The Illusion of Control
When I swim far out into the Ionian Sea, here in Corfu it flashes through my being that I could drown.
My vulnerability rises up… My body could be consumed by the deep blue lake that feels to heal with every immersion I take…
This place of healing could also be my grave…
I didn’t used to have these flashes in the sea… I am a strong swimmer, and swimming a mile is comfortable for me, a joy, a delight…
If it’s not too cold!
But three times in the last two years I have glimpsed death in the water… It was there beside me, in my auric field and I witnessed the thin veil that is always there between life and death…
I witnessed the stream that life, death and love flow along; all the same thing, mingling together into nothingness…
I experienced how quickly one state can become another, and now I glimpse it often when I am swimming far out, in the water, out of my depth…
.
Not knowing rises up in my soul…
The myth that we are in control being swept away… We have no control.
The only reason I am alive, is because that is the way destiny swung those days….
I have heard many other stories, the same as mine, where the cards fell the other way…
A year ago my husband Anadi and I were here in Corfu; we had swum out a quarter of a mile into a sea that was quiet and empty… Early October, the end of the season, no one about, when suddenly a motor boat was racing towards us coming from Corfu town…
We were right in his path…. There are many stories of death by motor boats in the sea….
We waved frantically and eventually the pilots of the boat saw us… Slowed down, changed their course and on they went and we swum to the shore…
In May I was swimming here again, the sea not yet warm ‘let’s swim a mile’, I said… After 1000 meters I started to feel dizzy and my body started to give in…
‘Swim to the shore’ Anadi instructed, ‘swim swim…’ My body responded and after a long hot shower and a couple of hours heat returned to my core…
Nearly two years ago we were caught in a riptide in seven foot waves…
I surrendered to my death, but kept swimming too…
Exhausted we eventually landed on the shore….
Since these experiences I am changed,.. I glimpse my own death everywhere I go… The illusion of control has gone…
I am not afraid, but I see beyond the veil, beyond this illusion of life….
I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run. In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression. I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running step; allow it to express itself in the dance and the motion of running. I ran for England and GB for some years. My first international was in 1979, a three mile cross country race; and I continued to run at international level until 1993. Two of my best results were first place in the Dublin City Marathon in 1985 and 7th place woman, 3rd British woman in the 1986 London Marathon in a time of 2.36.31, which gained me selection for the Commonwealth Games.
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