A ‘simple’ life TRANSFORMED

First of all, a thank you for the overwhelming support and positivity from all of you who took the time to read the Introduction. This will be my first official #90SecondDigest under article series, so I'd love to hear any thoughts, opinions and improvement suggestions you have to offer. ??

Sina asks: Where did your journey begin?

??? I wouldn’t say I had much of a ‘tough’ childhood – I went to a good school and ultimately lived in a comfortable bubble of going to school, taking part in extra-curricular activities (swimming, karate, piano lessons.. you know, the usual), and spending my days with my neighbour or one of my best friends who also lived on my road. There wasn’t much in the way of ‘challenges’. Then, it was at the age of 15, so still relatively young, where spirituality first ‘entered’ my sphere, or at least as I know it...

I say this because it’s said that seeds often get planted much earlier than you realise. And I notice this more at different points in my journey, which I'll come back to in later articles.

When you retrospectively think back, which is often done during periods of self-reflection, meditation or during conversations where you specifically reflect on pivotal moments in your life, that's when you might piece together not just when, but also why it may have occurred at that particular time. And I’m not just referring to spirituality.. it could be almost anything: a particular person (a friend, partner, mentor, idol..) entering your life, or maybe leaving it; a new career or business opportunity, or the opening to finally try out a passion / interest you've had. These are just naming a few. It could be worth looking back at your own situation, and where a moment in your life presented something like this to you.. I think the important thing here is to realise that it's occurred, and then why you decided to take – or not take – that opening or opportunity. Sometimes, it's a matter of the right timing.

I didn’t know why I was doing it, I was just doing it because it was a ‘good’ thing to do

For me, it was through a friend, who I held and still hold in high regard, who asked me to join him in staying with the monks at our local temple. As I say in the episode, I didn’t know why I was doing it, I was just doing it because I felt it was a ‘good’ thing to do. And if I look back, I can admit that at the time I didn't have a burning desire to explore this. Ultimately, I was a pretty happy-go-lucky kid. But having recently grown close to this friend, it gave me the chance to spend more of my summer holidays with him at least.

?? We stayed for 4 days, woke up early (at 4am!), attended the morning meditation, and helped with services around the temple grounds: cooking (not like I knew how to cook, but I could follow orders), cleaning, and helping wherever the monks needed. But it wasn't until I built closer connections with some of the other youth that my interest and basic understanding of spirituality really came to life.

As I mention, in those early days, for me the thought was: this is great, I now have a friend circle outside of school; and they just seemed like people who I wanted to look up to and associate with.

I thought, 'Wow, these guys are cool, and they're also funny so I enjoyed being around them; but they also had this deeper side that I'd never really explored'.

Within the first few interactions I felt I could learn something from them.. something good, something useful, and still have fun in the same way I would with my school friends. I didn’t know what 'something useful' was exactly, but I admired the wisdom they had at such a young age, and I was drawn to want to spend more time with them.

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?? You can listen to the full conversation here, which also has links to listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

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