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Becoming a yoga teacher came to me unexpectedly. Although I was already a yoga
practitioner it had never crossed my mind that someday I would become a
teacher. One day a friend of mine won a scholarship to become a yoga
instructor. It was at this point that I knew it was what I needed to do next.
I always knew that my
mission in life was to help other people. Although it was a strong
calling, somehow at the beginning, I was afraid. Yet, it was the most natural
thing for me. All my life I was at service but something was missing. I had no
boundaries and people took advantage of me.
It's only when I understood that being at service didn't mean being a servant
that I could be a true healer. When I understood this: doors opened in front of
me and my direction in life became very clear.
I'm on a spiritual path. I don't pretend to be ahead. There is no order of
things on the path. We are each other's teachers. My students are my teachers.
They help me to go further on my path.
Having said that, through the years, I feel that I have made my way to a very
comfortable place, a place where I love being me, a place where I am in love
with myself. Along the way I had all sorts of experiences that made me who I am
now and many more will come. I do not worry; I welcome new experiences because
I see them as learning experiences. As we are being tested, we learn and grow.
In the 90's, I moved to Taiwan where I studied Mandarin at Tunghai University
for one year and then for the next few years I worked as an English teacher in
a private school. My years in Taiwan were very pleasant. I had good fortune.
Looking back at it, I realized that in my profession as an English teacher I
was utilizing my skills as a healer.
A lot of the students that came to my classes were young men and women with low
self-confidence. For some reason, I attracted these kinds of students.
I realized very quickly that I had the ability to give these people
self-confidence. For those who were even less self-confident, I would put them
in a little bubble and attach the bubble to my heart and forget about them and
just go on with my teaching. I have no idea where I got this idea. It just came
naturally to me. I could see without doing anything special these students
metamorphosing themselves as the class progressed. Light would come into their
eyes. Even their complexion looked clearer. It's as if I was putting light into
them. What is interesting is that this was happening without me really trying.
It just came through my intentions.
After five years, I still loved being in Taiwan but something was pushing me
out. My life felt incomplete. I decided to travel for a while and to make my
way down to Australia from Thailand. During that time I traveled through
Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. I was struck by the different
interpretations of the divine in the different cultures. Witnessing all these
different manifestations of the divine made me realize that there had to be a
God. The divine just came in different packages according the different
interpretations of the different cultures.
When I arrived to Bali, I was, like everyone else's, overjoyed by the beauty
and the energy of the island. I had just read Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist.
In the book the Alchemist says to the little shepherd: "When you really want
something the universe conspires to make it happen." I would go to the rice
field and yelled, "I want to stay here for ever."
I did end up staying in Bali. Only later did I understand that we can indeed
force our will to obtain something we really want but since we don't have the
whole picture we may be hindering the cosmic plan and limit our own
possibilities.
During my first year, I was doing meditation and practicing yoga daily. Very
quickly I had a streak a good luck. I found a job, a boyfriend, a nice little
studio and a beautiful little kitten named Black Magic. I thought that I
couldn't possibly desire anymore. I was so grateful that I decided to surrender
every thing to God in my meditation. I don't remember how this came to my mind
but I surrendered my job, my boyfriend, my studio and my kitten.
Within a week I had lost everything. I was in shock. I knew I had gotten God's
attention but I didn't know what it meant. I was scared but I knew deep inside
that I had done the right thing. I never doubted that. I had really no one to
talk to. It was the beginning of my spiritual journey.
One month later, I had a new job; much better than the previous one, a new
house, a new boyfriend and a cat came into new my house and gave birth to five
kittens. I had everything and more.
You see, I had limited myself in the past. What I had previously I had thought
was the best that I could desire. But God had better plans for me and when I
surrendered to him, I went beyond my five-sense mind and attracted more than
what my mind had previously restricted me to.
Only later, when I had read Marianne Williamson's, A Return to Love,
did I understand what had happened. She says: "When our lives are given to the
Holy Spirit for his purposes, new talents emerge within us. As our heart opens,
talents and gifts start to blossom."
During my second year in Bali, I developed a chronic pain in my lower abdomen.
I saw a few doctors in Bali but none of them could help. It is at that time
that I was introduced to my teacher. I eventually went to Singapore and
consulted a gynaecologist. After tests, he said I had a cyst on my ovary and
needed surgery. The doctor said that he didn't think it was life threatening.
He did a blood test which he said wasn't 100% accurate but indicated that it
was probably not cancerous. I am grateful to this doctor because he wasn't an
alarmist and didn't try to influence my decision.
With that information, I went back to Bali and returned to see my teacher whom
I didn't know very well then. I don't know, looking back, what pushed me to do
that. I asked him if he could help me. He said he would try. He gave me natural
medicine and put me on a diet. I followed each and every bit of his advice. I
would meditate daily and do yoga regularly. I was very committed to my
spiritual path and my self-healing. I was conscious that I needed to heal more
than my ovary.
At that time I came across a book that really helped me: it's a book by Louise
Hay called: You can heal your life. I did all the exercises in the book. I knew
that I wasn't at peace with myself and couldn't continue to live this way. I
was living far away from my family and friends. I couldn't fool myself anymore.
I had nothing to loose. I decided to jump into the void and heal myself.
Six months later, I went back to see the doctor in Singapore. He was
astonished. The cyst had gone. He said, what ever you did continue because it
worked. Again, six months later, I went to see him for another check up and on
his bookshelf were books on alternative medicines. He said that when he felt it
was appropriate, he would tell women they could also consider alternate
medicine.
I'm not against surgery or western medicine. On the contrary, I have great
respect for the work western physicians, surgeons, etc, do and I believe when
one is sick, one must utilise all the resources available to heal, western as
well as eastern medicine and alternative medicine. My decision was appropriate
for me at the time. Surgery is very traumatic for the physical memory of the
body and I felt it should be done only if it was necessary and if there was not
other means.
During that time a friend also gave me a book on Runes and the Book of Changes
(yijing). The runes and the yijing were important allies during all these
years, when doubt came to me I could consult them for their wisdom.
For all those years, a series of people came into my life and tested my
boundaries. The tests were getting stronger and stronger because I wouldn't get
it. Until one day I was pushed against the wall, so to speak. During the
writing of this web site, while I proclaimed to be free of boundary problems,
the universe tested me several times. But this time, like a pro, I overcame
these situations easily and effortlessly.
When we keep facing the same situation, we must have the awareness that this is
a situation we need to overcome before we reach the next level in our growth.
The faster we understand this, the quicker we grow.
One day someone gave me a small book called "The Abundance Book",
by Randolph Price. I read that book with so much interest. In this book there
is a 40-day spiritual program of meditation. This program really helped me to
reprogram my mind and open my consciousness. I redid this 40-day program many
times. Actually, every year, I redo it just to make sure that I am still
atoned.
Our outer world mirrors of the inner world. This book is not about money. It is
about abundance in all areas of our life: abundance in spiritual life,
abundance of health, abundance in family life, abundance in love life,
abundance in professional life and abundance of material life. Our natural
state is peace and it is our mind that allows it to be disturbed. We just need
to be sincerely confident and to stop controlling things, people, and events.
Fear and negative thoughts sabotage our life whereas love and trust are the
foundation in our life.
People accept more readily that illnesses are caused by our negative thinking.
However, just as sicknesses are caused by emotions that get stuck inside of the
body, setbacks in our life are caused by negative thoughts.
What you invest you get back. If you invest in negative thinking you reap
negativity. If you invest in positive thoughts, you reap abundance. But most
importantly is your intention. One has always to be sincere with oneself. One
cannot fool the cosmic law.
During the time that I was healing myself, I came to the realisation that I was
attached to both my physical pain as well as my emotional pain. This is the
biggest stumbling block on our spiritual journey. We have to be willing to let
go.
It's about surrendering and living in the present. I found this beautiful quote
in Deepak Chopra's a path to love: "Spirit is always with me. It wants to lift
my pain, it does this not by abolishing the painful memories but by putting me
totally in the present, where the past doesn't exist."
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