When did your inner journey truly begin?

Dear Subscribers,

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all our American friends! I hope you are enjoying a really special break. And thanks for the beautiful goodwill messages you shared with other readers last week.

Just as I enjoy writing and sharing new mouse-size musing ‘by’ His Holiness’s Cat, in months to come I look forward to offering fresh fictional snippets from the world of my new novel, The Good Karma Refuge for Elephants.

This week, we join narrator Rob - basically, me - and his godmother, near her cottage in the Nyanga mountains. My own, dear godmother, Kay, lived in just such a cottage and we, too, used to enjoy our rambles in the forest talking about exactly such subjects as these ….

I loved walking with Kay in the pine woods near her cottage. There was something gently but powerfully restorative about breathing in crisp mountain air, redolent with conifers. Of having every footstep cushioned by the quilt of bronzed pine needles. Of catching glimpses through the branches of the blue lake in the far distance.

Wolfhound Thor and Jack Russell Tiki dashed from one scent to the next, noses quivering. And with the branches above us whispering in the breeze, conversation with my godmother flowed effortlessly.

We reached a smooth granite boulder—flat as a bench, mottled with green and gold lichen—and Kay settled onto it with familiar ease. She gazed out towards the azure waters below; clearly, this was a favourite stopping place. Just beyond, water burst between moss-covered rocks, hurrying downhill in a bright, insistent rush.

“That’s from the spring in my garden,” she told me.

She’d shown me the small rivulet earlier, and the tiny pond she’d formed from its crystal flow.

“Years ago we had a hydrologist survey this area.”

“So the water disappears on your property—?”

“And reappears here,” she nodded.

“Goes underground but keeps moving,” I said.

Kay gave me a knowing look. “As I was saying earlier…”

It took me a moment to work it out. “Oh – that,” I raised my eyebrows ruefully.

We had been talking about my meditation practice. Or lack of it. How my sitting routine unfolded irregularly. There were months when it was a natural part of my daily rhythm. Followed by periods when life took over and there was never enough time, or I just wasn’t in the right head space.

“Just because something slips from view,” she said, holding my gaze, “doesn’t mean it’s gone. Sometimes”—she nodded toward the spring—“it resurfaces with even greater force.”

“I can see.” The spring here was much more vigorous than the tenuous trickle in her garden.

“In the early stages there’s usually fits and starts. Going underground and re-appearing later. Joining into bigger streams, cascading down waterfalls, before turning into a big, steady river. What starts out as nothing more than a squiggle at the top of the mountain, with no impact on anything in particular, becomes more and more important the further it goes. There’s a kind of inevitability about it. Keep on doing it and the results must come.”

“What I’m curious about,” I said after mulling this over, “is why this spring - to use your metaphor - appears in some places but not others. Why does meditation seem so natural, even obvious, to some, but for other people it’s completely foreign?”

“Karma,” shrugged Kay. “Previous life stuff.” Then looking farther down the valley, “Our inner journey unfolds over many lifetimes.”

I thought of colleagues back in London who would dismiss the idea out of hand: If we’ve lived before, why can’t we remember it? Case closed.

“For most Westerners, that’s difficult to accept,” I said.

She nodded. “We weren’t raised with the idea of beginningless time or endless space. It feels too vague, too open-ended. But we really need to ask the questions that our cultures never asked. The questions we perhaps stopped asking as children.

“Easterners find our own ideas equally baffling. How can there be a Big Bang without a previous cause? A creator without an origin? How can something arise from nothing?”

“Just like mind,” I murmured.

She smiled. We had spoken earlier of the Buddhist understanding of mind as a formless stream of knowing. How consciousness is an energy more subtle than matter. How the current mind moments we experience arise from previous ones, and the brain, like an individual TV set, while vital to mind’s functioning, is not to be mistaken for the broadcast.

“So what you’re saying,” I clarified, “is that even if we only find this path late in life, it was always there—like a subterranean river.”

Kay nodded. “A human life is what… sixty, eighty, maybe a hundred years? What are a few decades—or even lifetimes—in the context of eternity?”

I snapped my fingers. The sound felt small against the vastness before us.

The landscape stretched wide and wild, unmarked by any sign of habitation. Beneath the rolling pines and glittering water, I could see the broad stream leaving the lake—the very one that would become the Gairezi, joining the Mazowe, and later feeding the mighty Zambezi River.

From here, the brevity of a single life was self-evident. And just as obvious was the unbroken chain of cause and effect—the river of events flowing, inevitably, to the sea.

“Whatever spiritual tradition we follow,” Kay said softly, “the destination is the same. All the great teachers point us to the mouth of the river, where it meets the ocean. Many rivers. One ocean.”

She turned to me, eyebrows raised in gentle invitation.

“Becoming one with the experience of enlightenment?” I asked.

“Non-dual with a state of heart whose true nature is divine,” she said with a smile. “And always was. Even when it was the littlest, silver trickle.”

Photo: Noodle the wildebeest sharing a mind moment with Barney the kitten. Notice how Noodle’s eyes are high up his head. (Photo credit: @bosnian_girl_in_africa)

This week’s update comes from Wild is Life/Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery, one of the three non-profits which all paying subscribers help support:

“Over the years, our sanctuary has been full of these weird and wonderful bonds. A loyal dog who adored an elephant. A cheeky goat who insisted on napping beside a calf. A giraffe who chose a peacock as its favourite companion. And now… Barney and Noodle, deep in discussion like they’re planning world peace.

Life here always reminds us that connection doesn’t follow rules. It follows the heart.

Photo: Taking the herd of orphans out into another beautiful summer’s day …

“We have been reflecting on what we’re grateful for, and a few things shine brighter than the rest.

We’re grateful for this incredible community of friends and followers who stand with us, cheer us on, and support the work we do each day. You make the hard days lighter and the beautiful moments even sweeter.

We’re grateful to be the only sanctuary of our kind in Zimbabwe, a place where elephants and so many other wild souls are given safety, dignity and a real second chance.

We’re grateful for the privilege of easing suffering, offering gentle rehabilitation, and helping animals return to the wild where they belong.

And we’re grateful to play a small part in protecting Zimbabwe’s wild spaces for the generations still to come.

What are YOU grateful for today?”

Hi Everyone,

David here again. I just had to share these images. Don’t they point so exquisitely to the theme of today’s story - to the values of love and connection that transcend all else?

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