The Best Glamping Off The Grid Eco-Travel Retreat

This clip of this definition of retreat is amusing to me; withdraw from enemy forces as a result of their superior power.
As you already know, no thing, has a superior power over you, as you are infinite.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you. – Joel Olsten

According to 60 Minutes, information technology is not neutral and recent studies indicate that Silicon Valley has created a playbook of addiction codes, weakening our ability to focus, trying to get our attention at all costs, brain hacking to get to the bottom of our brainstems to get us hooked via algorithms on information technology dopamine. The result is increasing anxiety levels making us codependent on more and more alerts, information, likes and technology and the only antidote from our behavioral dependence of our smartphones, is developing consciousness management.

This shares both our Glamping Off The Grid Eco-Travel Retreat and my personal reflections on consciousness management from my reading and research from the first quarter of 2017. This segues off of something that I learned from Stephen Covey about the best way to read a book; 1) read the book, 2) read the book again highlighting the key points, 3) summarize the key points and 4) share the key points.

Laura and I recently returned from The Best Glamping Off The Grid Eco-Travel Retreat in the Baja which came about serendipitously. Serendipitous in that Eco-Travel and Glamping were not what we had originally planned when we went to book a 12-day holiday at Los Colibris Casitas in Todos Santos, B.C.S, Mexico.

Alas! Los Colibris Casitas were booked for the first few days that we wanted to stay with them. To accommodate us for the first few nights, they offered an alternate Glamping Off The Grid Eco-Travel Retreat through their sister company, Todos Santos Eco Adventures.
This turned out to be the best thing that could have happened especially after a 19-hour travel day, traveling from Newark to Seattle to meet Laura and then onto Los Cabos.

So instead of potentially experiencing jetlag the next day, Mauricio of Todos Santos Eco Adventures picked us up from our Todos Santos hotel early the next morning for a one-hour drive to La Paz and a one-hour boat ride in the Sea Of Cortez to our Camp on Isla Espiritu Santo (which translates to The Holy Spirit).

Laura and I had an amazing experience with Todos Santos Eco Adventures which included boating, hiking, snorkeling with sea lions, and glorious sunshine.

The Team who greeted us at the Isla Espiritu included our Guide, Chef, Sous Chef, and our Boat Driver. Our Team looked after everything and provided us with gourmet cooking, spectacular service and the serenity of the Isla Espiritu Santo.

We were fortunate to be the only guests during the time we were there and had the entire camp to ourselves with the exception of the ring-tailed cat who honored us with a visit one night while we were sleeping.

The balance of our holiday was at Los Colibris Casitas in Todos Santos which served as home base for exploring Todos Santos during the day. Our accommodation at Los Colibris Casitas was in a rammed earth casita (earth shelter) with a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean.

We really ventured out on this trip and drove north and south to locate future rental properties, yoga retreat centers, the surfing beach, organic farms, a winery with a bocce court, art galleries and shopping, and a beautiful yoga studio. We thoroughly enjoyed the extraordinary cuisine of the area with outstanding restaurants in and around Todos Santos from small local restaurants serving the best chiles rellenos to gourmet dining featuring the local and abundant variety of seafood.

This retreat allowed us time completely off the grid; no e-mail, information, internet, news, social media, technology and TV, providing us with the space for reading, reflection, relaxation and rest.

Here are some of my latest personal reflections on consciousness management from reading and research that I will continue to write about in the upcoming months. Who knows, this may be the beginning of a new book or a 10th anniversary of an existing book.

Articles on consciousness management are showing up in magazines from Psychology Today through to Wired. We are rolling back to the intuition age, going full circle from the ages of intuition, knowledge, information and back to the intuition age, as some of us are not finding fulfillment with more and more information, just an information headache.

In my past talks, I’ve said that you are born perfect, a perfect child of God or your parents. Whatever your creed happens to be. You are not your body and not your mind. This is to create the differentiation between your mind and the amygdala, fight or flight mechanism, limbic brain, primal brain at the bottom of our brainstem, that is within all of us.

Again, you are something far more infinite, a being, or what some might call a soul. It is my view that the soul resides in the heart, not the mind. While I contemplate the above from a heart-based perspective, spending more time at my heart centre or intuition if you will, I hear people talking about trust the belly or trust the gut brain. Like the amygdala, fight or flight mechanism, limbic brain, primal brain at the bottom of our brainstem, the belly and the gut all feel too primal for me.

There is a lot of contradictory and confusing information out there. There is much talk about false NEWS. Could there also be false information keeping our belly, brainstem, or gut confused?

What are you going to trust: your heart, your mind which can be oh so easily influenced by the amygdala or your gut brain?

There are some that say intuition comes from the heart, intuition comes from the mind and there are some that say intuition comes from the gut. So which is it?

Based upon James 1:8, sounds to me that with all the information we are being bombarded with, we could easily wind up being unsteady and confused between heart, mind and gut;

• Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do. – New International Version
• Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. – New Living Translation
• He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. – English Standard Version

It is my view in this explosion of information, that one must understand and learn to be and practice consciousness management, a more heart-based / values-based approach as there are so many unfiltered false idols of information temptation via e-mail, internet, news, social media, technology and TV. When we are overstimulated our values can be left behind while going to the next information window that we open and fueling the root causes of;

• Over buying
• Over controlling
• Over doing
• Over driving
• Over drugging
• Over eating
• Over socializing
• Over talking
• Over thinking
• Over working
• Over worrying

I don’t know about you, my mind and gut, which is linked to my nervous system, needs a better consciousness management filter and this filter is interconnected with breathing and the heart.

The heart is at the intersection between the mind and the gut and the heart is at the core of your consciousness management. A strong values-based heart holds the opposites of peace and chaos together.

A prayer from a pure heart can touch the feet of God.
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Before I start talking about affirming and breathing through the heart to improve consciousness management, let me offer you this perspective which is an expansion of the ideas that I talk about in The Inspirational Tipping Point. Click here to receive a transcript of The Inspirational Tipping Point Speaking Presentation that I did at the 2015 MDRT in New Orleans.

Again you were born perfect with a perfect heart, perfect personality (whether you have the personality of an extrovert, introvert or ambivert) and a perfect nervous system.

Depending upon the environment/the stimulation in which you were raised;

• Some people’s nervous system experienced more love/values-based stimulation interconnected with positive feelings and positive beliefs.
• Some people’s nervous system experienced more fear/needs-based stimulation interconnected with negative emotions and negative beliefs.

So a person’s nervous system was either influenced / trained to attract/create/experience more love or more fear because their positively or negatively stimulated nervous system attracted/created/experienced what their positively or negatively stimulated nervous system became most familiar with.

This then stands to reason that;

• The positively stimulated heart-based nervous system is interconnected with values, positive feelings and positive beliefs.
• The negatively stimulated amygdala/gut-based nervous system is interconnected with unmet needs, negative emotions and negative beliefs.

This gives a deeper understanding about the law of attraction; 1) love attracts what it is familiar with and fear attacks what it is unfamiliar with and 2) you attract whatever you focus on. The question is; who is doing the focusing?

Is it the values-based heart attracting what it is most familiar with – love? Is it the unmet needs based amygdala, fight or flight mechanism, limbic brain, primal brain at the bottom of our brainstem, the belly and the gut attracting what it is most familiar with – fear?

So it stands to reason that one will attract what they are most familiar with and attack what they are unfamiliar with.

I believe that the wandering of the amygdala, fight or flight mechanism, limbic brain, primal brain at the bottom of our brainstem, the belly and the gut are all looking for love at the end of day.

Isn’t it true that all we really want is peace of mind, not more information or things?

I’ve spent years working on understanding fear/unmet needs based motivation/stimulation interconnected with negative emotions and negative beliefs. There is proven pathway to understanding not through the amygdala/gut-based nervous system, but through the heart.

There are countless healing modalities that include changes of state and reframing that provide distractions and momentary relief to help inconvenient and painful unmet needs, negative emotions and negative beliefs disappear for a while.

Psychoanalyzing in some ways is akin to the story of Sisyphus in Greek Mythology. Sisyphus was the king of Ephyra. He was punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it come back to hit him, repeating this action for eternity.

If the amygdala/gut-based nervous system is overstimulated through an unmet need of safety, generating anxiety and fear fueling a belief that I am not safe for example, then the amygdala/gut-based nervous system will never feel safe enough to allow the heart to shine through.

So with heart centered conscious management, here are some affirmations that you can say while you are breathing deeply through your heart;

• Empty your belly & mind of emotions and thoughts about overwhelm into your heart for deep, deep heart centeredness – love.
• Empty your belly & mind of emotions and thoughts about stress into your heart for deep, deep heart centeredness – love.
• Empty your belly & mind of emotions and thoughts about losing your business into your heart for deep, deep heart centeredness – love.
• Empty your Belly & mind of emotions and thoughts about too much to do into your heart for deep, deep heart centeredness – love.

We need prayer to understand God’s love for us. If we really mean to pray and want to pray we must be ready to do it now. These are only the first steps towards prayer but if we never make the first step with determination, we will not reach the last one: the presence of God – Mother Teresa

To take these affirmations to the next level, Click here to receive: Breathe New Life Into Your Business.