I experienced the joyful vibe in Colourfest 2017, and my other few participations very intensely. But I didn’t try to hold on to them.

I can now “do” non-attachment. I would spend decades yearning after the event, preserving memories, keeping keepsakes.

Today I am the conduit. I can deeply swim in and submerge into these fine, fiery, feathery, frolicsome experiences. But I don’t want them to last so much that all I become is a sad curator of memories. That has gone. I’m over all that. It’s a sort of inside of head declutter.

It’s good. It feels “grown up”.

I had a perfectly surprisingly amazing experience on Sunday morning, June 4, 2017.

Nashir Karmali gave a 2 hour lecture on Ayurveda healing practices. Much of it was in the form of delightful anecdotes from his own long years in his own Wimborne practice.

He impressed us all. He comes over as he is, a deeply human and compassionate person, wise, learned, and with a gentle humour.

There must have been at least forty in the elegantly preserved Gaunts House Library. All remained quiet and respectfully attentive in the room throughout.

I knew Nashir’s talk would “use up” all the calm sunny weather on that day. I knew the weather would deteriorate from midday on.

But I dismissed as selfish idle ego chit-chat the idea of “bunking” it! And Nashir himself had, after all, personally invited me.

So I stayed to the end.

At the end, we were asked to partner off into healing/listening pairs. We were told, “Sit face to face, eye in eye, holding hands, look deep into the honourable soul we see in the eyes before us. For the first part, one touches the wrists of the other at the pulse.”

I remained sat down while the others got up, walked and mixed to find their partners.

I know from Biodanza I am way down the list of pairing choices owing to my minority age group, as I was here.

Only one unpaired person remained.

Before me is a woman with a forceful confident manner. She is a young woman. Certainly of good family. Someone well-educated and sure of her place in her society.

Her face is pleasingly round and open. Her symmetrical features lend her a certain classical nobility older than her years.

All went quiet. I am touching her pulse on both her wrists. I cannot detect much if any beat. But it is contact. We both ignore what Nashir was saying about what to do and say, because we have become absorbed in each others gaze.

I find she had a tranquillity bordering on nobility.I say quietly,

“You are far more beautiful than even you will admit.”

She smiles. It is a compliment.

Then I begin to see and to feel inside of me something completely contrary to and at odds with the composed expression on her nice symmetrical face.

Here’s the thing. I became more and more restless. My stomach twisted. I see her calm face cloud slightly with a sadness. But what I feel is her fear!

I say,

“You are not as composed as you are projecting. You have had a shock, you have had a frightening experience. It is recent. You came to this festival in spite of carrying this with you.”

Her eyes filled, although the facade I had looked through was still strong and was not about to fail her.

I asked if she would share.

She said I was right. She said the day before the festival, her boyfriend, who lives across the road, had dumped her.

I asked her how she had felt this in her heart. She was torn up inside, she said.

Neither of us expressed an objective opinion about how or why I had “seen” this from only her eyes. Since then (only 36 hours ago) I have not foolishly distracted myself by marvelling at the phenomenon of this vision.

I accept it and am surprised is all. I find it suggests that I may have the ability to help others more than I had realised.

In the last moments together, I said,

“The pain and turmoil inside you does not ‘belong’ to you. You don’t own it, and it doesn’t own you. It is a hard to live with emotion, which will pass, like all emotions.

We are not mechanisms. We have no off-switches.

What is permanently yours is the light of love in your own heart from which you came, to which you will return.

That is your strength and that is what will support and sustain you through this time. Keep your heart in view, do not try to examine your heart’s pain.

Your closeness to your living heart will be what helps shorten this period of pain.”

It was her turn. She looked at me and she said I was very very calm. Hearing, or rather seeing her see this, I suddenly felt like collapsing.

I had to close my eyes, look down, bite my lip to avoid breaking down. I composed myself. I said,

“Under this I am in turmoil.” Quickly I added,

“But this is only what is on me now. I am at peace in my heart.”

She asked to hug. We hugged. Moments later we were both gone.

What do you think, dear Friend?