Unzipping my skinsuit

I have been enjoying experiencing my body getting stronger little by little, step by step. I have only rarely experienced myself acutely as a physical being before, and these yoga classes are working very powerfully for me. I keep making progress, recently managing to do my first proper press-up!
 It is a great special thing to share with my loved one, and I love watching the transformation in him too.

After my experiences in Beirut, I have really been thinking a lot of the challenges of being on the earth. Out of the blue, as we were taking a long walk along the corniche the other day- admiring the azure sky and sea-the loved one commented that one of his favourite quotes was that we are not physical beings that have souls, but spiritual beings that have bodies.
As spiritual beings, time and space do not exist for us. It is a mighty challenge to be confined to this earthly existence. I love jumping out of my body now and then, shooting straight up above the clouds and floating there. As a good friend says, 'unzipping my skinsuit'. Sometimes at night before I fall asleep, I imagine myself drifting up above the earth's atmosphere and playing there, tumbling and turning and somersaulting free.

Tonight after the exercises, we were resting in the dark quiet on our mats, Shilpa led us through a short meditation, asking us to choose a point on our bodies and imagine the breath radiating from there like a pebble thrown into a still lake. I became aware of the steady pulse of my heart and felt a lemony light radiating softly out of me, through every cell of my dearest on my left, filling the class and the house and the street and the neighbourhood and the city, and finding all of you and sweeping over and into you like a kind of gentle tsunami of joy.

I was filled with such a sense of celebration when I left that place. I got into the car and we spoke about food and contracts and Excel sheets and mundane normal topics. However, they all seemed so unusually beautiful.

Dear friend, may the everyday routine things in your world have the ability to remind you that you are liberated child of the stars.

On the joy of mixed spice and mist lifting

A good happy busy day. The semester is winding down and one of my classes finishes at the end of the week. I have been teaching most of these fourteen students since last September, and I feel like a mother bird who know her chicks are ready to fly and who needs to throw them out of the nest. This afternoon my last class ended at 5.15pm and I decided to go the supermarket before my German class, instead of rushing home. I usually run in and out of the shop, and it was fun having time to browse through the aisles for a change just looking at all the different things on the shelves.

The loved one and I are lusting after a decent fruit cake, and are determined to bake one. I recently posted on FB asking for good recipes with ingredients that would be available in Muscat. Well, I found THREE essential ingredients this evening that I have never seen before. I honestly can't believe my luck, and that finding 3 small things on the supermarket shelf could give me so much pleasure. Mixed spice, glace cherries and candied peel! It felt as though they had been there all along, just as though a kind of mist has lifted. Sometimes life feels like that, just open your eyes and you'll see that what you wanted was right there in front of you all along.

The cake is one large step on its way to fruition. Yeeah!

I was carrying with me today a little image from my trip to Lebanon I wanted to tell you about. As you drive from Beirut down ( or is it up?) to Byblos, there is the deep blue Mediterranean on the left and the green lush mountain on the right. It is pretty built up all the way, but as you look up at one point there is an imposing dove-white figure of the Virgin Mary benevolently gazing out over the city. This is Our Lady of Lebanon at Harissa. I was very happy on my last day to visit there with Junaline and Lara. There is a little peaceful altar to light blessing candles and a sweet chapel with bright stained glass angels, beautiful trees and also many interesting people to see. We were peckish and ordered fresh thin based pizza bread with zatar ( thyme and sesame) and I had a nourishing beautifully colored orange and carrot juice.

As we were waiting, there was the gentlest of tugs on my shirt. It was a little boy, no older than five,with black curly hair and huge brown eyes looking up at me. He enquired politely in Arabic about the wherabouts of the bathroom, and I instintively put my hand on his shoulder and we walked together there.

This interaction was no more that a few seconds, but it left an impression on me. This child so innocently being drawn to me, asking for help and trusting me to lead him to the right place. Is this not how we should be with God? Laying our needs and concerns before him, asking Him to take care of us and trusting that he will lay his hand on our shoulder and gently steer us to where we need to be?
Again, a mist evaporated before me.
It dawned on me that it  really is that simple.