Xenia and I have been meeting at Balls Head each Friday as part of a personal development project we are both working on. So lovely to do it in nature. It really is a special place and only a few minutes from home. We are always paid a visit by the local bush turkeys. I love them so much.
I gave it the URL of Life Trove and it created a wonderful, interactive podcast that provides some profound reflections on it. It's so wonderful, it had me close to tears at times.
I particularly liked how it described my life as a combination of external adventure and internal introspection and how these two activities can create a virtuous circle. I'd never thought of it that way before but it resonates as beautifully true.
It was a bumper year for meditation. I meditated an average of 48 mins per day which is over twice what I did last year. Total meditation was 294 hours compared to 126 hours last year.
Notes
I was on holiday in Cape Town. Life had sent me some financial curveballs and was I feeling a little distrustful about its benevolence. I got an Uber to Mum and Mike. Without me mentioning my life or predicament at all, my Uber driver told me how a couple of years ago he was financially destitute. Being God intoxicated, he prayed for help. Then suddenly he was contacted by a Joburg company who offered him the chance to rent a car and end up owning it. It just felt right so he spent his last remaining money to get there. When he arrived at the dealership, he was gobsmacked to discover that his tshirt was exactly the same colour as the ribbon on his new car. "It was a clear sign and it gave me the most extraordinary sense of trust and gratitude" he told me. He drove the car home and used it to generate income as an Uber driver. "It has brought me so much financial prosperity" he said. "Life is good. God is good."
The story brought tears to my eyes. It reminded me of the exquisite benefits of trusting Life and surrendering to it. There is an Infinite Intelligence running the show and I am loved and cared for. Life is not meant to make us happy but to wake us up. So not all will always go to plan. But ultimately all is as it is meant to be and all is unfolding for the ultimate benefit of The All. There is nothing but The All. Life is inherently good.
Below is the photo of him getting the car. He was delighted that he had inspired me and I wanted a copy of it.
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Two wonderful synchronicities on the same day:
In the car, on the way to our weekend away near Ceres, I asked Heather, Russell's mum, a whole lot of questions about her belief in God. Eventually, she exclaimed "You need to get out of your head. God is not an intellectual thing. God is an intuitive experience." We arrived at our destination, at The Fynbos Farm. As we drove to our cottage on the farm, we drove past a large poster that said "Trying to understand with intellect is like chasing a butterfly. Sit quietly and understanding will alight on you."
In the kitchen of our cottage, there was a painting on the wall of 5 green apples. In a bowl, on the counter, were five identical green apples; the apples that Russell had brought for us to eat on the weekend.
To thank me for the site I helped him create for his hypnotherapy practice, Nic did a hypnotherapy session with me. Here is the audio from the session.
I was hiking at La Perouse with Gavin, Srini and Elna. As we walked, we spoke of Gavin's friend, James, who I knew well and liked very much. Gavin said he had asked James to come hiking with us that day, but that he had decided he wanted to do a solitary hike to sort some things out in his head. Half an hour later. we walked out onto an isolated headland to have some lunch. Suddenly who should appear but James! He said he had never hiked at La Perousa before but had decided to explore it on a whim. The chances of us doing the same hike and then meeting in this isolated spot were mind bogglingly tiny.
A few months later, I went birding at Barton Park near Botany Bay. I parked at an isolated parking spot well off the main road and walked into the park. After a couple of hours, as I walked back to the car, I remembered I had switched on my car lights on my early morning drive to the park and had forgotten to switch them off. I made mental peace with it as I returned to the car. When I reached the car, what should I discover, but an NRMA van parked right next to my car. There were no other car in the parking lot. The NRMA driver had parked there to have a short break. I asked him for a jump start and he willingly obliged.
