The Cave

“You have been here how long?” Jake uttered incredulously.

“Two years” Assaji repeated calmly.

“No visitors, no speaking, barely any food and living in a cave in this remote area of the Himalayas; two years!”

Clearly Jake was dumbfounded by what he had just heard and fell silent to let this extraordinary feat of human endurance sink in.

Angelique, his French girlfriend, who he had met during his 15 months sojourn, was less surprised, but still astounded.

“How do you put up with not speaking or interacting with anyone for so long,” she said, “I would go crazy!”

“Well it is like this,” spoke Assaji, the early morning sun glistening off his shiny head, “The idea that I am alone is incorrect. You see I have experienced for myself that we are never alone.”

“There is just one of us, one spirit, one energy, whatever label we want to put on it, just one source of everything, inhabiting 8 billion bodies on this planet alone.”

“Whoa!” exclaimed Jake.

Angelique could feel Jake tense up with this revelation and gently touched his arm in a loving gesture of support.

She was born in the South of France on the Côte d'Azur, spending her early childhood on that dramatically spectacular coastline and later to adventurously explore all around the area on solo hikes.

She was a lover of Nature, animals and being authentic, no doubt about it.

It was her love of sketching and painting flowers in the countryside that subsequently found her studying at Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (National School of Fine Arts) in Paris.

The first year and a half went well, then the longing to be out in Nature beckoned her away from the city and following her heart and intuition, she bid her family farewell and set forth on an overseas adventure of a life-time.

Jake's story was entirely different.
He was running away from an unhappy childhood and an inability to fit in to mainstream society.
He was a troubled young man with an addictive personality, which brought him into contact with alcohol, drugs and a penchant for high risk activities.
His sporting prowess, mingled with the associated huge adrenalin rushes, had earned him over the years, a broken arm, mild concussion and several fractured ribs.

As far as Jake was concerned, he could not get fast enough or further away from his hometown in Canterbury, England.

Seven months into his escapism, he bumped into Angelique on the Ponte Vecchio ("Old Bridge") over the Arno River in Florence, Italy.

Jake and Angelique spent over fours hours chatting over coffee and cake at the Cantinette Tratoria Signorvino, thus sealing their ongoing friendship and adventures together.

Later, Angelique would constantly question Jake with "Where did you learn that?" whenever she witnessed his sabotaging behaviour.

Of course Jake shrugged it off with, "I've always been this way." But Angelique would not accept him stopping at the observable tip of the iceberg and gently guided him into the root causes, that which remains out of sight, but there nonetheless, and impacting upon his behaviours.

Slowly but surely, Jake began to wake up to the source of his aberrant conduct learnt from witnessing the dysfunctional ways of acting by his parents, who in turn, learnt it from their parents going back and back in time.
Not only his behaviours were being carried forward, but his DNA too, half of which came from his Mum and half from Dad, going back generation after generation.

What a burden to be carrying around on his young shoulders!

One day, sometime later on their journey, the magic of Katmandu, Nepal, wove it’s wonderful spell upon Jake, when thanks to Angelique’s gentle persuasion and heart- centredness, he realised that some of his destructive behaviours that he learnt from his parents, he was playing out in present time and he was not being authentic.