Spiritual Bumper Sticker

Last year the key learning for me was all about self-reliance, standing on my own two feet and trusting my intuition, while I religiously attended weekly sessions with my various teachers, mentors and healers who continued to teach me that the essence of their teachings was about me learning to seek the wisdom and extract the truth from within myself. I listened and nodded enthusiastically and continued to return to their classrooms week after week after week for further 'enlightenment'.

Six weeks ago, I moved from the convenience store of Sydney to MacMasters Beach where I am now immersed in nature and wake up with the kookaburras instead of the A380s, where I am the sole wanderer on the beach at sunrise and where the vast space of Bouddhi National Park (which means 'heart') feels like something out of 'Jurassic Park' or 'Land of the Lost'. I could wander off the beaten track and not see another soul for days.

The side effect of this yummy soul-nourishing space is limited accessibility to my various teachers, coaches, healers, mentors etc.

Now, something odd has been happening since I moved up here. Well no. Not odd. Not odd now that I see it for the offering it was but let me tell you and you can decide for yourself.

Firstly, the lady that resides within my GPS has been a little misdirected in her road guidance. First, she told me to go straight at a T-intersection, then she told me to "make a u-turn, please" in the middle of a tunnel and finally she told me to go straight ahead... into a large lake. Luckily, I kind of already knew where I was going and have just enough common sense to realise that I was not in a Harry Potter movie so if I drove straight ahead into a cement wall at a T intersection, it was unlikely I would end up at Hogwarts.

Next, I started missing exits. I missed an exit out of the tunnel so crossed a whole body of water before I could turn around; I went over the wrong bridge and ended up in a mountain instead of on the coast and then I went straight past my home exit on the freeway and didn't realise what I had done until I saw the turn off for 'The Entrance', about 25kms past where I needed to be.

Punctuality has not historically been one of my greatest assets. By the time I actually get in the car to go somewhere, I don't normally allow a lot of room for traffic, detours or directionless GPS women. And so, each time I experienced one of these diversions, I was immediately embroiled in a repetitive and very anxious internal discussion that went something like this: "Oh god. Oh no. I can't be here. I need to be at xyz (insert destination) by such and such a time. Shit shit shit." And so on and so forth and it quickly escalated from there until I was completely frenzied, agitated and of course, late.

The last time this happened, I was sharply interrupted by a very pronounced but calm thought:

YOU DON'T NEED TO BE WHERE YOU ARE GOING.

YOU ONLY NEED TO BE WHERE YOU ARE.

And there it was, voila! My spiritual bumper sticker. The whole reason I moved out of Sydney was to escape the busy-ness I so furiously treaded in and be in a place where I could just descend into the moment but here I was, driving like I was on the Autobahn and freaking out about where I was, because it wasn't where I was meant to be.

The simple wisdom and the teaching of that moment was so profound for me and at the same time it was a big 'D'uh' as well. For me, living in the now is the only thing I need to remember - It's like the spiritual version of "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" but its a lesson I frequently forget.

As Eckhart Tolle says, "Since the now is all there ever is in your life, your entire life unfolds as the present moment. People don't realize it, but all they ever have is 'this'. This moment."

So now that I've decided to just be where I am, I am amazingly finding that I seem to know exactly where I'm going.