The importance of being mindful.....

I'm finding it difficult to write this blog entry. I think this is because I have declared this blog to be a spiritual record and sometimes I don't feel spiritual.. What I mean by that is that I aim to see a spiritual purpose in everything that happens to me and around me. Sometimes though, like today the day is kind of humdrum and I don't look for the spiritual possibilities in human events. The day began as normal with me getting up to write my blog. I then showered and walked to work.

Once at work I turned on my computer and then gazing out at the view from my window I felt a restlessness and impatience. I'm so aware that the work I am doing is not making a difference to the lives of others and yet I insist in staying there so I can pay my mortgage. I speak of the importance of courage and yet it is me who is showing so little courage that I am selling my soul for a paycheck. I look at my colleagues who are so good at their job and often think how much easier my life would be if I was more left brained than right. But then I immediately check myself and feel ashamed that I should think this given all the grace I have been given.

All during today I was restless. I had a phone call with my brother and it had turned my cosy largely uncomplicated world upside down. What I was amazed at though was how calm I was when we were discussing what was quite upsetting. What I realised is that up to now I haven't taken responsibility for things in the human realm. My thinking was 'I am spiritual' normal everyday things don't bother me and as a result I haven't taken responsibility for some of the decisions I have made that are now coming back to haunt me. But ignorance is no defence. My sense of foreboding that I started this week with has now got a shape and it's real and is not going to go away. As a result of this phone call I was distracted for much of the day. I put papers down and then couldn't find them. I was short tempered with colleagues. Where was all my spiritual training now. The human qualities of fear and apprehension and wanting something to go away was much stronger than my preaching on acceptance of every situation as the way it is.

After work I went to the first evening of another seminar that I am doing. I blossom when I am in an environment where the sole reason and purpose of life is the transformation of others and then of life itself. When I am listening to all of this I have a deep sense of peace and contentment that is only matched by going out in nature. I didn't have time to eat anything before the start of the seminar so I bought a fruit bar for afterwards. When the evening finished I convinced myself that I hadn't eaten anything since lunch except a biscuit mid-way through the afternoon so therefore I must be hungry. I sat in my car and was so hell bent on eating my bar that I started up the car and moved off without any lights!

Completely ignorant of the fact that I had no lights on I set off on a busy London road. I turned the corner to get out of the road and continued past a couple of sets of traffic lights. I didn't notice anything wrong. Then suddenly there was this police car flashing its lights furiously behind me. Firstly I was confused. If it wanted to get out then why didn't it go. Then suddenly I had a thought that froze me and I realised that my lights weren't on and knew that the disco lights were for me. I saw an arm go out of the driver's window signalling me to pull over. I did this and the burly man said 'please get out and stand at the back of the car'. I did this. He then said 'you have been driving up until a couple of minutes ago without any lights'. I explained that 'yes I was aware of that now'. He looked at me keenly and said 'have you been drinking'. I answered honestly 'no'. He then said 'are you sure'. I said 'no I've been at a fantastic seminar and my mind was so full of things I had learned that I drove off without putting on the lights. I am very sorry officer'.

There was one of those full and pregnant pauses where my mind was going crazy with thoughts like 'oh God where is this going to end' and 'I'm going to get a fine for dangerous driving, this is all I need with what I am already dealing with'. All of this was going through my head but the amazing thing was how calm I was. He appeared satisfied with my explanation or maybe there was no other option for him. He let me go with a warning to be 'more careful driving around London'. Getting back into the car I was shaky. How could I have been so stupid as to drive the car without any lights. And yet, here was the universe again being its usual kind and benevolent self with a gentle reprimand. It was a huge lesson to me in the importance of being mindful.

As a result of this I have never felt less spiritual. I feel like a failure as a human with zero potential to make the transformation to the spiritual. I am sure that there are some readers feeling the same about me. Some may be asking why has she set herself up to be this human case study when all it's doing is making her look stupid. When I ask myself why I am continuing to promote this blog as a spiritual one when all it is doing is demonstrating how non spiritual I am, I am reminded of some of the words on the tape I received from a medium/clairvoyant I wrote to years ago. I wrote to this guy following the first experience of when energy rose from the base of my spine. It was in a perfectly ordinary setting - at work on a Saturday morning when I was in the office with a colleague. In my letter I spoke about my years studying Buddhism, my trip to India, the inner voice that told me to 'give everything up' when returned from India and wondered what to do and then this experience that resulted in a peace and calm that I never had before. I asked him what the experience was and what it meant for me. I have spoken about my wariness of people who contact spirits from the metaphysical world. There is no doubting the Truth of the messages that come through this channel but I question whether the source of the message is their own consciousness that they then attribute to something else. This man contacts the Ascended Masters and they speak through him.

What I liked about the way this guy dealt with my letter was that he didn't go straight into a reading by the Masters. He explained on the tape that he wanted to give me an impression of what the letter said to him and what he felt it meant before he handed over to the Masters. I felt greatly reassured by this and it made me listen to what he said more intently. What he and then the Masters said is lengthy. I am going to copy just a couple of sentences. It is these sentences that drive me to keep going when everything is screaming at me to stop. This is the only thing that makes me write this blog when like this morning at 5am it is the very last thing I want to do.

Extract from reading: And I feel that this experience needs to be shared. Not to be understood or examined or taught but simply to be shared. And the sharing of the story in combination with the peace and the harmony that you radiate and the human frailty that you still exhibit, your fears and your concerns and your unknowing I think will have a very alchemical affect on people, I think it will change and shift them. I think it will inspire them and give them hope. And in a world where there isn’t a great deal of inspiration or hope particularly in the spiritual community which is one based on many many false promises and false prophesies I think your story would change peoples lives - Edwin Courtenay - well known clairvoyant in London. His website is http://www.edwincourtenay.co.uk/

This reading was given to me in 2002. It has taken me until a year ago to prepare myself to take this on. As I have often written I am ordinary. What I am committing to is hugely scary for me. There is nothing I would like more than to ignore all this but there is something that wants me to be bigger than I want to be and it is to this that I am responding but also fighting against. When I first listened to the tape the enormity of what I seemed to be asked to do was just so big that I promptly forgot about the tape and its contents. I remembered it again five years later when I had almost finished writing my book 'Journey to Self'. One morning I woke up and my first thought was about finding the tape and putting it into the book. I have transcribed the full reading in my book.

So when I am riddled by doubts about my experiences and their purpose I am reminded of these words. And when like today I am feeling shaky about the shifts that are happening in my life I put these aside and share to 'change people's lives and give them inspiration and hope'. The path from perception and judgement to knowledge and acceptance through the certainty of knowing is not well lit. It involves nothing less than full and complete surrender to the will of a benevolent universe......