Edward’s Diary Entry 3

I have always been a non-conformist. Maybe I was lucky, because I was brought up in several countries, so that set the stage for calm confusion in life! Then I saw a TV programme at the age of 4 that said that in a magical place called “The Land of Hatchy Milatchy”, “if you should fall, the ground’s made of rubber and you bounce like a ball”. Later that day I was running around the driveway and fell and scraped my knee and felt sick in my stomach. The combination of sensing pain, feeling sick and thinking “that was a lie, it hurts when you fall”, was the first tripartite memory I have – a complete memory of sensing, feeling and thinking at the same time. Oh dear, how many other “lies” were to be discovered too – in the world and in myself! I roamed and travelled. I was a vegetarian, I rode round southern England and Spain on a bicycle. I motorcycled through France. I lived and worked in Germany. I was involved in teaching. I settled in Spain. My collection of philosophical, self-help and self-development books increased. On the surface I was more or less "normal", but inside my mind, things were “not quite right”. There had to be more meaning to life than just accepting the status quo, right? So when last year I met Guru Nanda and asked if he would be my teacher, he just smiled at me, stepped on my foot, and said “I hereby declare you... your own teacher. Be that!”
What, again? No dependency, and back to square one? Yep, like Alan Watts told us, remembering the Japanese proverb: “Seven times down, eight times up – that’s life!”