Enlightenment

One of the challenges of being a parent is to accept that your children are not little miniatures of yourself; that any child you produce for the world may be very much like you or not like you at all. All my four children are very unique beings, quite different to one another in most ways except to say that they are all good people and all quite soft and caring sort of people.

Their upbringing is very different to mine and of course, the world has moved on since I was growing up and being, say, 23 years old now is rather different to being 23 years old 25 years ago, I think. What people of that age want out of life could well be vastly different than what we wanted back then at that age. Contemporary culture and childhood experiences are going to shape us in ways we don't quite know and the challenge is not to judge and to understand that we all have our separate journeys through life; that no one can really hurry someone along; that maturity and knowledge and wisdom and fulfilment will come when the time is ready. As my boss used to say when I wouldn't heed his advice, "I guess you have to make your own mistakes."

One of the experiences I knew I wanted to have in London was to go to a Church service at Westminster Abbey. I was happy to go alone but my daughter insisted she was happy to come along. Plans with young people change minute by minute I find, and Saturday evening had her having drinks with a man friend whilst Sunday morning found them both hung over. Nevertheless, both of them agreed to come along and so off we went to Westminster Abbey.

I love churches. Something happens to me when I walk into any church, but to walk into Westminster after a period of 30 years since I have last been there was truly profound. It is such a beautiful church and the service this morning which focused on the death of Christ was a very beautiful one with a great deal of divine choral singing. The sound emanating through the Cathedral was so intensely beautiful that I found tears pouring down my face. I was deeply moved to hear such beauty amongst the splendour of the Abbey. It was one of those moments when you feel very close to your maker and when the reason for being here on this earth seems very clear. It was a coming together of the person from my past and the person who I am now - both of those people always in search of beauty, of grace and of deep meaning but in somewhat different ways.

It saddened me then and it saddens me now as I write to recognize that my daughter got so little out of the experience. Yet, I could be wrong about that. Perhaps one day on reflection it will mean a great deal - one day when she is ready to look at life with a bit more contemplative thought. I guess you would be right if you thought that I was missing my husband at that moment. He would have adored the Abbey and the service and completely understood my tears and my sense of being overwhelmed by the spectacular beauty.

Since I was often alone as a child, my world was of my own making and perhaps it is the reason why I have a strong and vivid inner life. My imagination always keeps me company. I read a lot and I have a hunger to see the places I have read about. It is why I find such wonder in being in London. Perhaps, it is why I can enter into the world of cindi with such ease and why I embrace her so completely. I see nothing wrong with, and never have, creating alternate realities. I've read on other peoples' blogs comments about that recently and of course I agree that it is entirely healthy to radiate in the pleasure and relaxation of creating an alternate experience other than just the "real world".

Yet as much as I can relate to creating alternate realities (my eldest son had two imaginary friends that we refer to to this day), I seek much more. Constantly, I await those rare but very precious moments when I may be transported higher; lifted spiritually off the ground and into the space of mind that can only be described as "the divine". I wait and wait for those moments and when they come, I feel a radiance and a sense of being filled with purity that is like no other feeling in the world. Sometimes, every so often, my submissive response takes me to that spiritual lightness of being. I was most certainly there today in the Abbey.

If I could give my daughter, my sons but one gift in life it would be to experience the sense of completeness that I felt today and that I have experienced in moments of submission and love. Whether they will ever know what I know, I cannot say. Perhaps it is not my job to be concerned about this and on their own personal journeys through life they will come to know things that I will never know. Such is life. I continue to hope that they may experience moments of being transported to a higher realm as I am just as I wish it for you; for everyone. My goodness, but it radiates beauty up there!