2/The Egypt Chronicles - Embracing The Uncharted Territory of Life: A Journey of Allowing

2.

The backstage

It is the 28th of November 2020. I have been back from Egypt since the 16th of March and it has taken me all of these days to actually get down to putting pen to paper… or rather, fingers to keyboard.

My intention of sharing my unplanned journey to Egypt has finally come to fruition with the last general overview I shared with you a few days ago. Hallelujah!

So let me continue my sharing today by weaving you into the context of this unfolding shawl.

It really started back in May 2017, or even further back, in October 2016 when I met Getrude Matshe - the amazingly inspirational Zimbabwean woman whom I had seen on a TED talk some years ago and who accepted to come to Portugal to our language school to start a fund-raising project that moved mountains in many hearts. 

To cut a long story a little bit shorter, Getrude recommended me for the Women Economic Forum international conference (WEF) and from then on it was a whole new discovery.

From the very first time I stepped into a WEF experience I was deeply touched by the atmosphere of cooperation, joy, gratitude, the caring, the deep connections made through the simple feeling of the moment, the love, the honour of one and all, the humble and yet grand radiance of Dr Harbeen Arora, Mansi Mahajan and Mannu Sandhu’s graceful beauty on stage and the inexplicable way they lead the public to greater depths of openness. Each woman treated as a queen, each man supporting and standing strong and stable as a king with her.

As I shared in the first Chapter of these Chronicles, I had not really wanted to ever go to India, not until I embraced and dissolved some past lifetime issues I came across within me. Once this was taken care of, I felt a profound blessing to be able to go to India, once again...

I wrote two Chronicles about my discoveries in India, which illustrate the full range of colours I was offered in the bouquet of compassion life presented me with during my travels. The first in 2017 called The Power of Conscious Choice - Mother India's Magic and the second in 2018 called Choosing Love - Thank you Mother India. Here you can also find my Exceptional Women of Excellence Acceptance Speech.

In 2019 it was our turn to organize Women Economic Forum Portugal, here in Tomar, where I live and which had been simmering at a very steady pace ever since May 2017, when I first fell in love with WEF.

With the most loving team and an immense stream of support, we managed to pull it through staying true to our hearts 100% of the time, choosing simplicity all the way and though it was a mammoth task, the final result was nothing less than glorious. We ourselves, as organisers, were embraced into a creation that went far beyond what we could have imagined and everyone who came was touched in such special ways that all of the work we put in was worth it a thousand fold. Here are some videos of the event. 

Dr Harbeen Arora’s presence made a huge difference, as she brought in her very special aura, blessing us all with her powerful Shakti, such a balanced Divine Human, whose purpose of creating a worldwide web of Sisterhood beyond borders is nothing short of extraordinary. We were also honoured and blessed by Mansi Mahajan’s acceptance to come and MC the event, setting the stage on fire with her vibrant aliveness, her natural and exemplary charm. So much love shared, so much we learnt. 

In hindsight I can definitely say that organising WEF Portugal was an initiatic experience that required every ounce of our determination to keep on pushing forward, bringing about long-lasting changes in all of us, in the local community, in Portugal at large, and more subtly but not less relevantly in the whole balance between Feminine and Masculine within all, everywhere. Thus is the power of WEF.

After this, we all took a deep breath, kept on working on the aftermath of this huge wave until June 2019 (the event was in March 2019) and then let go, allowing it to sink in completely, to soak us to the very core.

Annual WEF 2019 was right after our event in Portugal so we did not catch up with that one, but the intention of going to Annual WEF 2020, for the first time in Cairo, Egypt, was formulated and expressed.

Nevertheless, I had a feeling that things might get tricky round about that time - March 2020. Didn’t know what was about to happen. Could never have imagined it. But I did know something was coming up. So I kept on rocking back and forth, playing with this intention of going but not quite sure whether I would challenge the forces of whatever I felt brewing underneath the surface.

Another important reference is that in the same way as India had not been in my travel plans until very recently, so was Egypt a no go to place until a few years ago. I had so many recollections of lifetimes there, so much came back Home, even a vow I had made eons of time ago never to go back to those lands. 

Well, stories are just stories. We live them and we only keep them until we are ready to set them free, which is what I did, embracing each experience with a sense of profound gratitude for no matter how beautiful or gruesome they were, each one added more to the whole of me.

So back to my see-saw decision between going or not. Still not sure by the end of December, I receive an email from Dr Harbeen Arora with an invitation to please be present because she once again would like to honour me with an Award. 

An honour indeed. How to refuse such a graceful, loving and kind offer? And coming from one of the most radiant, pure and powerfully Present women I have had the privilege of meeting in this lifetime? No easy task. But an evident decision: I had to go. For some reason my wise Soul Sister Dr Harbeen, whom I am so deeply grateful to have in my life, was pushing me towards the edge and I was going to jump off the cliff, no questions asked.

It was like jumping off a cliff because, might I remind you, I knew something was about to happen that might compromise even the event itself, but then again, my reality is fluid, simple, graceful and free from drama so when I decide to be a part of something that I know my Soul is inviting me to do, I know that all is in perfect alignment and I need not fret about the details. I just Trust. Absolutely and completely. 

Coming back to the Awards, the last one I received was Women of the Decade in Social Entrepreneurship, also a surprise, but this time while I was already on stage, at Women Economic Forum Perth, in July 2019. Once again an intention which had been formulated a year before, at Annual WEF in New Delhi, during Carol Honlon’s session about the event she was organising. And so it was that when she asked who was going, I raised my hand, not knowing how it would become possible, but responding to my heart’s desire of so many years - visiting Australia and New Zealand. 

Well anyway, the fact is that I managed to finally sell my house and meanwhile paid off all of my loans - a total of 250,000€ which had been slowly wiped off my record with a lot of perseverance, help and unwavering trust, over a period of 7 years.

With WEF Perth as my converging point, New Zealand fit in perfectly before that, and that’s how I gave myself a gift I had been waiting for for over 20 years. It had been nothing more than an intention, yet it was so loved that it eventually managed to sweep me off my feet and take me on a breathtaking journey of exquisite beauty, space, silence and boundless love.

I have been intending to write my New Zealand and Australia Chronicles, and possibly I will someday come round to it, but for now what I would like to share with you is the sense of immense Peace that these lands enhanced even further in me.

The very curious fact that NewZealand is at the exact opposite latitude to Portugal, was like holding my arms around the whole world as my hands joined together in a restful smile. 

Back to Egypt.

The first time I started looking into plane fares I spent over an hour and nothing felt like the right fit. The hassle of getting myself organised to travel was bothering me. But not enough to make me give up. Actually the first thing I did was pay the Registration fee for WEF. So the rest would naturally follow.

As soon as my dear friend Joana decided to go also, we both sat in front of the computer and in less than 10 minutes we had found the ideal flight, booked and were set to fly off into Africa.

Ok. I was going. We were going.

To be continued...

Note:

Here is the first Post of this Series + the third Post coming up next