The Camino

  ALSO BY SHIRLEY MACLAINE

  Don’t Fall off the Mountain

  You Can Get There from Here

  Out on a Limb

  Dancing in the Light

  It’s All in the Playing

  Going Within

  Dance While You Can

  My Lucky Stars

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  Dedication

  For Kathleen

  The Camino

  INTRODUCTION

  The Journey Begins

  Everyone holds his or her own philosophical and religious belief. Spirit is something else. By Spirit, I believe everything that we know and understand to be physically tangible and existent in the five dimensions is in fact the manifestation of a more subtle and nonvisible energy that exists simultaneously. Spirit vibrates at a higher frequency than the physical dimension and is the higher reality. Spirit manifests as life through form.

  Thus I came to believe that the surface of the earth is the matter and form through which a higher subtle electromagnetic spiritual energy flows.

  Just as human beings are the physical vehicles for expressing their spiritual and multidimensional selves, so the geological earth is the physical vehicle for manifestation of ancient memories and an alive inner Spirit.

  Why, then, if Spirit flows through the earth and through all of us, is the state of the world so unfortunate? I couldn’t comprehend the violence or, to use the old phrase, “man’s inhumanity to man.” The weather contributed to my confusion because it was obviously out of balance, which of course led me to conclude once again what I had learned years before from my spiritual and metaphysical studies—that nature itself is informed by the consciousness of mind. It was difficult for me, and almost everyone I knew, to keep centered and hopeful about where we were going as a human race.

  Certainly Hollywood and the art industry I had been a part of all my life was reflecting values that, granted, might in turn be reflecting those of a great part of our society, but it seemed to me we were caught in an endless cycle in which we were witnessing the disintegration of decency, sensitivity, and the spiritual values that we as Americans had supposedly been raised with. What were we doing with ourselves? What were our human priorities? What did we wish for our futures and those of our children, and more than anything, why did we seem to so badly lack esteem in ourselves?

  Now as a senior citizen, I found myself experiencing not only anger, loneliness, and anxiety over what we might be headed for, but fear that we were now almost completely out of touch with what we were intended to be in the first place.

  I had a daughter, two grandchildren, a brother, and four nieces and nephews. My parents had crossed over, and I myself was contemplating how much longer I would have the physical life adventure on this world. However, I felt more creative than ever and had sufficient money, five or six really good friends with whom I could communicate on all levels (a rarity), a good healthy body, a sound mind (although some stand-up comics would dispute that), and a life that was “fancy free” and enviable to those who were tied down to existences of smothering responsibility. Sometimes, because of society’s propaganda and conditioning, I thought I felt lonely, but when I gave it a second thought, I realized, with relief, that I was leading exactly the life I wanted to … unattached to a man-woman relationship, free of the rigors and restrictions of raising a family (husband included), unencumbered by a job I was not inspired by, and free to do whatever I wanted in the future. That was the question, however … what was the future?

  Should I secure my roof because of the prophecies of high winds? Would there be a worldwide stock market crash? Would solar flares disrupt communications? Would there be one world government and buying and selling according to it? Would the viruses that seemed to be infecting humanity become more and more virulent because we were denuding the forests where they lived naturally? Would we become such a technologically addicted society that human appropriateness would suffer profoundly? Was our environment so compromised that it would never again sustain healthy human life? Were we alone in the universe? And if not, would they come to help us—or to finish us off? And was God out to lunch? Of course, I had more questions than even I could dream up. And, yes … I found myself at the point in my life where I had well-earned time to dream.

  Perhaps it was because I was so free and open-minded that I had the time—and the energy—to contemplate what not only I but all of us were really doing with ourselves. My imagination could ripple back and forth across time until I found myself in a state of mind-time that provided some answers. But I am getting ahead of my story.

  There is a famous pilgrimage that has been taken by people for centuries called the Santiago de Compostela Camino across northern Spain. It is said that the “Camino”—the road or the way—lies directly under the Milky Way and follows ley lines that reflect the energy from those star systems above it.

  In Eastern philosophies the spiritual life force of the earth is called prana. This prana is inextricably linked with the life force of the sun, providing energy for all life.

  The life force is especially strong along lines of energy called ley lines. These ley lines are the essential structure of the earth’s etheric spirit. They are usually fairly straight, varying in width and intensity. A cross section of a ley line looks like an hourglass, the narrow middle intersecting at the earth’s surface. The ley energy exists below the earth and above it, equally. This energy emanates at a very high frequency and, when experienced by a human consciousness, induces clarity of thought, experience, memory, and revelation.

  The energy of the ley lines increases the rate of vibration of the etheric and dense matter that make up the human brain. The result of this stimulation is the production of more full, conscious awareness and information that was previously repressed.

  This can be disturbing and frightening because it means that through this energy one becomes a more psychic being—for better or for worse.

  The ley lines carry not only the spiritual energy of the earth in conjunction with the sun, but also the energies conjuncting with other galaxies and star systems.

  The Camino, following earth’s ley lines, begins in France, crosses the Pyrenees, and makes its way from east to west across northern Spain until it reaches an exquisite and very famous cathedral called Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of Saint James are said to be interred.

  I have never been religious, opting instead to seek spirituality, so what interested me about the Camino was the energy of the ley lines themselves, as well as the challenge of walking alone for 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) and becoming essentially helpless and vulnerable along the way, as most pilgrimages require. The experience of complete surrender to God and self is the motivation behind most people’s attempt at the Santiago de Compostela Camino.

  The first inkling that I should do the Camino occurred in 1991 in Brazil. I was playing there with my one-woman show when my company manager, Michael Flowers, delivered a letter to me. It was written by hand and unsigned. Michael often sifts through my mail and, with an intuition remarkable to me, usually selects the pieces that he believes are important. Let me digress for a moment and tell you about his intuition. He has been with me as a company manager for nearly thirty years. I trust him, and when he believes that something that I haven’t heard about is important, I listen. It is crucial to explain this, because he figures prominently in my story later on. I get all sorts of requests, and the most profound and craziest usually have to do with metaphysical, spiritual, and extraterrestrial matters. At another time, when I was performing in South Africa, he received a request from a mother and daughter who wanted to meet with me because they had had a close encounter of the third kind with space beings from the Pleiades. I met with the two. They seemed sane and logical, and when they finished the story of their encounter, I asked when they’d be meeting with their new space friends again. They said they were told the visitors would return when the pink house was painted white. They had not understood this remark until they told it to me, and this was the reason: My ranch house in New Mexico was in an isolated region where stories abound about spacecraft. It was pink when I bought it. But after renovation and considerable thought, I decided to paint it white! I have not yet seen their return, but it is something I’m haunted by.

  In any case, the letter that Michael received when I was playing Brazil stated unequivocally that I should do the Santiago de Compostela Camino. As I said, it was unsigned. It was written in ink and implored me to do the Camino if I was indeed serious about my spiritual and metaphysical writings, teachings, and investigations. I was intrigued, thought about it, talked to some of my friends in Brazil who had made the journey, and ultimately forgot about it.

  Three years later, p
erforming again in Brazil, I received a letter in the same handwriting, again unsigned, stating that if I was to continue to write about spiritual growth, it was now imperative that I do the Camino.

  My Brazilian friend Anna Strong agreed. She was a spiritual leader and counselor who conducted seminars in meditation and inner balancing. I respected her and knew that she had done the Camino and helped others do it as well. After informing me of what to expect and telling me that she would meet me in Madrid to help me launch myself, I canceled the summer movie I had planned and told my agent I was going to walk across Spain instead. He was used to my “reckless,” adventurous ways, said I should get some good shoes, and adjusted to it. “Besides, you might get another good book out of it,” he added.

  Okay—fine.

  The Santiago Camino has been traversed for thousands of years by saints, sinners, generals, misfits, kings, and queens. It is done with the intent to find one’s deepest spiritual meaning and resolutions regarding conflicts in Self. The energy of the Camino was well known by people in ancient times to enable them more self-reflection and self-knowledge.

  The history books trace the Camino back to Celtic times with the attendant mythological stories of cosmic revelations; multidimensional presences of gnomes, fairies, and trolls; and the aspect of its legend that interested me most—the fact that the trail ended in Finisterre, a few miles further west from Compostela on the Atlantic Ocean, which was thought to be the end of the then known world. I wondered what had been the previous unknown world. Was there a land that had existed prior to our recorded history? Was it calling to those of us who felt attracted to follow the Camino until we somehow touched it again? Why was the journey along the Camino supposed to provide the pilgrim with self-knowledge and an understanding of his or her destiny? There was almost a quality of urgency for me to travel it so that I could journey within the secrets of my own history—which harked back to a time longer ago than my imagination could conjure—almost a haunting knowingness that my personal reality would become more evident. But I was unprepared for the impact it would have on me.

  It was—and is—my reality, which I am still adjusting to. My spirituality and the journey of my soul through time is the authentic discovery of my capacity to feel the alignment with the Divine. It is a theopathic state of consciousness. When the journey of the soul is recognized, a restabilization of the emotions takes place. There was no doubt that my emotions and the emotions of the world were out of balance when I began the Camino. During the journey I began to understand why. Many thought of the Camino as a religious trek. I could understand that because of the surrounding religious icons, churches, and reminders of what the church had established in relation to human life. But I saw how the church had attempted to mold its constituency into its societal perspective, sculpting the domain of feelings away from individual spirituality even as it claimed spiritual superiority. Then I realized that the world of religious domination of earlier times had given way to a scientific world today that sought to shed itself of the spiritual and emotional domination of the past in favor of a world of scientific, technological “facts.”

  Those scientists of human behavior who refused to observe through their own emotions were missing the point of reality. Individual feelings received no respect in their world. They had dehumanized human feelings and emotions, disregarding them in favor of what they term collective observations, which were agreed upon in the world. They didn’t even give themselves permission to be human. If they were not rational and “scientific” in their observations, they were ostracized. Even the expression of emotion was unseemly in their world. Though they claimed to be seeking the truth about its inhabitants, in reality they were establishing a new mind-set that refused the capacity to feel.

  So, in effect, science had freed itself from the domination of the church, only to become the modern dominator of the truth today. The chains have simply changed hands. The new enslaver of truth is science, and we are seeing its effect on human behavior everywhere. Without the recognition of the soul’s journey within us, we are lost and only part of what we were intended to be.

  I believe that the sorrow so much experienced in the world today can be regarded as the exercise of emptying ourselves of what went before, so as to make room for the joy that is rightfully ours in the future. We as humans have a moral obligation to seek joy. Then we will be in alignment with the Divine. But we need to acknowledge what has preceded our understanding of our lives, because therein lies the history of our conflict, loneliness, confusion, hatred, and separation from ourselves and God. If we can make peace with our ancient emotions, I believe we will have the capacity to live up to our moral obligation to seek joy.

  On my journey westward along the Camino, I felt I was traveling backward in time to a place that began the experiences that made me and the human race what we have become today. Yes, I could say it was a mythological and imaginative experience, but then what is myth and what is imagination? All fancies of the consciousness are based on some kind of memory, or why would they be there?

  1

  Whenever I travel, I prefer to do it light; however, seven pounds of lightness was new to me. Having done the trek herself, my Brazilian friend Anna Strong warned me that each ounce I carried in my backpack would become tons after a few weeks. Sooo … shoes would be essential and must be carefully selected—just one pair to walk in and one pair to put on at the end of each day. I have always had trouble with extraneous sounds while sleeping. I knew I would be sleeping in shelters (refugios) along the way with many others who snored, coughed, talked, and dreamed out loud. I wondered about my ever-present sound machine. Too heavy, I decided. I couldn’t carry the batteries. I opted instead for earplugs, even though I had been told by my homeopath and acupuncturist that earplugs obstructed the meridians to the kidneys. I carried a light sleeping bag, two pairs of socks, two pairs of panties, two T-shirts, a small towel, a small washcloth, one bar of soap, one pair of shorts, one pair of light leggings to shield me from the sun’s rays, some homeopathic remedies (for giardiases, nausea, cuts and bruises), Band-Aids, Nu Skin, adhesive tape, a water bottle (there would be fountains of clear water in every village along the way), my passport, several notebooks, a tiny address book, a few credit cards (which I vowed not to use), a little money (which I hoped I would not resort to), one Gortex jacket, one pair of Gortex slacks, one sweater (since I’d be walking in cold as well as hot weather), a sun hat, sunglasses, melatonin for sleep, and my precious Pearlcorder with many small tapes.

  I am a Taurus, and therefore a person who accumulates things. I immediately understood this journey would be an examination of what was essential to me. “The road and her energy will provide all you need,” Anna told me. “She will tell you what to throw away—and you will become humble as a result. You will see what a temple your body really is, that it is not a prison, and you will discover your essence.” She told me I would find a stick to walk with. It would speak to me as though it would want to help. My feet would derive energy from the ground itself, which is why it is infinitely better to walk than to ride the Camino in a vehicle. I would receive messages from the path as though it was talking to me, until I became the path and all of its history.

  I met with others who had taken the pilgrimage. They advised me not to eat too much and to drink lots of water—at least two liters per day. There would be many good restaurants, but it was best to stay within the energy of the path’s intent, which was to be essentially stripped of trappings. I should not be afraid of anything while trekking—first of all, they told me, the Spanish government protected all pilgrims and had harsh laws against interfering with a pilgrim’s progress. I was told it would be better to walk alone, even though I would encounter many people along the way. Everything I carried with me would be a distraction. I should learn to let go. And I should be prepared to die, because to do such a pilgrimage meant I was ready to give up the old values that conflicted my life.

  I could honestly say that I had no problem with dying if that was what was meant to be. I had had enough of the state of affairs as I knew them to be. I was ready for a new understanding to propel me forward for the rest of my life.