In my opinion, one of the best healing experiences one should try.
For the second time this year, I am here camping in the Sahara, with nothing more than the moon and the stars to bear witness.
This raw scenario puts you in a place of surrender, in a way to bow down to your emotions, actually feel the feeling and work through them.
Here, mobile networks are very limited, almost non-existent, so as pinpointed previously it is just you and yourself. When this happens, a strange thing occurs and your mind starts pulling up situations where you have emotional attachments.
In my case, there were quite a number of triggers, which included the lack of tolerance towards others, the uncertainty of knowing what the future will bring, and the strongest feeling was indeed the lack of having a partner to share emotions with, even though I am happy to be on my own, and will not settle for anyone just for the sake of it.
The first one started when my dear friend Anna passed on a remark repeatedly that I use the phone so much, I felt an immediate surge of rage coming up so I stood up and went for a short walk, calmed down within a couple of minutes. Once back around the fire, we noticed that our Chinese neighbours were coming to join us, and John immediately started complaining and being negative because they are loud people and they would have ruined our peaceful space… all this negativity was triggering me, and my first line of egoistic defence concluded that no wonder I prefer being on my own. But I am grateful for the fact that I was able to breathe, understand the situation, and we managed to transmute the trigger in a very happy party playing drums, singing and dancing with the Chinese. In fact, I am usually shy to sing and dance without alcohol, but this time I was there… an important part of the buzz.
This taught me an important lesson to embrace the differences, which might compliment a lack on your end and might contribute towards experiencing something new.
Second trigger was about knowing that in 4 days, I will be back to reality, phone ringing, emails, customer care, stock takes, orders… a huge contrast to that peaceful void. Again, I centred myself since I was missing the now, and living in the future. I recalled how the Egyptians in the south live for the day, and how happy they all were. I reminded myself that the Universe always provides what is necessary, and worrying only steals your present. At that point, John and I grabbed the Tripod, and started shooting some Long Exposure photography of the sky. It’s not the pictures themselves, but every time I’ll start worrying about the future, I will remember this instance and what an amazing starry night it was, with both Orion and Sirius aligned perfectly for us.
We were now tired, and decided to go to sleep. It was a very chilly humid evening, and I was feeling very cold. My first thought went towards how nice it would have been to share that whole evening with someone close to you, and eventually keep each other warm during the night. The feeling was so strong, that I actually started visualising it very clearly. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but this also means that there is still some work to be done from my end to fill in some blanks when it comes to self love. I am proud of my progress so far, but this was a wake up call to nourish my relationship with myself, and dedicate more time to appreciate what I have become.
Although chilled, it was one of the best sleeps ever, I felt so complete and all I had was myself, the stars and the moon.
Much Love,
CB
5dtimes.com 