{"id":587,"date":"2024-11-13T13:53:04","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T13:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/?post_type=episode_posts&p=587"},"modified":"2024-11-15T14:02:05","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T14:02:05","slug":"episode-14-down-by-the-riverside","status":"publish","type":"episode_posts","link":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/?episode_posts=episode-14-down-by-the-riverside","title":{"rendered":"Episode 14: Down by the Riverside"},"content":{"rendered":"

Down by the Riverside<\/h4>\n

Returning to Stanford in September 2018, a few weeks after my otherworldly tour in Ladakh in search of the Golden Tara, I realised that the Universe had been trying to show me something over the preceding months.\u00a0 The house that I thought I\u2019d wanted for these 15 months was not actually meant for me.<\/p>\n

Nothing further had happened in my almost six months\u2019 absence which would have suggested an immanent\u00a0 transfer.\u00a0 I sought legal advice from my lawyer Storme, who looked at the correspondence and shook her head.\u00a0 The process was flawed from the start and I could legally step out of it and get refunded.\u00a0 She would handle it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Is this what you wish to do, Marilyn?\u2019<\/p>\n

I reflected for only 30 seconds and nodded.\u00a0 And Storme took over.<\/p>\n

This was a Thursday morning in Noordhoek.\u00a0 I drove back to Stanford and later checked the website, Property 24.com<\/a> to find that something interesting had been listed that very day.\u00a0 From the photos it seemed perfect, and I called the agent first thing on Friday morning.<\/p>\n

‘You don\u2019t need to show anyone else the property\u2019 I said.\u00a0 \u2018It\u2019s got my name on it\u2019.<\/p>\n

She only needed to show me, on Friday morning before lunch.\u00a0 It was very clear to me thatit ticked all the boxes, and I let my lawyer know I needed to access my funds.\u00a0 She prepared a letter reclaiming the amounts I had paid to date before Friday evening.<\/p>\n

Things were now moving very fast.\u00a0 My friend Sharon came from Cape Town for the weekend as we had planned a retreat at Bodhi Kkaya, where we both needed time for reflection and thinking through our next chapters.\u00a0 Before she went home, I asked the agent to show us the house again and received a huge affirmation from Sharon\u2019s reaction.<\/p>\n

My offer was in and accepted and the transfer scheduled for early January 2019.\u00a0 I could now inform Ian Burgess-Simpson of the final delivery address for my very rested and restored piano.\u00a0 It had been two years!<\/p>\n

There was not much to pack up from the house in Morton Street; just a few items which had looked lost in the vast empty voorkamer.\u00a0 Apart from the fabulous house-warming concert and a couple of small events, including a weekly \u2018Harmonic Meditation Circle\u2019 for a few months, we had not been able to reach the objective of hosting regular Soir\u00e9es du Coeur.\u00a0 There are plenty of alternative house venues in Stanford, I realised.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t need to have a house which opened to the street.<\/p>\n

I thought I needed to replicate the achievements of Kalk Bay but came to realise that I myself was in a new chapter of my life and that this outreach from my home was not what I had to do, or needed to right then.\u00a0 It seemed rather that I needed to have a sanctuary where I could restore and nourish my soul, and just Be without Doing.<\/p>\n

Finding a Balance.\u00a0 That was what the Universe had in store for me.\u00a0 My annual intense visits to my northern node in Leysin are a fait accompli<\/em>,.\u00a0 My time in the southern node of my existence therefore has to provide a balance and get me to a place of quiet Beingness.<\/p>\n

The cottage on the Riverside has all the attributes I needed, and my piano arrived the day after I received the keys to 17 Riverside Lane.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I immediately felt at home and had a strong sense that after my next scheduled trip to Switzerland for our important programme with Judy Satori, I would be retuning to hibernate at Riverside.<\/p>\n

My partners in the Amani Harmonic Foundation, Beth and Nicole, our accountant and events coordinator, needed to know my situation.\u00a0 I believed that if they actually experienced some time in my new home it would explain why the stays in my Southern node would\u00a0 possibly and probably get longer.<\/p>\n

We needed a planning session, and they joined me in March 2019.\u00a0 Beth was on crutches since a fall fracturing her femur but received travel clearance and was assisted by Nicole who was on her first visit to South Africa.\u00a0 We also programmed some time with Dax, our social media consultant, who is also my step-nephew of whom I am very fond.\u00a0 Dax was out from London and spent a couple of days with us as we worked through issues of profiling ourselves since we seemed to be expanding into organising international events of a spiritual nature.<\/p>\n

Moving out of Morton Street, moving in, settling and then the intense visit with AHF planning and site-seeing was exhausting.\u00a0 I felt depleted.\u00a0 But after Nicole flew out, Beth and I traveled back from Cape Town by boat.\u00a0 A year before I had booked for us to leave Cape Town on the \u2018Astor\u2019 on 1 April and Dax dropped us off at the overpowering cruise terminal.<\/p>\n

We were both exhausted and quickly slipped into the ocean rhythm, sleeping for almost the entire first 10 days\u00a0 \u2013 the two little bunks becoming more cot-like as they held us through the 22 days of the crossing.<\/p>\n

A delightful trip on the Astor.\u00a0 I\u2019d been drawn to this smallish boat as my mother had taken the last voyage of the previous Astor in 1985 to attend my graduation at the Royal Albert Hall.\u00a0 She\u2019d carried her hat in a box for the ceremony\u00a0 and had it under the seat where she sat with Ronald.\u00a0 Somehow the moment had not presented itself for actually wearing it.\u00a0 And Ronald said that with the boring repetitive handing out of scrolls to each graduate by Princess Anne, chancellor of the University of London, my mother had dozed off and he wasn\u2019t sure if she\u2019d actually been awake when I was called up.\u00a0 I wondered at the time why he hadn\u2019t made sure she was \u2018there\u2019 and present.<\/p>\n

This Astor was a replica of the first \u2013 and a beautiful stable boat.\u00a0 I joined the ukulele classes held every second day, which were great fun.\u00a0 The majority of passengers were Australian and the \u2018musos\u2019 among them met in the library with their own \u2018ukes’.\u00a0 I joined in happily and learnt that with basically four chords you can play 2000 songs!\u00a0 So, with my recently acquired ukelele and the four chords I had mastered, I could play along easily.\u00a0 Beth and I also joined the choir \u2018Perfect Pitch\u2019 and sang in the Astor\u2019s Got Talent show.<\/p>\n

We arrived in London\u2019s Tilbury Docks, slightly out of our bodies and still feeling the ocean, had a night over at a friend\u2019s home and flew back to Geneva on 23 April, knowing we had quite a bit to do before the Sound of Light symposium with Judy Satori scheduled for 6 to 9 June 2019.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting settled finally in my sanctuary. A visit from my Amani Harmonic Foundation colleagues, Beth and Nicole. And a return trip to Europe by boat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":588,"template":"","categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-587","episode_posts","type-episode_posts","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-part-4-aftermath-and-afterlife"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/episode_posts"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}