A story of gratitude recalled is a powerful antidote to negativity

TRANSCRIPT

It’s not easy always to tell a great story, especially when the details are foggy. So I apologize if any of the following story is out of sequence, but I’ll do the best I can. And I don’t like writing these stories down before I tell them.

I’d been divorced for five years, and my brother happened to work in New York with his family and I decided to go and visit him. Right in the middle of Manhattan. I stayed there at his house at Much to the chagrin of his wife with their two children, and enjoyed all the fruits of living in New York. Doing very little work, some, but mostly remote and enjoying everything New York had to offer during this time, I attended a drumming workshop of all things. And I met Kaya and David.

They invited me to come and live in their house, which I did. Of course, I had to leave America because I’d been there three months. So I went to Mexico, stayed down there for a while, and then came back to New York with a new visa. I moved in with Kai and David and David was an incredible drummer. And I really enjoyed being with them. And in that time, we used to have drumming parties at their house goodness knows the neighbors must have been pissed off. But anyway, we had drumming parties with 10 or 15 people and I met cool people group Ku-U-Ipo was a Hawaiian woman, and she taught Lomi Lomi massage.

And not long after that Ku-U-Ipo and I formed a relationship and basically started living together way up on the Upper West Side of New York of Manhattan. I think that was around 130 or 140s. And that relationship was fantastic.

We went to California a few times where she was brought up. And with that, I got introduced to a group of people who, who really loved poetry, so I started writing and presenting poetry in a poetry room and sold my little poetry books and enjoyed. I guess what you could say at this time, a bohemian life.

Anyway, David and kya they knew some people in Santa Fe, New Mexico, so I took a train and went down to Santa Fe, New Mexico by myself. And there I met a family who were of the Jain set, and they were working on non violence in the movies. And they were working for Steven Spielberg. And I got to meet him and I got to meet a few of the other directors including Scorsese and a few others, because I volunteered to help them work on the project.

As part of this project, they had a friend whose name was anyway, she was a Native American woman. I’m gonna stop this video for a minute and see if I can remember her name. Shona bear.

Shona bear was a powerful woman who was the derivative child of a German and a Native American woman. And she was a really high priestess in Native American tradition in Santa Fe, New Mexico in that area. And Shona Bear taught me so many things, including a lot of the mysticism of the shamans and the alternative life of the Native American people. And I really fell in love with that whole culture much more than ever before. And in the time, I’m staying there at Santa Fe. I met many, many Native American people, especially in galleries where I just loved the artwork.

I ended up doing a shamanic training, teaching with pipe carrier from a from a community in of Native American people and we spend a lot of time out in the in the desert near Santa Fe doing training, and all sorts of mystical things down at Sedona. Anyway, part of this introduced me to a woman. Her name was Sylvia Stibolt.

And Sylvia was famous in America for printing angels. I ended up living at her place for a month in her in her art gallery, which was actually an angel center. And she built this thing out of a very, very old church that she’d bought in Mexico, and had all the pieces of wood I think it was she claimed it was 800 year old wood and the doors were so thick and the walls were so beautiful. And this place was where Silvia really went off on her painting expeditions and she was her paintings. was miraculous.

And I loved her work and I met that’s where I met Kevin Costner Anyway, I met him because he was a sponsor of Silvia and they had so many great connections and friends and she was famous all over and I entered ended up actually introducing Sylvia Stibolt to Peter Crisp who has an art gallery down there at Yas, if you ever driving down past there you’ll see plants, a beautiful lavender plantation and Art Gallery and that’s Peter and I introduced Peter to Sylvia and he did some angels immersed in glass in his glassware, which is pretty phenomenal.

Anyway, the people I was staying with in Santa Fe. They knew a guru at an ashram back in New York, and so I ended up catching a train back to New York to New York State. And staying at this Ashram with this guy who was a music healer. And that this Ashram was hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property, beautifully manicured lawns and incredible big buildings and the guru and all the disciples spent all day making music and hitting drums and beautiful sounds that were healing to both individuals. And the world.

It was a that that Silvia and I had a disruptive conversation because she wanted more than music at the ashram and I didn’t and so she left and I befriended the people at the ashram who, as it turns out, had an office at the United Nations because they represented the Jain set at the United Nations and they were there to share the work of peace in the world and so I became part of that community as well at the United Nations when I went back to New York City.

At this time, I was still going up and down to Canada, helping some work with some indigenous communities. And there was a young girl there who had got into a bit of trouble, which is another story. And she eventually through the coaching, ended up speaking at the Youth Congress on world peace at the United Nations through this contact.

And so these two beautiful people that I worked with at the UN, and visited their offices and and shared some incredible times at the United Nations. Were also open to helping the Unite First Nation people of Canada and so this expanded their work and also mine and so the story went on that I met another person in New York, and her work was going around at that time, giving medication to people with AIDS, who were basically confined to their houses. She was an amazing person, and we formed a relationship. And I ended up going with her up to Harlem, to a facility that had been created by a church I think the Catholic Church, I’m not sure for children who’d been born to addicted parents.

Now, I don’t know if you know this, but kids who are born to a parent with a heroin addiction are born with the addiction. People who are born very often to a parent who has AIDS will have AIDS. And so the work at the hospital for the for the staff was really intense because most kids didn’t have a life expectancy much more than five. My job when I went there and volunteered at this hospital was to read stories to the children. And the hard part about this was that you’d read a story to a child and then I’d go back a couple of days later to do to volunteer my work again, and that particular child’s room was empty and you never knew when it was going to happen. This is such an amazing facility in New York, I’m sure it’s different now because there’s probably more money and more facility but at that time, it was a an incredible gift to the communities. Interesting enough for me, I’m a white guy from from Australia. And here I am walking through the dark, some pretty heavy areas of Harlem that aren’t familiar with a white guy walking down there with a school bag over the shoulder, and but eventually they got to know I was volunteering at this facility and I became befriended by the community and looked after as I worked.

So this whole period of my life forms a bubble, if you if you will. It ends with a phone call from my ex wife saying that the children I hadn’t seen for, I think seven years have physically been in their presence for seven years. Were going to bring their yacht to The Hamptons to be repaired.

And so I was able to catch a train out and see them for the first time in a very long time. And I remember renting a hotel, a hotel room, they couldn’t stay with me overnight. She wouldn’t allow that. But she would give me a couple of hours with them. So I went to a hotel room. I decorated it full of balloons and toys and playthings and cakes and goodness knows what the door knocks. And there’s the three kids but I’m down on my knees ready to look into their eyes. And here they were standing adult height above me the kids had grown up and I hadn’t translated that into physical, physical shape. And I just remembered that as being closure for that particular trip. I came back to Australia, not long after that, and reestablished myself back here ready to go back and actually build the business that I eventually built back in New York.

The reason I’m sharing the story and the reason I’m being a little bit blase about the whole thing, because it’s not something to be blase about being invited into Native American culture and to be indoctrinated into the shamanistic teachings and to be given the opportunity to attend an ashram and work with very influential people around the world, including the United Nations.

The reason I put this into a bubble and talk about it as I am, is because I have no idea how it all happened. It was like for me now, this is like a dream that I had last night and digging it up to talk about it is quite incredible because it’s almost like I’m talking if you pardon me, I’m talking about somebody else. The funny thing about time and age and, and, and history is whatever happens in the last period of time usurps, whatever happened in a past period of time, and it’s, it’s really easy to diminish it and go, Oh, that’s history.

And it was in a time when you don’t when I didn’t have an iPhone, so I didn’t take 1000s and 1000s of photos I probably took I had a camera, no doubt because I always traveled with a camera. I know for sure in that time. I didn’t change my clothes much. I had two pairs of jeans and a couple of shirts and I’ve seen photos of me in those jeans and shirts and they’re not really all that attractive.

So I wasn’t fashion and I didn’t put I didn’t put pegs in the ground as such. But this was a really important part of of the foundation of inner wealth and the foundation of the knowledge that I have, that I share in a coaching session because there’s not a day goes by where something doesn’t remind me of Shona Bear. Something reminds me of the family in Santa Fe.

There’s not a day goes by where I don’t have extreme gratitude for the time I spent in that ashram and the incredible dignity that came with working in in in the United Nations for Silvia for a person who could translate what was going on outside of her in the in her Angel connections into a painting it it these things just they crossed my path on a on a daily if not weekly basis.

And they’re never far from the reality of what’s going on. But in terms of telling them as a story. It’s getting harder and harder to remember.

So look, that’s a little bit of personal sharing. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. This is Chris, you have a beautiful day. Bye for now.