I don’t think we can go through life without experiencing loss and painful events. But deep wounds can also hold great gifts for us, if we are able to look at what happened from a different perspective.
True healing begins when we realise there is nothing to heal.
I was very young, barely 20, when my father died unexpectedly.
To be completely accurate, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, because I had dreamt about his death three months before it happened. At the time, I had no idea what to do with any of it, and the loss hurt terribly. Because of the dream, I was filled with guilt: if I had seen it coming, why hadn’t I been able to help?
Emotionally shattered, I was driving home on the night of my father’s funeral.
I was on a main road. The traffic lights were flashing yellow and there was hardly any traffic. In the distance I saw a car turn onto the straight stretch of road, heading directly towards me. In a split second, I knew that although I had the right of way, that car was not going to stop.
In that moment, the small part of me filled with pain and guilt disappeared, replaced by complete peace and calm. I became aware of the world around me in every direction, as though everything were present at once. I knew we would collide head-on if I didn’t move. The kerb on the left — I would have to watch it if we started to skid, because it could throw the car back. A lamp post at ten o’clock — best not to wrap the car around that. And the car. The other one. I knew the driver had fallen asleep.
In a single timeless moment, I was aware of every movement at once.
With complete calm, I turned the steering wheel to the left. We hit. The other car slammed into the right side of mine without braking. Time slowed down so much that I could almost perceive the pieces of the windscreen shattering one by one. My car twisted and spun from the impact, and I heard the sound of metal stretching into a long, low roar. I corrected the skid with what was left of the car. For half a turn, the two vehicles moved together. I was still correcting… because, after all, there was that lamp post…
To me, it seemed to last for long minutes, and it all unfolded in a depth of peace I had never experienced before. In ordinary human time, only a few seconds can have passed between the impact and the moment we stopped. Then there was silence. Complete, absolute silence.
The confused, grieving 20-year-old girl only returned to her body at that moment, and immediately went into shock. I remember screaming and screaming, unable to stop, until people began talking to me. What no one expected was that I would climb out completely unharmed from a car crumpled like a tissue. I sat on the side of the road trembling for quite a while afterwards.
That terrible day became one of the most beautiful and defining experiences of my life.
For a long time, I too kept speeding up, keeping busy, achieving, looking for challenges and finding them, meeting expectations and failing to meet them, winning and losing. At the time, I didn’t even realise just how much I was losing. Eventually, I lost my self-respect, my faith in my own values, my trust in life and in human relationships. I lost myself.
26 éves voltam, amikor először fordultak hozzám tanácsért és kérték a segítségemet. A bő két évtized alatt nem csak én változtam sokat, hanem a világ is, amiben élünk.
Jó darabig magam is gyorsítottam, pörögtem, teljesítettem, kihívásokat kerestem, találtam, megfeleltem, nem feleltem meg, győztem és veszítettem. Akkor még magam sem láttam, hogy mennyire sokat. Végül elvesztettem az önbecsülésemet, az értékeimbe vetett hitet, az életbe, az emberi kapcsolatokba vetett bizalmat. Elvesztettem Önmagamat.
That was where the years of searching began, followed by the years of waiting, and finally by letting go of the search altogether. I began to slow down until silence appeared within me. Silence was followed by a joy for life, and that joy by an ever-growing openness. And then came what I have now: a life that is happy even in its imperfection — a life I may sometimes turn away from, but one I always have somewhere to return to.
In this imperfect life, every emptiness does not need to be filled. We do not need to force or earn anything from life, from God, or from something greater than ourselves through conscious manifestation, prayer, pleading, ceremonies, rituals, good behaviour or service to others.
Because everything is already within us and around us.
I don’t have to help anyone. I don’t have to serve anything. I don’t have to become anyone, because I already am that. And so are you.
This is all I can pass on. 🙂