When I look back over my first half of my life I realise that we are all searching for something. The search may take many turns and may change from time to time particularly when we realise a goal. Another vision is created, another goal may emerge. It may be a material possession or job, or an inner attribute we'd like to explore or ridding ourselves of a quality or behaviour that we dislike or have out grown.

I’ve become aware that we are never satisfied; we have within us a'divine discontentment'. It lives within us all- maybe driving us to achieve more, gain more, be more, have more until in a moment of pure grace we are at last fulfilled. Tapping into an inexplicable vastness beyond thought or deed and are integrated even momentarily into a universal lovingness and knowingness. Having experienced this unconditional love at our natural state our world is forever changed.

To me God is the eternal Mother, Father, God, Beloved, Friend, Complete Love, Bliss, Joy, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Happy, Laughter and Tremendous Fun. I did not always view God thus my inculturisation included Church of England Sunday School, Crusaders and Church services and as the grand daughter to a non-conformist Baptist Missionary who spent many years in China where in fact my mother was born. I had a very orthodox view of God as being 'out there' some where.

In my later teens I discarded church going Christianity because it did not fulfil my needs. It did not answer the ongoing questions the whys and wherefores of my existence.

During the years that followed I trained as State Registered Nurse, it is a process that makes you grow up very fast. At 18 years old I was a naive young girl who had lead a very sheltered life, I had not seen anyone vomit let alone die. Back in the 70's the nurses training was very different from the training now. Nurses started at a pre-training school which lasted seven weeks. During those seven weeks we were taught to take temperatures, pulses, blood pressures, how to make beds -yes with hospital corners, bed baths, how to feed patients and all the basic care.

As part of those seven weeks we would go out to the wards and work for a few hours to gain experience with a certain tasks. One day we went out to the wards to help feed the patients their lunch. I was sent to a female medical ward, as usually they were very busy with few staff and I was asked by the Staff Nurse to feed Mrs Jones in bed 16 a cup of tea. She gave me a teacher beaker (much like a toddler has) and told me that Mrs Jones had had a stroke. So off I went quite apprehensive, but as keen as mustard to get some experience with a real patient.

The female medical ward was an old style Nightingale ward with 14 beds down one side and 14 beds down the other -it looks like a wide corridor.  I arrived at bed 16, but the curtains were drawn and in fact pinned together with safety pins. I stood in the middle of the ward not knowing quite what to do, I did not want to disturb Mrs Jones, anything could be happening behind the curtains she may be on a bedpan or commode and the patient, we had been told needs their privacy, so after I had been standing there for some time, the Staff Nurse who had handed me the tea came rushing up the ward. As she passed me said well nurse you are not getting her fed standing there go in. ...

Taking a deep breath I undid the safety pins at one side of the curtains and took a step in. Mrs Jones was lying in bed with her head slightly elevated and her eyes closed. We had been told in school the importance of talking to our patients, so I started to chat telling her who I was, what I was here to do and about the weather. She did not open her eyes or respond at all, but I remembered that the staff nurse had told me that she had had a stroke... so that must account for it.

I sat down in a chair next to the bed and put the teacher beakers lip to her mouth and told her I was going to give her her tea now. As I started to give her the tea -she did not swallow and the tea started to run out of the other side of her mouth. I stopped and used a tissue to mop up the tea. I took her hand and stroked her arm trying to get some kind of response - although her hand was warm I really began to think that she did not look that well. I tried with the tea again but did not have any success. I left the curtained area feeling a failure and very anxious that the staff nurse would be cross because I had not completed the task she had given me. In those days Pre-training school nurses did not really address a Staff Nurse unless she spoke to you first. We told the Student Nurses who spoke to the Enrolled Nurses spoke to the Staff Nurses they relayed information up the chain of command to the Sister's (ward managers). But because now I felt very concerned that I'd failed to complete a task allocated to me and worried that Mrs Jones was not very well I approached another staff nurse on the ward. "Excuse me Staff' I stammered "I was told to give Mrs Jones in bed 16 this cup of tea, but, but, she wouldn't drink it and "

The Staff Nurse looked at me as if had gone berserk and said "I am not surprised nurse, Mrs Jones died 15 minutes ago" My small safe world disappeared forever, puff in a cloud of smoke. I stood there battling my horror and tears, I remember thinking... so there goes my youth... there goes my innocence. This is death and I’d better get used to it.

This situation and the deaths I witnessed during the following years made me angry. The suffering of the patients and the relatives agonised me. I felt each one’s pain and it made me very angry with God. My biggest feeling then was if I ever caught up with him I would give him a piece of my mind. Increasingly I began to think that there must be a better way. As I learnt more I realised how little I actually knew. Questions started to accumulate and bounce around my mind. I tried to help and. ‘be there’ for as many of my patients as possible, but it was like swimming against a strong tide at times. There was a growing sense that I was not making much of a difference, that there must be a better way than this and there must be more to life.

This is when my search started in earnest, it’s taken me around the world three times... had me doing things and having experiences that most people either dream about or read about in story books. I’ve met incredible people and made amazing friends all over the world. I’ve leapt from aircraft and dived in shark invested waters. Had many triumphs and some disasters. Tragedy has featured in my life, I ran away to sea to work as a Nursing Officer and learnt how to Party!!!, was repatriated ill and in need of rest in all that time the quest in essence has remained the same. To find the answers to my questions. It wasn’t until I stopped that I realised the biggest challenge I could take was to get to know myself and If I didn’t go within to explore the entirtity of self then I would go without having my questions answered.

So my search continued and I stayed in the UK and commenced a period of intense study. To finance this study I continued to work full time as an Intensive Care Sister and trained as a Homeopath which lead on to me totally looking at my own values and beliefs I also trained in other complementary therapies (Reiki, Breathwork, Neuro ligistic Programming, Spiritual Response Therapy and Life Coaching) I realised that I had been searching for God, meaning, wisdom in the outside world and as I turned within I reconnected with my childhood love of God, reconnected with meaning and my own wisdom and discovered my own spiritual path.

During the last 15 years I have been on an incredible journey of self discovery and self awareness. Having gone through a process of first reading the talk (I must have read literally hundreds of books and read a lot of different people perspectives on everything from finaces to Zen, spiritual laws to how to manifest a mate.) to talking the talk ( discussing all these new ideas with like minded people and boring the hell out of family and other friends with what they thought were wacky ideas). From talking the walk to walking the talk (beginning to go to workshops and listen to people speak and trying out some of their suggestions i.e. mediation, creative visualisations etc...) then walking the walk ( being guided by a guru on a spiritual path) and finally walking my walk (being on a spiritual path with direct and clear communication with the source). 

I have worked with and taught hundreds of people to dare to dream, live in the moment and to dance to the rhythm of a different drum and am truly grateful for all the people and situations that have taught me that life is not a guided tour, but an amazing journey into yourself, a journey to self realisation. That we are all divine beings and in fact there is only one of us here.