Sometimes I wonder… if I could have planned the grand traits of my life in advance from spirit world before I arrived in this earthly life, what signs would I have sent myself at important stages of the journey? How would I have given myself clues as to what decisions might be best for me? Which paths to choose, and what branches in the road to walk past?
Sometimes I feel that such messages from “Me”, in a vaster sense, come from chance encounters.
Here are four that happened in quite rapid succession, during my transit from Lamu via Maasai Mara back to London, and then on to Egypt, where I am now writing from the shores of the Red Sea. One day, in my little clinic room in Lamu, a tall and rather lanky westerner with windswept dark hair suddenly appeared, escorted by a local guy who knows everybody. I thought it was a tourist who needed help with some minor ailment or other, so I finished up with the patient I was seeing, and then invited the westerner to sit down.
His name was Johnny and he was a recently graduated doctor from England. In fact, he graduated from the very same medical school that I was studying at. An interesting coincidence in a tiny village on a small island off the Kenyan coast at the Equator.
He was on holiday, just travelling around, meeting friends in remote places, and he was doing some deep soul-searching on those travels. He started medical school after qualifying as an osteopath, wanting to be able to give his patients a more holistic service with a better understanding of physiology. Just like me. I studied energy healing and remedial and sports massage, and signed up for medical school for similar reasons.
Johnny was now wondering what to do with his life. He did not feel his heart was in his work as a medical doctor, but he kept pushing through because he wanted to prove to people he could finish what he started. He was sad at how little time he could spend with his partner and family because of the busy rotations he had to do as a junior doctor to complete his training. He hated being in hospitals. He wanted to see the world, help patients, not get lost in the bureaucracy and politics of the National Health Service. He couldn’t talk to anyone inside the system about his feelings because then his motivation would be questioned and things could go badly for him.
He sounded just like me. Was he a postcard from one of my possible futures, portraying how I might be in 4-5 years’ time if I made myself return to medical school and just kept pushing through, ignoring the calls of my heart and soul to adventure outside hospital walls?
We shook hands, he thanked me for listening, and I said he could always come and volunteer in Lamu if he wanted to check his vocation for medicine / adventure / world service.
So that was the first chance encounter: “me” in a parallel life, unhappy, unfulfilled, trying to prove something to people that was at odds with my heart, wondering when I could get out of the system and follow my longing.
The second chance encounter was with “myself” in a dreamy state in the Maasai Mara night. I don’t know if I was asleep or awake, but “I” appeared to myself and explained a new sort of healing that I can offer. It encompasses energy healing, creative writing and hypnotherapy all in one. This “I” from a spiritual plane described how I can help people remember the truth of their being – their Soul Story – and move beyond the limitations of the life stories that they are stuck in. I was given instructions on ways to do this, and it all started to become so overwhelming that I made myself more consciously awake so I could write it down!
That was the second chance encounter: me receiving instructions from a spiritual version of myself who had a way of amalgamating all the things I love to do into a way of offering service.
The next chance encounter started very unpleasantly, on a late morning train into London. I could only gather that I had inadvertently caused a great deal of offence to a slightly unkempt passenger who smelled not just slightly of alcohol. He stood next to my seat, aggressively lecturing me on his rights, and how I had wronged him, as I wondered who on earth I reminded him of that caused such transference.
As the train drew closer to my stop, I got up and made my way to the door, but he followed me, poking his finger aggressively at me and continuing his tirade. I then turned and stood looking him in the eye in as attentive and unchallenging a way as I could, without verbally responding. I used the old Hawaiian healing method called Ho’oponopono, and connected with the part of myself that I saw reflected in the pain and outrage of this man, who clearly felt misunderstood, insulted, unseen and angry. I silently told that part of myself, in Ho’oponopono style: “I am sorry, please forgive me, I love you, thank you” over and over. I felt my heart soften, even as the man’s tirade continued.
Then, out of the blue, an elderly passenger approached, hands shaky from Parkinson’s, and eyes as blue as the sky. He introduced himself as a priest, and said he would like to help. He told the man who had been showering me with his strongly worded opinions: “that’s not very nice”. The angry man stopped in his tracks, and asked the priest for a blessing. The priest blessed him, and me, and asked for heavenly forgiveness for any wrongs we might have done each other, and managed to gradually placate the man as the train drew into the station. The priest handed his business card to us both, and apologised to me for this unfortunate event. I told him that it was quite alright, and that’s life and this is London. All the same, the priest wanted to apologise for it happening to me.
So that was third encounter: an instant manifestation of the healing thoughts in my mind towards another human being, in the shape of a priest doing his holy and humanitarian work outside the walls of his church.
The fourth and last chance encounter, in this run of curious multidimensional and otherworldly happenings, was on the plane on the way to Egypt…
The elderly gentleman and his son who were next to me had actually settled in in the wrong row. However, as we later agreed, it had been exactly the right row, so that we could encounter each other.
I was a little worried about the relaxation prospects of the five-hour flight when the gentleman told me he would like to play a little game with me. I fleetingly wondered whether he was some sort of sociopath. However, the game appealed to me immediately: he wanted me to guess what he did for a living.
I considered the evidence: he was in his 70’s, travelling with his son who had Down’s syndrome, to spend some time by the Red Sea together. He was well-dressed, caring towards his son, personable and quite witty. He must love his work if he was still doing it years after normal retirement age, and he must also be quite satisfied with it if he wanted a stranger to guess what it was. Hmmm.
I asked if he was a magician, and he smiled broadly, saying that he would have to remember that one. I asked some broader questions and discovered that his work had been about teaching or coaching people, or somehow helping them reach their potential, until he specialised in a particular area which now involves a lot of writing for a very select audience. He used to be part of a large organisation, within which he unusually trained and qualified while on the job, but he then became independent and self-employed.
I asked if he was a ghostwriter, to which he burst out laughing, and told me that once I discovered what he did, I would know why that suggestion had been so hilarious.
Then I finally worked it out. He was a priest – the second to cross my path in two days. Rather fabulously, his name was Ted, which would make him Father Ted (UK television reference). He wrote biographical stories about people who had recently passed away by collecting their tales and essence from the bereaved, and read those stories out at funeral services and other memorial gatherings. He called himself a Life Celebrator.
After I recovered from the shock of discovering such a beautiful service to offer to humanity, I told him about the book I have been writing about Özge and I, now with the editor, on its way out into the world. The story of a relationship, told by the bereaved partner left behind, in celebration of the two of them and their love through lifetimes. He was delighted at the idea, and wanted to know all about it.
That was the fourth chance encounter: a vision of an elderly and satisfied “me”, continuing with my work and vocation, telling the beautiful stories of people’s lives, and helping to show the deeper meaning they had.
Yes, I do believe I got the message from “me” loud and clear… outside the walls of hospitals and medical training, a world awaits of stories waiting to be told.
Human poetry, of the ordinary, warm and beautiful. Soul Stories interwoven in the fabric of earthly existence.
