What you seek is seeking you – Rumi.

I have begun doing workshops after a five year break. I had reached the point where I seemed to not be receiving any benefits from spending my hard earned readies on another course I would probably use what I had learnt from it for a month or two and then go back to the old me I knew and loved/loathed depending on the day and my mood.

The last five years could be called traumatic in my life. I l lost my job of seventeen years, pensioned out never to work again, I had to move out of the house I had shared for over ten years and live alone, I hadn’t been in a relationship for ten years, generally you could say it included many nights of the dark soul. As Rumi states what you seek , seeks you and I had shown very little responsibility in any of these areas for a long, long time.

My heart had been yelling at me to get out of my government job at Centrelink for about 5 years and I took no notice going down the I have a secure job route, this manifested itself as  mental Illness and four hospitalisations over the five year period. The house I was living in I shared with a drug addicted alcoholic and I must shamefully say I took on a lot of his practices in these areas. In relationships I had decided they weren’t worth the trouble they created cutting myself off from the possibility of love in my life. What I was teaching myself over these years was that being irresponsible and not listening to your heart has costs and they would continue as long as I kept acting in that manner.

This behaviour continued in my new one bedroom apartment or should one say flat as it was a 1950’s double brick structure in Preston. I was the king of take away food and the greatest lender of videos from the local video store, yes they still exist in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne. I also slept up to twelve hours a day. This went on for about a year and a half when I made a decision in the face of all the things that made up my life at the time. I went along to a Colombian film night at a place called the Darebin Intercultural Centre, I had decided it was O.K. to go as it was at six in the evening. It was a mixture of many different cultures attending and for some reason that I did not know at the time but I sense it was my heart screaming at me, grab the opportunity I asked did they have volunteer positions. Inaam, my now inspirational leader said yes even though they did not have any at the time and two months later after police checks etc. I was ensconced in the place.

Where do you know that all cultures are welcome to teach other cultures about the best they have to offer, this is what we do at the centre , link to us on https://www.facebook.com/DarebinInterculturalCentre?ref=hl. I was sitting at my desk one day when a statement passed through my thoughts Love and respect for All, No one left out, which we recently changed to Love and respect for All, Everyone Included as it is more inclusive as the word suggests. I feel in love with the ethos of Interculturalism and had found my passion at 59 years of age. I was still sleeping lots of hours and eating crap food but transformed this after attending a daggy Healthy Eating seminar put on by the local council two months later. I woke up next day at six o’clock threw out all my take away menus and joined my local organic food coop and have not eaten junk food since. The food coop was part of an environmental organisation i had belonged to when I was trying to fix myself up CERES environment park, its contact is http://www.ceresfairfood.org.au/ .

Having changed how I related to life this gave me the opportunity to begin to see what was out there in regard to transformational workshops that fitted into my somewhat meagre budget. The first I took  on came out of left field. I saw that my old mate Sun was having one of his Kirtan gigs that I used to attend and there was a thing called Kundalini dance as well. As I used to dance before my hiatus in life I decided to go. The women leading the dance fascinated and scared me all in the one moment with her openness and freedom to move across the dance floor. I enrolled in her dance series as there was a payment plan.  You dance your chakras through the series and when we got to dance blindfolded during the heart chakra session this was my first major breakthrough and one of the most massive heart opening I have had occur in my ilife. http://www.kundalinidance.com/

it was also during this series that I got to attend my next major transformational workshop Rainbow Bridge 13;13:13 and discover the amazing work of Tanishka Tantrika. We had to dance and focus on a project that would stretch us. Nemone has told me about this retreat up in Byron the following month that I would like. having $50 in the bank I danced to the possibility of going not knowing how. The fourth email I read that night was the six month payment plan so off I went not knowing what to expect. Over the 8 days of the retreat I got to marry myself and make powerful vows to live by, own my position as an elder in life and generally fall in love with myself. Check out Tanishka’s work at http://www.starofishtar.com

Having started to believe in myself and let go of what no longer serves me I am in the space to choose what workshops I believe will empower me. I have done two Own Your Fuck workshops to deal with my sexuality issues led by Miroslav and Belinda http://www.facebook.com/events/1546442818829919/?fref=ts  a surprise workshop at an International Day of Peace event I attended were Emeli promised to get us see what it was that stops us living our dreams, Seems I have to stop running away. Emeli can be contacted at http://www.emelipaulo.com/ – she’s very real. I the did Connecting with Your Tribe to deal with the issues of being twice as old as all the people i was meeting. Led by Michele this is a fantastic look at the within and the without of your life, hence the business name https:// http://www.withinwithout.com.au, To discover what  my career could be I did Get Paid Doing what you Love workshop with Charmaine and Miroslav, seems I’m a blogger and an author, contact on  https://www.facebook.com/events/561276124006388/?ref_dashboard_filter=calendar&source=1 and lastly the work of Arion Light through Thrive to seek support in writing my book that I have had in me for 4 years http://activationschool.com/thrive-2/, I get a support call every week day now.

Are these the last workshops I will do, not really, Emeli is doing a series of workshops called RAW – there are no limits, so I will be going along to check out what areas in  my life I have been setting small limits http://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/raw-there-are-no-limits-tickets-13594765309,

Namaste to next time my Friends