No You Don't

There was this one time.

About ten years ago I was doing some work with my job that took me down to the country of Belize of all places.  Belize is a lovely place to visit if you have a reason to be there or on a vacation in one of the pampered tourist areas.   Of all the countries I've visited though, the people of Belize entirely redefined my perspective on what poverty looks like.  There are some terribly poor people there among the tropical beauty of the beaches and countryside.

There are also Mayan ruins, a place called “Xunantunich” (zoo-nan too-nik) which means “Stone Maiden”

http://www.belize.com/xunantunich-maya-site-belize

These ruins are still under excavation so when the people I was working with had a day off to be tourists some of us piled off to visit Xunantunich.  The Mayans are by no means extinct as a people.  Some of the indigenous people of Belize and part of Guatemala are direct descendants of Mayans and some still regard themselves as Mayans.   When you visit a place under excavation like Xunantunich there are finished structures that have been retrieved from nature, but its not like the Indiana Jones movies.  What you see are these lumpy looking hills with trees and jungle growing on the sides of them.  Hills that look natural enough and yet, not quite right. Buried in the hills, like graves, are buildings where people lived and worked.  If our own civilization ever collapses someday out tall buildings and houses will someday look like lumpy hills.

The pleasure of history, of museums, of historical places is the association of the imagination.  To realize that these places were once alive and important to people.  That people like yourself lived here, fell in love, gossiped, has families, worried about the future.  Worked hard, loafed.  Worshiped and speculated.  And then all things pass away.  When you walk along the green paths among the ruins you come to the small and narrow foundations of what were once private homes, where people lived their lives, gave birth and died before the conquistadors arrived and upended everything.

In the midst of the excavations , there is a pyramid called “El Castillo” which means “the castle”, probably a modern name.  El Castillo is quite a landmark and appears on the beer bottles of a  locally brewed stout which everybody drinks.  El Castillo has a band of images that surrounds the sides of it.   On the reverse side is a stone stairway that leads up from the ground to the top, about 130 feet straight up, where there is an observatory of some kind where the Mayans would observe the stars or perform whatever rituals bound them together.  The stone steps are a piece of work as in “Yeah, that guy.  He’s a piece of work.”  They are as narrow as a step ladder, close together and almost vertical.  One hundred and thirty feet of vertical.  No hand rails.  At the bottom of the steps are broken rocks and debris where workmen have been clearing things.  Certain death if your foot slips.  I couldn’t wait to climb it.

And why not?  Tourists, and students, some of them in sandals and back packs were whizzing up the steps and taking selfies at the top.  I put my foot on the first step.

It wouldn't move.  My body wouldn't move.

I had never experienced anything like this.  It was a mind and body split.  My mind wanted to go up, see the top, see what Mayan priests saw, take pictures of the surrounding land.

Nothing doing. 

My feet were planted in cement.  I could go anywhere else, even climb partly up the other side, but those vertical stairs;  I tried and tried.  Each time my body froze as if it had nothing to do with me.  I never made the climb.  I stood by and watched other people climb up and down like angels on Jacob’s Ladder.  A couple of times I went over to the steps and put my foot on them – and all though I wasn't consciously afraid my body would go no further.

This was one of the first times I was made aware that there are deeper levels to our minds.  We know that as a concept, but it’s a strange thing to have some deeper level, something beyond your self awareness, put a heavy hand on your shoulder and prevent you from doing something you consciously want to do.  It goes back a little to a previous post where I mentioned to Lisabet about how a person’s consciousness could simply be snipped into two people like a flatworm.  It reminds me that we are not who we think we are.  That personality and ego may be an illusion, a construct, and that the totality of our personhood may be much more complex and mysterious, and largely out of our reach.