FOREWORD: I completed the El Camino de Santiago – an 800km spiritual pilgrimage across Spain in late Summer of 2009. I journalled and photographed my trip, and as a final completion I agreed to publish my journal and pictures a year to the day of my journey.

STATS: Walked 18.4km (11.5 miles) Spent €18.30 (Accommodation – €7, Food – €11.30)

9:17am I am sitting on top of Mt Forgiveness and have spent the morning running forgiveness in my head. I look out at the panoramic view over Pamplona and it is breath taking. Such a beautiful place to just send light across the plains. Behind me on the ridge are the wind power poles gently whirring. It is so peaceful. This is a really peaceful place. If there is anything I am learning about myself is that I do prefer the country. I found myself skipping quickly through even the small villages and preferring to take my rest breaks out in the wilderness. I love this life. I met a New Zealander this morning and we shot the breeze, dreaming about maybe sailing around the world and realising that I don’t actually need to return back to LA and ‘life’ as soon as I had planned.

So back to contemplation about the forgiveness. I realise that I have a lot of guilt inside me, and how I do spend a lot of my life punishing myself. I notice that as I walk I am judging myself for not walking enough km’s in a day, am not in enough pain, just not in or suffering enough – And I live a blessed life – but I think subconsciously I am looking for ways to punish myself. I feel like deep down I am so so bad, and the punishment to my body is the way I keep myself in suffering. And all this stuff with “jason” it is not to punish him it is to punish me. Light for that to dissolve. I will just keep walking.

I was not in good shape to the point that on two separate occasions local people who were doing day walks on the path offered to carry my bag. But I just couldn’t say yes. It didn’t feel right.

9:55am I have crossed over the Mt of Forgiveness and I am swirling with the idea of my sins. A feeling like no matter how far I walk or how hard it is I will never be able to clear myself of all of my sins, and I want to punish myself somehow. I know it sounds completely insane and exactly like Catholicism and needing to exonerate myself and it is deep. Is this why I am walking the Camino? I am owning and embracing and clearing past lives of Catholicism where I owned the story of sin?
So I walk for forgiveness and to be washed clear of my sins..No more Catholic Mass for me!

10:51am I am sitting before the statue of the Virgin Mary in the direct sun – warm and comforting – the birds are chirping and again I experience peace. I have continued walking through my sin punishment Catholic scenario and I am noticing how a lot of what I think is ‘giving’ to myself is actually punishing myself. This awareness about sin etc is huge. It feels like a pivotal peace in my consciousness and when it is cleared it will have huge repercussions for my life.

It feels like the Camino has the vastness and space to reveal the big blocks. As I sit here beneath the Virgin Mary- I ask for a blessing to release me from the sin to know and understand what it means that Jesus died for our sins and all is forgiven. As I write this I begin to understand. I see glimpses of how it all fits. The sin that I carry is not just for some couple of lives. This is the sin for all time. The lost soul, my lost soul – in every carnation and carnation and on on…Is it possible that I never understood forgiveness? Jesus died to forgive our sins. Holy shit, that is resonating with me in a whole new way.

5:38pm I am sitting in the cool of the church in Obanos. It is about 40 degrees C (100 Fahrenheit) outside and I am so grateful for a bed and that I am showered and do not have my bag with me. It is at the albergue. I feel more exhausted than I have in ages. I walked to Eunate Church (which was a detour) and planned to stay there tonight and when I got there I was convinced that I could not take another step. It is my right hip this time that has excruciating pain and I think it might have taken me 2 hours to walk just 2 kms. It was extremely hard going and was what i was dealing with on the physical, while in my mental I continued my desperate grappling to try to understand guilt and punishment and how it impacts my consciousness. I understand my connection to the Mystical Traveller, and the opportunity to handle my karma through grace rather than law, and I am deeply grateful for that, and at the same time this could be the root of my guilt. Why do I get to be so blessed and pardoned? And the smart part of me says shut up and don’t ask, just receive gratefully. But there is something inside somewhere where that doesn’t quite sit right. I want to be sure that I do my part. I want to be sure that I am not shirking my responsibilities which others maybe be carrying and suffering.

Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to suffer, but I am also already suffering inside because I am not clear. I don’t want to suffer any more. I don’t want to feel guilty that I am being saved, that I am in the Travellers arms. I want to be free.

So after struggling to get to Eunate and basically collapsing on the door step, I discovered that the albergue was closed for the season. I had no choice but to go on. While I had walked the last kilometer I had had visions that the hospiteleros would see me hobbling along and rush out and come and carry me and my bag in. I can not express the agony I was in. When I discovered I had to move on, I was so devastated and exhausted I couldn’t even cry. I crawled over to the shade of the little church with 3 other pilgrims and gave up. After about 30 minutes of a total collapse I started to get a little hungry, noshed on a nectarine, took a cool picture of 2 German pilgrims and set off again on my way. I cannot get over the marvel that is the human body. From dead, to able to go, in just 30 minutes. Amazing. I am still getting to know the Spanish sun. I underestimated it in this late afternoon and it was intense. I am still walking in my sandals with a very painful blister in my right baby toe.

The Eunate church is linked to the Knights Templar and I don’t really know but it felt like something cleared off me as I left the church. My hip pain was completely gone. I was thinking it would be really cool to do this Camino with my friend Michael Hayes, so he could explain all of these kinds of phenomena. ( He is gifted that way.) As for me I was just super grateful to have no pain, and was able to pick up my pace into the next town.

6:02pm As I sit in the garden outside the church I am in reverie. In a past life, I fought a battle at Eunate or found myself injured there and I was carried to Obanos where I was healed.

Anyway, I made it to the albergue and felt fine and started to judge myself that I didn’t push hard enough today and that I ate shit food and well was just beating myself up in a way that I have not been conscious of in a long time.

I then lay down and slept for 2 hours and I can feel the exhaustion now. I had no dreams but when I woke up I had this sense that perhaps this Catholic stuff is not mine, perhaps I am picking it up from the land or other people. Of course I have it in me, and while I balance it for myself I may also be contributing to balancing the land and with that I ask for the light here. I want to be free of the oppression in my spirit. Light. I am so heady, I am swimming in it.

6:19am It is so hot it gets hotter and hotter in the evenings here. It is weird. I just bought an orange drink from a vending machine. It is so bizarre these centuries old buildings and roads, that are something out of a medieval movie and then there is a state of the art vending machine right in the middle of it.

It is Sunday I have no food except for a few nuts, and there is nothing in the town open. And this is what makes the Camino so precious. There are probably over 100 pilgrims in town tonight, mooching around town like a pack of hungry wild dogs. In some other part of the world someone would catch on and open a little kiosk something for times like these, there is certainly money to be made. But this is Europe and Spain, so it is just what it is. And this is what I like about Spain and the Camino. Pure As…Authentic. Unaffected. there is something here that I just love.

8:31pm I took my soul to soak in Spain
to make me and the world better
i walked and lay
and walked and lay
until I was soaked in my own soul
and there were no longer any dry bits
i came back from Spain

go to previous day: day 4 arres-to-cezor menor via pamplona
go to the next day: day 6 obanos-to-estella

to view comments on the images, click on ‘full screen’ and then “show info”