The magic of 2011 and when I started to wake up...

My Spiritual Awakening (written in early 2012)

It was during the summer of 2011 that I began to experience stronger and stronger feelings that I was not in the right place. I was a marine biologist who’d just finished a nutrition degree and was working as a desktop publisher at an investment bank in London – of course I wasn’t in the right place! But how I got there is a whole other story.

I had a deep feeling in me that there was more to life than being squashed up against some guys armpit on the tube and looking at a screen all day. Why don’t other people feel the same? Am I different? Am I missing something other people see? Judging by the glum faces on the tube everyday I didn’t think I was the only one. I wanted to break free. I had an inkling that the universe had a lot more to offer me and I had a lot more to offer to the universe.

I felt I needed to bring about change for myself, but going against the tide of London life seemed scary. There were many things about that life that I wanted to cling on to – having a nice house, having money – what we call ‘security’. However I knew that in order for me to find out more I had to get away from this environment as it didn’t allow me the time to explore my true potential. I had a feeling that once I was in the right environment my full potential would be realised and I was going to unleash amazing things…

the biology of belief

After graduating from my degree I really wanted to leave London but financially I had been crippled by the messy divorce I was going through with my ex-husband at the time. I was desperate for some time out to collect my thoughts and think what direction I wanted to take in life. Then something hit me on the head which helped my life greatly. It was a copy of the book The Biology of Belief. One of my nutrition tutors had recommended it, but I’d been so busy during my studies I’d never got around to reading it. Cleaning up after my final exams it fell off the top of my bookshelf and hit me. Talk about wake up call! Maybe now was the time to read it!

My scientific mind had always been wary of ‘airy fairy’ spirituality stuff, but this book helped bridge the gap between science and spirituality – and that each thought we have has associated energy. I discovered quantum physics. I was hooked. It led me to another book “Ask and You are given. Fantasies of leaving London continued to occupy my mind. Before arriving in London I had always wanted to travel to South America, thoughts of Brazil started coming to me frequently, I began meeting lots of Brazilian people and found myself looking at detox retreats in Brazil on the internet.

Question your daydreams…why does this thought come into my head right now? ~The Celestine Prophecy

It wasn’t long before I was thinking really positively about going to Brazil.  I didn’t really have the money but I was able to cancel the flights I’d booked home to Australia for Christmas and instead bought flights to go Rio de Janeiro. Work wouldn’t allow me any more time off than 2 weeks, but Brazil was calling me in a big way, I just knew I had to go.

Everything happens for a reason…

One of the first miracles that I brought upon myself was spraining my ankle. How is this miraculous you ask?! I had to cancel a holiday to Ibiza and a lot of other plans. But they were things I didn’t really want to do to be honest. I finally had time to process my thoughts and read through some other books that had also been collecting dust such as The Celestine Prophecy. Knowing that detoxing can help the body repair I decided it was an ideal time to do a juice fast. So I ended up home alone for 2 weeks deeply detoxing my body – and my spirit. This was a powerful detoxification – changes were happening inside of me – big changes. I began to have overwhelming feelings of love and deep gratitude for being alive. I became acutely aware of how lucky I was to experience life. I kept thinking about my dreams, what did I want in life, and focused all my energy on this. My friends were calling me, worried that I’d been cooped up for 2 weeks, but as usual everything happens for a reason and after those weeks at home my soul was singing and looking for an escape.

The more I thought about Brazil, co-incidences kept leading me there…

Two weeks before my holiday to Brazil, some crazy things happened. Firstly the bank I worked for got bought out and they were offering voluntary redundancies – I applied straight away and contractually my last day at work would be the day before my flight to Rio. The SAME day I saw my landlord to pay rent. In an apologetic tone he told me that he had sold the flat I had been living in and due to it been a cash sale he could only give me 4 weeks notice to move out….. So all of a sudden I had no job, nowhere to live, but 6 months pay and a ticket to South America…

Follow your bliss, forget your fear and doors will open where there weren’t any before ~ Joseph Campbell

It was 11-11-11 that I left London for that ‘holiday’. Its a holiday I’ve still not returned from. Most people I’ve met since leaving London ask me why I’m travelling. I was unsure myself at first then realised as cliche as it sounded I wanted “To find out who the real me is and to find out about the universe”.

Of course changing location isn’t necessary but it can be helpful getting away from the day to day life that often cages our imagination. After being away a few months I had an epiphany. I discovered that two questions I’d been seeking answers to actually answer each other!! I am the universe and the universe is within me, we are one and the same. It felt like I was seeing the world for the first time. Like I was breathing properly for the first time. It was an incredible realisation, I’ve never felt so happy, so connected, so at one, so at peace, and all of a sudden everything made sense. For a long time I thought of myself as a part of the universe as a separate individual entity – but I am it. Alan Watts says we are all ‘eyes’ of the universe so it can see itself. We are everything, but we only get to experience as one person at a time.

The funny thing is it all felt strangely familiar to me. I guess looking around in amazement like this is how children view the world. Then we lose this gift. We are conditioned to see things in a “real world” way, where money takes pride of place, and our amazement together with our dreams disappear. One of my biggest lessons is to look at the world in wonder again, realise just how amazing life is, rediscover the ordinary things we take for granted. Look at our bodies – they digest our food, produce hormones, our heart beats – all without us even thinking about it or knowing how it happens – a miracle every moment.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein

My experiences kept on becoming deeper and deeper… Ayahuasca in Brazil was a big catalyst, any fear you have is turned into love. I know now why the Amazon tribesmen are so fearless – they face their fears in Ayahuasca. It was during this time that I realised I wasn’t meant to go back to London, that I should continue to follow the path my body was taking me on.

It was a path that led me to Ecuador. I had an amazing spiritual experience rediscovering my love of the sea in the Galapagos Islands. Part of my heart that I hadn’t realised had died came back to life with a jolt when I was swimming like a mermaid again. I realise now that a part of spiritual awakening is feeling increasingly connected to everything around us and this was amplified by me being in the Galapagos.

Each time you fill up with love a meaningful coincidence occurs…allow yourself to be open enough to recognise those co-incidences…what’s my spiritual purpose ~ The Celestine Prophecy

I then went to the town of Vilcabamba in southern Ecuador. Raw food, juicing, permaculture – a model for the way we could live. I was blessed to meet some amazing people there who furthered my spiritual journey by asking me to think about the universe, my place in it, what did I really want from life.

Even though I’d learned a lot I still was unsure about my true loves and the real me.  I realised a lot of what we “know” about ourselves is what other people have told us. I was told I wasn’t good at some things I liked (singing), or that some jobs weren’t possible or suitable for me as a future job (creative writing).

A friend in Ecuador told me to try to remember back to when I was very young and still looked at the world in amazement. I told him I couldn’t remember. He suggested I should ask my parents to send me photos of when I was a small child 5 years old or younger. I looked at the photos. Who was I then, what did I like, what did I want to do before I went to school and thought I should be a doctor because that was a “good” job or before I was coaxed into hobbies and sports I didn’t want to do. Before the social conditioning. Before money was an issue. Before I remember what other people had told me about myself, their opinions.

I liked dancing, when I was three I went to ballet classes, but when I think about it I never really liked the classes. I preferred twirling around in the garden or in front of my bedroom mirror. I guess I liked making up my own steps, not following someone else’s. My well meaning parents of course probably thought this would develop my talent for dancing, but at some level a certain creativity was lost and I entered the rigid world of rules with steps that must be followed. Now I feel it’s time to dance to my own beat again. Recently I saw a poster for an ecstatic dance class – perfect!  It’s such a great expression, just let yourself be free. It's an amazing exercise that energises you and you can feel other people's energy in the room. It’s a very social and bonding experience.

In doing these new activities I’ve realised that I want to express myself more. I’d convinced myself I was scientific and not so creative but this was a self limiting belief that’s simply not true. In looking at the photos of me when I was small I remembered that I’d won several creative writing completions in primary school, but then shoehorned myself into the scientific world where writing had to be short and to the point, no wonder why I was always over the word limit!!

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do, there are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground ~Rumi

I thought about what I’d most like to do, if money wasn’t an issue. I’ve realised that it’s important to produce work with the intention of doing it for myself and the universe and if these works are useful to other people that is a bonus. So I thought about it. I'm curious. Curious about many things, our life, our world, but I love nutrition and I love writing. Learning about nutrition makes me happy and sharing that knowledge with others makes me even happier. My life experiences have lead me to discover my deep love of science and spirituality, which is so funny because I spent such a long time thinking the two were separate. I am utterly taken with the magnificence of our spiritual beings in a human body and as such my love for spiritual nutrition developed. And so, I realise that in part this is my purpose: to bring you spiritual nutrition, to share with you my story, to fuse my scientific understanding with my creative writing skills, to translate this knowledge into a modern engaging language.

After Ecuador I felt a call to return to Brazil where my dream of working in a detox retreat in Brazil was realised. At the same time I had magazine articles published and I launched this website/blog.  I met some monks from the Ananda Marga group and was involved in projects with them such as at the UN Sustainability Conference. Working with them was a blessing. One of the monks mentored me in meditation and I learned to embody their mediation mantra – Baba nam kevalam – Everything is love

And now, Bali has called me where I’m reviewing detox retreats…

But this isn’t meant to be a story about my physical travels, it’s about my spiritual one – my awakening. Don’t focus on the countries, but the experiences. You don’t need to travel the world to awaken as this is a journey that happens inside you.  For me it just so happened this way because it is the way I dreamt it.

Life is a dream, a movie, you have control, what do you want to act out? What do you want to happen next? Where do you want to go? Make it happen. I’m living my dream, and I want you to live yours too.