Liberate your Struggles Read online

  I was a sensitive, methodical child. I was happy to get up at dawn to practice my piano scales every morning, happily ‘doing the work’ necessary to be an achiever. By the time I left school, however, chronic fatigue and disillusionment with the effort I had put in at school and the results that seemed elusive led me to resist and rebel against what was expected of me.

  After finishing secondary school, I went to university to study law. I left university after one year because of my thirst to experience more from life. I did not want to be defined by the certificates expected of me or the accolades that might have come my way. What did the greater world have to teach me? I was impatient and desired to know myself beyond the realms of failure and success.

  Things did not initially go as I had planned after I left formal studies. Depression soon followed, along with debilitating migraines. I found myself living in London, working in a fashion retail store, at sea in a place where I had no friends. I returned to Australia with the realisation that my temperament was more suited to studying at an art school, where I could run with my ideas, direct them towards something tangible, and make sense of the ephemeral sensitivities my emotional states demanded. Challenge after challenge followed until I arrived one day on the doorstep of Tim Brown, a transcendental meditation teacher. By chance, he was related to a very close friend of mine. I felt a sense of foreboding as I walked towards his door with a white handkerchief, and an array of blue hydrangeas, ready for my initiation. Meditating with a mantra in this way is a tradition that belongs to the lineage of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and was my first formal contact with the blistering intensity of Mother India.2 Tears rolled down my cheeks, as time and space collapsed into a sense of enormity that was beyond any form.

  Becoming limitless.

  Top to

  Bottom.

  Limitless is our essential self,

  Not bound by our body, our name, nor our place in time.

  How did I find this?

  Allowing myself to be pulled into silence.

  Allowing my habitual self and aversion to change to be let go of,

  to return to the source of my true self.

  My sister and I had once done a juice fast at Hopewood, near the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. I felt the need to return to Hopewood to overcome the feeling of wanting things to be comfortable, but this time I decided to go on my own. My strongest memories are first of a massive migraine, as I began letting go of emotional layers of self, then of finding solace in the spearmint and sandalwood essential oils that I was drawn to in the gift shop. For three days only water passed my lips. At this time, I had no inkling that essential oils would play such an important part later in my journey.

  A silent retreat.

  A re-calibration.

  My thoughts slowed down significantly, to a point where there was so much spaciousness I could clearly see how they were arising in my consciousness.

  Taking my clothes off to dive into the river and swim naked felt so liberating, as if I was meeting a challenge I had given to my ‘old’ self to shed the past and begin anew. The following day, I had this experience of light-filled awareness and clarity as I had never known before. I sat, in a cross-legged posture in the hall after eating some papaya for the first time since returning to food, and my nervous system just unfurled blissfully. I felt that I was integrating pieces of my timeline I had not accessed for many years. Within three months, I was on a plane to India. I had nowhere to go or to be, except inward.

  Touchdown Mumbai! As my feet touched the tarmac it hit me - I was in India for the first time in this lifetime. I felt a strange sense of returning home, as if I had been here many times before. A swelling of bliss filled my body, and my energetic heart was expanding way beyond the physical form. I felt this feeling of fate and destiny pulling me. I had no need to ‘do’ anything. Actions would appear, just as naturally as breathing propelled my lungs to expand and contract, without help from a ‘me’ who was creating the experience.

  I attended a Vipassana retreat. Experiencing the anger at the core of my being, hit me like a blinding light. First, it was projected outwardly, to the experience I was having with the structure of the retreat and the teachers around me. I remember thinking that I literally wanted to kill somebody! And then, after ten days of complete and utter silence, mining the intricate depths of my psyche, and the physical discomfort of sitting cross-legged on the floor for hours at a time, with one meal a day, we were allowed to speak again at our lunchtime meal. It felt as though my shackles had been released and I could participate in a vibrational exchange. I was euphoric. I can’t remember what the woman sitting next to me said, but she was an experienced meditator who had participated in numerous silent sittings. After the exchange, I remember walking outside into the sunshine and feeling this sense of weightlessness enter my body. As we went back inside to sit again, the method of following my awareness around my body internally, sending loving consciousness to each and every cell in my body, brought an arousal of bliss such that I had never experienced before. The possibility of continuing to explore this sensation and its expansion inside of me, awakened a desire to stay longer at the Vipassana centre in Igatpuri, but the administrative manager would not allow it, she made it clear it was time to stop ‘freeloading’ as she put it, it was time to move on. A kind participant at the centre asked me if I would like to go with her and meet her family. And so, having nowhere to go and nowhere to land, I gratefully accepted the offer.

  Having the semblance of family life and normality around me was just what I needed. I couldn’t understand much of the Marathi they were speaking to each other, but their loving kindness towards each other was apparent. I was treated (as in all Indian homes), as a king, for whenever a guest arrives, it is a customary to entertain the guest as a God.

  Here the story goes blank, though. I have literally had an empty space on this page for many days as I tried to continue writing this chapter. I was reliving what began as a tremor and led into a level of terror and self-disintegration I had never before experienced. I guess it is true that fate plays a part in these things. There are parts of our story that are written before birth, and we have agreed to before coming into form. I prayed to my grandmother and afterward realised that she told me she had been saying prayers for me, so perhaps I had felt her energetically guiding me. When I left the family I had been staying with, I went to the airport ready to fly home. But sitting in the airport, I fell into a state of bliss again that told me I still had more to experience. I knew I wasn’t ready to go home to Australia. I got into the airport lift with my bags and pushed the button for the ground floor. A man got into the lift and saw me with my bags. He asked if I had somewhere to stay and I told him that I didn’t. He offered to take me to his brother’s guesthouse by van. Outside the airport, I found myself getting into the van marked with the words ‘Sun Guest House’ emblazoned on the side. So far, ok.

  When I arrived at the guesthouse I checked in, and as soon as I reached my room, I lay down on the bed. I gratefully absorbed the silence and lack of external stimuli that allowed me to sink deeper into whatever was happening in my nervous system.

  Then the phone rang. Its shrill sound pierced the bliss I was experiencing, so I answered it. I expected to be able to end the call quickly so that I could make that sound go away and be left alone. It was the front desk on the line telling me that ‘Milak’ (I will call him as I have no recollection of his name) would be coming to knock on my door to give me a healing. I replied, “No thank you. I’m fine”. To my surprise, a few moments later there was a knock on my door.

  As Milak entered the room, I remember feeling a conflicting set of emotions that equated to a mixture of fear and distrust, but also a feeling that if I were pleasant and clear, all would be well. He offered me healing. It consisted of removing my clothes and getting in the shower. This man was a Brahman with a ‘brahman’s string’ across his chest, which denotes chastity. He wanted to wash away my past relationsh
ip karma, and in so doing, he would ‘cleanse’ himself. I have no idea how or why I went along with this, other than that I must have been in a supreme state of shock and I felt that I needed to agree and be freed of my past indiscretions. Needless to say, after he left, I felt my psyche split and a voice from deep within me, called me back into my body. At this point I felt a profound sense of violation of my agency and my freedom - a severe interruption to my own energetic capacity to set my boundaries. I had been seriously taken advantage of in my vulnerable state as a traveler, and I had no one that I could call to come to my rescue. I was livid when I returned to the front desk. I had already packed my suitcase and got immediately into a waiting taxi, without allowing my anger to be expressed, as I feared reprisal from the manager of the hotel, who must have gone along with this kind of situation before. Thankfully the taxi driver was a kind father of many children. When we arrived at the train station, I left him my suitcase of possessions, which I no longer needed or wanted. Trauma has a funny way of re-prioritising your footwear and chosen attire!

  I sat down outside a McDonald’s restaurant, which at least provided my subconscious with some semblance of familiarity, and I noticed, from the corner of my eye, that a bookseller just next to me had some paperback novels. I was guided to, and purchased, Eckhart Tolle’s tome, The Power of Now and returned to my table. A young child, aged maybe five or six years old, came and sat opposite me, and I was grateful for the company. She smiled at me, and I kept on reading. When the train arrived, I was delighted to be again surrounded by the warmth of Indian hospitality as a family shared with me their chai and snacks. The journey was a long one, for which I was grateful. I didn’t have to make decisions about where to go next or to whom I should speak. I had a bunk bed on the train, as the night rolled in, and each chapter of the Tolle book sank me deeper into a blissfulness and self–awakening that meant I needed to occasionally pace up and down the train carriage to stay in an embodied state. Here I was, transforming profound trauma and abuse into the ultimate sensation of freedom and bliss. Was there nothing that could bring dissolution of the self?

  Soon after returning home from India, I had the opportunity to house-sit for some fellow sannyasin’s in Byron Bay. In a little bookshop one morning, a book literally dropped onto my head, and I opened it. Gangaji’s Autobiography Just Like You3 had landed in my lap. Opening its pages, I felt the need to devour every word, and gratefully returned to my little cottage on the hillside, with a wrap-around verandah, from which I could hear the ocean waves crashing far off in the distance. I saw myself in her image, I reconnected to my soul and felt integration in ways I could never have expected. Low and behold, I found out that Gangaji would be coming to Australia and that I might be able to meet her in person.

  I volunteered to help at the meetings in Sydney. I met some lifelong friends for whom I will be forever grateful, as happens in a group of people who are seeking truth and authenticity. Being in the hall was like imbibing medicine for the self. I could feel that the silence and opening to truth so palpably. I went up on stage to speak to Gangaji and felt the burning desire to travel to Arunachala, the place of Sri Ramana’s birth, in Tiruvannamalai, Southern India. And so, I accompanied Gangaji from her Satsang meeting in Sydney to a retreat in Perth, where I received a personal letter in response to my own that read “Arunachala is the cave of your heart. GO there and remain forever.”

  Following the retreat, I knew that I would return to India and heal what the younger me had gone to seek: this time, the trip would be simpler, more comfortable and more trusting, as I had no ‘where’ to go to. Just to the feet of my master. Ramana Maharishi.

  In the words of Papaji, a devotee of Ramana, in his book ‘The Truth Is’4

  “I am with you wherever you are.

  There is no escape from Love

  There is no east and west for Peace and Freedom.

  No matter where you go, it is always with you.

  Satsang is the reminder that you are home,

  That you are the home itself,

  So you can’t return “back” from Satsang, it is your nature.

  This experience cannot be forgotten.

  That which can be forgotten is forgotten by the mind,

  But the mind has no access to this experience.”

  I had found deep integration and liberation from my struggles. But life was still to be lived. Stories kept unfolding, but it was to be seen whether or not I would get caught in them and identify with their drama.

  The relationships in my life also had fate attached to them. I had, at one point, become engaged to a man who lived in Bihar, in Northern India. I had met his family; his mother, grandmother and many of his brothers and sisters. He applied numerous times for an Australian tourist visa, but each application was rejected. I was heartbroken when it hit me that I had to choose between seeing my own family or returning to live in India.

  I had to accept that the efforts we had been taking to bring him to Sydney to live were not being supported by the universe. One day, I was walking across Hyde Park in the middle of a storm, my umbrella turning inside out in the strong wind, only to see an immigration lawyer who I shouted out the words to, “why is this so hard”? I was agonising over the injustice of the legal processes designed to keep hearts separated. The following evening, I was in my sister’s home and met someone who happened to be living in the very same apartment block that I had been living before leaving for India. It felt like synchronicity, and fate intervened. We were married in a Hindu ceremony in Bali, and my vows that day were to devote myself to my marriage so that “truth may be served”.

  For now, I want to return to a recent time in my life when it seemed that disintegration was at play. The reality is that my family carries a strong history of mental health issues, not least having two uncles who are schizophrenic, and my destiny was to encounter postnatal depression after the birth of my babies.

  Having babies is not like anyone ever tells you. For some, the experience is blissful, for some, it is not. This is not necessarily something you plan for. It is not like an order you make to the universe that you ‘want fries with that’! You are given a particular set of circumstances and possibilities according to your genetic makeup, or if you want to, you can refer to this as your destiny. The baby’s genetic makeup is not in your control. Neither is their entry into the world. And so, despite having spent a lot of time researching a water birth, with a diagnosis of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, this was not in the realm of possibility. Induced, and yet still clinging to my birth plan of low intervention, I had no epidural. At the most excruciating point of intensity, I was prescribed gas to ease the pain, but later, while having stitches, we found out it had not been turned on! I had to ride out some incredible pain, it was unlike any physical pain I had ever experienced, nor would I choose to again. I experienced waves of expulsion, until it seemed the whole universe was being torn asunder. And then, she arrived.

  My beautiful daughter had arrived, the child whom I will never be able to replace in my heart space. All the gratitude and sincerity of truth and love I had yet experienced was made a mockery of by her exquisite face and my heart opened as I held her for the first time. I remember her little toy giraffe that played beautiful drumming music. We would fall asleep together to that music, in a bubble of our own breath rising and falling together, the nuances of her every sound being attuned to my brain.

  Within a couple of days, I was home and sitting in acute discomfort, trying to nurse a crying baby who was clearly not getting enough food. My brain was a mess of confusion trying to work out feeding and nappy changing, trying to decipher the ongoing small sounds and requests this little human was making of me. I would have happily obliged any of her needs by any means necessary, but they took their toll on my brain in its sleep deprived state.

  One night, I called my husband in to hold her and I collapsed to the floor, crying. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this anymore, I need to sleep” the
incessant torture and bittersweet emotion of wanting to give your all and your body failing you is so acute for a new mother - I’m not sure there is anything as heartbreaking as knowing you are inadequate in fulfilling your child’s needs. I wanted to die. The thoughts came only because I would then be at peace, I thought. Although I realised this was not a total solution. The human brain has so many nooks and crannies, so many traumas and unresolved pieces of our memories can return when placed under stress. I needed support. And I got it - my family were amazing. Knowing I could call a mental health acute care team any time on the mobile number they gave me was the psychological support I needed. Knowing that I would not slip through the cracks; knowing that I was supported, meant the world to me.

  Sometimes freedom sits in the exquisite emotional pain of knowing there is no answer other than to open yourself and surrender to where you are, at this very moment.

  I took a part-time job when my daughter was three months old so that I could have a couple of days out of the house and be able to return home to my baby and smile and cuddle her. The job helped me to pay for a qualified nanny. This woman loved to grandmother me, and get the dinner prepped before I came home. I was lucky. Unfortunately, we found out that she had been drinking whiskey while she was supposed to be watching over our precious daughter, so we had to let her go.

  I was quite sure if I had another child, it would have to be adopted. There was no way I could consciously put my body through torture again. However, when Frankie was 12 months old, we went away to a warmer spot for a few weeks and one day, driving through the hills I saw a sign advertising a psychic. I was intrigued, so we stopped the car and I went inside to meet her. She was incredible. So unassuming and not at all the picture you have in your mind of purple shag like rugs and crystals (though I saw a woman with goth black hair who fitted that description a few years later!). She reminded me of a little boy’s soul that was very close and waiting to come in. I couldn’t believe it. Within six weeks, I knew I was pregnant.