Awesome Anonymous’ Burning Question: “Are certain parts of the world more spiritually or vibrationally “enlightened” than others? If younger beings tend to have a higher and less dense vibration, does it mean that younger countries and societies that embrace newer ideas and practices have an overall higher vibration than older ones or those more rooted in tradition? Does it mean that places where people are more encouraged to freely and more openly “be” themselves are more high vibrational and advanced?”

Dear Awesome Anonymous,

You ask a very interesting question. While we’re each ultimately responsible for our own, individual vibrations, WHERE we grow up – the geographic region, the culture, the society – can and does have a major impact in our belief structure. Is it easier to raise your vibration in some parts of the world? Are the people in certain countries or regions more “enlightened” to begin with? Let’s explore.

How do we measure vibration?

Before I construct of list of the 50 most high vibe places on the planet, or something like that, let’s first take a look at what, exactly, we mean when we’re talking about a “high” or “low” vibration. You see, while it’s so tempting to compare ourselves against one another (“my vibration can beat up your vibration!”) there’s actually no real, accurate way to do that. Here’s why:

While referring to a vibration as being higher or lower is convenient, it’s not actually 100% accurate. Yeah, I know, I’m guilty of this, too. Like I said, it’s convenient. And to be fair, these are terms of expression we can continue to use, in my opinion, but we have to be aware of what it is that we’re actually saying. Now, we all know that a higher vibration means that you’re feeling good, and a low vibration means that you’re feeling bad. So, the goal becomes to raise your vibration from a lower place to a higher place – relative to you. Your vibration is a uniquely personal thing.

The terms “higher” and “lower” are not value judgments. They can’t be mapped out on some kind of number line, which we can all compare ourselves to, like grades in school. There is no one standard for all of us. The idea of a linear standard relies on the premise that we all started in the same place and are all going to end up in the same place, and that we can chart our progress against each other. Only, that’s not the case at all, at least not in the way I’ve come to understand it.

It’s less like we’re all travelling from NYC to Tokyo, and more like I’m going from L.A. to Paris, and you’re going from Venzuela to Turkey, and someone else is going from Venus to Mars. We’re not coming from the same place, we’re not going to the same place and we’re not using the same method of transport. Oh sure, sometimes our journeys cross and we can travel together for a while. But even if our paths are eerily similar, they’re never quite the same, because we didn’t start off in the same place and aren’t going to exactly the same place. And so, we can’t compare one against the other.

Your vibration and how it feels to you is relative to Who You Really Are. That’s it. The BIG YOU, the REAL YOU, the non-physical you (your soul, higher being, inner divinity, or whatever you want to call it), is holding a vibration for you. This vibration represents your highest potential for joy in each moment – what you could achieve if you were to let go of all resistance. Notice that this is a moment by moment thing – which means that your highest vibration is ever changing and evolving. But it’s also very personal to you and each of us. When we are in “alignment” with this vibration, when we don’t resist it, or are well on our way to attuning ourselves to it, we feel good. Our vibration becomes “higher” as we get closer to our own highest potential vibration and “lower” as we move away from it. It has absolutely nothing to do with any other person.

We can’t really declare that one person has a higher or lower vibration than another, not in a linear fashion. We can observe that one person may have more resistance to their own highest vibration than someone else has to theirs, but trying to judge them against each other is like comparing the progress of a long distance swimmer to that of an astronaut taking a spacewalk.

But what about high vibe places?

“But”, I can hear you asking now, “what about the geographic places on our planet that seem to have a higher vibration? What about Sedona, Arizona, or the Himalayas, or the mountains of Peru? Haven’t I heard you talk about the wonderful, supportive energy of different places, Melody?” Yes, indeed, you have. Allow me to clarify.

If you remember that everything is relative to you, this all becomes much clearer. You see, there are going to be locations, places on the planet, or even different places in your own town or country, which are more amenable to you raising your own personal vibration. Some places will simply feel better to you than others and will, as such, support you in the process of alignment. When you’re in that state of aligning you can and often will meet others who are doing the same and find similar relief in that location. You’ll then want to call that a “power spot”. And I’m not saying these spots can’t be powerful, but they are not the fix all that people often want them to be. The Arizona desert is filled with people convinced that if they just go there, they’ll become enlightened.

To me, whatever experience you have, even the experience of feeling that a particular place on earth has “power”, is down to you. Period. If a particular place on earth is conducive to providing you with a certain experience, you’ll be drawn there. If a certain place no longer has the ability to serve you and isn’t a match to you raising your vibration more and more, you’ll want to move and will be compelled to do so. In that sense, the toilet paper isle at the grocery store has just as much potential to provide enlightenment as a trek in the Himalayas does, providing that you believe it can. In other words, as you focus on feeling better, you’ll always be exactly WHERE you need to be in order to have the experience that best mirrors back your current vibration. Always. You can’t be in the wrong place, ever.

Do certain countries have less resistance?

Now that we’ve laid a basis, let’s move on to your real question. Do certain countries on this planet make it easier to have less resistance? Are some of them inherently more enlightened because humans have a shorter history on that particular patch of earth? Well, let’s think about it this way: Considering the entire life span of the earth, humans have been around for around a micro-second, comparatively speaking. You may be assuming that places untouched by humans are high-vibe and that homo sapiens moving in inevitably craps up the place. And I agree, it certainly often seems that way. But we have to remember that this “crapping up” behavior is a relatively new phenomenon. We weren’t always the horrible house guests we tend to be today. Human presence, in and of itself, does not bring down the vibration of a particular place, just as an ant crawling on your arm doesn’t kill the arm. Even if the ant takes a little tiny ant shit on your arm, it’s relatively easy for you to rebalance yourself. It’s the same for the planet.

Humans, however, tend to gather in those places that best support where they currently are in their vibrational journey. This means that people with similar belief systems will congregate in the same places. And yet, as we move through our resistance and continue to evolve, those places will often change, if we allow them to.

So, you chose to be born into a certain vibrational environment. The country, region, culture and family that manifested in your reality all perfectly represented this vibration. But that doesn’t mean that any certain location or region or culture or even family only has the ability to represent one particular set of experiences to you. There’s always a range. In fact, some places on earth can support a vast array of extremes. You can have war and peace in the same country or region, for example. You can have heaven in the same place as hell. Which one you experience is down to your perspective.

Heavily populated cities, such as NY, L.A., Tokyo, Paris, Buenos Aires and the like, have the ability to provide us with a huge variety of experiences, for example. There are so many people and resources in one place, that anything becomes easily possible. Want a crazy dude that’s going to flash you in the street? Check. What about a whole series of people who are willing to be rude to you to help you become aware of your sense of powerlessness? You’ve got it. Want to be surrounded by kind and wonderful people all day? Yep, we gotcha.

But in these cities, we can also quickly become overwhelmed, if our own vibration isn’t very stable (meaning we focus on whatever presents itself instead of deliberately choosing). The country side can provide a less volatile experience. It’s quieter, we can hear ourselves more, and nature is beautiful. We can connect with the energy of the earth more easily (of course, we can always do it, but it’s so much easier to focus this way while basking in a sunset or sitting next to a babbling brook).

Which location should you choose? Again, it’s totally up to you. Whatever feels best to you in that moment, whatever feels most conducive to where you are right now. And if that location no longer seems to serve you, if you get the itch to move on out of there, listen. No one country has a monopoly on enlightenment. You can find joy in the most dire of circumstances and you can be dissatisfied while living in a palace. And both of those experiences can be happening just blocks from one another. The location doesn’t really matter, except in how it relates to you and how you feel about it.

So… I’m moving

I’ve personally moved around a lot in my life. I didn’t always know why, of course, but I’ve always been willing to listen to my intuition, even if it told me to drop everything and move to a different city or country. I was born in Germany, which influenced my belief system. It was interesting to drop cultural beliefs which I never cognitively formed, such as beliefs tied to WWII, during which I wasn’t even alive. I moved to the US when I was 9, which provided a very different environment. One that started to mirror back my shit to me in a big way. This was not pleasant, but I can now see just how valuable this process has been. I lived in Boise, Idaho; San Francisco, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; back to Germany; and for the past 13 years, I’ve been living in Barcelona, Spain.

Each location perfectly supported me through whatever part of my journey I was on at the time. Boise, Idaho, witnessed me in my angsty, angry, painful teenage years. San Francisco watched me begin to question everything I’d ever been taught, giving me access to experiences and mindsets I had never been exposed to. It also nearly broke me as I crumbled under the weight of my own self-expectations, now so incredibly apparent without the buffer of my family around me. Las Vegas let me explore my wild side and gave me something I hadn’t fully known before – freedom. I was free to be me, to do pretty much anything I wanted (it’s Vegas, after all). This process also brought up a lot of my shit. I started to meet my dark side, the depression came back, the angst, the fears, and it was all so vividly and willingly mirrored back to me by those around me. In other words, if you need people to be assholes to you so you can become aware of just how incredibly unworthy you feel, Vegas is the place for you. Germany took me out of that environment completely, and provided more structure. I felt soothed but the expectations of myself, the need to prove myself came back full force and my workaholism once again threatened snap me in half. Barcelona is the city I credit with finally supporting me through the process of healing all of that (perhaps not completely, but for the most part). Each location was perfect for whatever stage of my development I was in at the time.

As many long term readers will remember, I’ve mentioned before that I was getting the hit to leave Barcelona. For a brief time, I thought I was going to move to the island of Ibiza, but that gravitated out rather quickly. It’s taken me nearly two years to realize where my next place of residence is. It didn’t need to take that long, but I was incredibly resistant to it. Whereas I figured I’d be moving to some exotic locale, cosmopolitan and international, you know, just like I’ve been doing for years, the Universe had a different idea. The location that best matches who I’m becoming is…. *drumroll please*… Boise, Idaho. I know, I can hear your collective gasp. But honestly, it feels so right (now that I’ve let go of my resistance to it, that is), and I’m actually really excited about moving there.

So, I’ll be leaving Barcelona at the end of June, will be spending three months in Germany (and a bit in London, since my book is dropping on July 27^th, totally shameless plug right here), and will then be heading off to Boise. Of course, I won’t be there long, as I’ll still be taking my annual end of year spa holiday, and will be spending the month of January in Peru, so house hunting will have to wait until 2016. But all in all, I’m actually really looking forward to how this new location will serve me. I don’t see it as going back, since my vibration has so drastically changed since my teenage years, I can’t possibly manifest the same reality (not even close).

For those of you in the US, this means that I’ll be a bit more accessible, being able to do more local speaking engagements and the like. But really, since my business is global and I communicate online, I don’t think that you’ll really see much of a difference. Or maybe you will. Who knows…? I’m not leaving Barcelona because I no longer like it. In fact, I absolutely love this city. I’m leaving because I’m being called to a new place, not moving away from something, but rather moving towards something else. And I can’t wait to see how the adventure unfolds. As long as you follow your own path, as long as you honor what feels right to you, you’ll never EVER be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And every place will be the perfect place.