Facing the Heart of the Beast Part 1-3

Popping The Comfort Bubble

Have you ever felt the wanderlust pull you from the comforts of your bubble?

What happens when you answer the call of the wild to be free and set foot into the unknown?

Well, my friend, you just signed up for an adventure. Adventure can have many faces, experiences, and lessons. But unfortunately, we often don’t know what we sign up for when we’re called to explore new locations, visit historical sites, or be enfolded by Mother Nature in her pure, raw form.

There’s something in our makeup that makes us want to face the heart of the beast. The beast isn’t some external force or factor that we face. It’s ourselves.

It’s our inner nature, world, and perspective that we must face to make peace with the hunger within that desires to know more about the world around it.

That’s how I felt when my comfort bubble popped, and I landed in Costa Rica and Nicaragua during the beginning of their summer months. But unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared on many levels and began to face the beast of travel. The beast of travel can include the environment, temperature, people, and the response and reaction time to settling into vacation mode.

Travel offers you so many learning lessons and points of patience. It’s something that either brings your relationship closer or leads it to eventual combustion. It expands how you feel, and your senses are more heightened by the newness of your environment.

Before I left, I was cloistered in a bubble of routine, temperature-controlled comfort, and choice paralysis from having too many options, from food to eat to shows to watch. Yet within this bubble, I was restless and feeling turmoil in my heart.  

I felt the call to move, travel, explore, and dive into the unknown, and I couldn’t quite understand why I was feeling it. Life was great. The routine was comfortable. Why would I want to rock the boat?

Spirit has a way of reaching you when it’s time to upgrade and transform.

You just have to be available and willing to answer it. So…I did.

My King, Jon, and I set off on a three-week adventure to explore Costa Rica and Nicaragua. We didn’t have a plan, just a general idea of where we were staying. However, we knew there were some key people we were going to intersect with and key places we wanted to visit. Other than that, we were winging it.

In winging it, I began to undergo a series of tests that drove me closer to facing the heart of the beast.

The first test of my nature had no plan.

I really love organizing my day and time in a planner and making lists from menus of our meals to how I’m going to spend my day. When I’ve traveled in the past, I’ve organized our outings, events, and even meals to the hour. I realized that just winging it would make time either drag or rush by. I could sense my internal nerd freaking out. What would we do? How would we relax? Would we miss something?

The second test for my nature was the invisible army of bugs that I wasn’t mentally or physically prepared for.

My comfort bubble popped very loudly on the 3rd day of our arrival when we were attacked by an invisible army of no-see-um in the water, on the beach, and in our bed. We weren’t the only ones. Other visitors around us were visibly marked by bug bites, indicating that they greatly outnumbered us. The jungle was my biggest test for bugs, but the jaw-dropping beauty was worth the discomfort. There were many moments where all you could do was just take in the natural visual masterpiece because you were just there.

The third test for my nature was the food.

I came from a world where any food could be ordered at the touch of a button or picked up curbside within an hour. I was dangerously spoiled and soft by so many options. The Universe decided to test my love for rice, beans, and plantains in a way that made me humbled. So many Costa Ricans and Nicaraguans operated as if rice and beans were their goals for the day. How could I even complain?

The fourth test was the language.

I’ve traveled to many places globally and did not know the country’s language. But this trip was different. I felt isolated from not fully grasping Spanish or left out of conversations. Again, the Universe was testing my desire to learn vs. being adverse to knowledge because of my experience.

These tests remind me of a very repetitious message in the Akashic Records: Lean Into the Discomfort.

I remember hearing those words and feeling the cracks of discomfort shatter the bubble of illusion that I carried around me. You need to have that happen if you’re traveling for a while. You need to have that happen when you trust total strangers to help you and even care for you. You’re also going to need that if you’re willing to face yourself and break down.

Travel brings some level of breaking down because what you witness often builds you up.

Sometimes you need to witness the wildness of nature to remind yourself that you’re a part of that. Or you need to witness deep abject poverty to remind yourself how blessed you are and how you can help others. And then there are the moments when you just need to witness yourself having a hard time because travel isn’t always easy. It’s not always about fun.  

What you gain from facing the heart of the beast, your internal self, is the opportunity to see your flaws, weaknesses, and padding. All that gets shown to you so that you can toughen up a little more and take it all in.

It’s worth it to get out of your comfort bubble every once in a while. It helps you grow, expand, and define new boundaries. It’s ok not to have the most well-laid-out plans. It opens you up to spontaneity. And it’s ok to let yourself feel what arises when you’re completely out of your bubble. Even the most hardened hearts can be shown new things when they’re open to discovery.

After all, facing the heart of the beast doesn’t require killing it. Instead, it’s about understanding what it needs so that you feed it the right kind of tasty experiences.

Life is a balance between the beast and the celestial self. It’s a dance between light and dark, comfort and discomfort, and evolution and contraction. To grow, one must be willing to break free from the shell and spiral out into the unknown. It’s part of your journey as a Divine Being in Human Form.