild kin, rooted humans, and weary visionaries – ONE WITH THE MOTHER is our space to replenish, to remember, to become reverent in the chaos. Featuring four days of healing activations, collective ritual, wisdom talks, and remembering together. Join me for a digital retreat that connects you more deeply to the real world. We gather online and in community August 7–10. Learn more and register here.
