Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Surrender, Trust & Gratitude in Egypt: Part 2
The Story Continued
So there I was alone in the Bates Novotel in Cairo. My luggage was missing and all I had was the clothes I was travelling in, a souvenir from Egypt t-shirt, a toothbrush and a hideous pink swimming costume that was haemorrhaging pink dye all over the bathroom. All that was needed to complete the picture was some young guy dressed as his mother wielding a knife, slashing away at the shower curtain.
My Dark Night of the Soul
It seems fairly pathetic in retrospect that I should have been plunged into a crisis just because my luggage was missing, but this is what happened. I tried to sleep but it was proving impossible. My mind was churning over and over, I was formulating contingency plan after contingency plan. I was trying to cover every possible disastrous scenario of where my bag might be and when, if ever, I would see it again. Every time I thought I had settled my mind down, that I had covered all the possibilities, I would remember something else and start again from the beginning. The main problem was the dreadful frustration I was feeling about not being in control of the situation. I had no faith what so ever that anyone at the airport would be efficient and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. This was the crux: there really was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Of course I knew that the more negative energy and stress I poured into this situation the less likely it became that things would turn out well. But what could I do? It was now quite late and I really needed to sleep, I was absolutely exhausted and facing another long day starting at 3.00am. The situation was made more difficult by the fact that my room overlooked the pool where weird disco music played incessantly. What the bloody hell was going on? What was I doing here? I had been so sure that I was doing the right thing in taking on this trip. I’d spent loads of money that I could ill afford, I’d given up the opportunity to be with people I really love in Assisi, I was taking what should have been an amazing spiritual trip and I felt like poo and just wanted to go home. Pull yourself together girl!
I think that eventually I simply was too tired to resist any longer. Somehow I got myself to the point where I truly let go of the situation. I got myself to the point where I truly surrendered. I decided that there was nothing I could do about my lost bag and that anything could happen and so there was no longer any point in making contingency plans for imagined scenarios. All I could do was to wait and deal with whatever happened in the moment, making the best decision at the time. Interestingly this was not so much an intellectual understanding as an energy shift. As soon as it happened I fell asleep almost at once, it was amazing. The next thing I knew it was 2.45am and I was wide-awake. I decided to use the number I had been given and phone the airport to find out if my bag had turned up. Feeling anxious I picked up my mobile and I dialled the number, there was a discouraging beepy tone followed by a message in Arabic. Oh man! I knew it. Then an English message followed telling me the number I had dialled had not been recognised. I knew this would happen. With little hope I tried variations on the number in case I had misread a 1 as a 7 or whatever. No good. So I started to look for a number for a travel rep. As I did this the bedside phone rang. It was my 3.00am wake-up call. I replaced the handset and it rang again almost immediately. Someone was trying to tell me something about my bag in broken English. Finally they made me understand that the bag was in the hotel reception area and that I needed to come down and sign for it! This was an outcome I had not foreseen or planned for! It was the most unlikely thing of all to have happened. I was beside myself with joy and gratitude. Please fly Alitalia!
It All Makes Sense.
So that was a long story, taking place over 24 hours. I was physically and emotionally drained. But, crucially, I was also enlightened.
How could I expect to embark on a major spiritual adventure and not expect to be challenged? If you want to be a heavy hitter, if you want to play with the big boys you have to be prepared to face up to your vulnerabilities. So I was off to a great start! My crumple buttons had been well and truly pressed. What does it for me? Issues around being late and losing my stuff. All issues to do with control. “Control” is the big word here.
I had to laugh at myself – and it wouldn’t be the last time I did that on the trip. Here was I pontificating about surrender, trust and gratitude, I was even running a workshop with that title. Well they say you tend to teach what you yourself most need to learn, how true. I’d just taken a 24 hour-long master class in the subject! I was soon to realise that this was going to be a feature of the trip. I found that I worked through some of my major vulnerabilities on this trip, all my shit came up in fact, but it was all in a very compact time frame. Stuff that would normally take years to recognise and process, I was zipping through it in a matter of days or hours.
After this salutary experience I was able to let go of my need to control everything. Really. I really, really was. This of course affected and informed the rest of the trip, half the time I didn’t even know where we were going next. This is why I found it easy to let go of my plans for a peace prayers ceremony at the axis of the Christ Consciousness grid. I stopped worrying about coordinating times with Beloveds and friends in the rest of the world. I allowed my intuition to guide me in many things. Guess what? This is still happening.
Post Script
Oddly just as I wrote the last phrase of the previous paragraph my son Arthur appeared at my side. It was 2.10pm and he had just got out of bed (teenagers!). He was not looking bright-eyed and bushy tailed having arrived home around 4.00am this morning after a clubbing trip “Up West” last night. In typical Arthur fashion he reminded me that I’d promised to give him a lift this afternoon and we needed to go NOW. Had he eaten yet? No. How irritating, I was just about to go out and have a swim, go to the bank etc. I looked at what I’d just been writing. I sighed and I sent him to make a sandwich then bundled him into the car and drove him to Wimbledon. I was driving across Wimbledon Common on the way home when, on a whim, I decided to drive to a part of the common I used to go to in order to walk my dog, probably been 18 years since I was last there. I parked my car in the old familiar place and walked a little way into my most usual dog-walk route of old.
I found myself stopping at a spot called Caesar’s Well. This was where my partner Roger and I had sprinkled the ashes of the child we lost in 1986. It is a spot that holds many memories of dog walking and also playing with my daughter Amy in the well itself. I was knocked out by the energy there, it was really, really powerful. I stayed there for quite a while in the end, about an hour. I found myself slipping into an enhanced state of awareness where the trees and the ground itself seemed to pulsate. It was a beautiful experience. So I guess I have to say “Thank you” to Arthur for disrupting my plans for the afternoon thus enabling me to have a magical experience!
Strange but true.
I’m going to post this blog now before anything else happens!
So there I was alone in the Bates Novotel in Cairo. My luggage was missing and all I had was the clothes I was travelling in, a souvenir from Egypt t-shirt, a toothbrush and a hideous pink swimming costume that was haemorrhaging pink dye all over the bathroom. All that was needed to complete the picture was some young guy dressed as his mother wielding a knife, slashing away at the shower curtain.
My Dark Night of the Soul
It seems fairly pathetic in retrospect that I should have been plunged into a crisis just because my luggage was missing, but this is what happened. I tried to sleep but it was proving impossible. My mind was churning over and over, I was formulating contingency plan after contingency plan. I was trying to cover every possible disastrous scenario of where my bag might be and when, if ever, I would see it again. Every time I thought I had settled my mind down, that I had covered all the possibilities, I would remember something else and start again from the beginning. The main problem was the dreadful frustration I was feeling about not being in control of the situation. I had no faith what so ever that anyone at the airport would be efficient and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. This was the crux: there really was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Of course I knew that the more negative energy and stress I poured into this situation the less likely it became that things would turn out well. But what could I do? It was now quite late and I really needed to sleep, I was absolutely exhausted and facing another long day starting at 3.00am. The situation was made more difficult by the fact that my room overlooked the pool where weird disco music played incessantly. What the bloody hell was going on? What was I doing here? I had been so sure that I was doing the right thing in taking on this trip. I’d spent loads of money that I could ill afford, I’d given up the opportunity to be with people I really love in Assisi, I was taking what should have been an amazing spiritual trip and I felt like poo and just wanted to go home. Pull yourself together girl!
I think that eventually I simply was too tired to resist any longer. Somehow I got myself to the point where I truly let go of the situation. I got myself to the point where I truly surrendered. I decided that there was nothing I could do about my lost bag and that anything could happen and so there was no longer any point in making contingency plans for imagined scenarios. All I could do was to wait and deal with whatever happened in the moment, making the best decision at the time. Interestingly this was not so much an intellectual understanding as an energy shift. As soon as it happened I fell asleep almost at once, it was amazing. The next thing I knew it was 2.45am and I was wide-awake. I decided to use the number I had been given and phone the airport to find out if my bag had turned up. Feeling anxious I picked up my mobile and I dialled the number, there was a discouraging beepy tone followed by a message in Arabic. Oh man! I knew it. Then an English message followed telling me the number I had dialled had not been recognised. I knew this would happen. With little hope I tried variations on the number in case I had misread a 1 as a 7 or whatever. No good. So I started to look for a number for a travel rep. As I did this the bedside phone rang. It was my 3.00am wake-up call. I replaced the handset and it rang again almost immediately. Someone was trying to tell me something about my bag in broken English. Finally they made me understand that the bag was in the hotel reception area and that I needed to come down and sign for it! This was an outcome I had not foreseen or planned for! It was the most unlikely thing of all to have happened. I was beside myself with joy and gratitude. Please fly Alitalia!
It All Makes Sense.
So that was a long story, taking place over 24 hours. I was physically and emotionally drained. But, crucially, I was also enlightened.
How could I expect to embark on a major spiritual adventure and not expect to be challenged? If you want to be a heavy hitter, if you want to play with the big boys you have to be prepared to face up to your vulnerabilities. So I was off to a great start! My crumple buttons had been well and truly pressed. What does it for me? Issues around being late and losing my stuff. All issues to do with control. “Control” is the big word here.
I had to laugh at myself – and it wouldn’t be the last time I did that on the trip. Here was I pontificating about surrender, trust and gratitude, I was even running a workshop with that title. Well they say you tend to teach what you yourself most need to learn, how true. I’d just taken a 24 hour-long master class in the subject! I was soon to realise that this was going to be a feature of the trip. I found that I worked through some of my major vulnerabilities on this trip, all my shit came up in fact, but it was all in a very compact time frame. Stuff that would normally take years to recognise and process, I was zipping through it in a matter of days or hours.
After this salutary experience I was able to let go of my need to control everything. Really. I really, really was. This of course affected and informed the rest of the trip, half the time I didn’t even know where we were going next. This is why I found it easy to let go of my plans for a peace prayers ceremony at the axis of the Christ Consciousness grid. I stopped worrying about coordinating times with Beloveds and friends in the rest of the world. I allowed my intuition to guide me in many things. Guess what? This is still happening.
Post Script
Oddly just as I wrote the last phrase of the previous paragraph my son Arthur appeared at my side. It was 2.10pm and he had just got out of bed (teenagers!). He was not looking bright-eyed and bushy tailed having arrived home around 4.00am this morning after a clubbing trip “Up West” last night. In typical Arthur fashion he reminded me that I’d promised to give him a lift this afternoon and we needed to go NOW. Had he eaten yet? No. How irritating, I was just about to go out and have a swim, go to the bank etc. I looked at what I’d just been writing. I sighed and I sent him to make a sandwich then bundled him into the car and drove him to Wimbledon. I was driving across Wimbledon Common on the way home when, on a whim, I decided to drive to a part of the common I used to go to in order to walk my dog, probably been 18 years since I was last there. I parked my car in the old familiar place and walked a little way into my most usual dog-walk route of old.
I found myself stopping at a spot called Caesar’s Well. This was where my partner Roger and I had sprinkled the ashes of the child we lost in 1986. It is a spot that holds many memories of dog walking and also playing with my daughter Amy in the well itself. I was knocked out by the energy there, it was really, really powerful. I stayed there for quite a while in the end, about an hour. I found myself slipping into an enhanced state of awareness where the trees and the ground itself seemed to pulsate. It was a beautiful experience. So I guess I have to say “Thank you” to Arthur for disrupting my plans for the afternoon thus enabling me to have a magical experience!
Strange but true.
I’m going to post this blog now before anything else happens!
