2020 – Page 3 – My Inner Peace

Following Jesus Chist footprints to Jordan River

How I baptized myself in the Jordan River

Once we left the Dead Sea, we started to drive towards the Mount Nebo, where Moses is supposed to be buried. We had planned that day to visit Mount Nebo, Madaba and Jesus Christ Baptism Site. While driving to Mount Nebo, my inner voice was calling me towards the Baptism Site first. So, after driving for half an hour, I stopped the car and recalculate the route towards the Baptism Site, practically driving back for 10 minutes.

Another 15-20 minutes drive and we arrive. After parking the car, we found out that there is a shuttle bus driving us directly to the place, and moreover, each shuttle bus has a tour guide. I must confess I thought this was a visit one can do by himself, but in reality, they have everything under control including the tour guides due to the fact that the Baptism Site is essentially at the border with Israel and it’s a military area.

So, having already the tickets payed online, we went directly to the shuttle bus. Essentially, you should expect to jump in a minivan with kind of a poor conditions inside: no air conditioning, damaged chairs and other local aspects you will understand once you will get there. But, it’s the only way to reach the Baptism Site, so not the place to act like a diva. 😊

Baptism Site Museum, Jordan River — Baptism Site Museum, Book of Greetings, Jordan

After other 5-10 minutes’ drive, we arrive at the gate of the Baptism Site. We started by seeing a museum and then we went towards the Jordan river and afterwards to the place where Jesus was baptized. Jordan river used to be bigger 2000 years ago, so now the place is inland far from the current Jordan river. However, the guide explained us that during spring time, the water comes out from the soil in that area as well, like a small water spring.

The tour guide was actually an amazing man! We talked about religion and beliefs and I asked him how does it feel to be Muslim and have a job in a Christian place of worship? And after the experience in the Mosque in Aqaba I was surprised to here that he doesn’t consider this activity as a job, but as his mission in this life. And then he added that the Muslim people believe in all the prophets, including Jesus and the Quran mentions Virgin Mary 40 time while the Bible is mentioning her less than the Quran. And we continued to walk and talk about the fact that there is only one God, and just the name is different in different beliefs.

After a short walk we arrived at the Greek Orthodox Saint John the Baptist Church, quite close to the Jordan river. We went inside and I found out that if I am already baptized in a church by a priest, I can enter the Jordan river and baptize myself in its water as well. So, the guide was very kind and he gave me a special made white dress to use for this ritual, even if we didn’t had cash with us. However, I gave him 14 JOD, the price of the dress, once we got back to the car.

Here I am, doing something I was imagined to do since I was a kid: to enter the Jordan river and to be baptized in its water as Jesus was. Strange childhood dream, one may say, but I was fascinated by this idea for so many years. It is useful to say here that being baptized as a Christian Orthodox, on 6^th of January we are celebrating Jesus Baptism right when the Catholics are celebration the Epiphany. And each year, the priests are visiting the people’s houses and blessing them using holy water and singing a song about Jesus Baptism in the Jordan water. So, this was one of the songs of my childhood and I always asked myself how it was for Jesus to be baptized in the Jordan river as an adult.

Maybe it sounds strange, but I must confess it was one of the most powerful gestures I did for myself, based on a childish idea I was fantasizing on when I used to be a kid. So, I entered the Jordan river, I disconnected from the outside world and I baptized myself in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. 😊

After leaving that holy place, I felt like having a new superpower or something. I was so happy and I had an epiphany! I was so grateful to myself for listening that inner voice asking me to turn the car and drive back to see this place first. Not doing so, I was probably meeting another tour guide with different views about world beliefs, have other discussions, and probably never found out I can enter and baptize myself in the Jordan river. And, the funny thing was that the place was full of people before changing my clothes. Then, when I approached the river everyone left and I had my ritual in peace and without being disturbed by people taking pictures or talking around.

Today is 6^th of January, the Jesus Baptism Day for the Christian Orthodox Church, and I am remembering this story and writing it down as a symbol of this holy day, and as a symbol of the holiness that lives in each of us. We are a projection of a higher consciousness we call God, and we have everything we need to become the masterpiece of our life.

To be continued…

I am an independent writter, so if you like my stories, I invite you to support my activity with a donation.

Check out the begining of the Jordanian adventure here:

PETRA, the City of the Magic Fire (1st part)

Kerak Castle, a visit inspired by „Kingdom of Heaven” movie

After four days in Aqaba, enjoying the Red Sea, we rented a car and started to drive back to Amman. We had a lot of objectives on our map, mostly castles, and we manged to see only the most important of them. So, our first objective was Kerak Castle, an old Crusader forteress oppened in 1142 to oversee the commercial roads between Jerusalem, Damascus, Mecca and Egypt.

From Aqaba we took the highway following the western part of the country, near the border with Israel. It’s the fastest way to reach Kerak (Al-Karak), 250 km drive away, and we needed to be fast to be able to see the castle before 16:00 when the visiting hours were ending. So, we left Aqaba at 12:00, stopped for lunch on the highway and then driving to Kerak.

To reach Kerak, you have to drive for almost an hour outside the highway up on the mountain. So, small damaged roads with endless curves are waiting for you. If you have a bad stomach, think twice before doing this part. :p

However, once up on the mountain, in the middle of the castle ruins, you are in the right position to thank God you took the journey. You can see everything from up there, Al Karak city below and the roads looking like a small part of Transfăgărășan road in Romania. Basically, you have a 360 degree view of the horizon! And if you happen to be there close to the sunset, the view it’s breathtaking.

The place has a good energy and you may feel like staying for a while. So, if you have a day, just enjoy the castle and also the city.

I am fascinated about old castles, hence for me it was a blessing being there and walking inside the rooms preserved after so many centuries, and imagine how everything used to look like at that time. Even if most of them where built as strategic points of defense, I still find them fascinating.

But why Kerak Castle?

Well, I am a huge fan of the famous movie „Kingdom of Heaven”. One of the most important battles of that time was in this area between Saladin, the frist sultan of Syria and Egypt and the conqurer of the Kingdom of Jerusalim from the Christian’s commands, and Raynald of Châtillon, prince of Antioch. Even if the movie was not shot there, I wanted to see the place and step into the energetic footprints of the people fighting for a „kingdom of conciousness” they understood at that time it’s made by stones and buildings.

In fact, if we are looking at the root cause of the current wars we are facing today, we can easily see we are not that far from them. We are fighting in diffrent countries for material things like land and properties, in the name of the same God that we, as human beings, understood He promised us a material kingdom. And if we look at Kerak Castle or other points of defence in history, we can understand what will be left from today’s wars. Only ruins and a history painted by the ones in a powerful position.

As I see it, the only way out from all the ancient patterns we are repeating over and over again is by rasing our level of counciousness, which will take us out of this reality to build the Kingdom of Heaven as it should be: a kingdom of counciousness embodied in human beings led by their inner voice of their true nature manifested as kindness and compassion for their own phisical manifestaion and for all the other beings around.

To be continued…

I am an independent writter, so if you like my stories, I invite you to support my activity with a donation.

Check out the begining of the Jordanian adventure here:

PETRA, the City of the Magic Fire (1st part)

Aqaba, the city of narrow-minded views showing openness in a Mosque

Leaving Wadi Rum Desert is like leaving behind a treasure that belongs to your Soul. The good news is that I felt like taking with me the taste of the silent sand full of divine grace. And that feeling is so full of meanings and powerful understanding that fuels your body with the curiosity of the new adventure waiting to be lived in Aqaba.

So, we left Wadi Rum with a jeep taking us into the village, and from there we took a cab (25 JOD for 2 people) to Aqaba. This city is not present in the usual organized trips, but was one of my dreams seeing this place. This is the Jordanian seaside, and after so many dry days in Petra and Wadi Rum, taking a swim in the Red Sea, was the best thing to do. The sea in the Aqaba bay is quite calm, salty, and good for swimming. The two bothering things here are the laud music on the boats transporting people in different points of the bay and the fact that the local men are literally staring at the foreign ladies that are daring to go for a swim to the public beach. They have this custom to sit on the beach or in the coffee shops with a beach view, smoking shisha (narghile), drinking tea or coffee and looking at the foreign ladies on the beach.

That’s why the government arrange for a private beach in a 5 starts resort where you can go from the hotel directly paying 11 JOD / person which included the transportation with a hop on hop off bus, plus the entrance fee in the resort. Everything is 5 stars, and you can also book a room and spend some days in there. Is 10 km away from the city, just that is in the middle of nowhere so you feel like closed in there if you don’t have a car to go to the city. And another disadvantage would be the fact that the sea is not that still and calm as in Aqaba bay. Nevertheless, if you want to spend a day there, it’s a good choice as it’s really quiet and deserted.

The city of Aqaba it’s an ordinary city. Big, full of people that are less open-minded than the people in the northern part of Jordan, even less open-minded that the people in Petra or Wadi Rum. Initially I thought it was because of the fact that there are not too many tourists in this city. Then I’ve noticed a lot of foreign people, so there is another reason behind, I was not able to discover yet.

However, there were some nice experiences we had in this place. First of all, the accommodation. We booked a double room for 4 nights at Taj Hotel 3*, and we ended up receiving an upgrade to a suite within the same price (122 EUR / 4 nights / 2 people). And this was not just for us! I must confess that before booking the room, I was reading the reviews and more people were saying the same thing. So, basically, I decided to book this hotel hoping for the same treat. And it proved to be real! 😊 Now, you should not expect a 5* suite, however, having two rooms, a living room and a small kitchen like in an aparthotel, was more than what we’ve expected. Honestly, I think it’s a marketing trick, it’s actually their way of making you choosing this hotel that is up on the hill, not next to the beach as the others. However, if you enjoy a 5 minutes’ walk to the beach, it’s a very good choice and quality for money. We’ve met a Romanian couple on the second day. They booked a 2-3* hotel near the beach for one night, and they told us it was awful. So, I say better uphill, in a suite! 😊

Then, the nicest part of this city was the food. Even if it was very hard to find restaurants serving vegetarian dishes as most of the restaurants and fast foods are selling only dishes with meat, we finally found this place, Al-Tazaj, with an exquisite falafel, and excellent sea food, and we suddenly became their loyal customers. We even took some falafel sandwiches with us when we rented the car to drive back to Amman and visit some other places on the way back.

Another nice thing to see in here is the Aqaba Castle. We were there 15 minutes before the closing hour (4 pm), and we did a quick tour. Then, the man in charge of the Castle came to us and offered us a private tour inside and up on some of the parts of the Castle that were closed. It was a great experience and we enjoyed a lot his way of showing us where to sit to have the best pictures of the place.

If you have a look at the small details around, Aqaba had a great positive aspect to be remembered here: the labels with the real prices of the products in the shops and supermarkets. In Wadi Musa, there were less honest people telling you the real price of the products, moreover the prices were even 3 times bigger than in Aqaba. So, not feeling “rubbed” at each corner was a big plus of this city!

Now, a strange thing happened when we tried to rent a car. We went several times at Avis rent a car office asking for a car and they continuously told us no car was available for the day we were planning to leave. Moreover, they asked us to pay 35 to 50 JOD extra-charge for taking the car in Aqaba and leaving it in Amman. So, I decided to check this on the internet. And I managed to book a car via Ryanair app from the same Avis office without paying any extra-fee for leaving the car in Amman. Briefly, when in Jordan, you may want to book things on different sites and apps than dealing with local people even if they are employed by big international companies. The good news was that again I booked for an small car (Kia Picanto) and I received an almost new big car (Kia Celina), so we were so comfortable driving back and visiting around different places on the way back to Amman.

Going back to the less open-minded people, we faced that again when I tried to visit a mosque. During the last day of our staying in Aqaba, we went to see the mosque we were passing by each day when we were going downhill to the beach. And once I entered the courtyard of the mosque, the men started to fight each other to get me out of there. Some were saying that it was not a problem for me to visit the mosque, others were completely against the idea, and others were trying to make me pay 20 JOD for a hijab (a long skirt plus a scarf to cover my head). At a certain point, when I was about to leave the place, a man came and he was completely willing to help me entering the mosque. So, he asked his wife to give me her hijab and a scarf to cover my head and I was invited inside the mosque.

I sat there quietly thanking God for the presence of this man, and praying for a more understandable and peaceful world. After finishing my pray, I went outside to give them back the hijab and the scarf, and he started to explain me that we all have the same God, just that some people are seeing these things differently and I should understand and forgive them. And we agreed that we are all the sons of the same God, just the way we call God may be different like Allah, and the perspective may change from a mind to another. I thanked him for his way of seeing things and for his willingness to put an end to that fight, and I left the mosque full of hope that men, one day, will stop fighting for and in the name of God.

To be continued…

I am an independent writter, so if you like my stories, I invite you to support my activity with a donation.

Check out the begining of the Jordanian adventure here:

PETRA, the City of the Magic Fire (1st part)

« Prev 1 2 3