Tomorrow I catch a flight back to England after nearly two years in America. As long as I can remember I expected to live in the US. I don’t know if you can call it a calling, or if it was something that was part of my ‘to do’ list I set out before I was born. I had a deep knowing that there was something important for me in America. As I have been chasing the tale of the spiritual path, America always seemed to be where the spiritual speakers came from. I don’t know if I thought I would fine ‘my people’ here (whatever that means), but I did expect to find love.
If you think there is something wrong in your life that love will satisfy, love will disappoint you. The only thing that can make your life feel satisfactory is the kind of living in the moment that self love brings. The driving force that leads you to seek love is an emptiness that isn’t made to feel full by love. The only love that makes you feel full is self love. When you know love of yourself as a divine force (beneath the ego self) then you find the divinity in others that allows you to share love fully.
I found love in America, I am so happy I will be taking that love with me. It is sharing the very seat on the flight and will now be a part of my life always. I bit of ebb and flow I am sure. Even self love isn’t something to take for granted! I have also leant from America how to verbally express that self love. Many variations to say no thank you, and many ways to express when something is not OK. I love being English for our inbuilt politeness chip, but it also needs a finger flip switch. I still haven’t got one of those, it’s still a polite authentic self I have found!
At the end of a journey, you recall as much as you can. What was my vision for coming? Can I class this successful? Did I do the right thing? I have heard and used the expression hind sight is 20/20 vision, but I don’t think it is. You can only feel what your past meant to you. Recalling a past as accurate as remembering a dream. In fact it is a dream; only in its recall does it have a meaning. When in reflection you know what it ‘feels’ to be to you. When I remember my past, it looks just like I am remembering a dream. Often no more real or vivid, to the point where I could convince myself that it never happened. I can even sit in the present moment and view it with the emotions as if I was recalling a memory of something I have lost. Sometimes when sitting with friends I do this. I look at them with the eyes as if I had moved on from this moment. I feel the moment as deeply as I look at it as if I was flicking the scene though a photograph album. I live it like I have to the time to appreciate it. I miss the friends sitting right in front of me. If I could live each moment with this depth of mind I would taste and feel everything so differently.
Tomorrow New York turns into what San Francisco turned into,and what London turned into before it, a memory in dream like quality like it never happened. The only way I can be sure it did is the impact of feelings it has imbedded into my soul. Tomorrow it will be me in the luminal space of the flight, looking back in-between movies and trying not to cry at the odd song on the ipod.
I am so ready to come back to a place where I can build with roots (without a government time frame). I look forward to my US friends coming to the UK on visits and I to visit them. But right now as I sit at the window in the New York City heat, I feel such overwhelming gratitude for so many things. However the most humble and painful gratitude is to the people I met and the people who I left in England, who supported me, laughed with me and loved me. (Also to the people who left stuff on the streets for me to find that made life so much easier. This morning ipod docking station and radio for my last 24 hours, which is stressful with out tunes!) If you ‘buggers’ are bored you might just read this and know how much I love you. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten.