Category: Diary of a Bodhisattva

It’s nearly exactly seven years since Anadi and I first met…

On December 6th 2012 I made my way to north London to be interviewed by him about my running as a meditation…

Exactly one year later we set off as nomads having shed everything we owned except the essentials we could carry…
For six years we journeyed, until now, when we find ourselves living in London….!

Three things I discovered whilst being a nomad…
1) I love the UK more than anywhere in the world
2) I love the changing seasons
3) I love having a washing machine!
I think I already knew all these things 🙂

I do love to journey – I like moving whilst being still inside – journeying within…
I love journeying anywhere- even on the tube…
These were my reflections on the Piccadilly line yesterday …

‘Staying present, everywhere, witnessing, watching self in motion, expressing through a body a mind . Yoga as life love in motion, through the space beyond body and mind.
Yoga – union with God beyond body mind .
Body mind union allowing the connection to the  silence – and so to express from this space – the truth of who we are.
Always clearing tension so we live in the space beyond… Free to experience life beyond the duality of yin and yang, where the tide is always coming in and always going out again
And so life can becomes an Asana – an opportunity to feel to notice and so the clear the tension
And live in silence
Freedom.

I am writing this on a packed tube from Leicester Square to Earl’s Court. It is hot here and very crowded.
All of us together journeying together
But separate,
Separate sparks of the same energy.
All One
All connected at the source.
And so we journey on an underground train to no where…
Where are we going?
No where.
If we journey within and stay present in the heat of the tube, too many clothes and too many people.
If we journey inwards and listen to our breath we are immediately connected to the infinite state  of consciousness and the core of humanity pulsing with life and possibility.

In every moment all we need do is come back to the breath.
Breathe in breathe out and find the silence at the top and bottom of each breath.

In this space we can experience our true nature, and any time we are triggered and find ourselves clinging to the past, or anxious about an imagined future all we need do is breathe in and out and be silent.

And then life becomes an opportunity to experience ourselves in every moment.

I am journeying to Earl’s court and then to Fulham Broadway and then I will walk to meet Anadi .

I love seeing him, and every time we meet It is like I haven’t seen him for a long long time and I am joyous in his presence.

I met Anadi’s landlord the other night.

He is a retired doctor, with special healing powers. His eyes are bright, clear, warm with the ability to see into a person.

He looked right into me as we spoke, and suddenly he said ‘Julia you are working in the night, you are are helping people when you are asleep as well as when you are awake…’ 

‘I know I am’, I said… I was told this many years ago.. I was 34 years old and I went to visit a medium. Her name was Theresa and she lived in St Leonards – on – sea. She worked with a spirit guide who spoke through her.

I sat with her and she closed her eyes, then she gulped and went into a trance… Immediately another voice came through her and spoke to me for an hour.

The one who spoke through her – a voice that was neither man nor woman – told me that I had incarnated on earth to heal people… The main thing this spirit cautioned me though was not to rush… ‘Things of the spirit happen in their own time’, this voice, who felt like a he to me, said…

He told me I would always be protected, and that there would always be a stream of people to my door seeking wholeness, and that my work was simply to keep clearing the channel, to be the clearest reflection I could possibly be for others to see themselves… To know themselves, to see who they truly are.

My work was to heal myself.. “Healer heal thyself’ this must be my watchword always.

That I must always seek to know my self, my true self.

And then he said, ‘You work with souls during the day, but you also work in your sleep state…You teach and heal souls all through the night…’

I left with all that had been said resonating deeply within me…Words that had rung in my ears from a very young age, were confirmed… ‘To thine own self be true’, my father said to us – he said it often

‘To thine own self be true’.

And this is all that is required that we are true to who we truly are, that we clear in every moment any reactivity or projection of judgement that is coming from our wounded self, our adapted self, the self that we so often believe we are.

The ego, the mind, the created self.

And in clearing and clearing we will connect to the silence within us, the self that is the no self.

And if we listen to this voice, if we listen – and then act from this place – a whole new experience opens up free from the samsara, the duality, the yin and yang, the pain and sorrow – the swings of light and dark in this human experience of polarity.

Instead we can experience the kingdom of heaven on earth.

For his place is within us.

The silence in the breath

Freedom

Our true self.

I am often aware of working in my sleep…I wake up knowing I have been speaking, sharing with others.

Sometimes I have more vivid experiences. I once spoke to a couple who contacted me, because they wanted to do some work together on their relationship with me. They were geographically apart and so I spoke on the phone to one and then the other.

That night I dreamed that we were all sitting together around a table, talking and working things out.

When we all met the next day, they were exactly as they had been in my dream….

It is five years since I have been to a hairdresser. It all began in Spain, before my Spanish was a little more fluido.

 I was very capable of ordering cafe con leche,y tostada o croissant, which stood me in good stead to satisfy my essential life requirement!

But it didn’t feel it would be as relaxing an experience having a haircut!

And so I started to cut own hair, with the help of Anadi… He did the fringe and the length at the back, and I cut the layers in; following the advice of my friend Gill… ‘Just pick the hair up, hold it up high, and cut…!

And so I did just that…

And then two weeks ago, I met my new hairdresser. 

In the street outside a Sassoon salon.

I was there to book some highlights for my niece Jess. She was staying with me and we were having lots of London experiences… This was to be another one to add to the week of London living!

Scott was just about to go into the salon to open up.

He engaged with me immediately, and suggested I come back in twenty minutes when they would be fully open…

Twenty minutes later I was back, to be greeted by him and Mia. 

We booked Jess in and then started to talk… I told them that I was new to living and working in London…

‘Where did you live before?’

‘I was a nomad – for six years’

‘What made you stop?’

‘My inner voice… And – I had a re birth day on my 60th birthday… ‘

I paused… ‘Do you want to hear this story?’

‘Yes yes we love your energy, we want you in our salon, tell us your story…’

And so I did…

They listened fully, to every word, and they heard me deeply.

And then, I glanced at my hair in the mirror behind them… ‘I haven’t been to a hairdressers for 5 years – but I have found you now.’

And so yesterday I arrived for Scott to cut my hair.

‘I was excited when I saw your name in the appointment book’ he said, ‘I’m glad you came back’… ‘I was always coming back I said…’

As Richard Bach says in Illusions… ‘Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years…’

And as he washed my hair and cut it – we had a conversation that was far reaching and expansive… About energy and creativity about sport, relationship, about evolution expansion development — and about truly a listening to one another.

And while we chatted, he cut my hair exactly as I have been cutting it.

He had asked my what I wanted, and as way of an answer, I had told him my ‘hair cutting’ story…

And so he began, and he followed my own attempts on my hair.

He had listened to me and my hair, and listened with his scissors – and he has made it the same, but much much better!

I jogged today through the Sussex countryside damp dripping wet from the 4am rain, puddles stretching across the road, sun shining on the fields, now brown and fallow, glinting through the trees magnificent in autumn attire, green red gold.

These lanes I know so well. 

I ran miles and miles and miles through them in the 90’s. Mile after mile. Winding my way to fitness, speed, endurance… Competition, fast times…

I have been back here to work. I have been here all week.

Yesterday evening Anadi joined me, and as we left the restaurant that we had supper in, I commented, ‘I remember the feel of November here… It feels like I remember.’

In the loo of the restaurant I had seen a poster advertising their New Year’s eve event for 2020… ‘I remember your event for welcoming in 2000’ I said to the owner.

I was there …

Remembering… I was there, but it is like it never happened. It never happened

The person I was is gone. The life I was leading then is gone.

And all that remains is now.

Our past disappearing like the wake of a boat.

And now, being here all week long, it feels like London and my new life there is a myth – I made it all up… A dream I had, which I have woken from and find myself back here, in these Sussex Lanes.

Jogging along my never ending running path, taking me no where.

Which is why I like it.

The road that never ends, that goes no where and yet gives me endless lessons in Zen…

Being here, now…

I have journeyed on this running road for so long, step after step; seeking the way, the direction, a destination – only to discover, there is none

The steps go no where except within.

And so I keep going running anyway, along this road I have never travelled before, to become.

More free.

Yesterday Anadii and I caught the river boat instead of the tube.

We journeyed from the Embankment to Battersea, ‘disembarked’ and then walked the rest of the way back through the park… Along the long tree lined avenue, with fallen leaves golden brown dry; beside the grey expanse of river, bright skies above.

Past the Buddha statue golden huge on his white seat… The bustle of stalls readying, appearing just for for the fireworks that night.

Celebrating gunpowder treason and plot!

Families out together, babies in prams, children racing and couples wandering.

A Saturday afternoon in London Town where I now live!

Six years of nomadic life seemingly gone in a flash…

Like it never happened.

I have stopped travelling with all I own in a rucksack. And I have landed, but not where I began…

In any way at all.

The surroundings are different, and I am different.

In truth living without a base to return to – does not truly suit me. 

As a child I was often sick before going away on holiday  – ‘Oh poor little thing. She doesn’t like going away’, my Mother would say… Off we would go, and I would settle in and have a marvellous time – only to cry when it was time to leave again…!

However my inner compass moved me to shed all I owned six years ago and take the road less travelled… And even though at times I yearned for my old life, I knew that I must keep travelling, keep letting go, keep clearing the way.

Journeying within.

And then early this year, in February I sensed the time of journeying as a nomad was drawing to a close.

I had shed not just my possessions but so much from within too.

I was lighter.

And then on my 60th birthday I shed my body and my mind too.

I collapsed on the bathroom floor at 6.30am – for no physical reason – all subsequent medical tests revealed me to be super healthy.

I left my body. I experienced a sense of aliveness, awareness, vast expanse, silence, freedom and I was zooming along at great speed towards a dot in the distance…

I had shed everything – even my self.

And then I heard Anadi calling me… And I came back.

And now a new adventure, a new life in London Town is opening up before me.

I remember how helpful I found it when I was first shown how when we point a finger at someone – the other three point straight back at us!

Those three fingers are the ones that we must immediately become more interested in than the pointy one –  if we are to be free…

Free of projection, free from the hurt inside us from which the finger is pointing

Free.

It takes practise. It IS a practise to always remember to examine first our own process… Where is our vision clouded? Where are we seeing through the filter of our own story? Our own wounds – the self that is of the mind, rather than of our essence?

Our truth

Our silence

When we start to point and say… ‘He did’ ‘she did’ ‘he always’ ‘she always…’ ‘Did you see that’?

Then it is the time to look where those other three fingers are pointing – straight back at us…

I love being surrounded by people… I like people very much – their essence, their energy – meeting along the way, as we travel our earthly path together.
We encounter one another in every moment; on buses, trains, planes, coffee shops, restaurants – and in the street, out in the countryside – up mountains, by the sea…

We meet ourselves in the souls of others, who are reflecting back both our hurt to clear – and deeper than that – our essence, our one ness.
If we care to look
Within
At the other
Our self
Namaste – I honour the part in me that is the part in you.

When I was young – in my 20’s – I yearned to retreat, to withdraw from the challenges of living in society.

The possibility of ‘getting it wrong’, seemed to present itself at every turn.
But I learnt that ‘getting it wrong’, is how we learn, how we heal and grow…
How we get it right.
Only to discover that there is no right or wrong
Way – after all.
Only the journey within.

I intuitively knew that my spiritual path must be along the rough and tumble of my life.
This is where I would learn to love…
Myself
And others.

And so I stayed in society and lived fully!
And I made so many mistakes!

But the road less travelled has always lead me back to my self
In every moment – as long as whenever I felt to point my finger I followed the other three back to within

To find silence

I love journeying to nowhere.

Travelling on a plane or a train, with a the sense of no where to go and nothing to do.

A sense of purpose in not going anywhere…

Even when there is a destination ahead, it allows the moment to shimmer in its glorious essence and for the ‘not knowing’ to be fully experienced.

The journey of life going nowhere, only inward to truth. 

The inner journey asks that we become at ease with the unease of uncertainty; to become certain that in each moment we have all there is to step into the new unknown next moment.

Often we might stay trapped in patterns, even those we don’t like much, because they are familiar, known, uncomfortably comfortable.

But the new is unknown… And this is its gift, its expansion, its limitlessness…

And so once again, I find myself writing on a plane , six miles high, enjoying the in between land… But journeying to Edinburgh is an up and down voyage, no sooner have we set off, that it seems preparations to land are in action…

My brother suggested when I told him of my love of journeying, my enjoyment of the in between world of one moment, time suspended – that I take the train to Edinburgh – longer to be in that space, to feel tangibly the essence of the words the Buddha spake

3000 possibilities in each moment, the potential in every moment for the past to heal and for the future to be new.

I believe my brother is right, another time, I will journey by train, and watch the countryside flash by for mile after mile, while I stay still.

I feel very glad to be starting a diary blog again…

I kept a daily diary from the age of 14 to 22 and have since then written blogs and books and scribbled in notebooks.

And so here I am turning up again on my road less travelled, to share some of the steps I take towards freedom.

Which is our birthright, it is there for each and every one of us, and the keys lie within.

Because the freedom is within and when we find the keys we discover that the door to our cage was never locked.

It has been open all the time and all we had to do was spread our wings and fly.

But to fly free and light we must first let go of all that is heavy inside, all we believe to be who we are, all the stuff if our life – of lifetimes.

The story of our life can be charged with energy and reactivity and attachment to the hurts.

Which means that the past crowds into the present and our future…

But when we decide the time has come let go, to surrender then we can start to remember who we truly are….

I ran in the rainy grey sky along the grey river to the park, wet damp with dripping trees and sodden grass, shiny roads. The whizz of bikes and the pad of running feet.

This park that I raced races around many times, many years ago.

A track I once trained on as a ‘twenty-something’ full of ambition and burning zeal.

And today I find myself here again.

The burning zeal and ambition have left.

They left when they were done, when they were ready.

I let them go again and again, surrendered to the silence, felt free – for a while – but then back they always came, and so I followed their energy to feel it, to experience it – to see where it took me, to discover, running to learn…

What I needed to let go of, what I needed to clear, to surrender…

And then one day it seemed they were gone – I was left with the step.

Just the one

And the next

Revealing the path.