Finding Sarah

by Sarah Ferguson

  One very conscious effort I have made is to not start focusing on God only when there is something wrong in my life. I focus on Him when things are going well and thank Him every day for giving me a wonderful life. I have many spiritual guides, Buddha, Jesus, Babaji, Sai Baba, Mother Teresa, and many more who sacrificed their lives because they could see the God in them, and the God in them wanted them to sacrifice their lives for humanity so that we people could learn peace and purity. I am always open to learning and growing, spiritually.

  Cultivating a spiritual connection can help you feel more grounded in life and broaden your perspective on the world. Study after study has found that spiritually active people experience greater happiness; this may be due to the close relationships that are engendered, to the sense of meaning and purpose people extract from their faith, and/or from the incentive people feel to extend the focus beyond themselves.

  One of the most spiritual places on earth is India. I love the country and its people and culture for personal reasons. India has given me decades of discovery, learning, and friendships. India is in my heart.

  When I met the Dalai Lama in the Indian border town of Dharamsala, where he has lived in exile for more than four decades, I asked him about how he dealt with regret. He said, “Regret is guilt. Guilt is a fabrication of your own mind. Learn from your past and go forward.” His response felt like a fresh, clean page to me.

  It wasn’t until I got to fifty-one that I met with Rajesh Raman in Kamalaya, Thailand, and he started giving me daily spiritual sessions, which helped guide me to find myself. I believe Rajesh is a genius and an extremely personable mentor. And I am one of his people.

  When you become aware of thoughts that are not real, then you get your life back. This is what I practice at home and this is what you can do.

  It was many years ago that I was given a great gift by a lovely lady, a friend of mine. The gift was a man called Hugh Lillingston, who invented the Warrior Programme.

  The Warrior Programme was established in 2007. It restores self-esteem, rebuilds confidence, and helps people to lead a more fulfilled life. The program addresses the complex challenges faced by those who are emotionally scarred by what they have been through.

  Immediately, I went to see him on a one-on-one basis. Through this I have learned all about Neuro Linguistic Programming, which I have put into practice in my daily life. Apart from seeing him every day, I attended a four-day workshop in Ronda, Spain. The retreat program was about personal transformation. The most important skill for a human being is the ability to communicate. The practical understanding that your thoughts create your reality and therefore imagination is the key to put control in yourself. The four-day program led me to find out more about myself and to reach my goal of finding the true Sarah. I learned many new techniques to use in my life on a daily basis—some of these I will share with you.

  The joy of what Hugh Lillingston does is he gives you hope. He makes you understand that we are not our thoughts.

  Prioritize

  Schedule

  Communicate

  Using the PSC goals has helped me put into action what I want to achieve in life and how I am going to do this. Questioning all the time what do I want, what makes me happy, and what values are important to me. Setting boundaries and deadlines that can be expanded as I grow and develop.

  Using the techniques from the Warrior Programme helped me overcome negative feelings that we experience: What am I angry about? What am I sad about? What am I fearful of? What am I guilty about? By questioning ourselves and identifying the problems we can reach the goals we set before us in a controlled and positive way.

  Probably the most valuable ideal I learned was how to stop negative thoughts controlling my everyday existence. Think that your mind is like a filing cabinet, divided into values and beliefs, attitudes, memories, language, decisions, time, and space. When we experience something negative, our minds then compare this to previous events, which is then how we feel about ourselves. If we become aware of this we can see it has created false thoughts.

  A golden rule I wrote for myself is FEAR, which stands for:

  F—False

  E—Expectations

  A—Appearing

  R—Real

  After this most important learning experience I felt I could stretch my arms out to help a very close friend. This is what I wrote,

  You will wake up frightened as another day bids hello. Stop … whatever you are doing and go and sit quietly somewhere. Close your eyes and breathe. As you listen to your breath in and out, your mind and mind chatter will stop, as it has to focus on the in and out of breath. You are my friend, and I care deeply for you. You are so special. We have got to help you see your true self. So … whatever thoughts come in are not real, you have believed your own made-up thoughts, and they can ruin your day. You are doing well. You are a butterfly in a cocoon and you can fly. Your fears are filling you with anxiety. Fears of where, how, and when. In the silence and calmness you will see that. Imagine the thoughts as balloons full of mind … They come in, now see them as that and let them go. That is called awareness. And this is what true spirituality is. This is why the Dalai Lama monks practice up to six hours a day to calm the mind and chatter. Just breathe. You are not on your own. I see your heart and soul and you are special and you are like so many people … It is frightening to realize that we have been asleep to ourselves for so long and now through awareness you are looking and waking up.

  Now I am going to sit quietly for twenty minutes and listen to my breath and realize that my thoughts are not real and cannot thieve me of today. For the next weeks here I will be with you on text or in person and we will crack that heart open. I know it is frightening and you will want to fill that void… This is no-man’s-land … But stay strong to trusting me and together you will see the answers … This is called spiritual work. And if I can do it … so can you.

  NUGGETS:

  • Stay where you are. Don’t look up. Don’t look left. Don’t look right. Look down and sit in your space. You may be in a valley—a no-man’s-land. It’s frightening, but the valleys of life help us face our fears. Eventually we’ll look up at the mountaintops. Life’s mountaintops encourage us, but the work of healing is in the valleys. We live in the valley, the no-man’s-land, but are sustained by the mountain.

  • Replace “I can’t” with “I can” and “I will.” Yes, there may be temptation along the way to take the wrong path, but that doesn’t mean we’re failures; it means that we are progressing. If you feel like you’re going in circles, that’s good! Progress is never a straight path.

  • When you come to a roadblock—or, better yet, before you encounter an impasse—read and learn from those who’ve gone before you.

  • Your focus determines what you find in life. If you focus on opportunities, you’ll find them. Focus on obstacles, and you’ll find those.

  From: Jane

  To: Sarah

  There are two beautiful sayings I heard today, one from John Daido Loori and one from a book called Perseverance by Margaret J. Wheatley. I thought of you, my sissy poos!

  John Daido Loori (Zen teacher, 1931–2009): In reality, there’s nothing anyone can give us. There’s nothing that we lack. Each of us is perfect and complete, lacking nothing. This truth must be realized by each one of us. Great faith, great doubt, great determination are three essentials for that realization.

  “The Path” by Margaret J. Wheatley

  Great Doubt

  Who am I?

  Why am I here?

  What’s the point?

  Why me?

  How do I get out of this?

  Great Faith

  I am here for a reason.

  I trust that I can learn and grow.

  I trust that other people are worth the struggle.

  I know that every situation is workable.

  Great Determination

  I am willing to keep going.

  I choose to
stay.

  I surrender to what is.

  From: Gloria

  To: Sarah

  Dear one,

  Thinking of you at this moment and holding you close. Am so hoping life is on a more even keel and you are having a little break. I do so hope that one day our paths may cross so that we can have the big hug that we both need.

  With love,

  Gloria

  From: Debbie

  To: Sarah

  Dear Sarah,

  I just wanted you to know that I believe you will be able to rise like a “phoenix”—all the best people do.

  Love,

  Debbie

  17 Healing in the Desert

  You can see magic anywhere if you look hard enough.

  A PRECIOUS, SIGNIFICANT PART of my journey took place in Arizona—a state I love. Arizona has a magic all its own. Just being in its profound beauty opens up my soul, for this is a place that holds thousands of years of sacred history within its landscape of pastel-painted bluffs, buttes, otherworldly rock formations, and sunsets straight out of those old cowboy movies. It is here, where nature goes to such extremes, that so many people find emotional and spiritual awakening.

  My first stop in Arizona was Cottonwood, one of those funky places where you don’t intend to stay, but that hooks you anyway. Although quirky and appealing, Cottonwood is an old farming town, and farming towns always have a rough look. It is surrounded by jagged mountains on the south, east, and west, and to the north by mesas and buttes. Named for the beautiful cottonwood trees that grow along the Verde River, Cottonwood has a population of around six thousand. The town sits roughly three-fourths of a mile in the air. There are shops and old houses strung on a couple of streets like beads on threads.

  My docuseries crew and I were in town where I was to meet with a shaman named Clay Miller, and to be honest I felt a bit nervous about the whole thing. I didn’t know what to expect. It was as if I had an appointment for which I was not ready.

  Shamans have been around since the Stone Age. They are people of knowledge, visionaries revered as healers and holy persons in Native American, African, and other ancient cultures. Their beliefs do not constitute a single religion, although worldwide shamanic traditions approach reality and human experience in similar ways. In shamanic thinking, everyone and everything has a spirit, and spirits affect all events, including illness and disease. If you’re depressed or ill, a shaman often will say that your condition was triggered by a traumatic event that broke off part of your soul, which is now trapped in the spirit world. He or she might perform a “soul retrieval,” coaxing the lost piece home and “blowing” it back into your body.

  An example might be that a husband took a piece of his wife’s soul when he died because he could not bear to be apart from her. Once the husband is located, a shaman will communicate with him and ask him to relinquish the soul so his wife can live a full life again. The shaman will then travel back with the precious item, restore it to the wife, and help her feel whole again. The work of some shamans is said to be so powerful that they are believed to be capable of changing a person’s life.

  Clay’s home was a small one-story brick structure, just off a dirt road. Wind chimes sung in the breeze, and various large dogs loped around the yard. I went inside and found Clay sitting cross-legged on a circular green woven rug in a sunlight-splashed room with his white husky, Honteyo, by his side. The walls of his home were decorated with bits of all types—skulls, feathers, rocks, birds, birds’ nests, Native American artifacts, and various items that I deduced to be shamanic icons. There were many bookcases filled with books leaning this way and that. It all looked very spiritual, and you felt like you were inside a wigwam. A bottle of wine in the corner caught my eye, and I immediately thought, “Fine, at least he knows about Napa Valley, too.”

  Clay had thick shoulder-length salt-and-pepper braids. His eyes were hooded in a serene gaze. His sleeves were rolled up to show sinewy arms, and he wore dusty jeans. Tall and rugged, Clay impressed me as a dignified man, having something of an authoritative aura around him, with an unknown quality that must have been shamanic spirituality. I suppose he was my idea of what a shaman from Arizona ought to look like.

  I sat down across from him. Honteyo was immediately drawn to me and plopped himself down in my lap. His white fur began to shed all over my black skirt and cardigan. Clay reassured me that Honteyo was simply checking me out. I scratched the back of the dog’s ears.

  “My dogs are not only my companions, they are my helpers,” he explained. “Unless you have an aversion to dogs, they will accompany us on this shamanic journey. Their presence has been a great blessing and gift to many. Some who have been afraid of dogs have overcome their fears and found new friends.”

  A dog lover myself, I was immediately struck by how much he loved his dogs. I was extremely curious about his work.

  “People come to me for all sorts of things,” Clay said. “I’m called out any time of the day or night, just like a doctor. Some people come to me with illness; others want me to intercede with the spirit world to end some misfortune. Everyone’s shamanic journey is different. It can be about healing or it can be answers to questions of concern.”

  The shaman asked me what I was seeking. And I started telling him about how I’d been emotionally stuck over feelings of abandonment by my mother, about being beaten and persecuted by the scandal, and about feeling stratospherically sensitive to everything.

  We went outside, and Clay directed me over to a pile of rocks and asked me to load them into a bag. I did as he asked, picking up the heaviest rocks in the pile, without a clue as to why.

  Before long, we jumped in his dusty SUV with Honteyo and another one of his dogs, a German shepherd mix, and found ourselves barreling along dirt roads through a flat, arid terrain dotted with cacti, juniper shrubs, and scrub oak and into the red-rock wilderness beyond. The shaman sang at the top of his lungs—a love song to Arizona—while one of his dogs barked incessantly. All I could think was: “What am I doing here?”

  About thirty minutes later we got out of the car and he asked me to lug the bag of rocks with me. I still had no idea where this was going. I decided to take from the experience what I needed, and logic be hanged.

  I was wearing Chanel ballet pumps, the worst shoes imaginable for hiking rocky, dusty terrain. Little did I know I had to lug the wretched rocks through Arizona desert.

  I wobbled behind Clay up a rocky winding trail, before arriving on a beautiful little mesa. I have to admit, it was a vibe-y place. The silence that descended on us was unforced and magical, especially with what the Indians call the “footsteps of the wind,” the sound breezes make as they dance through the openings in the rock face.

  I looked at those mountains across a sweep of red rock and thought, “What if I didn’t have to go home? What if I just stayed?”

  On the mesa the shaman asked me to empty my bag of rocks.

  “Out you go, love,” I said, as the rocks came tumbling out.

  “These are your issues,” said the shaman.

  I then realized that we all have our own bag of rocks to carry around throughout life, baggage we carry wherever we go. Mine were the rage and anger of Sarah being abandoned as a young twelve-year-old, and later having to sacrifice my marriage. I had never let go of the emotions tied to those events.

  Next, Clay asked me to do exactly as he did. The shaman outstretched his muscled arms upward and started chanting to the spirits. Suddenly he dropped to his knees, screamed “Mum!” and started sobbing. What on earth was going on?

  At that moment, I recalled my confirmation at Sunningdale Church when I was a little girl. My relatives sat stiff and proud in the pew. The service was austerely sublime. The whole affair went off perfectly in fact, until I came back from the altar and broke into a huge, beaming smile: then an audible siege of giggles.

  Mum was slightly mortified. “Can’t you take anything seriously?”

  Of course it was shy
ness that made me giggle back then, and it was shyness that was about to make me giggle now, looking at Clay on the desert floor, shouting “Mum.” I was desperate for fellow gigglers, but to my amazement, the entire crew and team were taking it all seriously. Now I looked a proper chump!

  So then Clay asked me to do it. He said that by shouting my mother’s name repeatedly, pain would be released. At first I felt so embarrassed and inhibited because the film crew was taping it. But I’m a good sport, so I screamed out loud… “Mum, why?”

  I felt something had changed inside me. It wasn’t so much a presence as an absence. At that moment, all that pain, rage, and anger I had carried seemed to have vanished. It was a clearing of some blockages that had held me captive for so long—a powerful emotional release. Clay made me look at my fears in a way I’d never done before. Although I still had a long way to go, I felt that I had begun to transform emotions such as fear, grief, anger, and shame into sources of strength and compassion.

  From a shaman’s perspective, there is always a way to transform the negative thoughts and emotions that we encounter throughout the course of our lives. What he explained to me is that if we choose to perceive negativity, anger, and fear all around us, that will be our experience. But if we move to a place of love and appreciation of self and life, our perception changes, creating light and love all around us.

  “It’s like if you saw a little girl crying, you’d go over to her and you’d just hold her tight,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “So just hold yourself.”

  What Clay wanted me to see was that due to unresolved heartaches from my past, I wasn’t all that I could be. I needed to start caring for the little Sarah within me—loving and nurturing the little girl within. The shaman saw that I had walled her off.

  He was right, of course. I grew up without adequate emotional nurturing, and this may have led me to put all my effort into nurturing others, in hopes that they would reciprocate and tend to my needs. But this way of being in the world keeps us stuck in loving others too much, while ignoring our own needs. We exhaust ourselves trying to take care of everyone else, yet fail miserably at our responsibility to properly care for ourselves. I had to find the courage to turn within and look at myself with an attitude of love and acceptance, treating my vulnerable inner self with kindness and love.