I was talking to a brand new friend just the other week about the perfectly mechanical machination of the workings of the Universe. It was a very deep rabbit-hole of a conversation, which was also somewhat inevitable after our very first encounter just a few days previously…

when we’d found ourselves partners in an eye-gazing exercise …

That practice of peering into another one’s soul

A practice which can therefore often sometimes feel uncomfortable. Still, once you get past any triggers of embarrassment or feelings of weirdness, this is also a practice of an immensely profound and intimate nature, creating an arena that is magical, liminal, beyond space and time… where often times mystical truths are revealed. 

And in my own experience, often times, this is so.

On this particular time, I had found myself falling, quite hypnotized, deep and far beyond the blackness of her pupils, into the swirling galaxy of her eternal being… before the practice had even officially begun.  I was transfixed already. And so, I noticed, was she … despite the cacophony that surrounded us (well, perhaps not a cacophony per se… just laughter behind me, some chatter behind her)… Certainly, this wasn’t the most serene of environments, but the music that played, I noticed, was so beautiful… and that music in fact was the only aspect of the entire experience I’d really been aware of … other than, of course, this very intense and overwhelming understanding that kept engulfing me… that I knew exactly who this person was. 

I knew who she was, I knew. 

I knew her… very well indeed.  

We continued to sit in this deep, unspoken communication … mirroring each other’s inquisitive gaze. Even after the music stopped playing and we were told that we could share, we – along with such piqued intrigue from each of our enquiring souls – still were not able to quite pull ourselves entirely back to this dimension

And so, half here, half there, we simply reached out for each other’s hands, and grasped them tightly.  I asked her with a smirk: ‘So. How was it for you?’

Nadiia is from Lithuania. Her accent is intoxicating. 

She said,  ‘I felt … this sense of …deep … recognition’.

I’ve had this kind of experience with eye-gazing before – with a man a man called Ben whose parents owned the flooring shop just up the road from my flat in central London; the pair of us perched facing each other crossed-legged on my sofa.

The reason I’d met him in the first place had seemed fated. Because, as soon as I’d inexplicably found myself rushing into his shop one afternoon to check on something with one of his staff members (and I say inexplicably as I’d already sent them an email), I’d met him for the very first time, sitting languidly at his manager’s desk, surrounded by post-it notes and swatches of carpets, and barking instructions down the phone.

Yet, within less than ten minutes after he’d finished that call… we were talking about …the plants.

(You can run, you see. But you cannot hide)

I’d only been back from Peru just over a fortnight. I’d spent 6 months in the jungles there, where I’d stubbornly refused to undergo any form of shamanic death whatsoever (thus marking the start of these last 3 years, which have forced me to undergo the painfully laborious shedding of all my stagnant, tired and unconscious psychic layers manually). 

Erroneously believing at that stage in my life that I might be able to get away with it, I’d decided to get on with dealing with external distractions instead, namely ripping out my entire Islington apartment (bathrooms, kitchen – and flooring – included) and starting all over again. And yes, of course, I knew on many levels that this wasn’t quite the core transformation that the Universe had been preparing for – and requiring of – me. 

We create our lives from the inside out, after all

But nevertheless, I’ve always been completely obsession with houses and making them look all beautiful (what else do you do with a boatload of planets in glamour-loving Libra in the astrological fourth house of home, after all?)

Here’s a clue: we’re born to learn to use our energies the way our souls have already intended… And since, as well as one’s home and one’s personal foundations, the 4^th house – being the section of the chart right under the horizon – also covers the Earth, the Northern Hemisphere, the Underworld, deep psychology, plants and shamanism, – this is clearly, absolutely undeniably where I was being directed. 

But, to be honest; frankly… I hadn’t wanted a bar of it. I loved it all, but also I was kind of … well. Freaked out. She keeps calling me a Witch, I’d hissed at Steve, my friend and Shaman at one of the centres I’d stayed at in Peru. (‘She’ being Ayahuasca, that most divine of all vines; that most loving*, and cherished (*sometimes harsh as hell) plant teacher.

But it’s hard to shed your skins sometime, as, in our ancient shamanic traditions, we ask the Great Serpent to teach us…

Mother of the life-giving waters…

Wrap your coils of light around us

Teach us to shed the past the way you shed your skins

To walk softly upon the Earth

Teach us the Way of Beauty

What can I say? I’m stubborn. (You don’t also have a boatload of planets in Scorpio and a South Node in bull-headed Taurus without quite a staggering ineptitude in the art of letting go.)

So there I was, then, having freshly escaped from the world of deep magic and ancient earthly medicines, sitting on the only piece of furniture that now remained in my flat with Ben, the local flooring shop’s owners’ son, who had dropped by unexpectedly to check on my new carpets, and with whom, upon his request, I was now locked in deeply inextricable, mutual contemplation.

As I sat there gazing into Ben’s brown eyes, I had a sudden flash of a memory… of Egypt… And then suddenly, his eyes began to produce a watery pinkish residue, as grief and sadness rose to the surface, and he started to weep. This man, who had just had laid for me my dark oak flooring (and the carpet for my hallway) put his hands on my knees and then back to his face. ‘I’ve missed you’, he wailed, now suddenly rather inconsolable. ‘You left! I’ve missed you!’

And then he went on to mutter things… about …

Well.

Egypt, of course. 

Where else?