Waiting for a Miracle in Barcelona

Now I am in Barcelona, after an amazing eight hour trip on the ferrry from Ibiza. I was with a young boy I met in Formentara, Kristian (note the name!) who is beautiful being who I believe will become a rock star in Spain. He will sing songs of love and inspiration for his generation, which he considers ¨lost.¨ The first question he asked me was, "What is happening in this world?" It was a real question and deserved a real answer. So, of course, I did my best to give him one. But the short answer is, "We are healing the illusion of separation from all that there is." He calls that Gaia. I don´t care what you call it, we all feel it, and know it exists, like an ancient song of joy that echoes in our memories, and seems to call us home. Sometimes we mistake that for the home of our childhood, but it is much more universal than that, because not everyone has had this experience of a happy childhood, yet everyone has this sense of a purity and innocence and a feeling of Paradise lost. Some are more saddened by this feeling than others, some more aware, some react with anger and greed, and try to steal it from others who appear to have it, or they kill those who give to them the love they think they lack. But everyone, regardless of their experience, at some level knows the feeling I am speaking of, lurking behind the appearances of this veil of illusion we call the "real world."

 

In that "so-called 'real' world, which is actually a nightmare of separation, the events proceeding from the theft of my wallet in Valencia two weeks ago, continue to unfold. I arrived here in Spain and found out that the bank card which was sent here to Barcelona to the address of the woman I left my baggage with,  Maite, was rejected by her because, speaking only Spanish, she did not understand what was happening! My card was Fedexed immediately to me, but she had it sent back! So I waited for two weeks, and now I find I have to wait another two weeks!

 

It seems that there is something holding me here in Barcelona.

 

This morning I discovered that there is a lovely Brazilian artist staying in the same room I stayed in, in Maite's lovely apartment. And she too had all her money, 5000 Euros, her passport, her cards, everything stolen at the airport in Ibiza. She had to stay there for forty days waiting for her cards. She is the first person I have met here who has heard of the Course.

 

It feels as if there is a reason why I am being called back here. She told me that I should pay attention to the signs, and stay here. So I will.

 

Yesterday, on the ferry for eight hours in the Atlantic Ocean, with the sun glaring down on Kristian and I on the upper deck, the wind whipping my hair in my face, blowing my hat away, the engine pounding, the waves churning white in the wake of the boat, the sky clear and blue, I felt filled with an inexplicable sense of joy, you might even call it ecstasy. I feel so blessed to be here, to have survived all my adventures and come out with a sense of freedom and love intact. In fact, I feel fantastic, as if the best part of my life is beginning.

 

In fact, I was realizing that when I was seventeen I came to Europe for four months before I went to Montreal to the National Theatre School of Canada. An Italian man who was a guest in our home for a year while he worked at a travel agency, returned to Naples. We continued to correspond, and a year later, he sent me a ticket. I had a weekend to get a passport. My father got a friend of his to open his photography shop on Sunday, take the picture for the passport I needed, and couriered it to a friend of his in the government in Ottawa. On Tuesday I had the passport, and I flew to New York, with a letter from Augusto in Italian. When I arrived at the ship, I was directed to the address on the envelope of the letter, the Captain of the ship. He read itm ub Italian, and then smiled at me, and welcomed me to the Captain's table! I had dinner with the officers that night!  Mahogany, crystal, white linen, candlelight, a boat built in the nineteen thirties making its last village home, owned by the ancient Grimaldi family of Italy, Prince Ranier of Monaco being one of the Grimaldis, some of the richest ship owners on the planet.

 

I cruised from New York to Brazil, throught the Carribean. Every night I stood at the prow of the boat, watching the stars and the foam on the sea, and listening to  the 45 record of Percy Faith's "A Summer Place" (Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. Brad Pitt, eat your heart out! ) that I had brought with me. I at in a swing onboard with a young man from Brussels, Thieri, who was being forced into an arranged marriage by his wealthy family (shades of Titanic!) and, of course, we fell in love, for a moment, just long enough for him to understand that he was going to tell them, after this trip he was being sent on to "think it over", that he was not going to marry as ordered.

 

I shared a Cabin with a wonderful woman from France. At seventeen she seemed so sophisticated to me. Her name was Ogla Cazmir Jeanon. She was a combination of Spanish, Russian and French. We spoke French together, thanks to my highschool education. She told me that her boyfriend was Briggite Bardot's manager. For those of you who do not know who Brigitte Bardot is, or was, she was the French sex kitten who started the whole blonde bimbo thing.Before there was Monroe, there was Bardot! ( Rhymes, you know.) She told me that if I came to Paris, I should look her up! Which I did, but that comes later in the story.

 

After visiting all the Carribean islands, we crossed the Atlantic to Naples, where I was supposed to meet the man who had gifted me this incredible cruise. But instead came a stranger to take me to the hotel, where two dozen roses awaited me in my room. The next morning Augusto arrived to tell me that he was married! So, I cried, ended the relationship right then and there.

 

As if reflecting my sadness, the lights in the hotel went out that night. I found myself standing on the terrace watching the lights and life in the courtyard opposite. I became aware that there was someone standing next to me, and we began to talk. He turned out to be a Spanish Concert pianist on tour. He took me out for dinner, and told me I was beautiful, and I should continue to see Europe on my own. Which I did, for four months, and then returned to Canada to attend the National Theatre School in Montreal, where I had been chosen as one of seven girls and seven boys from all across Canada to attend. I learned from the greatest talents in the country, and had an amazingly wonderful time there too, despite all the scary and challenging things that inevitably happen when you are young and inexperienced. 

 

But back to that trip of long ago.

 

When I reached Paris, of course I went to see Olga, who lived in a beautiful apartment right on the Champs Elysee. She took me with her everywhere. One day we went to the hairdressers, and Anouk Aimee a famous French movie star, was there, their version of Audrey Hepburn, the gamin.  And then she took me to the office of Brigitte Bardot´s manager. There was a life sized photo of her in the lobby. The two of them, Olga and her boyfriend, thought I reminded them of Zazie, a character in a film that was popular at that time, "Zazie dans Le Metro" and so they adopeted me. He drove a red MG, small English racing car, convertible. They put me up on the back seat above them, and asked me where I wanted to go! They showed me Paris like that. What a blast I had! I have been so lucky in my life!

 

So, as I was on the boat last night coming from Ibiza to Barcelona, I realized I was at the back of the boat now, watching the sunset. I realized also that the sunset of my life is the richest time of my life, full of the deep Burgundy and Indigo and Gold ochre hues of the sunset over the ocean. I want to experience this time of richness and share it, like the Madeira wine I drank on board the "ship of fools," as I called it! It had everything, rich widows, and a third class filled with Jamaicans and a steel band, and wild dancing, just like in the movie Titanic. It was fantastic, and I have had a life filled with those kind of adventures. Now I want to share them with those young ones who come behind, and who have the task of returning the world to joyful innocence, and finding cause to celebrate.

 

Which brings me to my purpose here in Europe. I am to inspire and teach and help gently those who are seeking. Those who ask me how and why I am so young and so happy I will tell. I will tell my story.

 

It is a story of miracles, one after another, compiled until I see nothing but joy and forgiveness everywhere. I will make my teaching and hopefully my life here, and in Canada. Wherever I am called, I will go. If it is back to Morroco, I will go there. I am being gently guided, and I am constantly astonished at home intricate, and yet simple the Divine plan is. And it is NEVER as I plan it! That is the one constant thing that I think is true. If I depend on my own strength, no wonder I am afraid. When I surrender and ask for help and guidance, I am shown the next step. It unfolds as if I were being "gently carried down a beautiful path in summer."

 

So, as I was leaving Ibiza, I wondered what the purpose of going there had been, and, in the hairdressers where I went to make myself lovely for ....I don't know who,  I met a young Dutch woman who has a big house and six other houses. Her husband builds them.She has a vision of using her big house for workshops. It hit me. No one here knows anything about the Course. I am evolving into becoming a Teacher of the Course. I can teach here, in Paradise. People would love to come here!

 

I must finish my book, and come back here and do workshops, introducing the Course in Miracles, but combining it with all the creative arts, performing, singing, painting, all directed towards a discovery of the truth of who you are through creating your way home.

 

I can feel the way of the work forming and taking shape inside of me. Perhaps I will use Paulo Cohelo's work as a structure, with his exercises from El Camino del Santiago, the Pilgrimage. I also am realizing as I study the Course that there is a structure to the lessons that can be condensed into the structure for my book, because I am learning certain lessons that depend on others. Each group of lessons builds to a breakthrough, and the experiences that I am having seem to fall into a natural order. As you know, I am sure, the Course says that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. The golden thread of my story is one miracle after another, beginning with the miracle of my mother's being saved at birth from certain death by her grandmother.

 

The miracles in my life now appear like pearls on a string, each one perfect, each one formed from a resistance to the grit of pain and suffering, a sort of crucifixion which transforms them into gleaming orbs of opalescent light, little suns, all strung together on a golden thread.

This is the structure I want for my book. That, and the journey to the center of the labyrinth, holding the golden thread. Because we each have to confront our own form of the Minotaur, the demon of our own chaos and confusion and pain, caused by our own misperception and fear of the Will of God. The fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs ever made by human kind.

 

Now, my patience is being tested again, because I have already waited two weeks for my bank card, but now I must wait again. Why? The Course says this: "What could you not accept if you knew that everything was gently planned by one who has only your best interests at heart?" So, for some reason I find myself in Barcelona again, and compelled to stay here for another week to ten days! Yikes! I felt like I was coming home, coming home to a lover who is waiting for me with open arms. I still have faith!

 

Last night as the sun sank over the Atlantic, Kristian and I watched, as the sliver of moon rose into the Indigo. We had been talking all day about God, a word he simply cannot accept, too many connotations of religion.  We finally decided to refer to it as ALL THAT IS! I like to refer to it is the ONENESS. At any rate, we came to a place where the first star was shining just to the right and above the moon, and I taught him the rhyme I learned as a child and passed on to my children:

 

Star light,

Star bright,

First star I see tonight,

I wish I may,

I wish I might,

Have this wish,

I wish tonight!

 

I have taught that rhyme to children in the Sahara desert, and there I was teaching it to 21 year old musician, who knows that I am returning to Barcelona as "The City of LOVE!" So together we wished on the star, for each others happiness, and our dreams to come true. I feel an excitement I cannot explain. I feel as if everything I ever wanted is within reach now. I am creating it as we speak. It is flowing through me with an abundance of Grace.

 

The Brazilian artist has a shop called "Full of Grace" I love that! Her paintings are filled with colour and joy and light. They are so happy. She had the same experience as me, being robbed. I think that I will put together a workshop in Ibiza, with teachers of painting, music, and drama, all tied togehter with theme of  Healing through Forgiveness. I think I will call it: Return to Innocence.

 

 I have so much to give, and I have such a wonderful story to tell. I think it is a stage show, a theatrical performance, with lights and dance and music, because it depends on my energy, combined with that of the youth around me. I see Kristian as part of it. His partner has theater school here in Barcelona, and he is a genius at lighting and sound. I am beginning to see it now.

 

You should have seen us on the beach that last day in Formentara! It was Paradise! White sand, no clothes, brown bodies everywhere, swimming, taking pictures of each other, running in the sand and the water, so free, so happy, like children. Kristian and his friend Germana, from Naples simply could not get over how good I look "for my age!" The want to know how I do it! Even Maite, the woman in Barcelona who grabbed me last night when I finally arrived at her door, saying that she thought I was dead, said I looked younger, and asked me what my secret is. I don't have one, except what Kristian said to me when he found out how old I am, "You must be with God!" True.

 

As soon as we met we recognized each other. He is beautiful, powerful, innocent, free, young, strong, the way that Christ was when I saw him painted on the cloud above Maui. His hair is brown and gold, long, and he wears white, always, and beads.

 

I was talking with him about the Course, in a cafe, and I gave him the book, telling him to put his finger down. He did, and it was on the words,

" I am the Light in which God sees"

 

At that moment there was light all around him, mauve and pink light, and he looked at me and told me there was light all around me too. We were inside a dark cafe. There was no window in the corner where we were. It was an inner light radiating from both of us, visible to both of us, in that moment of joining and remembrance. At that moment he said, "I have never felt like this with anyone! It is as if you KNOW me! And I know YOU!" And so it is.

 

I feel the same way at this age. I feel young,  strong, free, filed with love and joy and ecstasy! I feel filled with hope and excitement about the future. It is as if everything I have done in my life has led me to this moment, as if I have returned to the innocence of my childhood, yet with the wisdom and knowledge of experience. Everything that has happened in my life has filled me with a sense of the exquisite nature of the Truth, which is overflowing Love. Literally, "My cup runneth over!"

 

My skin is brown the way it was at the end of the summer at the cottage in Ontario. I remember a picture taken of me, where my skin was so brown, my hair so white blonde, as I stood in the doorway of the cottage in my white nightgown, billowing around me in the breeze, that at first my farther thought it was a negative, photos back then being in black and white. The blonde curls are not there, but my hair is bleached white by the sun, and straight. I am tanned all over the way I was when I was a little girl and my sister and I lay in the rowboat, naked, to the dismay of the neighbouring cottages who would not let their children play with us. That, of course, is the difference between Puritan Canada, and cosmopolitan Europe. Nobody cares here. Formentara is filled with Germans, Italians, and Spaniards. There are children running free and naked everywhere on the beach, and their parents too. Lovely! So natural. All the children have lovely round heads, with full heads of hair. You never see a crewcut kid. And their eyes are huge and round with wonder and innocence. They seem to come from somewhere else. You rarely hear a child cry here. They are the Crystal generation.

 

As for Judith, there has been nothing since, so I am not worrying about the porn thing. She sent the books in English and in French to the Professor in Morroco yesterday. I emailed him. I am waiting for his response. I am filled with a sense of certainty and joy like never before. Everything is unfolding as planned, and I am simply watching in wonder.

 

So, my dears, this is the latest from your correspondent in Barcelona!

 

Waiting for the next miracle to appear.

 

Shelora