Weekly Newsletter - Excerpt from my new, new book (the third really if you don't count the prequel) what I learned from Hawaii and Venice (sometimes I have to go two, three or many places to really learn something)
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Click here to get my newsletter emailed to you direct http://eepurl.com/U3C3T
For upcoming events please see the bottom of the email - please note I am no longer teaching weekly Zumba classes, although may have some retreats and masterclasses coming soon! Anything is possible.
My Beloved Friends,
Well, unfortunately I haven't been able to access my emails to reply to anything you've sent me after my last newsletter ��� I'm just in Cornwall at the moment, trying to see it before the school holiday masses descend (although it seems pretty full, I stayed two nights in almost the last bed in a female dorm in a hostel in Penzance and then last night in a four star luxury spa hotel near St Austell ��� it's heaven ��� especially after a stay in a hostel!) but still finding it difficult to get my internet connection!
It's hard for people (and even me) to understand why I do what I do, but it all works out in the end and it's bringing me back to the truth of who I am, not just a writer but being able to let go of so many things I've picked up in my life that are just not me.
But I also see that the travelling, even the writing is becoming more of a distraction, an addiction, from the next steps of the journey. I can feel it with travelling, it's when it starts to feel like just sightseeing or my heart pulls me on even if my brain says "Stay, it's wonderful here." I know I definitely have to go back to some of the places I've been, especially Hawaii. (There's a noise Monica makes in "Friends" about a guy ��� something like "hum un un unu" as in, "he's super hot" ��� that's how I feel about Hawaii.) Or sometimes my heart says "Stay" even though there are a hundred places I want to head to ��� and a little while later I know I was in the right place at the right time. But the books are not enough ��� and I hope you see that from what I write below, it���s like the Zumba manual or a DVD, there is absolutely nothing in this word like a live class ��� and that's what I need to bring to the world ��� a love class (oh wait that was a typo but it works!)���
So anyway, I got the proof for my new book last week (the second in the series if you don't count the prequel), so yes, I'll be working on printing that, but I'll also be working on my book tour and maybe some retreats too. It's about time I opened up my heart to fellow travellers like I did in the hostel the other day (but I may not be sharing with four other people anytime soon ��� that's a lot of people noises in the night!) although it was wonderful to meet so many friendly and interesting people there!
If you really want to get in touch with me, feel free to text me on 07770 846 284, I'm coming back from my sabbatical now (although I may be doing one more long haul before September so I apologise for any radio silence!)
Speak soon.
Lots of love, Pearl x
The Top Of The Mountain
As I sat on the top of the mountain at Lumeria in Maui I understood and felt the truth about what it is to love and be loved. I sat on the grass and meditated overlooking the sea and reached a point, a top of the mountain of feeling and being that was the highest I have yet experienced.
To try to put it in to words is to describe a meditation of enlightenment with the words "we are all one". If, in just saying these words, we could understood and feel this deep truth, well, pretty much all the retreat and meditation centres, not to mention yoga schools, bars and spas would go out of business. These are just words.
It is like me, standing now in Venice, telling you it's pretty, showing you my photographs, when I want you standing beside me, feeling the cold biting through your fingertips, the rush of hot coffee and Sicilian cannoli in your blood, the images of waterways burned into your retina as well as a hot pocket full of iPhone snaps. I want you to know what it is to wander dark streets, see black gondolas smacking against the waves in the night, to see the night reflected in tiny dank canals that hold no comfort before the dawn, when thoughts turn to bodies dropped out of windows and figures shrouded and masked for carnival, to know what it is to walk and find yourself in the right place all but for a few yards of canal with no bridge and to know you need to shoulder your bag, your life and retrace all those steps to get back to the place that you took a wrong turn. To feel the energy of a thousand artists honouring beauty, feel their passion for life till it makes you dizzy and a thousand murderers and ghosts that wake you up before dawn playing with your darkest fears. This is Venice. It is as far removed from the Venice of Las Vegas as your whole life and every breath you ever took from your last ID snapshot.
I will try.
I believe it's important and I believe that many of my teachers have tried to explain it to me, and I have learned it over and over, each time getting closer and closer to that moment.
As Mother Theresa said "There are things that cannot be seen or touched but must be felt with the heart."
I sat and meditated on the life of my beloved.
I had felt, travelling to Hawaii, the deep lie at the bottom of so many of my fears, of my refusals - like a horse refusing to jump when I could so easily have soared. I felt the deepest acceptance of myself just as I was in that moment. I have heard it said about grief that acceptance comes when we can see that death not as a life interrupted but as a life completed. I could see the journey of our relationship as completed because of where it brought me, but I could only arrive at this moment by accepting myself, himself and that relationship as perfect and complete. The butterfly had metamorphosed from the caterpillar, crawling through the most painful and messy period of transition, of meltdown and being both less and more than a single being and then become a thing of lightness and joy. I could see his life and him, not as something to be fixed or corrected, but as perfect, I could feel that every step he took was perfect.
This is love. To see each other, our most precious soulmate and the stranger smoking or drunk on the street, in the same way that we can know "we are all connected", to know "they are perfect and every step they take is perfect.��� It is letting go, in a way, but more than holding on or letting go it is finding a perfect balance, pona if you will, of holding a person in our heart without in any way trying to change them. Because we would be trying to improve on perfection. It would be like paving Venice or fixing every battered shuttered window or straightening the canals, or covering the sky and painting it a perfect sunny fresco like a Vegas Venice.
And it is sharing ourselves, our dark, our light, our stories with them when our heart tells us to, without judgment, without fearing that our words, our story might overbalance them. It is not trying to protect them from us.
(N.B. I quite like this excerpt ��� I was so caught up writing it on the banks of Venice that I got a touch of hypothermia, sometimes an artist must suffer a wee bit for their art.)
Pearl's Instagram Feed - Lots of Photos Now On My Homepage!
http://www.pearlescapes.co.uk/index.html
Upcoming Events
Watch this space - but plans are underway for an event in Paris mid September.
For up to minute news check out my Facebook
Or follow me on Twitter
Click here to get my newsletter emailed to you direct http://eepurl.com/U3C3T
For upcoming events please see the bottom of the email - please note I am no longer teaching weekly Zumba classes, although may have some retreats and masterclasses coming soon! Anything is possible.
My Beloved Friends,
Well, unfortunately I haven't been able to access my emails to reply to anything you've sent me after my last newsletter ��� I'm just in Cornwall at the moment, trying to see it before the school holiday masses descend (although it seems pretty full, I stayed two nights in almost the last bed in a female dorm in a hostel in Penzance and then last night in a four star luxury spa hotel near St Austell ��� it's heaven ��� especially after a stay in a hostel!) but still finding it difficult to get my internet connection!
It's hard for people (and even me) to understand why I do what I do, but it all works out in the end and it's bringing me back to the truth of who I am, not just a writer but being able to let go of so many things I've picked up in my life that are just not me.
But I also see that the travelling, even the writing is becoming more of a distraction, an addiction, from the next steps of the journey. I can feel it with travelling, it's when it starts to feel like just sightseeing or my heart pulls me on even if my brain says "Stay, it's wonderful here." I know I definitely have to go back to some of the places I've been, especially Hawaii. (There's a noise Monica makes in "Friends" about a guy ��� something like "hum un un unu" as in, "he's super hot" ��� that's how I feel about Hawaii.) Or sometimes my heart says "Stay" even though there are a hundred places I want to head to ��� and a little while later I know I was in the right place at the right time. But the books are not enough ��� and I hope you see that from what I write below, it���s like the Zumba manual or a DVD, there is absolutely nothing in this word like a live class ��� and that's what I need to bring to the world ��� a love class (oh wait that was a typo but it works!)���
So anyway, I got the proof for my new book last week (the second in the series if you don't count the prequel), so yes, I'll be working on printing that, but I'll also be working on my book tour and maybe some retreats too. It's about time I opened up my heart to fellow travellers like I did in the hostel the other day (but I may not be sharing with four other people anytime soon ��� that's a lot of people noises in the night!) although it was wonderful to meet so many friendly and interesting people there!
If you really want to get in touch with me, feel free to text me on 07770 846 284, I'm coming back from my sabbatical now (although I may be doing one more long haul before September so I apologise for any radio silence!)
Speak soon.
Lots of love, Pearl x
The Top Of The Mountain
As I sat on the top of the mountain at Lumeria in Maui I understood and felt the truth about what it is to love and be loved. I sat on the grass and meditated overlooking the sea and reached a point, a top of the mountain of feeling and being that was the highest I have yet experienced.
To try to put it in to words is to describe a meditation of enlightenment with the words "we are all one". If, in just saying these words, we could understood and feel this deep truth, well, pretty much all the retreat and meditation centres, not to mention yoga schools, bars and spas would go out of business. These are just words.
It is like me, standing now in Venice, telling you it's pretty, showing you my photographs, when I want you standing beside me, feeling the cold biting through your fingertips, the rush of hot coffee and Sicilian cannoli in your blood, the images of waterways burned into your retina as well as a hot pocket full of iPhone snaps. I want you to know what it is to wander dark streets, see black gondolas smacking against the waves in the night, to see the night reflected in tiny dank canals that hold no comfort before the dawn, when thoughts turn to bodies dropped out of windows and figures shrouded and masked for carnival, to know what it is to walk and find yourself in the right place all but for a few yards of canal with no bridge and to know you need to shoulder your bag, your life and retrace all those steps to get back to the place that you took a wrong turn. To feel the energy of a thousand artists honouring beauty, feel their passion for life till it makes you dizzy and a thousand murderers and ghosts that wake you up before dawn playing with your darkest fears. This is Venice. It is as far removed from the Venice of Las Vegas as your whole life and every breath you ever took from your last ID snapshot.
I will try.
I believe it's important and I believe that many of my teachers have tried to explain it to me, and I have learned it over and over, each time getting closer and closer to that moment.
As Mother Theresa said "There are things that cannot be seen or touched but must be felt with the heart."
I sat and meditated on the life of my beloved.
I had felt, travelling to Hawaii, the deep lie at the bottom of so many of my fears, of my refusals - like a horse refusing to jump when I could so easily have soared. I felt the deepest acceptance of myself just as I was in that moment. I have heard it said about grief that acceptance comes when we can see that death not as a life interrupted but as a life completed. I could see the journey of our relationship as completed because of where it brought me, but I could only arrive at this moment by accepting myself, himself and that relationship as perfect and complete. The butterfly had metamorphosed from the caterpillar, crawling through the most painful and messy period of transition, of meltdown and being both less and more than a single being and then become a thing of lightness and joy. I could see his life and him, not as something to be fixed or corrected, but as perfect, I could feel that every step he took was perfect.
This is love. To see each other, our most precious soulmate and the stranger smoking or drunk on the street, in the same way that we can know "we are all connected", to know "they are perfect and every step they take is perfect.��� It is letting go, in a way, but more than holding on or letting go it is finding a perfect balance, pona if you will, of holding a person in our heart without in any way trying to change them. Because we would be trying to improve on perfection. It would be like paving Venice or fixing every battered shuttered window or straightening the canals, or covering the sky and painting it a perfect sunny fresco like a Vegas Venice.
And it is sharing ourselves, our dark, our light, our stories with them when our heart tells us to, without judgment, without fearing that our words, our story might overbalance them. It is not trying to protect them from us.
(N.B. I quite like this excerpt ��� I was so caught up writing it on the banks of Venice that I got a touch of hypothermia, sometimes an artist must suffer a wee bit for their art.)
Pearl's Instagram Feed - Lots of Photos Now On My Homepage!
http://www.pearlescapes.co.uk/index.html
Upcoming Events
Watch this space - but plans are underway for an event in Paris mid September.
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