FOREWARD

One day I decided to play a game with my friends and asked them to give me the first thing that came to mind when I said: LIFE. I thought I’d get a magnificent platter of exquisite attributes and interesting delicacies; lots of chocolate, cream, vanilla and cinnamon. I was also prepared to encounter the odd sour grape, and perhaps a few indigestible morsels of tough meat. But an overall general opinion ranking at least B+!!

But what I got was quite astounding! I was pinned to the wall, speechless, by the potent dose of ‘indigestibility’!  Instead of a ballroom of beautiful glass chandeliers glistening like stars and a long golden table laden with a rhapsody of flavours and aromas, I found myself waging the worst battle, in a damp, cold trench, with mud in my mouth and an intolerable stench, finding it hard to breathe, choking on the word ‘shit’ that was being repeated time after time! Was this possible? Were we so disgusted by life that we had become warriors who knew nothing more than to fight and keep fighting? Was there nothing else?

And I see more and more sad people around me, more and more bent heads, gloomy streets and tired steps; it is as if we have lost the gift and our eyes have been smothered, and even when a spark appears, it soon dissolves and vanishes into impassiveness, tasteless, without a trace. And everything becomes bland to the touch!

Yet the birds keep singing, trying so hard to beautify each moment, but the noise drowns their song and no one hears them. The sun dissolves in the west with hues accompanied by the most glamorous of cloud ballets, and before it vanished behind the horizon, it blushes with shame as there is no audience to see it, no one to cast a fleeting glance except for a small, lonely and wandering smile searching for a face on which it might land and blossom into a million different coloured flowers and tickle the hearts of the world so that it might sing an ode to joy! But there is no one; it seems that everyone is occupied with their own worries!

And yet we need so little, a different perspective, a small thought, which once it starts rolling, will create miracles and start an avalanche of change. All we need is one single word, from the heart and of a truth that know no bounds, one that knows all that it can and wants. All we need is a spark that will ignite the fire within us and free us of the dust and the damp in the trenches. We need love, pure, honest and sacred to warm our hearts and to help us to fall in love with ourselves, with life, the world, clouds and birds; to help us to fall in love with the truth and smiles and vibrations; to help us to fall in love with playfulness, the morning and silence; to help us to fall in love with a tree standing by the roadside, innocent and sweet and existing solely so that it might be reflected in the eye of the Universe.

And the world will dance a tango with you, wrapped in the scents of cinnamon and chocolate!  How satisfying and magnificent!!!!!

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS THE DECISION

One thing is certain: we are experts in various forms of escapism. We adore pretending to be crazy, turning our heads away from ourselves and pretending that everything is just fine. And what’s worse, we don’t give up; we spend half of our lives doing this, sometimes even longer. In the meantime, we stand steadfast in our beliefs that we need to change everything around us – our friends, our bosses, politics, stupid rules, lovers, the rule of nature and the universe. Watch out world because here I come and I’m going to change everything!

But it doesn’t seem to be working, does it?

Admit, how many times have you wanted to change someone or something just because he or it is not right? Every time we come across something we don’t like, we want to change it, even if it means banging into walls. And in the end we always end up by getting hurt. What else can we do? And, what then? And then we realise that we can’t go around changing the world around us, so we give up, and we give up on finding a solution to our problem. It all seems so logical – we give up because we can’t solve it, not through lack of trying, because we’ve almost killed ourselves trying, we’re exhausted from trying to explain things to the person we want to change, but because we failed to do so. He doesn’t get that he should change, he sees himself as just fine. In fact, he would like to change you, because you’re the problem; he’s not the problem, you are, and he has almost killed himself trying to change you and you haven’t budged, not an inch, or a step.And then we realise we are trapped in a vicious circle. Like any other physical activity, whirling around in circles wears us out, so we give up; we’re nervous, disappointed and feel sorry for ourselves. That’s when we decide to escape into all sorts of things. I know the scenario all too well. I think that we all go through it, and some are still going through it. If you belong to the latter, please lose the phase as soon as possible; it’s murderously fake and goes nowhere. The further you go, the harder it’ll be and the problems you think you’re avoiding by doing so will only get bigger and bigger until they threaten to destroy you. My various and numerous choices of escape are still vivid memories!

When I was thirty or so, I became dissatisfied with my life. I had been in a long relationship but wasn’t ready to have a family. It may sound crazy, but it was my reality and one that was very frustrating. All the other ‘normal’ people were getting married and bringing children into the world, and I was still in a haze. I wanted something, but had no idea what it was. I had no idea why things were happening and for what reason. All I knew was that I couldn’t dive into something that all the cells in my body rejected, and I didn’t have the energy to convince them that they should behave like the rest of the ‘normal’ world and that I would have serious problems if they didn’t.

I knew changed was needed within such a context as something had to change, but the what and how wasn’t all that clear to me. So I took the logical approach: if I’m not satisfied with my relationship, I should change my other half into the image I had created in my mind and one that would definitely satisfy me – he should be like this, that and the other and have this, that and the other. I had all of this nicely sorted out in my head and so I went to work. I also had a well-thought-out strategy: the who, when and how; in my mind I had checked and cross-checked all the various monologues that contained a balanced dose of seriousness, sternness and dramatic elements to achieve an emotional moment where a tear in my eye would force my opponent to surrender and change. But it wasn’t as easy as I had expected. In the meantime, I switched tactics, introduced new characters to the plot, added and subtracted from the main storyline and ending, played around with preferred directions and wore myself out. And nothing!

After along time, I had to accept and understand that I can’t change the world (the guy wasn’t giving up without a fight), and instead of focusing on myself, I had managed burden myself with everything in my power. The main thing was that at least something was changing. I was prepared for major change, and I tried out everything at my disposal. First, I had my hair cut, but nothing changed. Then I changed the colour of my hair and still nothing happened. Then it was the car, the colour of the walls, perfumes, dresses, shoes and more shoes, and even more shoes. I even considered changing my name. It was all pointless! After all the unsuccessful attempts at change, all I had managed was to fall deeper into despair. Nothing brought any improvement or a reasonable answer. And then I started running away from myself. I started working nine, ten hours a day, occupying myself with everything that came my way – yoga, Pilates, fitness aerobic, roller blades, running, cooking classes, fortune-telling, sleeping. I knew about every course in town, I knew what was playing at the cinemas, I fell in love with the theatre, but it didn’t satisfy me. I still had plenty of time to face myself and feel that there was something missing; that my side of the street wasn’t the sunny side. And then I enrolled post-graduate studies to get a master’s degree and decided to kill myself by focusing on all sorts of stuff. I literally went into overload – I wrote, read, passed exams, wrote, learnt, read, jogged, cooked, cleaned, worked, read, learnt, got my degree and fell into the deepest despair ever. None of it had helped! I was unhappy and nothing, absolutely nothing, could make me happy. I was empty, pathetic and drifting in a sea that made no sense. I was desperately in search of meaning!

One night I had a strange dream; an interesting character appeared from nowhere and asked me: “Who are you?” I woke up in a panic, in seconds I was wide awake. Who am I? I asked myself. I rolled my eyes and everything turned into silence; with nothing to distract me, I went into every single one of my brain cells, burrowing into the white and grey matter. I even asked my pituitary gland, but there was no response. All I knew was that I was Danijela and that I was supposed to be a woman. I heard my heart beating, it was beating very strongly. Today, I can see why; it was as if it wanted to shout out to me: “Hey! I’m here! Ask me!” Of course, I didn’t. What’s the use of looking for answers in your heart? That’s ridiculous! From time to time, it snivels, dripping like a broken tap. Drip, drip, drip. How boring. What a heart! But that was then.

I remained awake until the morning. I rose unbelievably refreshed (something that is not usually my forte), looked at myself in the mirror. Someone was waiting for me there, someone I was yet to discover, yet to know, yet to fall in love with. I looked myself in the eyes; it was an incredible moment (and thinking about it even today it evokes the same strength and beauty); it was a moment that was timeless, it was time extinguished in my irises, standing with me in peace and amazement. It was a moment of perfect purity; I was being reborn in my gaze, stripped of everything, of all my defeats, stories, lies, regrets, guilt, past events, of having to do things, of hiding, of proving myself, of my mask; there was nothing left. Only me seen in my own reflection, like silk in the palm of my hand, drinkable like water. I laughed at myself, like I would at a dear friend that I hadn’t seen for a long, long time and then met her in a crowd of nothing. We nodded to each other with dignity and repose, as if in that moment we had reached an agreement on self-discovery. The surface of me had decided to introduce me to all the other hidden aspects of Myself, places I had never been to and never knew existed. For the first time in my live I was absolutely sure that I had brought the right decision!

It was scary, yet beautiful experiencing myself in that way and wishing to touch the weave of my essence, to enter all the secret chambers of my being and to discover what world lay hidden there. After a long time, I realised that I didn’t know myself, that I was a stranger to myself. I was shocked to discover that I had been living in a state of inertia, without depth or perspective, in line with established rules valued by the masses. I saw myself as belonging to the masses and I had folded myself into generally accepted drawers, my goal was to be generally accepted without even feeling the need to be who I am and to live life to the full. What I was doing was living a lie, living according to exiting rules because someone liked them, and I was convincing myself that it was the only and right thing to do. How could I be happy? It was simply impossible!

Sometimes I catch myself believing that I had sent myself a message in my dreams, and the more I think about it, the more it seems true. Let me try and explain that: I think that the me that lies behind all these masks which I have chosen to wear and the me behind all the walls I have decided to raise wanted to find the true me and that the universe sent me a little messenger who got things rolling, that is, gifted me with the trigger question.

If the urge to find something is so strong, then you will find it. Triggers are the perfect message, like a signpost along the way, but we often do not see them, or choose to ignore them, pretend that we cannot hear, or that we don’t understand; mildly put – we run away (and ,as I said before, we’re very good at doing that). I must admit that when I brought the decision to embark upon the journey of self-discovery, I was filled with fear. I knew I could not longer agree to deceiving myself, making myself believe the lies I knew, deep down, to be lies. But that wasn’t the only problem. I also knew that I had to let go of some of my habitual behaviour which was making me dim-witted; that I had to let go of some of my beliefs and opinions that had served as an ideal screen behind which I hid; that I had to let go of some people that were draining me and stealing my time (they weren’t stealing it – I had allowed them to do so). And perhaps I have mitigated the feelings that I experienced; it wasn’t fear that I felt, no, no; it was PANIC² (panic squared.) The horror! My legs would begin to shake just at the thought of it; my hands would sweat and my stomach was a barrel of fermenting most threatening to explode. My ego was threatened, it was screaming. It sat on its luxurious throne and felt the end coming; its rule had been threatened by a revolution and the banners were already surfacing: “Down with the Absolutist Monarchy!” The hour had struck for democracy.

Looking back, it was my so-called ‘bubbly phase that brings about change’. It was as if every cell in my body was vibrating to its own rhythm and total chaos had flooded the system. My thoughts were chaotic, my dreams were chaotic, my sentences lacked words, my time lacked rhythm. Sometimes, the hours stretched out like the Chinese Wall, and sometimes I hardly noticed the day come and gone. Never before had the interval between bringing a decision deep within me and acting upon it lasted so long. The interim phase only grew; it became big and juicy and there was a threat that I would remain stuck in this neither-here-nor-there space. Mondays, the beginnings of the month, sunrises and sunsets, New Year resolutions came and went and I was still spot-welded. I was aware of it, veeery aware of it; I was angry at myself and kept telling myself that I was a coward, a weakling. I told myself all sorts of things, some of which aren’t appropriate to put on paper.

It’s amazing how sacred we are of change. Some people even wear the same hair cut all their life – they are the ones with the hardcore ‘don’t change anything’ philosophy. We crouch in the dark aware that we’re in the dark; we see the door but ignore it in fear of what might await behind it; the dark is familiar territory and we live in the illusion that we’re safe. We’re convinced of our own ‘better safe than sorry’ logic; no matter how bad it might be, at least we’re safe. We allow fear to govern our lives and we confuse routine with security!! I, too, allowed fear to hold me back. I drove myself insane wondering about what would happen if I changed, if I changed my life. Thousands of scenarios razed through my head and I worried about things that might happen in the future. Will it be like this or like that? What if it’s like that? It might be… What if it all takes the wrong turn? Who knows what kind of things might happen. Superman might fall from the skies and land on my head and break me, or a gigantic rat might appear and devour me! It’s better if I don’t go out; it would be best if I simply stopped breathing before I inhale a rhinoceros!!!!

I knew that if I continued to think that way it would turn into full-blown phobia, fear of everything and everyone, and that while I was dying of fear, I would miss out on the adventure we call life. My God, how stupid of me! It’s really inexcusable to worry about something that hasn’t even happened, or about something that I’m not even sure will happen, yet there was I killing myself by worrying about what if it did, about something that didn’t even exist. Looking at myself in all honesty, I had to admit that I was the worst kind of masochist there is. My consolation was that I was the most productive masochist, like millions of others that inhabit this planet. And knowing this did not soothe my conscience one bit!

Do you now see what we are doing? To ourselves! Therefore, I ask you learn this lesson before your life passes you by. Understand that you only have the right to this moment in time, everything else is the past, and the future has yet to come; it doesn’t exist as such, only as an idea. So bring awareness into the moment, breathe it and feel it with all its force. It contains life, which leaves its mark; it carries you and makes you vibrate, it gives you unforgettable beauty. And you can choose to ignore all this and colour the moment with nothingness, or even worse, with sadness and sorrow by worrying about what might come in some distant future. Start living in the now, in all your fullness, don’t delay. Avoid thoughts such as: “I’ll be happy when…!” Once the ‘when’ becomes a part of your life philosophy, it never comes because the conditions for it are never-ending; one condition breeds another and there is always something else – the when + 1. If you think like that, you will never feel fulfilled. There will always be something missing and the external conditions that might allow you to enjoy the moment will never be fulfilled. By doing so you place yourself in a never-ending spiral of dissatisfaction; every new circle of the spiral binds you even more to the empty feeling of being unfulfilled and lack of sense and meaning. Every new circle brings ever stronger feelings of despair that will engulf every positive thought that you might have. It is a process by which we loose the twinkle in our eye and become a wallflower!  Don’t be a wallflower! Let them be. Instead, be yourself, fulfilled and happy!

I, too, finally stopped being a wallflower. I broke off a twelve-year relationship, bravely faced the world before me and stated: “No, my dear, I don’t want to get married now and there are no children on the way, or anything like that; I have decided I want to know myself, find out what life is about and find meaning!” End quote.

You can imagine the stares I got. Alice in Wonderland is pale in comparison to the looks of bewilderment. Many thought I was mad, that a screw was loose in my head, that I had been caught up in some kind of New Age nonsense. What made it even stranger was that my other half was a beautiful and loving person, a person that had many other beautiful traits (and he holds a special place in my heart to this day), but I knew that I couldn’t grow alongside him, I simply couldn’t and, at the same time, I was certain that I couldn’t give him what he needed and wanted. He gave me the beauty he was supposed to, and I think I gave the same to him and our mission together had ended (and I thank him for that), but I needed space, I needed to be alone. I felt that it was the only way I could move on!

In the little ‘quarry of my own making’ the only consolation I found was the strong feeling that I needed to take a step forward, and in my parents who bathed me in their love (although it was difficult time for them). Everything else, the when, where, how and what next was a big mystery. I was clueless! It’s like going on a journey but not knowing where you’re going, for how long, whether you need summer or winter clothes, whether you need a malaria shot, or a shot for some other exotic disease, whether you’re going to encounter werewolves, little green men, or perhaps an empty void, a vacuum. I knew absolutely nothing; I only had faith that where I arrived was where I was meant to be, irrespective where that was!

It’s strange how when we allow our feelings to surface and wash away all the fear, the ego trips and the other ‘dirt’, the shiny stone that remains is our real truth, our shining guiding star. The only thing we have to do is care for it, polish it and observe our reflection in it. ‘Only’ may be a short word, but it’s a long process, a long journey. Nothing happens over night and we need some time to find the stone which we will transform into a perfect gem; there is no place for impatience. Easier said than done. I wanted everything straight away, the very same minute it came to mind. I wanted to feel magnificently happy right away, but that’s not quite what happened.

Do you know what the transformation from two to one looks like? Uuuuu is all I can say, and I hope you get it. All of a sudden, I had to do everything on my own – go to bed alone, wake up alone, eat alone, drive alone, watch TV alone, go for walks alone, cook alone, shop alone, breathe alone, do everything on my own. There was no one nearby. My parents lived 200 kilometres away, my friends were busy working, watching out for those first baby teeth, breastfeeding, discussion stools, vomiting, being in labour, changing nappies, clothes, doing school homework, cooking, complaining along the lines ‘he never does anything around the house’ or ‘he doesn’t understand me at all’. It was as if they were living in distant and parallel universe. I was alone in the world like some sole survivor on a raft in the middle of an ocean waiting for something to happen, for someone to find me and take me somewhere, anywhere, just somewhere where I could feel the soil beneath my feet, even a desert would do. Can you relate to the feeling of panic? I was in an aggregate state called being alone, one which my friend would define as: F…! I felt like a fifth wheel, no one needed me, no one missed me, there was no one waiting for me. All of a sudden, my idea of finding myself seemed stupid. How was I supposed to find myself and what would I do once I had if I was so alone and pathetic, and cowardly, and weak and hopeless? I only had myself to blame for being so stupid and I deserved such a fate. Was there no one to embrace me? I wanted someone to hug me, now and unconditionally.

But there was no one. I was like a schnitzel rolled into eggs of complaint, flour of grousing and breadcrumbs of self-pity. I had totally lost myself in my new role of being ‘ a woman on her own seeking the inner self’. I had a role, but there was no screenplay, no props, no set, no film. It did not occur to me that it was all in my hands, that I could make any film I wished to and that I could make any film I wanted, all I had to do was envisage it and go for it.

Solitude is an interesting phenomenon. We don’t know how to be alone and we fear it. Being alone is a scary prospect. Solitude is like the worst case of fear. I had never been alone up until then. First you have parents, siblings, family that, in most part, loves you because you’re small, cute and waddle when you walk. Then you have peers, classmates, friends that live in your street, crushes, a group of people you hang out with as a student, the people you go clubbing with, your girlfriends who have all the time in the world to drink coffee, who read the coffee beans in your cup and tell you whether he loves you or not, and then Mr Right comes along and he loves you, cherishes you and pampers you, embraces and hugs you and then comes the SHOCK – you’re left with no one and no one has time for you, for your complaints. So what then? How can we be alone and is it at all possible? The answer inside of me welled up into a big No! I didn’t know what to do with myself; after all my daily activities. I’d come home, open the door and slowly enter my flat only to find that my stomach was cramping and I was filled with an indescribable wish to run back to the noise and the bustle, the people, the flooding masses and to drown myself in them and vanish into my dream world. I hated the silence that awaited me at home, it was ominous; the whole flat was filled with it and there was nowhere to hide; it crouched in the silence in my ears, heavy like the strength of a hundred decibels. Not even the radio helped, to drown out the silence within. And its companion, solitude, was like a Siamese twin. They went hand in hand, shadowing me wherever I went. They possessed me and fed off my tears, and they hungered for more and more and I fed them. Life vibrated around me in all its beauty, waiting for me, while I chose to keep company with my ‘tormenting twins’, killing myself by crumpling up all my moments and transforming them into a slimy amorphous mass to create a hell of my own making, an adhesive which I smeared all around me while I turned into the waste of my of self-pity.

The things that I did to myself! Total auto-destruction without any legitimate cause. In order to extract myself from such a phase, I obviously needed to be pushed to rock bottom, to bleed and for the sorrow to turn into rage, and the rage into the willingness to fight back. It was my way; I needed to fall to reach the deepest level of my pain in order to trigger a turnabout. And that’s exactly what happened! Utter despair pushed me into the arms of an Apollo and I had someone, but for a very short time. My Apollo soon vanished and I was alone, again, and falling bottomless pit.

Exhausted, feeling sorry for myself and pathetic, and by that time, quite enraged, I realised that I could continue to die in that bottomless pit, or I could stand up and challenge the world, demanding that it show itself before me in all its magnificence. I chose to tell myself: ENOUGH! I said it out loud, got up from the mud with a mean look in my eye, shook the dirt off me and decided I would be happy. Imagine how wonderful it is when you can tell yourself it’s enough and DECIDE to be happy, even if it means being alone. What inherent powers we have! We decide what we want, whether we want to die inside for as long as we live (although it’s questionable how alive we actually are), or whether we want to take our life in our own hands, like the finest silk, and create a magnificent dress and be beautiful – the greatest star in our own lives. Well, I finally decided to stop being a drama queen that accepted defeat and decided to become the brightest star on my horizon!

When you send out such a harmonized song from every cell of your being to the Universe, what you get in return is what you need (even if it is rock bottom). When I decided to be happy and move on, the Universe sent me a beautiful book filled with inspirational thoughts and an old friend, who was also alone and in search of herself. I jumped for joy; for me, it was a fascinating coincidence. But do you know what coincidence and happenstance really are? You don’t? They are the way God chooses to act and remain anonymous. Nice to know, isn’t it? And not only is it nice, it’s also true.

My dear friend, and the occasional book in my hand, made by days more bearable; it gave me a ray of hope and brought back my faith in life, which raced through my blood and lulled me to sleep at night. I recognised the old feelings, the sign from deep within that told me I was on the right track and that everything would be okay. It came as a great relief after my stormy experiences. Fortunately, storms always pass and the calm returns leaving behind the smell of freshness, a new type of oxygen that gently fills our lungs and energises us. It was as if I was seeing a new stage of my life. No matter how painful my ‘personal squalls’ had been, I knew that we all get, and only get, that with which we can cope. I know that this fact may not sound so elating; we would all like it if there weren’t such storms, but, unfortunately, nothing can influence us to change better than ‘personal squalls’. When life is good, we relax and dream and enjoy; we have no need to change anything because we feel great. Who would be crazy enough to shake any trees if the going is good, if he is enjoying himself. But when things start going downhill, we use everything we’ve got to resolve the situation at hand and get back to our warm state of sanctuary. It’s as if storms and squalls grab us by the shoulders and give a good shake, as if to say ‘Hey, kiddo! Wake up and open your mind and smell the roses! So many wonderful things await you, but you’re stuck in one place and think there’s nowhere else to go!’ This is approximately the message the Universe sends us through storms; we need them, we need challenges that will push us into action, because action is needed for each leap we make, and it represents a leap, a step upwards.

Do you know what the worst thing of all is? There are many who don’t get the message of the storm and instead of shaking themselves and going into action, they fall into an even greater agony blaming destiny for dealing them out such a fate. There is no action behind their words, only deeper entrenchment and they sit burrowed in their hole playing out a scenario similar to that of ‘Waiting for Godot’.

My comment to it all is a wry cry for action – Long live personal squalls and long live those who have been moved by them! Cheers! We always need to celebrate when we know we’ve done or achieved something good and when we feel that we’ve forced ourselves into action, that we’re climbing upwards. Like alpinists, we can choose a favourite spot where we can take a break and from where we can look down and admire the view and see how far we’ve got and how much we’ve achieved. We need breaks; we stop to remember what we were like a month ago, or five or ten months ago, and to see how much we have experienced, how much we have changed in respect to new insights, and to celebrate this. Beautiful, wouldn’t you agree?

One evening, my friend and I decided it was an occasion to celebrate. We made ourselves the most magnificent meal with the tastiest delicacies complimented with our favourite wine – Calitera. We allowed ourselves to be magnificent princesses, if need be Amazons or the omnipotent Lara Croft. That evening we were whatever we wanted to be. We laughed and talked about days passed and events we had been through, looking at them from a different perspective. We still had no idea how we would move on, where the light was and how we would find answers to the hundreds of questions buzzing in our heads, but we knew that a path existed and that it was waiting for us to discover it.

And the path emerged!

One afternoon, my friend rushed in ecstatic and told me that she had attended the promotion of a book called The Destiny of the Soul. Judging by the book’s title, it seemed promising, and after leafing through it and reading a few random sentences, it seemed unbelievably good. It seemed to be just what we needed to start creating order in our heads that were throbbing with the hundred or so unanswered questions. And we decided to accept the challenge. I recall I wanted to take a holiday to be able to absorb what I had read. I was so fulfilled and couldn’t concentrate on anything else. The book was opium for my brain and my heart; all those unbelievable thoughts that resonated with me in amazingly beautiful harmony, and the way in which I recognised their resonance and they mine to create a union often brought tears to my eyes. At times, I found myself crying like a child at their beauty. Something inside me resounded with the same rhythm and it was this rhythm that lulled me and lulled me! It was so beautiful! It’s like, when winter comes and you put on your winter coat, stick your hands in the pockets and pull out forgotten money left there from the year before; it’s a moment that brings a smile to your face. That’s the feeling I experience as I read the book. It was like all the knowledge contained within it was also deep inside of me, forgotten, and I was now sticking my hands into all the multitude of hidden pockets. I was like a sleeping beauty and the book had given me the most passionate kiss and awoken me from an induced dream. It was so romantic (even if there was no prince)!

But the prince did appear, not in the classical sense – and they lived happily ever after… This prince was a prince among princes and he had many princesses, and the occasional prince (it didn’t matter to him; he was one pretty strange dude). I’ve probably got your imagination going, but none of what you’re thinking is what happened, or is in any way close to the truth, believe me! Soon after I had read the book, I found myself sitting at an introductory lecture held by the dude who wrote book The Destiny of the Soul; he was the prince I mentioned above. At one point in the lecture he asked us if we were happy that we had two hands. I sat there in total shock and thought: “What is this? Why should I be happy to have two hands? It’s normal that I do. We all have hands, okay maybe not all of us, but I don’t have to be euphoric just because I have hands, and a kidney. Am I also supposed to be happy because I have kidney?????

Today, I often embrace myself and thank my arms and my shoulders for all the embraces they have gifted me with, for all the touches woven with love, the beautiful meals they have prepared for me, and the jumpers they have knitted to warm a beautiful heart. Do I need more reasons for being happy and grateful?!

Many people find torches lighting their path. We got a hand that helps you when you fall, a consciousness that always asks the right questions and looks you straight in the eyes; he was our helping hand, like family, like blood, and we, in turn, got each other as a gift. We created true friendships, friendships that weren’t based on reciprocity, but on a relationship whose seeds had been planted in purity, watered with truth and nurtured with rays of love. When I think of all my friends (and here I include my mother, father and sister) I am filled with indescribable joy and pride. In terms of riches I can state with absolute certainty that they are my most prized riches and cannot compare to any currency of this world. Thank you all! I love you to the skies!

As you can see, and like I said before, God gives us what we ask for; she prepares the most perfect gift and puts it in our hands.

I had finally found and boarded the ship that was going to take me to myself. I burned with curiosity, impatience and expectation of what awaited me and had no idea how long the journey would last, if I would be sea sick, if there would be sharks, what the weather would be like, if I had enough clothes with me. I wasn’t concerned as my wish was so strong that nothing else seemed to matter.

I sometimes wonder why my wish to discover myself was so strong; even today, I don’t have the answer to that one; the wish simply appeared and I allowed it to surface. I did not suppress it, or push it away; I allowed it to live and I allowed myself to listen to it. We all, sometimes, hear the voice of truth within us, the quiet, vibrating feeling of omniscience and the depths, but very often if that truth does not resonate with our current beliefs, we turn our backs to it although we know we shouldn’t and by doing so we only make things more difficult for ourselves and for our lives. It’s just the way we are…