Yesterday I went with my friend and fellow mom to the Lake. Our families met at the circus, but we wanted to spend more time together and the weather was hot. So we went swimming.
It had been eighteen months since we last seen each other. We live about twenty minutes apart. But with boys about the same age (she has two), our lives are incredibly hectic with our work and sports schedules.
She is a biller. She is an expert at the coding for medical billing for anesthesia. I met her at the room at work where new mothers could pump in private. Our boys have been friends since before age one. Typically, our conversations revolve around her worldly concerns--redecorating the house, people and work issues at her job, and vacation.
We went through all that, and once we were floating on the air mattresses in the lake, she said, 'Oh did I tell you I went to Japan to train? I got my black belt.'
I smiled. She is crazy for shotokan, and even keeps at it although she gets hurt. A tiny, size zero former gymnast in Romania, found her love, in Karate. And she went to Japan for ten days with her dojo! Her husband was incredibly supportive and arranged for her to go.
It was her 'mommy-moon' to Tokyo and I delighted to hear about it!
The food was delicious. She ate japanese three meals a day, even though she used to hate shrimp. The town was immaculate, so much so that when she noticed a small wrapper on the ground in the corner of her eye, someone bent down immediately and put it in his pocket. She went in March, and it was rainy. She forgot her hat and scarf at one training center--and it was exactly where she had left it five days later. The cherry blossoms were amazing! And she spent about two hundred fifty dollars riding the train with her group to different buddhist sites.
The people on the train were so unlike her native Romania! Back home, people push and shove and sometimes you even get off the train at the station you don't want because the crowd squeezes you off the train. In Japan, the people file in one line to go off, another to go on. She says you could set the watch by the trains--if it is due at 3:23, then thirty seconds before the train pulls into the station and at 3:23 EXACTLY the doors open!
The people in Japan are also very private to outsiders. Even though 'everybody speaks English most people say they don't, does that make sense?' she confided in me. And because she wore a taupe trench coat, she totally blended in with eighty percent of the people there.
The hotel room, which cost her $110 a day, was so small that when you sit on the toilet there is about three inches between your knees and the bathroom door. The bathtubs are square and deep, so you have to sit up. There was only enough room for the luggage on the floor; it was so small she had to figure out a way to walk around it. There was a full-size bed. And it was a smoking room, which she didn't like. Everyone smokes in Japan. They wear face masks on the street to protect from the pollution, but they smoke too.
The opportunity to train with Karate masters was incredible. The ones that made the most impression on her were seventy-eight, and seventy-three. Each day, they trained for two hours, continuously with their students. She could not believe how their speed, their power, their balance, their flexibility, their stamina, and their accuracy were at the top of their game. What seventy-year olds are like that here in the states? She said that one showed her something how she was not blocking correctly, and later she was looking at this huge bruise on her hand and wondering where it came from? It was from the teacher, the seventy-three year old, who is her hero. When she is that age she wants to be just like him.
Except she doesn't want to smoke!
There is a message in this story that is exactly what Spirit wanted me to hear. It is 'in there' and I know it. I don't expect you to 'find it' or even 'look'. Just know that when Spirit is trying to get your attention, it will answer a question you have had on your heart directly, just between You and Spirit, in ways that only you can understand. My message to you is to 'know that it works!' : )))
Be sure to look for it where you are not expecting it!
Namaste,
Reiki Doc
P.S.
I am trained in Bushido, the 'way of the scholarly warrior'. The best warrior never uses their skills. They have them but avert conflict to maintain Peace for everyone involved. That being said, the student practices bo (staff), sword, karate, aikido, meditation, and calligraphy.
