I’VE SPENT THE LAST 21 DAYS WITH OPRAH & DEEPAK CHOPRA

I’ve spent the last 21 days with Oprah and Deepak Chopra.

We meet 5am daily, just after I have had a coffee, when the world is still fresh and my heart open.  Our shared passion is HOPE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES.

Every day is the same.  Oprah goes first. She tells a short story of times when she lost hope or how hope guided her back home. My goosebumps tells me that I’ve been there too. I mean, we all have. Hope is what got me through many a bloody and painful day.  It still does.  Just recently, in fact, I have had dig deep in my drawer of compassion in order to deal with difficult individuals who I can only describe as malicious and deceitful.  HOPE is the muscle I used to frame a vision of them returning to the light one day.

Next, Deepak gets me ready to pray.  The sun is usually beginning to make its way up. We begin with a “centering thought”. My favourite has been “being at peace is my greatest strength”.   Deepak takes me through a preparation for meditation with a short lecture. We get comfy, accept a Sanskrit mantra, a bell goes off and we meditate together for about 20 minutes, after which the bell goes off again and we release the mantra.  

It has been incredible! The expanded awareness is lovely. The deep sense of connection to Spirit so comforting.

It is said that HOPE is the word inscribed into the heart of every human being.  Always a tomorrow. Always another day. Always!

Sometimes we just need a little reminding.

Lee

P.S. Here are the details of the mediation if you’re interested.

https://chopracentermeditation.com/experience#

A Monday “Accident”

After a rush to get the kids off to school, I grabbed my diary off my bookshelf and rushed out of the front door in my white Converse.

 

I sat down at my corner spot at my local coffee shop, pulled out my notebook and turned to November.  Damn! Wrong notebook. Many years old.

 

I flipped through it and I looked at the words. 

 

List after list

Chest pains

Deadline after deadline 

Anxiety

 

Stress

More words

More deadlines

More stress

 

I recalled it all. 

 

I must tell you though, the coolest feeling in the entire world was as I realised that all that was in the past. 

 

…and that the crap we stress about today, will also just be old words and old memories in scruffy notebooks one day too. 

 

Shucks, that’s a lovely feeling! Don’t you think?

 

 

© Lee Mayimele

 

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NOT your Friend

He was 50.  I was 20.  We took the bus together 5 days a week.

I asked him questions about his wife and children. He asked me questions about my ambitions and dreams of traveling the world.

It was cool.

So, bright and early one Monday morning, just before the bus arrived, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Someone peeking through a curtain.

It was his wife.

My instinct told me to abandon the conversation. He was just getting started telling a joke. He was very animated.

The next time I saw his wife, I said “Hello Mrs X! You must be excited about your trip”. Her husband told me that he was planning something special for their anniversary.

Her response left me cold.

She said, “Listen little girl. I am NOT your friend”. 

Friend? Who said anything about friends?

The next time I saw her husband, he was full of smiles again. He had a bunch of brochures from a travel agent in his bag. He said “I will let my wife choose the best ones and give you the leftovers, okay?”

I was excited. I reallllllly hoped she would leave the Contiki Tours of Europe one for me.

Then my dear mother (bless her wicked vocab) stepped into the soapie right on cue.  She said, “Do me a favour? Please don’t talk to those f*ckers again. You don’t need other people’s twisted views and insecurity issues in your life”.

And of course she was right.

Mothers always are.

© A Heart Full of Stories, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Lee-Ann Mayimele and www.aheartfullofstories.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

YOU are Enough

…The time surely comes

When you put yourself first

When you regain your God essence

When you count your blessings

When you honour your sadness

When you give yourself permission to try

When you name your pain

When you stop calling your passion a “hobby”

When you keep your word

When you kick someone out of your emotional bed

When you alienate nasty creatures

When you write thank you notes

When you take more risks

When you stop trusting losers

When you approach people you need

When you say no to darkness

When you yield appropriately

When you say beautiful words of gratitude instinctively

When you sleep for days

When you trust your internal red flags

When you disappoint another heart

When you run your race and let others run theirs

When you clear everything on your vision board and start again

When you no longer mind being called emotional

When you equate self respect with breathing

When you allow yourself to dream again

When you listen to a child

When you let yourself be touched

When you honour your calling

When you travel to places that call you

When you risk humiliation

When you press “reset” on your life

When you accept the shape of the parts you disguise

When you simply say “not today”

When you acknowledge those that guide you

When you start imitating yourself

When you draw a line in the sand

When you empower other people

When you forgive yourself

When you delight in the success of others

When you laugh loud

When you kiss your broken heart

When you are your own role model

When you emulate the speckles of light you see

When you tone down the noise

When you soothe your heart with music

When you dine alone

When you share your struggles

When you own your fears

When you unlearn your defences

…and on that day, may you know that YOU are enough YOU have always been enough YOU will always be enough End of story!

Aluta Continua, I say!  The road is long (for me)

© A Heart Full of Stories, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Lee-Ann Mayimele and www.aheartfullofstories.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Tequila Girl vs Action Girl (Choices)

We arrived in Dar es Salaam on a Friday.  It was a girl’s holiday and we were heading to the beautiful island of Zanzibar.

The scenery was magical. Turquoise water, white sand, tanned bodies, spices, sunshine and the prospect of endless cocktails.

Just when I thought that the day could not get any better, the hotel set up a solo dinner table IN the shallow water of a beautiful private beach, at sunset.  And right before I was about to die from sheer bliss, I learnt that the menu for the night included spicy prawns, grilled before my eyes.  We were in the land of spices and I wanted to cry! Haleeluuuuuia!

The next morning, we decided to go local. We ditched the tourists from our resort and went exploring.

Before we left, I met a girl in the loo.  Her face was bust up. Black eye, swollen lips, cut on her eyebrow.  My instincts told me not to trust her and NOT to make eye contact.  She said “clumsy me! Too much tequila last night”.  She told me that she had fallen down the stairs in her drunken state.  I have been acquainted with tequila a few times in my life.  Not as well as her, but still – I knew its power.

My friends laughed when I told them about her.  They had heard from the guy cleaning our room that there had been a domestic abuse drama.  “Same old story!” he said to them.

That night we went dancing. I saw the girl.  She was drunk.  She was dancing with a group of guys.  One guy had his arm around her.  I figured he was the baddie. What an idiot, I thought. 

I was glued. I could not stop staring.

When they moved to another bar, I said to my friends “Hey! Let’s go next door.  I love the sound of the music there”. They bought it.  We moved and I positioned myself strategically.

Now, one of my friends is an ACTION girl.  She is driven by her heart and when she is confronted with a situation where she feels that there is an injustice, she acts. Mostly its heroic but there are also times when it isn’t very pretty.  I did not want her involved in my movie. I needed to act cool.

Now, acting cool got hard when she saw me talking to security. She knew that something was up.  She said “What are you doing? It’s that girl hey!?” and as much as I tried to deny that I even remembered the girl, Action Girl saw right through me.  She said “don’t tell me you believe her story?”

I had zero chill.

Action Girl said :

“Look, you have two choices: 

1. I help you get to the bottom of this shit 
2. You forget about this shit.

BUT we can NOT spend our holiday with you obsessed with some drunk hooker who invents stories of an abusive husband to scam strangers, steal their money, their boyfriends and their memories of their dream holiday.

Make the choice”. 

I chose option 2.   More out of fear of Action Girl in scenes from Option 1.

I decided to honour my company and resist the pull from the drama magnet, filled with its lies and deceit.

I chose instead to order more spicy prawns and a Long Island Ice Tea (with a little tequila because I was still on drama-detox and had to slowly let go of the memory of Tequila Girl).

© A Heart Full of Stories, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Lee-Ann Mayimele and www.aheartfullofstories.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Man in Torment

He watched his wife lift her skirt to many men.

He lived through the humiliation.

He ate her bitter words routinely.

He faced her rejections nightly and he sniffed the smells of other men knowingly.

He perfected the art of saying NOTHING.  He was so good at it that when his kids did hear his voice, they ran.

On his mother’s death bed, she said “My son, please do me a favour. Leave that woman. You can’t go on like this without killing yourself or someone else”.

He was shocked. Surely the medication was messing with the old woman’s head.

He could go on! And he did.

© A Heart Full of Stories, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Lee-Ann Mayimele and www.aheartfullofstories.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.