Hello folks,

Well I’m back from the big apple feeling not quite how I thought I’d feel in a good aswell as not so good way.  New York is a city full of opposites which I can’t quite get my head around, not that I really want to get my head around it.  It’s massive, overwhelming, emotionally cold, extremely creative, and all sorts of things all rolled into one.

I think the best way I can sum it up is to say that while on the one hand people seem to be very cold towards each other – they don’t smile or look at each other as they walk down the street, everyone is also on a mission to fulfill themselves as best they can.  On the one hand you have a number of beggars around the place (not quite as many as certain tourist guides would have you believe) and on the other, it’s a city of opulence.  The place oozes abundance.  Especially if you take a walk along the financial district.

As for how the place made me feel, in most cases I felt kinda unwanted and ignored and a little bit of an inconvenience to people – I was the Scottish tourist who was in a place full of millions of people who do things very differently than we do over here..  British people are polite because we like to make ourselves feel acknowledged, whereas over there if you want to be acknowledged, that’s up to you to manifest that and aint no goddam shopkeeper is gonna say “Have a nice day!” in order to make you feel more acknowledged!

Yet again on the other hand, I visited a fantastic art gallery called the Chapel Of Sacred Mirrors which hosts Alex Grey’s work and had a magical time there.  It was one of my main reasons for being in New York and I subconsciously knew that something good would happen.

So, I turned up at the gallery which exists on the 4th floor of what seems to be a series of run down looking business units, one on each floor.  The stairway was lined with those rope lights which people put up at Christmas which gave the place a certain feeling as if you were venturing into something a little more special that the various garages which surround the streets around the chapel.  I walked in and paid my $5.

The paintings were all incredible.  I’ve seen them all online, etc, but seeing the original oil paintings in the flesh was a lot more intense.  There’s a very real meditative, conscious quality about the chapel itself and the people who go there.  Everyone is real and humble and very sensitive in there.  You might be there by yourself, but mostly, you’re also very aware of whoever’s standing next to you.  Being around that much conscious energy seems to connect everyone.  So, yes the paintings were amazing.

I really want to talk about this girl I met there though – her name was Paris and she was a lovely New Yorker.  We seems to resonate with each other quite nicely.  After hearing her talk to her friend about the chakras shown on one of the paintings I started talking to her about yoga and tantra and stuff like that and it was nice.  Definately a highlight of being in New York.  Pity my heart wasn’t as open as it had been the night before, but I was kinda busy that day looking at all kinds of other stuff in the Museum of Natural History.  Anyway, it was what it was and it was lovely. 

I left New York feeling very ready to go home and back to a somewhat more normal existence and arrived with a great strength I didn’t know I had.  This seemed to be another quality that the New Yorkers rubbed onto me when I was there.  So, on the one hand, no-one looks at each other, but it encourages you to look inward and find your own strength.  And you find it.  And you realise that actually it’s a very useful asset.  Even if it’s only there because people seemed rude or aloof towards you.

So when people ask me, “So, Ryan, how was NY?”  I never know what to say.  It was always one thing aswell as it’s complete opposite.  But I came to the conclusion that a place like New York needs to exist.  The vibration of people over there is far higher than it is over here.  And there are some people (very few) who seem to be vibrating so high, that I just can’t even contain myself.  The beauty of these people is unimaginable.

One woman who sat next to me on the Subway blew me away and an east asian girl I saw in the lift at my hotel left me thoughtless.  I’ve honestly never witness such beauty. 

But you need to understand, yeah they did look good, but they felt amazing.  There was a real heat coming from the asian girl and the energy the girl on the subway felt very light, in an almost colourful kinda way.  It’s way more than a physical thing – these folk are genuinely chanelling some high quality enegry.

Anyhow, I think that’s as much as I’d like to say on New York.  It’s a fasctinating, strangely alluring place, but if you’re like me, you’ll probably find that when you get there, what you’ll get from the place isn’t what you thought you went there for and although the negatives of the place are obvious, focusing on those is really a cheap shot at a fantastic city which is serving as the vast humanity evolving womb that it actually is.  I don’t think I could live there, but it must be one hell of a life to live there full time…

Good night.