Me and all of me

Deeply feeling into the supposed natural sense of things that my nine year marriage was ending. I started having this feeling more than two or three years ago, free the birth of my second child, I fell into a deep postnatal depression. I realised, as I woke at 3.13am to this tiny human and placard him on the change table for a new, clean nappy, and then sat down in bed with my dear one on my breast, and stayed present here in the silence - that I needed a new miracle. One small miracle I asked for, through the skylight window into the night sky. Just one. That he settle back to sleep. And he did. And my trust in the universe was renewed.

Fast forward through antidepressants, a stay in a mental health hospital and ten months of psychiatric therapy and I realised through my therapist that perhaps my questioning was entirely rational and I was not meant to stay in this partnership for ever. Ever and ever. Ever and ever and ever until I die.

So I didn’t.

It began with a quiet knowing that my joy required me to answer the phone to a previous lover who had been calling me and we had spoken, from other continents a couple of times. We had tried to understand one another and forgive one another for the decisions that had brought our engagement to a halt - to a different outcome. We held eachother with some humour and delight; and a little bit of flirtation. We decided to share some more about our lives and I decided to join him for a week - to meet him on his home soil, where we would be in neutral territory since we both needed to travel a great distance to get there. So I wrote my kids letters and packed their bags and explained their needs to the one who would take care for them for a week. And I stepped out of time into a different dimension.

In this new dimension, I rode motorbikes, I reached a long held desire to be in the presence of the river Ganga in Rishikesh, and I practiced the art of opening myself again to intimate connection. It was hard. At first it was a little awkward and yet so deep was the heart’s yearning to be seen and understood again, that I felt compelled to surrender to the process. To completely let go. It happened that this letting go became a waterfall of surrender at the feet of a guru. My guru. Dear Moojibaba.

I had no expectation or prior knowing how deeply this would happen. I had only the reference point of my previous pilgrimage to Arunachala, the holy mountain in south India, the embodiment of Shiva. The stillness that emenates from this mountain and the temple of Ramana Maharishi that is nestled at its feet, reverberates eternally in all directions, throughout time and space. And so too, did this meeting in the present moment, with Mooji baba, outside his home beside the Holy River.

His hand reached out through the car window to take mine. I held it, tenderly, tears coming from my eyes, and we gently, wordlessly placed our hands on my heart. This transmission was outside of time. It had eternally been occurring throughout time and space, only now I was embodying it. The flesh and bones and nerves of this body were actually experiencing what my heart had been desiring since I was a teenager: crying in my bedroom to my father that I belonged in a different culture and didn’t feel at home in our four walls.

I floated from this meeting, and within 24 hours had fallen onto asphalt and cut my chin on the ground. Literally and figuratively tripping over myself to get to satsang where I would hear Mooji speak and be bathed in his presence. The Guru’s grace bestowed on me these circumstances, which allowed me to enter the ashram for the day and eat lunch in Mooji’s presence after seeing the doctor about my chin. And so we were present for a spontaneous chanting Leela, singing and swooning as the heart melted open a little more.

And still, this moment out of time was to finish and I needed to get in a taxi and return to the airport. I had no idea how this could possibly occur, as I sat by the River for the last time and received her blessings.

How would I pack my things, without dissolving into a puddle of tears for not wanting to leave this Holy place. How would I get in a Taxi again with the man who had loved me so much and simultaneously broken my heart. We were pilgrims, together, destined to walk eachother through important doorways for our souls. And so we did. And when we arrived at our temporary overnight accommodation, and held eachother, it was deeply bittersweet, knowing that we would be farewelling eachother again the next morning.

Deeply called. Deeply held. Deeply feeling every microsecond of this parting.