My accommodation in Rome was at the Trastevere Hotel, in the old Trastevere district, on the west bank of the Tiber River, just south of St Peters Square and the Vatican, where my Cammino (Italian spelling) had come to its conclusion.
That evening I went to a local Pizzeria to have my long-awaited reward for a journey well-travelled; Pizza and a long cold beer!! It was only 6pm, but I was starving. I’d lost nearly five kilo on the journey – so I ordered the largest pizza available.
The young man who served me, Luca, was very personable and quite chatty, so I decided to sit at the counter to drink the beer he had just brought me. Luca turned out to have excellent English. He’d been studying it for the last couple of years as he hoped to travel to America to see family, and maybe even work there. He told me his Uncle had ‘connections’. I couldn’t help but smile to myself.I had hardly talked to anyone in two weeks as there’s not much English spoken in the back-blocks of Umbria, so I was very happy to chat. He wanted to know about me and how I came to be in Rome. I told him about coming from NZ to undertake my Cammino journey and a little about my experiences on the road, many of which I was still processing.
Then the weirdest thing happened. He stared into my eyes just the way my angel had done and pointed directly at the middle of my chest and said in the most beautiful voice “Cuore” and then once more with something I can only describe as almost reverence and respect. “Cuore!!”
In the best pseudo-Italian I could muster, I asked, What is “Cuore?” (which I am sure I completely butchered by pronouncing it something like ‘Quoray’). He kept pointing at my chest… “Cuore…Heart” “What you did can only be done from the Heart.”
For a moment, time, and everything in it, stood still. A frozen instant that, like my 1990 experience, will be locked within me forever.
Suddenly I accessed something I had learned some years before; the word Courage came from the Latin word for the heart ‘Cor’. I also remembered my High School French and that ‘la Coeur’ also meant Heart… and that ‘Courage’ is the same word in both languages.
A massive penny dropped. When my angel told me to “Live my life with great courage” she was telling me much more than to be brave and act bravely. She was telling me to live, speak, choose and act from the Heart – which, as it turns out, is the original meaning of the word ‘Courage’
My beautiful angel had let me know in the most perfect way that only in our hearts do we find our real home… and our mystic legacy. And now, finally, after all these years and challenges, I could finally fully receive the gift she had given me.
I looked at Luca and a tear ran down my cheek, the one-and-only tear I shed during the entire Camino. He just smiled, shook my hand, and went on with his work as if nothing had happened.
I sat trying to take it all in and when my Pizza arrived, I devoured it in complete silence. Once again, I was in a place beyond words… and I was home.
In all the books I have read on sacred journeys and pilgrimages, there seems to be one consistent theme. The pilgrimage journey is just an outer representation of the most challenging journey of all – the eighteen-inch journey from the head to the Heart.
To live my life with great courage and to live my True Purpose of being a healing, empowered presence on this planet, comes down to one thing… my ability to walk home to my Heart and stay there. This is at the very ‘Cor’ of my life’s journey.
Over the last two years, I’ve come to trust my Heart more-and-more. I’ve begun to understand that it is a direct conduit to the Divine Infinite library of information that I experienced so profoundly during my journey back to the Source of all things.
It is in and from my Heart that some of what ‘I knew I knew’ has become increasingly available to me – and whether I am coaching of facilitating healing work, it seems to speak to me, and through me, in a way that directly benefits those I am working with.
My journey is not that of an Eckhart Tolle or a Karl Renz, who also touched the face of the Divine Infinite, became One with it, and then returned. I don’t believe my experience was any less profound or meaningful than theirs, because we all went to the same Source.
However, unlike them, I was not able to contain and integrate all that was downloaded in that moment in a way that I could begin to share it with others.
For reasons I can only accept as perfect, my way seems to be a far more of gradual reveal. A slow burn that gently grows in intensity. Maybe anything quicker would have blown my very nascent circuitry and left me completely unable to function in the physical world.
I have also come to understand that it matters not whether I share what I know with people in their millions, or just one person at a time. The Universe is infinite and in no hurry, it just unfolds perfectly in the Eternal Now, like a flower that only knows how to blossom.
This continues to be the ongoing story of my journey home… the journey back to my Heart.. back to my Source.. back into the Mystic from where I came.
And when that foghorn blows I will be coming home
And when that foghorn blows I want to hear it
I don’t have to fear it.
~ Van Morrison – Into the Mystic ~
The Beginning
Footnote: Kieron, his wife and business partner, Jamila, and daughter, Arielle, live in the beautiful Nelson/Tasman region at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. They can be contacted at Turning Point Clinic and Coaching – www.TurningPointNZ.com
And if you would like to listen to Van Morrison’s ‘Into the Mystic’ on You Tube, please click here…