I was unhappy, I had hoped marriage and a child would fulfil the void I felt in my life, I had almost resigned myself to living a half-life, making do and coping, and yet there came a series of events which would change my-life. During a very turbulent year (including separating from my husband and some huge heartache), I kept wanting to run away, to go to India….it just kept popping into my consciousness.
I would describe myself as an atheist, being quite anti religion in my youth, yet I believed there was a universal energy that connected us, and it was this that guided me towards meditation, I started meditating and felt such great benefits, people smiling at me, being able to cope with the day, and I was lucky enough to have an amazing friend who taught spirituality, who guided me with helpful books and meditations, this was the beging, jump forward a couple of years and my friend was taking a group of her students to India, I knew I wanted to go. The logistics where no easy feat, yet everything fell in to place.
So with no real idea about what I was doing, I flew to Chennai from London and met up with the group of Australians in the hotel. I was a complete spiritual novice, I recall being on the bus to the ashram and wondering what they were all talking about, mantras, mudras, etc it was a foreign language! I really was running before I could walk!
The trip was life changing, it was not easy to sit in Pooja for several hours, my mind would wander, in invariably it would get stuck on “is God real” or versions of that theme… my ego was desperate to find some way out. This along was a lot of my stuff being shown to me, and some good old karma clearing, it was a bit of a rough ride for a few days. I would say to myself well if there is a God then please show me X, and sure enough X would happen.. I did several tests like this, all where answered and yet still my mind questioned (after all this is the job of the mind).
One day I took myself off for a walk, I wandered out of the ashram complex to some local waste land where there were several boys playing cricket, it was hot, dusty, and they had makeshift equipment, yet as I sat there a sense of deep peace fell over me, it was as if the light suddenly connected with me, I felt love, I felt God and felt peace, I remember laughing to myself, all these hours in temple and yet I found God watching cricket.
From that moment on, my ego calmed, I was able to meditate more deeply and there was a lot more joy, several weeks after returning from India I recall waking up in the morning and realising I felt happy, this wasn’t a happy something good has just happened, it was a deep sense of joy, I knew something in me had shifted. The light was shining through, the door was open and I now knew the path my soul was destined to walk.
Laura Hamblyn Holistic Healer 