5.3 — The Far Journey To Unknown Places

What happened was life-changing and life-affirming.

More Travelling

In building a new life for myself, I moved on in my personal life as well as in other areas. I met a woman and started to explore a new relationship. I do not propose to go into the relationship itself in this story, that is for another time. What I do want to explore is the way it opened me up to a new way of looking at the world, how it created a new freedom in me, how it allowed my awareness to deepen.

Through the growth in this relationship I grew in my travel, to the point where I gave up having a home at all. I expanded where I went travelling and I widened my reasons for travelling. It ceased to be about going somewhere and became about just travelling. I will explore how this changed my life in the next section, but for now I want to look at what happened and how it came about.

I was already travelling for my lighting work and I added travelling to Tony Robbins events. I had signed up for a number of events around the world, mainly in the US but also in Fiji. Money was short after the problems with my businesses and my leaving home but I managed to find a way to keep going. One of the benefits of the amount of business travel was the bonuses I received through air miles and other perks. At one point I was able to travel to Australia for free, courtesy of air miles and take my new girlfriend for free as well, courtesy of a credit card promotion. Some of the events I went to in the US I could combine with business trips and so dramatically cut the cost.

I know I was meant to pursue this route to my development because it always happened, the Universe always provided the ways and means of achieving my aims. Two events stood out for to confirm this developing view I had of life.

Serendipity

Towards the end of my lighting career I was coming to the end of a church lighting project in Ireland. I was living in France at the time and was developing a new career as a writer, specialising in the area of men's work. I came to know of a men's conference being held in Boulder, Colorado. I had a business trip planned to Boulder and so I thought I could combine the two. They ended up over a week apart and I worked out that the cost of extending my existing trip to cover this conference would cost as much as flying out specifically for it. I could not afford the cost and so told the organiser that I was not able to come. I said to myself that if the money appeared I would go. I left it at that. Soon after This I was contacted by the church in Ireland to organise a trip there to inspect the contractor's installation work. The beauty of this request was that the client paid me on a daily rate for the trip. I was able to time the trip to coincide with the conference. The trip took me part the way to Boulder and provided the money for the remainder of the trip. The money had appeared.

The second event was when I was travelling in Australia, again towards the end of my lighting career. I was contacted by a client in London who wanted me to come and look at an urgent project that had come up. This client paid me for the time I spent working for him. I explained where I was and offered several alternatives for how I could do the work for him. One of these was for him to pay the cost of me flying back to London for a week to do the work. He readily agreed to this, affirming that my way of life was the right one at that time.

Fiji

At the beginning of this period of my life I spent the better part of a year in Fiji. My first trip was at the opening of the Oneness University in Fiji. This was an event sponsored by Tony Robbins and was the start of his shift into his spiritual development. I went as a participant and through it I deepened my spiritual growth and development. It was a long way to go but I knew that it was right for me. I was moving away from my career and personal life and was seeking a new way to live. I knew that this involved going inside and dealing with the issues I still struggled with.

This first trip to Fiji opened my eyes to where I could go and what I could do and it opened me up to a new relationship with the woman I had met. I have already talked about how The Oneness University affected my view of life and my view of myself. It also gave me the courage to let go of everything that held me back, everything that kept me in the past.

After this trip I was asked if I would like to go back to Fiji to crew for a Robbins event. I agreed to this and thought about how I could pay for it later. My food and accommodation was all paid for so all I had to do was get there. This was a gift I was not going to pass up. I ended up going there for a number of trips to crew different events. I spent extended periods in Fiji soaking up the laid back atmosphere and thinking more about my future life.

A New Life

This period became the gateway to a completely new life for me, one that transformed me in almost every way.

I was seeing more of my new girlfriend and becoming more attached to her. I spent much of my time in Fiji with her. She had divorced her husband and had sold her house. She was free and was setting out on a life of travelling and discovering herself. She was escaping from all the history that tied her to the past and was exploring her future. There were still people trying, in a well-meaning way, to tie her down in a new relationship, and who could not understand what she wanted and where she was going.

She was staying with me in my cottage in Derbyshire, on a short visit before going back out to Fiji. We were talking about the future and what we were looking for. She was wary of any new relationship because she had learned to see them as restricting. She had only experienced men who wanted her to live their way.

I was looking to escape my rut and find a new way of living. Out of the blue, in the middle of our conversation, I said, "How would it be if I joined you on the road?" She looked at me in amazement and asked if I really meant what I said. She was wary because she had not come across someone who was interested in doing what she wanted, before. I assured her that I was serious and that what I meant was to let everything go and start travelling with her, wherever that might lead.

I heard what I said and was scared stiff by its implications. What happened was life-changing and life-affirming. The story of what happened comes next.