I was talking to P.
"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
'What does it all mean, do you think?'
********************************************************
I was in a coffee shop in Edinburgh.
2.45pm.
My first time there during the day.
I wondered how I'd ever know.
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.
And suddenly I'm in love with everything.
