Hi lostgirl,

I really enjoyed reading your story. To me your story is packed with spiritual richness, that you are really onto something, I sense you realise this? But do not trust it/yourself? Your story brought so many points to mind which I’d love to make.

Your desire to live in the US and innate ability let’s say with the English language reminded me of Paramahansa Yogananda’s desire to go off to the Himalayas in his book Autobiography of a Yogi (have you read it?). I never used to believe in past life stuff, I thought it was a load of nonsense, but reading that book changed all this for me. Anyway, it’s interesting because just like you he had a strong unexplainable urge to go there and made a number of attempts during his youth to escape to there, but each time he was thwarted. He reckoned he was drawn there by a past life experience, but the thing is in the end he never ended up there so I guess he didn’t really have to go there, i.e. it wasn’t an essential component to his life purpose, as you might put it.

It’s funny how you talk about how you came to study film, that “you don’t know why”. You also say the same thing again for going to Montreal. I recently heard a spiritual teacher talk about how people are often asking for advice from God, praying for answers etc, and claiming not to be receiving any answers, but that actually the truth is being communicated to us in lots of subtle ways all the time. He gave the example of how for instance you might see, in my case a hot looking woman, and that there’s a quick and quiet feeling/voice inside that says, “don’t do it”, and the mind often will then question it, why? why shouldn’t I approach her? etc. But the thing is the truth will never justify itself, it just is. He said that it’s given life a free gift, take it or leave it. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that the universal life force if you will is moving through us all the time, we are it. My current spiritual understanding (by no mean infallible) is that “you don’t know why” is perfectly normal. The mind always wants to know (a function of the ego), always wants a reason why, but the higher intelligence is in charge and I’m sure you know by now that you can not reach the spiritual, truth, through the mind. You cannot work it out or get there through your logical reasoning function. From my experience whenever you try to do this you are just stifling the natural movement of life, and this is what I believe is the cause of all our struggles and suffering in life. This is the real meaning of going with the flow, and as it sounds, it’s effortless. However, it is also very difficult to do because it means having complete trust and faith in the universe. This is why you will read about how for spiritual masters life is effortless in this sense. They don’t struggle with life trying to work things out (which incidentally can’t be worked out). I practice Aikido and this is a physical demonstration of this spiritual principle – a few rare times it will happen that someone attacks me and I will throw them and it feels like I didn’t do anything – those times I was told I did it right. However, the majority of the time when someone attacks (life energy comes my way) I TRY to throw them, I struggle a bit, etc, and it just doesn’t work so well. To me it sounds great that at least you have done some of these things (gone with the flow) despite not understanding why, most people probably don’t, I know that for most of my life I haven’t or have at least struggled immensely trying to work things out instead of just letting them happen. To me, all you need to add are the ingredients of faith and trust in the universe and in your process. The book Dying To Be Me by Anita Moorjani helped me massively with this and I’d recommend it to you, it’s a nice read.

The seeing the London signs everywhere is a typical example of what happens when something is on your subconscious mind, it can result in selective seeing in your environment of anything associated with the object of your current desire.

Although you call your life a mess, I would call it a wonderful mess, and I think that is exactly the way life is meant to be. I think that the vast vast majority of people try to reduce the amount of chaos in their lives as much as possible, establish as much constancy and consistency as possible to get those things called security and control (an illusion of the ego). However, by doing this we stifle life. I saw the truth of this about 6 months ago in a certain situation I was in at the time. I really think that most people are effectively dead, they are living but they are not alive in the truest sense, because they have tried to remove themselves from the flow of life (whose nature is unpredictable) and in doing so have removed life itself. I guess this is one of the aspects of separation that spiritual people speak of.

Regarding things not ‘working out’ the first time round in London: “To everything there is a season”. To me there seems a perfect flow to your life story. It may just be that being in London the first time was to put the fire inside you to want to come back, but that the time wasn’t yet ripe for you to stay, that you first had to go through some other things first or/and certain things had to come into place, be set up for you. To me it’s all about trusting the almighty hand, maybe’s he/she is setting things up for you.

Lastly, “Trust Thyself” – Ralph Waldo Emerson. I really don’t think you’re going crazy. It sounds to me from your words that you have a sense that you know something perfectly non-crazy is happening, that again you just need to trust it, trust your own sense about it rather than the words of others. Most people will without doubt say something like that, i.e. maybe you should see someone, that’s it’s some mental dysfunction. People not on the spiritual path will never be able to comprehend such happenings, they cannot. By the same token (and I’m having equal difficulty with this one), as you start to progress in your spirituality, raise your awareness or vibration as some might say, you will start to experience an almighty chasm developing between yourself and family members as they remain in old (commonplace) awareness mode. Again, just as for your opening up experience, any higher knowledge, understanding, ideas, anything, will be incomprehensible to family, or rather only comprehensible at their current level of awareness, so whilst on the surface (intellectually) they will understand, they won’t really understand if that makes sense. It can be extremely frustrating and I’m learning that it’s best not to share it with them. This might sound like the wrong thing to do for some, but I now see that I cannot show them the light as it were, each person must seek it themselves, if they come asking for advice that’s another matter, but I then have to be very careful at giving it according to their current understanding – I’ve not been doing this well at all lately. If you need to talk about higher matters then do it only through equally enlightened individuals (friends/teachers), otherwise much frustration will ensue.

It’s funny, regarding your London situation, I for the last 8 months have had an identical thing for moving somewhere. For much of that time I’ve been trying to work out (I know lol) whether the desire is coming from my heart or from my mind (i.e. universal director or ego desire). You see, I didn’t want to fall into the trap which korkor has made allusion to above – am I just seeking happiness outside myself, in a place, after all the ‘kingdom of God is within’. However, more and more and after much meditation and coming to the conclusion that it’s the right thing for me to do. It’s an example of what on the surface seems like a paradox, which you often come across in spirituality. Yes, you don’t have to go anywhere to find what you are really looking for in life, to find truth, however, I believe that doesn’t mean that you should enforce upon yourself not to go anywhere because you ‘don’t need to’. Again, it’s about not stifling the life force. All I know is that the sense to go keeps arising in me and I’m now getting to a point where I believe I need to let go and do it, I think it will happen in the next few weeks in fact. By the way, clarity has come by stopping trying to work it out and just getting on with life, making more decisions, even if might be the ‘wrong thing’. The clarity has come by allowing myself to keep moving, to keep flowing. It will be interesting to see what happens if/when we both go for it here. For so long I’ve been wanting to jump into the boat of the unknown of following the heart, I’ve read how life flows form this, that one thing will lead to another, things that you’d never guessed come into your life, through the process of allowing. I’m in the process of allowing the allowing and I’m quite excited!

Normally I’d proofread, but that was a long reply and it’s late 🙂

Ben.