obviously there is no such thing as psychic phenomena.
it's not like there is anyway that i could psychically hear without any verbal or written communication what was being asked of me in the heart of someone in scotland from all the way over here - across the atlantic ocean and the american continent.
it's not like we transmit ourselves vibrationally across time and space in every moment - and it's not like it's possible to tune in to that vibration from any location anywhere in the world.
i've decided to cut my plans for NY and fly back to edinburgh. i'll be there within 48 hours.
"Come to the edge he said. I can't, I said, I'll fall. Come to the edge, he said. I can't I said, I'm afraid. Come to the edge he said. And I came to the edge. And he pushed me. And I flew."
******************************************** "Out of here..."
I try to think where it started.
Was it 10 years ago, when I heard the siren call of a song called The Cedar Room by a band called Doves, and I had had the distinct impression of a tragic and beautiful fate that I was very personally being drawn in to:
Within weeks of hearing it for the first time, I had met the man I would marry. Doves were signed to his label. He had just released the Cedar Room.
It had started.
******************************************* "We're out of here..."
Or was it when at 4am he played Sleep The Clock around after a Saturday night in summer 1999, and we laughed, completely in love not knowing what a mess we were about to make and that the record playing spelled out every word of what was to come:
"And you trusted to this And you trusted to that When you saw it all coming it was waving a flag Of the united states of calamity - hey After all that you've done, boy You know you're going to pay."
It had started then.
**************************************** "We're out of heartache..."
Or maybe actually it had started years before we'd even met, when he had his first number one record, and it said precisely everything there ever would be to say if I had ever listened to the lyrics:
Or maybe it had started way before even then - when I was 10 years old and found myself mesmerised forever, repeating, over and over, knowing for certain that this was someplace I would one day go:
'Oh You've green eyes, oh you've got blue eyes, oh you've got grey eyes... And I've never met anyone quite like you before'
Not knowing that one day I would literally marry myself to it.
******************************************* "Along with Fear..."
I don't know when it started.
But something started.
Something that I had to do. Something that I had to learn.
And now it's over. And now it's really over.
"There goes the fear again..."
And it's time for something else to start.
"Let it go"
That's how this feels.
"There goes the Fear." ********************************************
I don't know when it became time for the newness to start.
Maybe it was in the summer of 2007 when the Heron came regularly outside my front door when I lived by the River Esk:
Maybe it started those mornings I would wake up alone in a brand new world, and meditate and do yoga every morning, alone on the banks of the River Esk:
Not quite believing that the sound of this river is what I went to sleep listening to, and this is what I saw as the dawn came and I opened my eyes, and stepped out of my back door: unbelievably blessed that this was my very own private back garden:
Soon that summer, the Solstice came, and maybe it started that night, when we lit candles around my back garden:
And I gathered with brand new friends, in this beautiful and enchanted place that was my new home, and we sat in my back garden, on the banks of the river that night, and watched the sun set and the stars come out:
I remember Sam helped my light the candles, one by one, but he refused to come to eat with us. I'm no hippie he said. But I couldn't have reached all the candles without him.
Maybe the time for newness had started then.
Maybe it was at the end of that summer, 2 days before I moved out when the horses came. First one white horse.
I noticed the Heron was in the tree. She and the white horse. And me. I had been asleep in the afternoon, and woke to see the Heron and the Horse. Across the other side of the river. I rubbed my eyes and smiled. And then I saw another:
She was still in the tree. Two horses now and my Heron. And me. And the River Esk. Silent, alone and still. I looked at them, coming awake. Taking pictures to believe. I smiled. And slowly the tears were coming. And then I saw the third horse come to my river, and stand below the tree:
I was still. It was so quiet. All I could hear was the sound of my breath catching as I watched the three horses and the Heron, walking from my door to the edge of the river, and becoming aware of the rush of the water as they looked at me, and I at them.
Heart breaking and healing, tears falling and wonder and enchantment swirling around that moment, I looked at the Heron in the tree to take a picture. But now she would not stay. She spread her wings and was gone.
I never saw her again.
And the horses, in the noise and movement of her flight, turned and galloped away until I couldn't see them anymore.
Maybe it was then.
Maybe that was the time when this newness started.
*****************************************
I have the feeling, as I look back on my life, that nothing has ever been accidental and that every single emotionally resonant feeling or experience I have ever had since I was 10 years old, and maybe even before, has held deep and profound significance, the full meaning of which I would unlock and discover only in my later adult experience.
I have the intuition and the belief that I am not alone. That I am protected. Loved. And guided.
I have the impression that everything that has gone before now has always and forever been leading up to exactly this moment in time.
And that it's time.
Something new begins now.
And I am scared.
But although I am scared, I have the belief that I am safe.
It's started.
And I am safe. *******************************************
"Faith pours from your walls. Drowning your calls I've tried to hear. You're not near."
We were talking about transformation.
"Now I've fallen in deep. Slow silent sleep. I'm dying."
We are talking about how he - the wildest hedonist - was turned by our divorce into someone who discharges the day to day responsibilities with ardent care.
And about how I - someone who had believed success came from following the instructions of the head and not the heart - was turned in to a heart centred hippie.
I said:
"I'm not the same person I was. I'm different. I know it."
He said:
"I think that is what happens. That is what this thing actually is, is all about. That is what is called Life."
"Soleil. All over you"
We talked about how in the end, it turned out that we actually gave one another what we needed more than anything else at that point in our lives to evolve as people - things that we didn't really know that we had within us; things that now discovered, we will drawn on and have as a resource for the rest of our lives and that help us express more wholly all of who we are; that we will both regard as the most precious gifts that were given to us in our lifetimes.
"Warm sun. All over me."
We smiled, 600 miles apart. Two years since we saw one another last.
I wished him good luck with his application to study for a masters. We said our goodbyes and I put down the phone.
I sat there. Wondering about how we had actually given each other just what we needed. Wondering about the spiritual concept of sacred contracts -
...The idea that we exist as souls before and after we exist in this particular arrangement of matter in this particular moment of time and space; that we choose to incarnate in to the physical world to learn lessons for the evolution and expansion of our soul; that we agree before we even come here the other souls, and the times and places of our meetings with them, for the learning of these, our soul lessons; that we agree whose lives we will enter, and when and for the teaching of which of their soul lessons. Every aspect of our world is governed by our sacred contract, is the teaching: and our job is to understand the truth behind every relationship in our experience so that we can learn the lesson, assimilate it and evolve at the level of the soul.
The teaching also says that you can't escape it. The lessons you've come to learn from and teach to one another.
You can choose to participate in the learning in love.
But even when you don't, even when you engage in behaviour that's painful and damaging, if you can just meet the hurt with love, if you bring forgiveness and conscious attention to all of the actions in a chain of events, you will discover the truth of your cosmic contract, and so your soul lesson.
The teaching also is that you get help: there's energy around you that's carrying information that resonates with you: guides, gods, angels, archetypes, vibrations: subtle energies around us all the time supporting us, telling us, showing us, guiding us. We should tune in with the experience of ourselves as energy to access this support - and be open to its messages.
It seemed to me, as I thought about it, that it was possible that P and I had actually succeeded in being the forces for positive evolution for one another that maybe we had agreed to be before we came in to physical incarnation.
I wondered if we were MEANT to get married all along, and if it was possible that maybe it was MEANT to end all along - just so that we could teach one another what we did.
I wondered about R. P's beloved best friend and mentor who died the week before Pete and I met. And my grandfather. Who died the same day, at around the same time. I always felt like P and I were guided together. This was not an accidental meeting - we were both so sure of that.
I thought about Manchester. Where R had been born in the 1950s. Where my grandfather travelled from India to study in the 1950s. Where Pete had moved to in the eighties. Where I arrived in the nineties.
I wondered about how odd it was that a native Mancunian and an Indian doctor would share space in Manchester, England in the 50s; and that forty years later their protege and grand daughter would meet a door or two away from where these two souls had once lived side by side, unknown to one another; and start a journey of their own together in which they would each drawn on everything they had been taught by each of these two older, now gone guardians.
P and I both always felt like we were given to one another.
When we met. The way we met.
"Remembering when I saw your face Shining my way Pure Timing."
For a long time I think I had felt like we were guided to come together, but that somehow we'd got it wrong. Somewhere we'd come undone. And we'd missed what we were meant to do for one another, together.
For a long time I had thought maybe we weren't ever meant to get married. Because ending the marriage felt unmistakably right.
Maybe I have thought, we were only ever meant to have been friends.
Now - as we talked about the lessons we've actually taught one another - I wondered whether it's possible that all of this was just as it was meant to be.
I wondered if it was possible that we had an agreement pre birth that we would teach one another the most vital lessons we needed to learn for our own healing and expansion and growth.
I wondered if it's because we have successfully learned the lesson we came to give one another that we can meet each other with genuine mutual respect and support and love, without ever wanting to go back.
I wondered if we were totally supported and guided in every step of the journey we had taken together - by angels and guides. I wondered if angels and guides, and R and my grandfather, and more recently P's father, whom he lost a year ago, had been instrumental in bringing us together, seeing us separate and then in returning us to love - and in doing so supporting us in the mission to understand and assimilate the soul lessons we've learnt.
I wondered how I'd ever know.
I had just ended the call, but found myself sending him a text message saying
Then -in that very moment - just as I hit 'send - out of nowhere, loudly, clearly -I heard the cello.
Everything stood still.
Time stopped.
The hairs on the back of my neck and on the back of my arms went up.
Goosebumps across my arms and I shivered.
How many years ago had I had walked down the aisle to this music?
"Pure Timing."
I was so surprised by its sudden presence that I couldn't remember what it was.
A second later I couldn't figure out where I was.
A second later, I was back in the room: sitting in a coffee shop in Edinburgh, after a long conversation about there being cosmic contracts that we make with one another pre birth that rule what we will teach one another in this lifetime so that we may each grow and evolve as souls whilst having individual human experiences; after which I had just texted him saying 'what does it all mean'; silently wondering how I would ever know.
A second later I realised:
"Faith pours from your walls"
I felt in that moment that they were around me. Around us.
R - who I had been asking how I would ever know.
My grandfather - who I had been asking how I would ever know.
Angels - whom I had been asking how I would ever know.
Applauding. Smiling. Holding. Protecting.
Happy that we were getting to the point of why we went there.
At last learning.
Because from that learning comes the soul evolution and from that the incarnating into our true selves.
Emergence.
And then the work we really came to do.
"And you will dry this tear, Now that we're here. And grieve for me. Not history"
Not history.
How had I chosen that song to walk down the aisle to and never noticed that verse?
I wondered if it was possible that I had been guided to choose that song at that time so that right now in this moment at this time, I would understand that I'm being given an answer to my question.
"Pure Timing"
I called him and said
"I just asked you what it all means and then, now...listen..."
and let him hear the track as Damon sang:
"Soleil. All over you. Warm sun. Pours over me. And suddenly we're in love with everything."
"I told you," I told him.
"I told you there are angels all around us. All the time. Honestly. Whatever goes on. ALL the time. They were there with us, that day we met - they were there with us, that day I walked down the aisle, the last words I heard were 'faith pours from your walls'. They were with us when we decided it was over. They've been with us ever since."
"O.K." he said, "Yes."
Like he always has said when I say such things.
Not really believing me. Not really not believing me.
I listened to the the song play to its end. And took a deep breath.
I picked up my things, and walked in to the August sun - and thought thank you angels, thank you guides, I love you, I love you, I love you. I asked how I would know and now I know.
I felt soleil all over me. The warm sun, pour over me.
"When you were here before, Couldn't look you in the eye You're just like an angel, Your skin makes me cry..."
How many years does it take to become aware of patterns of behaviour so deeply imprinted on to your psyche that they dictate the outcome of almost every situation you enter?
In my case - 33.
There's the thinking in spiritual traditions of all ancient cultures that as you are within, so it is without.
That what you experience in the world around you is actually just a mirror, a cosmic articulation of your deepest beliefs about yourself. The thinking is that we are energetic beings in physical form: and as energy, we are aligned to, attuned to, in sync with, energy that resonates and vibrates at a frequency that matches our own.
See and experience joy and success and love - and it's because you are within yourself in alignment with joy and success and love: it's the outward expression of the expectation of your deepest, most intimate beliefs which are funbdamentally an articulation of your energetic core.
See and experience loss and sorrow and pain - and it's because you are within yourself in alignment with loss and sorrow and pain: it's the outward expression of the expectation of your deepest, most intimate beliefs which are fundamentally an articulation of your energetic core.
So by that thinking, when you experience situations and relationships that hurt you or wound you, you are coming face to face with a part of you that is deeply attuned to that very experience at an energetic level. Essentially -it's your vibe.
How many years of spiritual study does it take to become comfortable with the acceptance that 'we create our own reality through the frequency of our energetic vibration' and to see how this might actually be playing out in real lives, for real in real situations?
For me: 3
"You float like a feather In a beautiful world I wish I was special..."
So how much of my life spent feeling like I don't belong here? Like I'm not wanted, no worthy, not worth it?
Answer: 31 years
How many years of thinking I'd caught it, named it, cleared it - ended it?
Answer: 4 years
I rememeber looking around me six months before my whole world imploded: i remember thinking this isn't right. This isn't how it's meant to be. No love. No support. No warmth. I knew I deserved more.
And deep, deep within me I knew this wasn't the first time I had found myself right there.
Sweetly, sincerely, I ended everything as it was then and there and I thought that was it. I felt my heart break. I thought I'd done the work.
I didn't understand then how I had created it. I challenged this school of thinking, how could it possibly have any real meaning - how would anyone, why would anyone be in alignment with things that hurt? How on earth could what what was around me come from within me - it didn't make sense.
Why would I be in attunement with rejection, with isolation, with abandonment?
I hadn't done the work.
I did the work.
I meditated. I prayed. I wrote. I journalled. I looked back to the very beginning and found a little girl who felt intuitively that she wasn't wanted from conception and who was told when she was small that she had ruined everything just by being there, and who was told when she was bigger that she was only worth what she could achieve, and who lived in the eye of a violent and terrifying storm of a home.
What else was she going to create - but a world with all the signs of outward achievement and excellence built on a core belief of not being wanted, not being good enough and an expecation of abuse.
A year later, I thought, maybe - maybe there is something in this: it was all unconscious but it seemed to me, it was all there: it turned out that as within -but deep, deep within - so without.
I was shocked.
I cried. I learned. I forgave. I took journies in to healing with trusted teachers.
I healed.
I learned about chakras and in doing so I began to consciously repattern my energy. And I saw shifts in all aspects of my world.
And so the healing happened.
"I don't care if it hurts, I wanna have control I want a perfect body I want a perfect soul"
It's painful to delve in to your psyche to pull out the darkness. But according to the ancients, if I could just reattune my core energy, release from it the residue of conditioned patterns of behaviour from previous experience, if I could bring myself to be in unconflicted alignment with the things I thought I really wanted, and if I could then take every action without any expecation or attachment - then there was no stopping it: everything i ever wanted would arrive effortlessly, easily, and enjoyably and miraculously.
OK.
How many years has it taken for me to clear negative patterns from my energetic being?
Answer: 3
How many dreams have come true in the process, and as a result?
Answer: Well from reading Hayhouse and Deepak Chopra books three years ago, to attending a Hayhouse conference representing Deepak's ANH 2 months ago in San Diego -I would say just too many to count. And all of them just happened. In between there's been a longed for reconnection with a club environment and late night soundsystems, a journey into robotica and a life time connection with NYC and here is the healing center and the work with record labels and artists across the US to make something very special indeed come alive.
Too many to list or to count. They keep coming, and I feel blessed. I meet every day with faith and love and gratitude knowing that many miracles are coming my way.
I've learned how to heal.
And I know that I know enough to take other people through the process and help them realise their dreams. A healer. A teacher.
"Whatever makes you happy Whatever you want"
So what does it mean when you think you're there - and you've done the work, and there are no more dark spots of unwanted conditioning in your being for you to have to work through - and then: here it comes - a relationship that you think is part of the blooming of a bigger and beautiful picture, becomes unhinged, becomes fragile and looks like it will end in a situation that's not what you want?
Answer: It think it means that you still haven't done work! Or maybe that the work is never 'done'.
I think it means that there's always more to do.
I think that maybe it means that you'll always be shown where you truly are at the core of your being by the essence of the experiences and relationships that you're living in any given moment. It's where you are. It's your vibe.
Your challenge when you feel something you don't enjoy feeling, or that you think you've released from your core being, is to know it. To name it. And to choose in your actions to release it - to end it.
How many months did it take me to figure out what was happening the last time this happened?
Answer: 7 months
How many weeks did it take me from then to call time on the situation and to end it?
Answer: 6 weeks
I'm healing
I thought I had done so well: I entered into a commitment with someone based on my authentic belief in them, love for them, commitment to helping and supporting them.
We exchanged emails. We met in San Diego. We made an agreement and a commitment.
I did the work. He became unavailable. I delivered the work. He became silent. I reached out. He stayed back.
"I want you to notice when I'm not around You're so ...special I wish I was special"
A friend asked me 'Is this a dysfunctional love relationship?'
I realised what I was being taught.
It's not about the situation never coming up again - it's about knowing when it does what it is, and believing in the energetic principle of attunement and alignment.
It's about having the self belief and faith to end as quickly as it emerges any patterns that are essentially old imprints representing.
How many weeks did it take me this time to figure out that it's happening again?
Answer: 2 weeks
How many days has it taken me call time on this situation and to end it?
Answer: 3 days
So I sent him a note. And said enough, and no more.
I can not, will not do this. That we have to do this differently on terms that support and honour me or else we stop now and we don't do it at all. I've maybe ended this whole situation before it even started.
It might mean the losing of the thing that I thought is bringing me what I really want: the much needed little piece that completes a larger whole of security, both emotional and financial.
I've risked losing a relationship that I thought was going to give just what I needed. That looked on the surface like it would give me just what I needed.
Because I believe that I am essentially an expression of energy incarnated in to a physical form, and that as energy my vibration will naturally be in sync with, in harmony with, in tune with, in alignment with other patterns of energy that vibrate at the same frequecny.
Because I believe that the frequency of my core energy aligns itself with matching frequencies in the world around me: so that what is around me is actually a mirror of what is within me.
Because I believe that how I am vibrationally as energy becomes the truth of my experienced reality in the material world.
And because I believed that here I was creating again was something that looked supportive on the surface but was actually confused and ambivalent at its core.
It's my vibration.
I've decided I need to end it. Let it go. I need to be very conscious of my vibration. Consciously re-attune. Realign. And repattern. I need to reset, reclaim it.
In releasing from my experience a vibration that felt familiar from a state of being in which I expected to be rejected and to be left behind, I believe that - even if I lose this opportunity - the essence of what I wanted that relationship to bring me will re present in my experience - on clearer, less compromising, more respectful and more cherishing terms.
It's frightening and feels chaotic to be challenged to let this go. Because it looks so much like the thing that I really want.
I'm so scared. I'm so so scared.
But I believe it's the right thing to have done. Because I believe that what I experience is in alignment with my core energy - that in the end what I get is for me to determine in my vibration.
Because at at last I believe something else too: that I am someone to be wanted, to be cherished, to be respected and to be supported.
Because at last I can say, maybe for the for the first time in my life, with pure and utter commitment and love:
I just dreamt that you lived with helen hipkiss and that you had a girlfriend called helen pain and i came to see you and i was crying and crying and you came to see me and you had your beardy and you looked big and beautiful like a lion and you were holding me and i said 'i don't want to know anything about your stupid girlfriend'. Sadness x
He called me to tell me he that 500 miles away or more he woke from a dream at 06:30 crying.
We talked about the connection. We talked about how it's good that there's no way back and that there's only a road ahead. And that we're in different places.
I couldn't understand why the tears were falling all day. I know that we've done what we were meant to do. And that the right thing is that it is over.
And then 'Nothing can change what you mean to me.'
Knowing that this man was a man with whom I did once touch something that animated both our spirits in ways of beauty and joy and peace. Once.
We talked about meeting other people. About maybe never meeting other people. I told him I met someone recently and I thought I think I could like someone like that. Like being with someone like that.
I told him about Stornoway and Zorbing. He told me about his favourite company who hand make small stoves for camping from America. He asked me if I was listening to The Archers. I said No - that was in another life. And then he told me about Matt Crawford's world coming undone. We talked about Scotland and England. About how there's nothing to like about the Northwest and then about the country lanes you find just around the corner if you go off the main road where he lives. I told him about yoga training in California and then we talked about how far we'd come: that Ic ould after three and a half years, when I was hurting and confused, call him and cry my tears to him, in complete vulnerability and he didn't hurt me: he just listened and made me laugh.
I told him that I think it happens at the end of July. When I leave for California. That I'm going.
I told him I loved him. And he told me he loved me. And when he said as I was crying, 'tell me - what is it do you think that you want?'
And I stopped and i thought and then and said 'I think I just want you to be a friend'.
He said 'Well, you have friend. You always have a friend.'
************************************************************************* I feel quite blessed to have loved him the way I loved him. To have had the self awareness to know what I needed to do to look after myself and then the strength to have done it.
I feel blessed to have been able to meet him with love even when we were at our most wounded.
I feel blessed to know that three and a half years later, when everything else feels uncertain, I know that there is someone who knows me and loves me and will always be a friend. As new relationships blossom or maybe fail. As the continents we live in change. As our paths appear to be going in more and more different directions.
'Nothing can change what you mean to me.' ***************************************************************************
I think the dream was a message to me that it was time to tell him I was leaving, and to feel the real meaning of this ending for us both. New people in his life. A life an ocean apart from one another in which there would be whispers of his success and love and happiness from mututal friends. Get ready, my dream told me, to hear of his happiness and renewal. It showed me that there was healing to do: 'I don't want to know anything about your stupid girlfriend.'
More letting go. More self belief. More unconditional love and support to give.
We talked and found that in the end, after all is said and done, all there is, is love.
And with enough time and healing between us, it's an amazing thing to be back in state of absolute love for one another.
My dream supported me, prepared me. This morning I feel steady. I feel good to go.
Traveling at the speed of love, with an open heart. Authentic. Vulnerable. Unafraid.
Two weeks ago I decided what I wanted was to put myself through school to study bodywork in Sedona, work for ANH in San Diego, and make regular visits for project meetings to Laguna Beach to open the Raj-Ananda-Shaanti Healing Centre.
I felt it in mu body. I experienced it as real.
I asked.
It happened.
Tomorrow I fly to LAX. And it starts.
And here I am - even more tears.
Because two years later I have never been more ready to go home, and here I find that there are things about being here that I have learned to love. My heart feels happy to know that it's coming to an end. But there are people here that I love without words to describe just how deeply. It pours out of me when I think about them, when I look at them, when I speak to them.
And here I go. Somewhere else. And Why?
A girlfriend this morning said you're being very silent about what you're organising out there. I said I'll tell you when I'm ready.
Because I have to.
Because it's personal.
Because it's time to be a big girl now.
And big girls don't cry.
Because I know what I need to do.
Because I know where I need to be to allow all the rest of it to come together.
I finally understand and know as truth that you get to choose how you want your life to be. You get to choose. You just have to choose.
And I choose this. To end this.
And it feels like the most adult thing I've ever done in my life.
For me a red dot that I created for Manna (from Heaven) a business I built with love:
when Manna was gone, I saw it again with a crescent below in the children's support group where I decided to volunteer to help underprivileged kids:
and when eventually I felt like I could be engaged in real work, I found it again in the logo of my new and current workplace, this time or on its own :
When I see them, I feel like I am being guided. I think they are telling me that I am where I am meant to be. I think that they're an invitation to engage.
I thought this out loud in front of friend and he laughed saying that it was like an episode of Doctor Who. His sarcasm and exasperation pierced me a little.
I wondered if I was wrong. Maybe, i thought, there are no signs.
But my belief in their meaning and in their existence remained unshaken. I made up my mind that when I see these signs I'll pay close attention.
'Tell me, I thought', 'tell me what I need to know. Show me.'
There are Angels.
Feathers.
Numbers.
Names.
Poets.
Flowers:
and Symbols:
They tell me that things are going to be good. That there's a reason for me being where I am.
And they surround me.
In Williamsburg, Brooklyn:
In New York City:
In San Diego at the Convention Centre (111 West Harbour Street):
Painted on to the last wall of the last cave high in the cliffs of the red rocks of Sedona:
Now more than ever I believe that I've been calling angels down to earth.
And I don't need a reason.
It's what I believe in. And I believe I need them.
In the last three weeks I watched complete miracles occur in my life: people who I dreamed would contact me, contacted me - without me knowing their personal e-mail address or them knowing mine and we met -alone for the first time - in New York City.
My plane was due to land at 12:06, but arrived early. We touched down at 11:11.
I went to the UN. Just like I saw I would.
And prayed hard for Israel and for Palestine.
Four days later I met, sitting next to me at a conference event in San Diego, someone who runs peace camps in Israel and in the West Bank, joining children and young people together in peace initiatives - she said she wanted very much to share the project with one person in particular to help in advancing the message of peace. That person was the person I met in NYC.
I went to lunch with a girl I felt a good connection to who turned out to be the lawyer of the publishing group I was at the conference to visit, and when she told me her birthday it was 11/11.
I went to Sedona. And found thistles and cairns amongst the red red rocks. Telling me something about why I am in Scotland.
I met a man who held my hand and who took us to caves built high on the edge of the red rock cliffs. And when he led us to the last cave in a labyrinth of caves, making me feel unafraid and safe and sure, cliff hopping with care but with no fear from one ledge to the next, what I saw painted on to the 300 million year old rock of that cave wall was a red dot with a crescent below it. Painted on to the wall as I stood and looked at the canyon and creek below me, the blue sky outside me and the swallows swooping across the opening.
There I think I found my name.
As I left Sedona and considered what I thought had just happened, a white car pulled up before me with the number plate 11:11.
And when I arrived in Newark NJ, and made my final exit from California until next time, the signs around me said, once, then twice then three times in big letters: 'GATE 111'.
Now more than ever I believe that I've been calling angels down to earth.
They're telling me that I am where I am meant to be. That there is something of meaning and of connection in this place for me. They tell me not to be afraid. Not to run away. To stay and to learn what I am being taught no matter how intense, how frigthening, how new the experience.
It's Sunday, and I get to look back on this crazy time and all the things that are happening and coming up. I am marvelling at how it has come to be that I am realising a life long dream to work with robots. But it's come to pass at the same time that I am deeepening my understanding of and commitment to new dimensions of being human. I love it. Everything feels beautiful. Somewhere someone wrote about the track above, 'it's about a lonely girl who makes mountains out of molehills' ! But I know there's something deeper:
After a year of not being able to share with anyone, I decided to tell others about this blog a week ago, and a very new friend, who lives in Oceanside, San Diego, read through all of it and sent me an e-mail referring to all the loss and suffering I felt in the aftermath of a divorce and a closed business, and leaving behind of an old way of life, saying 'You need to stop believing that what you've been through - that it's your fault. You need to stop blaming yourself...'
I couldn't believe how deeply it resonated. I thought I had released so much. But as I read those words, I felt it grip me - this feeling that somewhere within me there might actually still be a part of me that would stand in the way of me keeping everything I have ever dreamed of: a part of me that believes that I don't deserve it.
For the last three days I have been thinking, thinking, thinking about the part of me that still doesn't believe that I really deserve love or success. I've been asking in prayer and listening for answers in meditation for ways for me to release all those ideas within me that would stand in the way of me and the things that I know I can create and grow in my world.
This morning, out of the blue I noticed I had a missed call from the former Chairman of my company, Manna - I don't think we've talked for over two years. There was a voicemail asking me to call him. He didn't even know if the number he tried was still mine. I returned his call and was thrilled to hear his voice. We talked and were both happy to be in each others' worlds again.
I told him that the long silence these last two years on my part had been due to the multiple complications and feelings of loss and mourning that I experienced after making the decision to close: I asked him, thinking about this part of that thinks I deserve to suffer - I said,
"Chris, I've been thinking, and I'm going to ask you straight up and I know you'll tell me directly. Was it me? Was I not good enough? Was there something I should have been doing that I didn't do? As a director, as a shareholder, as a manager, as a colleague, as an individual? Was it me?"
He's in his late 60s. He's the Divisional Director for Central and NW England for one of the UK's leading private equity houses. He chairs and manages investments in select companies, with values in to millions. He and I worked together from 2002 to 2007 on an almost daily basis. He knows everything about how I am, who I am.
He said,
"Rakhi, it was something excellent. The concept is one of the strongest there is out there...You were always more than exceptional. You were very very good.'
************************************* I told him about training in holistic health, about my frequent trips to the US, about robotics and Informatic, about 'The Modern Girl's Guide to Spirituality', about the Alliance for a New Humanity, about the vision to integrate holistic health and service in to well being centres and maybe another incarnation for Manna in the future.
I waited for him to be bemused and cynical - given his corporate leanings and background. Instead, he said:
"Well, I feel like now there is a time for humanity to review its direction - so much is falling apart, and that bring the opportunity for change. It sounds like what you have been doing is incredible, and you are now doing things that you simply could not have done if you still had Manna. In fact, it may be the thing that, in the end, one day further down, makes sense of why things with Manna ended where they did - because now you are learning new things that I think can be very good for you and for the world at large. ."
*****************************************
More than two years since we last spoke. A missed call from his number to mine yesterday, that I only noticed today and then at last we speak: and just in these days when I have been praying for guidance and help to let me release anything that is within me that thinks I don't deserve the things that are in my heart, he says:
"You were always more than exceptional. You were very very good..."
And from him, probably the most unexpected of sources amongst all the people I know, the affirmation that what has happened, what is happening, 'feels important and with meaning..'
All my life I loved robots and artificial intelligence. I didn't train in anything remotely scientific or IT related. Not even a GCSE. And here I am working in Informatics and thinking all day about robotica, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and human robot interaction.
I decided to retrain in holistic health and started working towards certification as a meditation intructor - learning how to teach people new ways to think about consciousness - and here I am working with cognitive scientists and neuroscientists.
I decided that I want to move to NYC for at least a short while, working for ANH and two weeks ago they e-mailed me out the blue; a phone call later, and now I am sending them ideas for plans to develop peace consciousness globally and I am meeting them in NYC in three weeks.
I decided I wanted a sign that would help me release any thoughts I have that I don't deserve success. And out the blue this morning, I receive a phonecall for the first time in over two years, from a former corporate backer who tells me that I was 'exceptional' as a leader of an organisation.
It all happens. Every single prayer gets answered.
I know it's not coincedence.
And I know it's not by design.
I think that it's cosmic. From where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins.
From the Field. ******************************************************************
I am in awe at the directness with which prayers are answered when you just open your heart and surrender and release any expectation of the form that they should take.
And I think I am done with fighting their meaning when those answers to prayers arrive in the most unexpected forms.
I have been asking for something more beautiful that I can give words to. And it occurs to me that maybe it was given all along, but I just couldn't, wouldn't, refused to see it or accept it.
It has felt like a test. It does feel like a test. And I think that maybe it's time I learnt to fight, with love and gentleness and staying power, for the things I believe I deserve. Maybe there's something cosmic in this too.
" THE TEST BEGINS - NOW
I thought I was smart I thought I was right I thought it better not to fight I thought there was a Virtue in always being cool - so when it came time to Fight I thought I'll just step aside...
I don't know where the sun beams end And the starlght begins, it's all a mystery ...If it's not now than tell me when would be the time...
I don't know where the sun beams end And the starlight begins, it's all a mystery And I don't know how a man decides what right For his own life - it's all a mystery.
THE TEST IS OVER - NOW " ********************************************
In 2003 I used to listen to Yoshimi Part 1 over and over again thinking all the time about robots and Japan and technology imagining how cool it all was, and identifying with lonely girl making mountains out of molehills. Now, more than ever before, she is in me.
I never listened to Yoshimi Pt. 2 'Fight Test' before this morning.
The name, and the idea of fighting always made me 'skip' this track. Today, I decided to listen. Just as I had decided that what I had to do was learn to step up to, reach out for, be unafraid of believing that I deserve eveything that is in my heart - I didn't press 'skip' and I heard, for the first time ever, the words.
They made me smile and cry at once as they articulated every aspect of where I am right now, after six years of choosing not to listen to it until this moment now - and I knew that here it was again: that place where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins pouring like a cosmic rainbow right in to my world - a message just for me, just for this moment in space and time, from the Field.
Sunbeams and starlight and healing and love. Through time and space.
What I said was: the guy - with music in his blood, NYC in his soul, Edinburgh in his heart and giving in his Spirit - it'd be OK if he showed up now.
I keep coming home in tears. I keep wondering what more I have to do. I keep trying to say goodbye. I keep being drawn deeper in. I don't believe what's happening is bad. I don't see how what's happening is good. I keep wondering what I have to do to.
I know I don't believe that I am strong.
I know that I am strong.
I'd like the Universe to listen to me when I say that I am ready. I'd like to not have tears in my eyes every night. It would be OK for him to show up now.
Just at the moment the line 'Although you don't believe me you are strong...' came on and the suddenly the tears were falling harder, at exactly that moment, 6000 miles away in Sacramento, California in a different time zone, at 12:17 PST time, Kerri Olson felt my tears and sent me an urgent e-mail:
It said:
'...Empathy flying far distances, sensing disconnection...'
I replied within minutes from Edinburgh - in a different continent in a different timezone, 19:20 (BST):
'i'm ok...sometimes i think why is it that i am on this journey on my own - a whole lot of friends who love me and god i love you. but when do i meet someone? when do i have a family? i'm going ot be 35...i don't understand what i have to do to let this enter my world. i don't know what i have to do. crying...why am I crying...?'.
We chatted. She made me laugh. She made me think. She reminded me that I am just a girl and that it's all just a part of being human. She told me I'm amazing. And intense. And beautiful. And wise. And just a girl. She helped me believe again that I am strong. She caught me. From California. Just then. Within seconds of me coming undone. She caught me - across time and space.
It's been a year since I started writing here sharing this journey.
It's been a journey more incredible than anything I could have imagined, or that I thought I was ready for. It's taken me back to San Diego and New York City, and on to the to the Omega Institute and to Columbia University and to Rosslyn Chapel and to the Salisbury Centre and to Stonehenge and Virginia.
I have met members of my soul group. All over the world. I have soul connections right now in Michigan, Pittsburg, Taiwan, Toronto, Omaha, Bakersville, NYC, New Delhi, Mumbai, Paris, China, Dallas, North Carolina, Vermont, Manchester, London, and even here in Edinburgh, my home town, which never felt like a place I came from or could stay in, which I have grown to love.
Something happened.
It feels like I opened myself up to trusting something that I knew to be present, but that I didn't fully understand, and in return it moved to reveal itself to me in parts, patiently waiting for me to be ready to understand one piece at a time.
What I have learnt so far, I think, is that it comes in pieces: you never know the whole answer - you just know what you have to do next, and you have an intuition about where that's leading you. And you have to just trust that. No matter how it challenges you to do so.
I don't know the reasons why some things I am experiencing are happening. I don't know their meaning. I worry about what I want and what I see as occurring before me. I worry that I am wrong. I worry that I am reading meaning in to nothingness.
But if I were to take away the spiritual truth, as I have come to understand it, of each relationship and situation in my life at present, then I would be left with a set of chance sequential unreleated events without any independent or interrelated meanings; but what resonates within me, outwith me, is that I am here, at the end of, or in the middle of, a series of unlikely coincedences and accidents that have delivered me quite deliberately to the most intense, stretching, challenging, incredible, beautiful and moving set of relationships, opportunties and experiences that I have yet known.
So I have come to trust. That what happens is you use your intuition to feel the way of your overall course. And then you SURRENDER in the moment.
You have to get out of your own way. You have to give up the resistence. You have to give up judging. You have to give up control.
You just have to be committed to being in complete integrity, willing to take the next step, the tiny, tiny step to express your whole and authentic self and trust that what happens after that will be good, and trusting that with every step the path becomes clearer.
It's only in looking back now that I see how much clearer the path is now then it was then, a year ago.
I heal. I teach. I write. I create. I am on my way to NYC and to California. Closer. Surer. It all happened. Is happening.
There's more to come: there's a place of my own again, a lasting and deep and true relationship with someone who adores and cherishes me and whom I adore and cherish in return; a short term move to NYC followed by settling in California with a family of my own; there's global work for ANH, teaching THE MODERN GIRL'S GUIDE TO SPIRITUALITY in NYC and SAN DIEGO, there's working with the CHOPRA CENTRE and a wellbeing center in LAGUNA BEACH and books and making films and a whole life full of creativity and healing and learning and giving.
I've never felt more sure it's all there. Lined up. And in truth I've never felt less certain in my whole life about how, or exactly who with.
I think what I have learnt is what I taught at THE MODERN GIRL'S GUIDE TO SPIRITUALITY last night:
S is for SACRED, and for the SHADOW, and for STILLNESS.
And above all, S is for SURRENDER.
And ultimately it's about surrender to love, through time and space.
A Journey into Energy and Healing - and Stories from the Other Side
A Soul's Awakening
Seven years ago, I made the first of what turned out to be such profound changes in my life that I now find myself in a completely transformed state. What began in 2006 as a simple and pure intent to finally put right, once and for all, all that was wrong, led me to decide on the 1st Jan 2008 to live in a new way - a way committed to a life in healing and service, studying and practicing holistic health, to the understanding and exploring of spirituality and the source of wellbeing.
A month later, I found myself in San Diego, in a meditation garden with my eyes closed, connecting with the universe, looking for guidance about the direction I'm taking. When I opened my eyes a man was sitting next to me and he said :
'I feel a shift occurring within me, and it's something that's difficult for people to get, but it's happening, and I sense it happening all around me...'
What is happening to me ?
I am intellectually keen, I am intelligent, I am articulate, I am grounded.
What should I make of this new belief system that seems to be emerging from within me?
A set of ideas spanning spiritual beings in physical form, divine life purpose, soul groups, karma, cosmic intelligence, shamanic knowledge and energy healing and unity occuring instantaneously or in waves across time and space.
I sense a transformation happening in me. And I too sense this transformation happening on a subtle level all around me.
Whatever is happening, I will share this journey and my expanding awareness within it, here. A journey which I believe we are all on, and which, in its absolute essence, is the journey of Love through time and space.
