It first began in 1990. I had finished my HSC, which in those days was a High School Cetificate, and was waiting for the results. There is nothing more nerve wracking than waiting to find out if you have made the grade; was I going to be a failure, what would I do in life if I didn’t pass? Although I had worked pretty hard for the exams, self doubt plagued me, as it did and always had. Self esteem of the highest kind was not my forte. So I had asked my dad for a job working in my parents’ hotel. It was the off season for the ski resort and the place was empty. All I had to do was clean rooms while listening to my Walkman. My friend Danni had asked if she could join me and so we became a little family of two, cleaning hotel rooms and waiting for our futures to unfold. She was very much into crystals and her mum was an avid spiritualist. I had begun my journey when I fell in love with an American who, when I first laid eyes on him, I knew I had seen before. Well not seen, with my eyes but his soul I had seen before. I knew him before we even spoke and so after falling in love for the first time at 16 and saying goodbye to him as he left for the States, I pondered on this experience of knowing someone. When we were together I understood things about him I could not have known, intimate things about his heart, his nature and so I began searching about energy in the school library.
I figured if I had known him before, I had been born before, and if I had been born before then I had not ceased to exist after death.
This idea facinate me. Was I energy? If I was, what was energy? I found a book by a gentleman called Albert Einstein. In this book he stated something that sent me on a path I would only ever leave once and return to years later. He claimed that energy can’t die and can’t be created. Meaning it has or had, always existed. Well I listened to my friend Danni as we cleaned the rooms. I listened to her talk of past lives, about her mum’s crystal collection, how her sister could hear a baby speak to her from the womb. ‘Can you teach me?’ I asked. She then took it upon herself to educate me, since no one else would. My dad was an atheist and believed in the ‘gene pool’ and my mum, a rather delicate old fashioned lady with a simple hearted nature, did not like talking about such things. So an appointment was made, and I was to see a Channeler and her mum would take us.

Looking back now I realise, I knew nothing of channeling, so when I sat before this lady I was completely unprepared. Wind chimes echoed outside the window. She sat before me and breathed deeply, then sharply. Immediately her face changed, I became dizzy and my eyes, that were staring intently at her, began to dart back and forth. I felt like I was spinning inside my body without moving. Then the voice. Her whole persona changed to that of an Indian man. He addressed me as though I were his daughter and his student. He explained he was my guide, that he and I had shared many lifetimes together, the most recent in India, where he had been my teacher and I his student. He said many things, but the most poignant of it all, the conversation that stayed with me was, his announcement that one day, through meditation I would hear him, that he would take me to India and that his name was Rama.

That night I had a dream. I was flying in the air with this guide, practicing summersaults. I flipped forward with ease, weightless and free. But then he said, ‘Now go backwards.’ The thought which passed through me then, is still vivid now. ‘If I do that I would have to let go of all the laws of physics. I would have to defy nature.’ So I did. I began to feel a buzzing, like I was in the center of thousands of bubbles all passing through me, then, out of my body I moved. I was no longer in what I would describe as a physical space. But I could still ‘see’ the room. What defied reality, was that I could see three hundred and sixty degrees around me, all at once. There was no pain, no sadness, none of this existed. I felt pure peace and bliss, free in a way I had never known before. There was no time, no contrast, no opposition, and I state all of this with hindsight, because at the time, all just….was. I then saw my body lying on the bed, on my side, one shoulder clearly exposed while the rest of my body was covered. But as soon as I began to analyse what I was seeing, I felt the buzzing sensation again and I was back in my body, in bed.

I sat up, still reeling from the strange sensation of being weightless, peaceful and yet I grieved. I was overwhelmed with a sadness I cannot describe. It was a longing to be back there, to be free of this cumbersome body. This sadness was like a homesickness. The separation, the cold sharp corners of the physical was devastating. I felt alone and for days I wandered around lost. But then a second dream came, but this time I was standing on top of a cliff, my guide by my side. With my arms outstretched I heard him say very softly, ‘Jump.’ So I did, I fell and again the buzzing, the bubbles but this time I move through colours, through a rainbow sequence of colours, then as suddenly as I was out, I was back in again.

So this was to be the starting point of my journey with my guide, Rama. I wrote in a journal as I had always done, one day hoping to be a writer, somehow feeling like I was practicing, and in this journal I had listed all the questions I had for my spirit guide. Does God exist? Are there Angels? Do animals have souls? Why do we reincarnate? The list was endless. So on I went, into my future. I did well at school and was accepted into University studying Journalism and Creative writing, but the feeling stayed with me, that loss, that loneliness. I spoke to Rama all the time, wrote constantly, as though he were there listening. But still the skeptic in me doubted. Maybe he was not real? Maybe I was wrong? All I had to go on, was recalling the feeling of sitting before the Channeler and the feeling of being outside the physical world. But soon these became simply ideas, concepts and I lost myself in the confusion.

One year into University, I found myself away from family, alone and still searching for answers. I think that I was lost in the physical world, because I had been out of it. I had been to the other side and there was no one I could find who understood what that was like. Everyone seemed to carry on as though this was it, but it wasn’t. There was more and this was not THE reality, this was fake and so I became a very sad soul. My best friend from school came to visit me and told me she had found God. So off to the city I went, changed campus and joined a Christian cult. I was eighteen and vulnerable and thought well, maybe they have the answers. Rama slipped into the background, like a neglected friend. I wasn’t allowed to believe in him anymore, plus maybe he wasn’t real anyway? For two years I threw myself into the bible, into hell, into heaven. The conversations with God felt real, but all the rest was an act. It was as though I had fallen asleep. There was no Rama, there was no reincarnation, there was only one shot at getting it right and if I stuffed up, well then, Hell was what I had to look forward to. One night, standing in the kitchen of yet another Christian house I had been placed in, I dared the Universe to get me out. So the next day, in the mail, came a letter from the American. He had not written to me for years, but there it was, opened, read and on my desk. I stared at it and knew what to do. The next morning I pretended to have a cold and so when they went to church I packed my car and fled.
I sat in the hotel, in the restaurant the very next day, watching the staff potter about the place. In that moment I felt pure relief, I did not have to fear Hell. I knew it was not real and then the thought of Rama returned. Was he still there? Was he real? I had no way of knowing. I moved into a house in the city, owned by my parents and for the first time, I had a secure place to live. I was in my early twenties now, as I had deffered University and travelled in between. By this time I had studied Reiki, I had found Tarot and I was reading every spiritual book I could get my hands on, which I had been doing before the Church intervened, but had stopped out of fear. I had time and the safety of a home to immerse myself in spirituality, so I began to meditate on a regular basis. I became so dedicated that my room permanently smelled of incense and oils, as I would sit in my bed and connect with that space I had found so many years ago. Then my friend Erin invited me to a Pranic Healing course. This changed my life as I finally was presented with an opportunity. The Master healer was visiting from China and happened to attend our course for the day. He offered those who desired, a healing. This was not a common practice as he was rarely in Australia. This was an opportunity not to be missed. Erin nudged me into the line. Okay, said the Skeptic, let’s test it again, is it real? Well it came to be my turn. I sat on the chair and he looked down at me. ‘What do you want?’ He asked. I replied ‘I want to hear my spirit guide’ and he laughed. ‘You must be meditating a great deal to achieve this.’ I told him I had been and he went ahead with the healing. He pointed two fingers at my throat and closed his eyes. Shock went through me. My throat began to buzz. For days it stayed that way, buzzing. I swallowed constantly, trying to get it back to normal.
Then one morning, standing under the washing line while pegging on my wet clothes, it began. It was, at first, like trying to listen to a voice that was just barely audible. Then as I stood still, waiting, wondering, exploring inwardly in a way I never had before, I heard him. He was speaking about my questions, what questions do you want answered? I could hear him but there was no sound. It was a voice without sound. It felt like I had to follow the thread of his presence. So I ran inside, past my confused sister who was living with me and into my bedroom. I sat on the bed and began to meditate. He then swept in, energetically cut my head off with a huge sword, I popped outside my body for an instant, then back in again and he simply said; ‘See, it is of no signifigance.’

From that moment we were in constant communication. He became my ever present guide and teacher. How strange it is to have that kind of support. It’s not dissimilar to having an imaginary friend, someone only you can see. ‘Rama’, I would say, ‘How do I detach from this situation?’, or ‘Rama, why am I so easily hurt by people?’ Rama…..that name at this point, was a name I had know since forever it seemed. But it was just a name, one that I had been given, it was not one I questioned, nor asked anyone about and no one I knew in the spiritual circles I moved in, had ever heard of it, or if they had, no one said anything to me. My diaries that span decades, are filled with conversations with this being, advice, words I would never use, concepts I barely understood, about intention and creation, about energy and ways to work through life. The guidance he gave never sounded like me. I was being taught, rather than regurgitating information I already knew. I never questioned it really, when he spoke because it felt a certain way when he connected. It was the same feeling I had when I left my body in my teens. It was a feeling of seamless oneness, tempered by non-humanistic wisdom and peace. It was something outside of me, but still the Skeptic in me doubted.

After a few years of studying and writing, meditating and connecting with Rama I took off up north to Queensland, following a boy. Classic error in judgement. He ditched me after we had driven all the way up the coast and left me stranded with nowhere to live. I had no money and so called my old High School friend Angela who lived in Nimbin. Angela’s home on the mountain was a haven, a place where I found solace from a broken heart and hurt pride. The earth was a beautiful rich red, the trees that surrounded the property were lush and green. A long driveway wound up from the main road to her rickety home where she and her three children lived, without a man, all on their own surviving on the small pension she received each fortnight. She gave me a room to stay in beneath the house. It was open and a little rustic, but I had surrendered to her lifestyle and so developed within myself a certain comfortability that comes only when one is totally penniless and homeless, when the conventions of life have fallen away and trust is all that’s left. Two things I remember vividly is the huge snake in the bathtub outside my room and the teachings Rama gave me.

As I wandered around the mountain, taking in the beauty, Rama spoke to me, taught me. I asked so many questions and the communication became very clear. I was shown a way of seeing things that was completely oriented around how we manifested experiences, life and how intention was a part of creating. He spoke about the jewel held within the moment, how the path through was to find freedom from belief.
Each day I walked and listened then wrote all he said in a scrappy notebook I had bought from the local newsagent. The writing grew large when I documented what he said. I couldn’t write fast enough when I sat on my rickety bed and listened to his voice. It was a strange feeling to not know what words would come next and read as I wrote, without any prior knowledge of what would be said.
He was my life at this juncture and then one morning as the sun rose I crept outside, the light drawing in colour, building the world around me as it spread. The air was thin and warm, so unlike the morning air at home that wakes your skin with its brisk cold. I began to walk, to listen and now looking back I wish I had not heard what he said.

’It is time to step out now and live what I have taught you.’ I grabbed the words in my mind and questioned him. It was silent, I heard nothing. I called out again to him, but the words moved into a void and were lost.
He was gone. I was alone.
From that moment the world felt different. I felt like a teen who had been asked to leave home for the sole purpose of learning how to live independently. Shoved back out into the world armed with knowledge of what Rama had taught me, but without the voice of comfort, without any direct connection.
I caught a bus back home and my mother picked me up at the other end, tired, broken, but ready to return to University. The Skeptic in me still sat in the background assessing, determining what was real and what was worthy of belief. Did I believe Rama existed? How could I not after all I had experienced. But skepticism tempered with hope is never a bad thing. So I carried on a cock-eyed traveler hoping more proof would come my way. Rama however did return but this is another tale I will tell another time.