I hope all is well with you. I’ve had a great summer so far, and hope you have too. I’ve spent most of the last month
travelling. First, I was on holiday in Germany with my family. The town I visited, Halle, has been transformed almost beyond recognition over the last 20 years. At that time, it was a grey, semi-derelict and downtrodden place, after 45 years of communism. Now most of the buildings have been returned to their former glory, and it’s now a very beautiful town.
While I was in Germany, I had a strange
experience of synchronicity. 20 years ago, I had three really good friends in Halle - Henry, Hans, and Jordan. I spent time with Henry and Hans and it was great to catch up with them, but Jordan had moved to Berlin years ago and no one had seen him for a long time. The morning we left Halle to get the train to Berlin, I was thinking how great it would have been to catch up with Jordan too. I actually cycled past his old flat, and was thinking about him a lot. Later our train arrived at Berlin
Sudkreuz station and I was looking around for the connection to the airport when I heard a voice ask, 'Is that you Steve?' Amazingly it was my friend Jordan, who happened to be passing through the station on his way home from work. He had no idea I was in Germany. We were shocked at the coincidence and chatted for half an hour or so. When bizarre synchronicities like this happen, I always have the feeling that the universe is reminding me of something - that there is a pattern to things, and
nothing is really random.
After that I went to the US, to run a workshop based on the Calm Center at the Omega Institute in New York State. I had a couple of days in New York City first, where it was incredibly hot and there was a lot of nervous tension in the air. I spent a fantastic day with my friend, the author and psychologist Edward Hoffman, who showed me around the city, but after two days I
was glad to escape on a train up the Hudson River, into the tranquility of New York State. “Yes!” I thought. “This is where I belong - in the quietness, in the woods, by the river and the hills!”
The Calm Center workshop was wonderful. There was a great group of people who bonded together very closely. A couple of participants even became romantically attached (even though it wasn’t a workshop on
sexual intimacy), which was nice!
Apart from the workshop itself, I spent as much time as I could swimming in the lake near the Omega Institute, and wandering in the woods. I took a kayak out on the lake a couple of times too. Once I start swimming in a lake or in the sea, I find it very difficult to get out. I feel so at home that I’m sure I must have been a fish (or perhaps a whale) in one of
my recent previous lives. (Last weekend I was swimming in a wild roaring sea in Wales too. When I got back home I heard that several people had died swimming the sea off the coast of the UK over that weekend, so I was relieved that I hadn’t been too reckless.)
The Calm Center workshop was such a great experience that it made me think that I should run workshops more regularly, but I’m also careful
not to arrange too many things, so that I don’t spend too much time away from my kids, while they’re still young. Maybe in a few years my schedule will be as busy as Deepak Chopra’s….
