Returning to Love
On World Yoga Day the Brahma Kumaris Nuns, brothers and sisters at the Museum of London Docklands put on a fantastic event, where I gifted a free session on the theme of ‘Creating a Happier World from Inside Out’. It was such a joy and honor to be volunteering alongside such an inspiring community, especially poignant as the building had once been used, many years ago, for sugar slavery. Everybody's love and positive energy rippled out into space and it was such a beautiful and powerful day.
I set up a little stall to spread some happiness and brought along some things that had been gifted to me from the Service Space community over the years. A Gandhi sign (gifted from the Gandhi ashram) heart badges and our Museum of Happiness gratitude tree. And whilst holding the Gandhi sign, I felt a strong calling in my soul… that I really needed to go to Gandhi Ashram soon! I’d wanted to go for years, but timings hadn't ever aligned until this point.
3 hours later, I got an email with an application to apply to be a part of a Moved By Love - Intelligence of the Heart Retreat, part of the Gandhi Ashram ecosystem, which felt like magic! Later that day, the money for the plane ticket also came in, in a beautiful and unexpected way. A friend came round from outside of London and shared that she needed to rent a room for the month of July. So she ended up taking my room for the month and it was done.
The past 3 months prior to the trip had been some of the most challenging months of my life and I’d felt really pushed to my limits. I am so grateful to the Service Space community for hosting a beautiful retreat and getting to host Karma Kitchen at our new home at Well Bean, as well as getting to volunteer for World Yoga Day, as it all helped me to top up on love, inspiration and joy. My mind and body had been in threat and survival mode for a few months navigating a complex situation and I knew I had to be so mindful not to fall into a place of burn-out and I could spot some of the early warning signs. So the time at the Gandhi ashram, connecting with these magical children and teenagers, every single person I met and all of the messages I received, were exactly what my mind, body and soul needed to fully replenish, realign and return to love. It quite literally felt like divine intervention.
There are about 450 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds that the Gandhi Ashram and Manav Sadhna ecosystem supports, providing them all with education, food, shelter and so much love, wisdom and mentorship. I had the joy and honor of getting to live with the teenage girls at a space where Gandhi and the freedom fighters used to live. The girls had only left their villages one week prior and were just finding their feet and their friendships. The language barrier was a bit tricky for the first five minutes when I arrived, but then the girls took me under their wing, grabbed a bindi and sari for me and welcomed me into their home with loving arms. My heart quite literally melted! These girls have been through so much, yet their light was so bright and their hearts were so big and filled with so much love! They don't have a lot, yet their generosity of heart, kindness and smiles moved me to tears on a daily basis. I thought I knew what love, kindness and generosity was, until I stayed there. It is truly hard to put into words what I learnt from these girls and all of the people I came into contact with there. On my birthday, the girls stayed up until midnight, snuck out of their rooms and whispered and sang happy birthday to me, created the most beautiful handmade gifts and cards and gave me their last chocolate. I shared the story with a Service Space friend in London and she felt moved to share a pay-it-forward gift and donated £100 and said ‘please treat the girls’. One of the staff members of the ashram found out about this and also donated £20 and £20 in India is a lot of money and a large percentage of somebody's wage. I was again moved to tears by the kindness and generosity of people and the positive ripples.
For my birthday, I got the opportunity to volunteer at Sava Cafe which was a permanent restaurant like Karma Kitchen that is 100% run by volunteers. At the end of your meal, your bill comes to £0, as the people before you have already paid for your meal. You then have the opportunity to accept it as a gift or pay-forward for the people that dine after. It's a beautiful heart-led experiment in moving from transaction to trust, from scarcity to abundance, and from isolation to community.
That weekend there was a 2 day retreat for the girls, which felt like such a privilege to get to be a part of. There was so much openness, vulnerability, common humanity and sisterhood in the room, it was so beautiful to witness. I was so grateful to get to run a session on self-compassion, making origami hearts with the girls and exploring how to treat ourselves with the same kindness we’d treat a best friend. These two days were some of the most meaningful and heartwarming times I have ever experienced in my life.
It was a joy and honor to be able to share with the teenagers one of my favorite teachings from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn ‘No Mud No Lotus’. Life will send us mud, sometimes really thick dark, yucky mud! Yet God, life and the universe is not trying to pull us down, it’s sending us tests and challenges to help us evolve. Our task is to use life’s mud as fertilizer to grow. The thicker the mud, the more beautiful the lotuses.
Being with the girls, listening to their trauma and being able to relate, connect and have deep compassion, also helped me to gain a wider perspective on the role that my own suffering had played in my life. I can see now why my soul chose this path and all of the ups and downs, suffering and trauma, as it has helped me to have deep compassion for others. There is even more meaning from the mud for me now and for that I am so grateful. When the sunshine of loving kindness meets the tears of suffering, the rainbow of compassion arises.
The whole experience helped me to remember and I was so grateful to get to share this with the girls… things can happen to our body, to our mind and to our heart… but our soul is infinite! We are NOT our challenging thoughts, we are NOT our difficult emotions and we are NOT our past trauma. Our soul is pure love, pure peace and pure joy and is so full of wisdom - and this is our true nature!
One of the most heart-warming things the girls shared at the end of the retreat was… ‘It doesn't matter what language we speak or what color our skin is, it's what's in our heart that matters the most’. Such deep wisdom is this.
I am grateful beyond words for this experience and to everybody involved. These memories will live in my heart forever. And I will spend my whole life paying forward the kindness I received. Thank you all for helping me understand what unconditional love, kindness, generosity and humility truly is.
