Breaking Free: A Journey of Self Discovery Read online

  I hung around at the programme for a while longer. With the time having gone past one in the morning, I kept telling myself that I should get going as I had an early start the next day, but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave. I’d turn to walk away, but my feet wouldn’t budge. Eventually, sometime later on, I took one final look at Amma and then left.

  When I returned to my hotel, I lay wide awake in bed staring up at the ceiling. I felt incredibly light and energised, as though electricity was racing through every part of my body. It was the same kind of rush I’d experienced after a good night in a nightclub. I didn’t know what, but I felt that something profound and amazing had just happened to me. What I could never have dreamt of at the time was that I had just met my guru, my spiritual teacher, and that life was about to take me down a completely different path to anything I could ever have imagined in my wildest dreams.

  CHAPTER 13

  The same blissful feeling remained with me for a few days after meeting Amma. Even when I was on the road running, it felt as if I was floating along. The best way for me to describe the feeling was to compare it to falling in love. When you fall in love you, you can’t stop thinking about the person, and you feel so happy whenever you think of them. This is how it was for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Amma and every time I thought of her I found myself smiling. The feeling did eventually begin to fade away, but my desire to see Amma again didn’t go away. Knowing that she was going to be heading north for the remainder of her eight-week tour through India, and with me on my way down south, there would be little chance that I’d get to see the hugging saint anytime soon, but what would be a nice consolation, I thought, would be for me to stop off at her ashram on my way down to Kanyakumari.

  ***

  Until very recently I had never even heard the word, ashram, therefore I had no idea that an ashram was a place where people went to learn about spiritual practices such as yoga and meditation. The first thing that struck me about Amma’s ashram was the size of it. It was huge. It looked more like a university campus than anything else. I was expecting a temple and a few small buildings, but it wasn’t anything like that at all. I quickly realised that there were many different types of people at the ashram. There were those who had been there for a while and were clearly very serious about their spiritual life, and then there were other people, such as myself, who didn’t know the first thing about ashram life and were there merely out of curiosity.

  Only a few minutes after arriving, I saw an elderly lady walking past me with a small board hanging from her neck, with the words, ‘in silence’ written in big letters. I was a little shocked to see this and couldn’t help but wonder whether an ashram was the right place for me. Perhaps I had made a mistake in coming here. What would my friends back home think if they knew that I was staying in a place where people dressed in white and women walked around with boards around their necks? They’d probably think I’d lost it and had joined some crazy cult.

  “Get the hell out of there, Jed,” they’d tell me, but these initial doubts didn’t last long. I soon settled into the simple and peaceful atmosphere that you couldn’t help but feel at a place like Amma’s ashram. Unlike other ashrams in India, many of which are said to have very rigid daily schedules, at Amma’s ashram it was entirely up to you as to what you did and did not want to take part in. I liked this as I felt that I could ease my way into things in my own time.

  Seeing as though I would be in the ashram for a few days to rest, I figured that this would be the perfect opportunity for me to learn how to meditate. I didn’t have a clue about meditation and so I asked one of the Indian ashram residents for help. The man I spoke to, had been living in the ashram for many years and seemed like the kind of person who would know what he was talking about. He suggested that I sit with my eyes shut and that I imagine being in a dark room with a candle burning in front of me. The idea was to try to put all my focus on nothing but the candle flame. As soon as I noticed that my mind had drifted off I was to take my attention back to the candle flame. That seemed simple enough. How tough could it be? One of the great things about Amma’s ashram is its location. Literally a stone’s throw from the ocean, every morning and afternoon many people went down to the beach, either to enjoy the scenery, or to do their spiritual practice. I decided that the following morning I’d wake up early and meditate with all the others at the seashore.

  At the beach the next morning, I found a comfortable spot on the sand and sat with my legs crossed and hands resting on my knees. With my eyes closed, I imagined being in a dark room with a candle burning in front of me. This was the easy part. The difficult part was then to keep my concentration on that damn candle flame. I’d visualise it for only a few seconds before my mind would start chattering away to itself. I wonder what I should have for lunch today? Should I have the Indian curry again or should I try something else this time? Then I’d suddenly remember that I still had my washing to do and my mind would go off on another tangent. I can’t hang around in the dining hall long after lunch as I need to get the washing done before I go to seva. Then again, maybe if I hang around in the dining hall after lunch I will see the same girl that I saw yesterday. Dressed in white, her long blonde hair falling gently down her back, the girl that I had seen the day before, looked more like an angel than anything else. I wonder whether she has a boyfriend? A beautiful girl like her, I bet she does. But if she doesn’t maybe there’s a chance that something could happen. Where would I take her, though, and what the hell would I wear as I don’t have much other than two sets of running clothes with me... the candle flame! I’d suddenly remember that I was meant to be focussing on the candle flame and not on where the blonde and I were going to go on our first date. However, a few seconds later I’d be fantasising about the girl once again.

  It wasn’t long before I had become completely frustrated, as my mind just wouldn’t shut up and be still. It was like a stubborn bull wanting to run off and do its own thing. Controlling my mind seemed to be almost impossible. I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was always this restless and out of control, or whether it was only playing up like this now because I was trying to meditate. In time I’d come to realise that my mind was always like this. It’s only now that I became aware of it. My first meditation was an absolute disaster, a total failure. I felt more tired after the meditation than I did before, but what this had clearly shown me was that the practice of quieting the mind was not such an easy thing to do after all. I wasn’t ready to give up just yet, however. The next morning I was back at the beach to practice meditation again.

  ***

  One of the daily activities at Amma’s ashram is seva. The idea behind seva, which means ‘selfless service’, is that so much of what we do in life is done with a selfish motive. Seva is therefore the practice of doing something for someone else without a selfish motive. With so much free time on my hands, I went to the seva desk the next morning to find out what I could do to help. The guy in charge asked me whether I’d be happy to help clean out the trash in the afternoons. Cleaning out the trash wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of serving lunch in the dining hall, cleaning rooms, or maybe even showing people around the ashram, but then again, it wasn’t as if two hours of rummaging through the trash with an apron and gloves on would kill me. How bad could it be?

  “Sure,” I smiled. “I’m happy to help out.”

  My afternoon at the recycling yard didn’t turn out to be that bad in the end. In fact, it made me feel good that I was helping out in some small way. It was also a great chance for me to speak with other people who had been at the ashram for some time. One of the things that fascinated me was to hear about all the hundreds of charities and projects that Amma had initiated over the years. I was told that when Amma was not giving darshan she was almost always in her small house busy overseeing the administration side of her charities. On a good day Amma supposedly only got two hours of sleep a night. Very often s
he went without any sleep at all. Hearing about the charities was one thing, but what interested me the most was to hear stories of some of the miracles that had happened around Amma over the years.

  One of the stories that stood out the most for me, was the one about a leper who had gone to see Amma many years before. The story went that he was so inflicted by leprosy that he had to leave his begging bowl some distance away as the smell coming from his body was so strong that no one would go near him. Then one day, somebody took pity on him and told him that there was a holy woman living in a nearby village. The man suggested that he go and see her to get help. When the man arrived at the ashram, Amma was already giving darshan to a long line of people waiting to see her. Standing some distance away, Amma looked over at him and smiled affectionately. “My child, my child,” she said. “Come over here.”

  Amma then, in front of everyone, started to lick all the open wounds on his body. Some who were watching this vomited, others fainted and collapsed. When Amma was done she told him to come back in a few days so that she could lick his wounds again. In time, miraculously, the wounds healed.

  Another story that inspired me greatly was one about a lady who had gone to ask for Amma’s blessing for her to have a child. Amma assured the lady that she would soon fall pregnant. There was nothing particularly unusual when she did fall pregnant, but what was strange was that when the lady went to have her scan the doctor couldn’t pick up any trace that there was a baby inside her. Her stomach was swollen, but according to the X-ray machine there was nothing there. The lady went to see another doctor but again the result was the same - no baby! Confused, the lady went to see Amma to ask what was happening.

  “Have faith,” Amma smiled back at her. “It’s a child of God. That’s why the X-ray machine can’t pick up anything.”

  This wasn’t the only test that the lady would face. When her due date arrived nine months later there was still no sign that the baby was ready to come into this world. Ten months passed, eleven months, twelve months – still no baby. Villagers made fun of her when she walked past, saying that there was an elephant in her stomach.

  “Have faith, have faith,” Amma said when the lady went back to see her again to ask whether there was a problem. Fifteen months after falling pregnant, the lady finally gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby, just as Amma had promised she would.

  CHAPTER 14

  It was approaching the end of February. As much as I was enjoying my time in the ashram, I knew I had better get moving, as I still had a little over 200 kilometres to run before reaching Kanyakumari. The full wrath of the Indian summer was fast approaching and I knew that the humidity was only going to get worse. On my way down to Kanyakumari I made sure not to make the same mistake that I had made on my bicycle trip across Canada by focussing too much on getting there. I tried to remind myself to take it one day at a time and to enjoy it right to the end. However, saying that, on my way into Kanyakumari I couldn’t control my excitement and was almost sprinting the last few kilometres into town. What an indescribable feeling it was for me to turn the corner and see the ocean at the southern tip of India for the first time. I took a dip in the sea, and then sat for ages on a bench staring out into the horizon, overcome by a feeling of deep peace. I wasn’t at all sad that my trip had come to an end. So many things could have gone wrong along the way, but in the end nothing bad had happened to me. My run through India brought yet another exciting chapter in my life to an end.

  ***

  With two weeks to spare, I decided to go and spend my last few days in Amma’s ashram before returning home. I very quickly got into the same routine as before, my mornings on the beach practicing meditation, and my afternoons doing seva. Things were ticking along nicely, but then one day I found myself dreaming of how nice it would be to see Amma one last time before I left for South Africa. When I went to find out where Amma was on her tour, I was told that she would be in Calcutta in a few days time. If I wanted to see her, then I’d have to hurry as that would be her last stop in India before she left for Australia. I mulled it over. Of course I wanted to see Amma again, but the thought of having to spend two to three days in buses and trains to get to Calcutta didn’t excite me one bit. One minute I was thinking yes, I must definitely go, and then the next minute I was thinking no, I am crazy to even think of going. After going back and forth - almost driving myself mad in the process - I finally decided to flip a coin. If the coin landed on tales, then I’d go. And if the coin landed on heads, I wouldn’t. It was as simple as that. Before tossing the coin into the air, I shut my eyes and said a prayer. Is it best for me to see Amma again? I asked.

  When I opened my eyes and looked down at the coin sitting in the palm of my hand, I saw that it was tails. It was a ‘yes’. I didn’t waste any more time debating whether or not to go. I packed up my stuff right away and left first thing the following morning.

  When I arrived at the programme in Calcutta, I noticed that the crowds weren’t quite as large as they had been when I had first seen Amma in the south of India. Just as before, the programme started off with a spiritual discourse and singing, and only then did Amma start giving darshan. I took my token and sat around waiting for my number to come up. My hug from Amma this time was completely different to the first one. She didn’t make eye contact with me at all, and didn’t she give me that same flashing smile that she had given me before, but unlike my first darshan, in which I hadn’t felt anything special during the hug itself, this time it felt as though a lightning bolt of energy shot through my body. It was such an intense feeling that I walked away after the hug a little shaken up. For some time after, I sat quietly in the corner by myself wondering what had just happened, but whatever it was, I now had my own firsthand experience that these hugs that Amma was giving were not just regular hugs from a sweet old lady that liked to hug people. I knew for sure that there was obviously so much more to it beyond what the eye was able to see.

  CHAPTER 15

  My trip to India was the start of a major transformation in my life. What I didn’t know at the time was that for this inner awakening to best take place, I needed to be away from home. I needed to be away from all familiarity in a place where nobody knew me. Both my friends and family knew me so well by now that the personality I was around them was so deeply ingrained that I automatically behaved in a certain way whenever I was with them. What I needed now was to take off all these masks that I had worn for so long and to find out who I really was when I didn’t have to play the Jed Matthews that everyone knew me to be.

  A few weeks before I left for my running adventure through India, I had landed up sitting next to a stranger in a pub in Cape Town. We got chatting, and as it turned out, he was teaching English in South Korea. Teaching in the Far East was something that I had wanted to do for many years. I didn’t let the opportunity pass me by and so I asked him more about it and found out the details of the recruiter that he had gone through. Things fell into place perfectly and within a few weeks of returning from India I had signed a contract to work at a middle school in South Korea for the year. It amazed me how things have a way of working out, and at just the right time too. By now I had used up nearly all of my savings and so it was that time again for me to put my head down and make some money.

  Before leaving for Korea, I made a stop off in Cape Town to hand over the equivalent of $7 000 that had been raised from my run through India. The project did take a little longer than I had anticipated, but still I was happy to get an email from Neville later on in the year to say that the money had been put towards a new classroom, as well as an outside bathroom for the staff members, both of which were now complete. Previously the school only had one small outside bathroom that both the students and the teachers had to share. Raising the money was more of a project than I had expected it to be, but in the end it had all been well worth it as the money had all gone towards a wonderful cause.

  ***

  If my first week in Korea was anythin
g to go by, things couldn’t have been any better. The students I taught were an absolute pleasure, and my job was about as easy and stress free as you can get. The apartment I lived in, although absolutely tiny, was simple and easy to maintain. It was the complete opposite to the big three-bedroom house that I had been living in the year before. The town that I had been placed in was perfect as well. A 90-minute bus ride from Seoul, it was relatively small by Korean standards and had only a small group of foreigners living in it. Few foreigners living there meant that there would be less chance of me getting caught up in big social gatherings, which would give me all the space and time necessary for me to be introspective and to let everything unfold as it needed to.

  Ever since my recent trip to India I’d made sure to keep going with my daily meditation practices. Every morning I’d wake up and meditate for an hour before work. Even though it was a constant effort for me in the beginning, I kept plugging away at it, as I was sure that meditation was a good thing and that it would get easier with time. At this stage I was still using the same meditation that I’d been taught in India, the candle visualisation meditation. On top of my morning meditations I read daily from the many spiritual books that I had bought in Amma’s ashram. What amazed me was how simple and practical Amma’s teachings were. She spoke of things such as the importance of following a healthy diet, simplifying your life, maintaining a clean home to live in, and focussing on a person’s good qualities instead of looking at their bad qualities. Everything I read felt right and made complete sense. What I also really liked about the teachings was that I didn’t have that feeling that I was joining a ‘religion’, which would have only put me off, but rather that I was learning to use different tools that would help me to live a more peaceful and enjoyable life. Now who wouldn’t want that! I started to love these books more and more and very quickly my desire to read anything other than spiritual books had all but disappeared. In the past, the books that had inspired me the most were books such as Lance Armstrong’s, It’s Not About the Bike, and Richard Branson’s, Losing My Virginity, but now what ultimately moved me the most were books relating to spirituality. With the teachings being as simple and practical as they were, I made sure to put them into practice as best as I could. I knew that there was no point in me reading all these books if I wasn’t going to apply them in my daily life as well.