Far out on the Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula where the blue-morpho butterflies flit about like the spirits of ancient warriors and the aluxes hide in the jungle waiting to play trick or treat with unsuspecting travelers, there is a rustic hotel. It lies just across the street from Ik Kil, the rainbow-wearing grand cenote that is rumored to be the center of spiritual power for the ruined Mayan city of Chichen Itza.
The hotel has two swimming pools. One pool is manmade. The other isn’t.
The manmade pool is round with a pretty fountain in the center. The other pool is a spring. It is an old reef pool with interesting coral formations and tiny caves, small enough for an alux (al-oosh) to hide in. The hotel owner had a pretty, blue-tile border built around it, so when you enter its cool waters you feel like you are entering a swimming pool. But you are not.
You are entering sacred waters.
There is a small, almost un-noticeable sign on the wall in the lobby that explains the limestone pool. It says:
This pool is sacred. Its waters are the power center for the cenote Ik Kil and the spiritual city of Chichen Itza. When you bathe in its waters, if there is anything wrong with you, either physical or spiritual, you will be healed.
I swam in the pool. Of course nothing could keep me from it. I didn’t feel anything except a little frightened. The unevenness of its tiny coral caverns made me nervous. I wasn’t sure what it might be linked to. The Yucatan is riddled with hundreds of miles of underground caves that are filled with water and I felt sure there must be a link I could not see. My niggling fear that it might suck me under left me a little uncomfortable.
But nothing happened.
Well, nothing happened while I was swimming.
But later that night, something did happen.
The day had been filled with exploring Mayan ruins. After my quick dip in the pool, a traditional dinner of rice and beans in the hotel’s restaurant, and a hot shower, I fell into bed. But sleep eluded me.
Pictures flashed in my head so rapidly I could not keep up. Kind of like a commercial on TV where they flash a hundred things a second. One other time in my life I had a similar experience and that was at a lodge in North Carolina where angels are reputed to live. For a hundred years the people who have owned that lodge (and their descendants) have been praying 24/7 and the place is an open portal to heaven. I know. I was there.
But this story is about a little hotel in Mexico.
When I finally fell asleep, I slept fitfully. I tossed and turned, the flickering pictures still flashing through my dreams. And when I awoke in the middle of the night, there were purple lights on the ceiling. I shut my eyes and opened them again. Over and over I checked to see if I was seeing things. Purple balls of light—small ones, about the size of a basketball—floated about six inches from the ceiling. They hovered just at the edge of my vision. If I turned to look directly at them, they disappeared. But when I relaxed and just stared off into space, they floated there in my peripheral vision. I watched them for a half-hour, maybe more, until I simply could not hold my eyes open any longer and I fell asleep.
What were the purple balls of light?
I don’t know. I wish I did. I have seen balls of light before. I saw them in that place in North Carolina and I saw them at my house once too. There are people who have insisted they know what the round purple lights are, but I don’t think they are correct. How can anyone know for sure? How can people they say they are energy or angels or the spirits of those that have passed unless they have some sort of evidence?
It is easy to think you have all the answers. I am not an all-the-answers kind of person. There are core things that I believe, but I am always learning. And for now, I still wonder what those lovely purple lights were. One day, I hope to know. One day, I am sure I WILL know, but maybe not until I get to the other side of this matrix we all live in.