Simply Be at 33

Andrea Polakova

Published by A. Polakova

© Copyright Andrea Polakova 2019

SIMPLY BE AT 33

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ISBN 978-1-5272-3493-2

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Dedication

I dedicate this story to human beings from all walks of life that crossed my path and touched my soul in one way or another, to all beautiful fairies out there and dark witches too, to the awakened soul as well as to a lost one, to an ordinary man and a woman, to a child and to an elderly person and to the highs and lows of one’s life.

Because the light will not exist without the darkness, and that same light would not be there if you didn’t pass through the dark tunnel first, because without a woman there would not be a man and without them no child that would grow old and wise. I surrender my soul to the power of nature, which I worship most of all.

And in the natural contrast of all existence, I bring the experience of my truth – the story of my life to you…

Table of Contents

Title Page

1. Beacon of Light

2. Childhood Memories

3. Passion for Fashion

4. Troublesome Teens

5. A Year in Germany

6. Au Pair in London

7. Transition Time

8. Study Years at LCF

9. One Foot in the Door

10. Friendships for Life

11. Time of Frozen Land

12. Who Am I in Nepal?

13. 30 Days, 3 Countries, 30th Birthday

14. Bali – Trouble in Paradise

15. Learning To Walk Again

16. Mount Shasta Retreat

17. Quest for Change

18. Garden of Happiness

19. Simply Be

20. China Revelation

21. What’s Next

22. The Contrast of Existence

Bibliography

1. Beacon of Light

A fairy tale would start with ‘Once upon a time’, but this isn’t a story that’s made up. This is the first part of a journey of a life. As such, I will not start my story from the early beginnings, because there was one event that allowed me to look at the world from a brand new perspective, allowed me to see a new light emerging.

In September 2005 I finally broke the cycle of me continually being an au pair. It was only two years earlier that I’d arrived in London with no knowledge of the written or spoken English language. Now, I was starting a new job as a nanny. It was childcare again, but I no longer had to live with the family; it was an act of liberation. I was moving into a huge Victorian house in Streatham Common in South West London. The house had nine bedrooms and fifteen housemates, including me. The housemates were a mix of people from Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Since I’d grown up in the former Czechoslovakia, it felt more like a holiday house as there were so many of us.

We had a few days of an Indian summer that autumn. I remember one particular Saturday morning I’d made plans to go shopping for new things to wear, as any twenty-something with some free pocket money would do. But as I walked towards the train station on this pleasant day, suddenly I was feeling let down by the thoughts in my head… something wasn’t right. I told myself that I lived on my own, had a fairly good job and was about to buy new clothes, yet I wasn’t at all happy. I looked up into the blue sky and an existential question sprang to mind: “Is this all there is in this life?” This remark ate me alive. The idea of working and spending hard-earned cash on material things felt somehow dull and empty. I couldn’t find any satisfaction in the emptiness of it all. The moment felt somehow hollow.

In the meantime, back in the house a few weeks after I’d settled in, one housemate who studied psychology asked me if I’d like to meet someone with psychic abilities. I’d never heard of psychics, or mediums or clairvoyants before, so I said, “Why not?”

The room he was in was on the top floor of the house. When I walked in, an immediate feeling of warmth washed over my body, I instantly felt calm in his company. There was an eerie dim light from the few candles burning around the room. He sat in a chair across from mine and looked at me with his piercing blue eyes. He then closed his eyes and his attention moved towards my right and he asked his guides to be present by his side. It almost felt like he was having a dialogue with higher beings from somewhere else. When ready, he turned back to me and channelled the following messages from them to me.

“I see three birds in the sky… The middle one almost died. His heart stopped beating but came back again. It was very weak but he pulled through at last.

“Your grandma… I see your grandma through your eyes. She was very beautiful when she was about fourteen years old… I can see her telling stories to children… there are many children around her. Your grandma was an interesting soul. If she’d had more time she would have become a storyteller.

“She is here with us right now. You are never alone, for she is with you wherever you go… Remember that. I can see that her favourite flower was a poppy…”

The psychic then changed the topic. “There is one main long road through a valley and above the road is a hill with three crosses. There is a boy pointing a gun at a man. He looks like a soldier. I’m not sure exactly what happened here. I see two holes underground just below the crosses. They look like caves.”

Then he said the following: “The only way forward for you is to use your creativity. The mundane routine doesn’t do you any good, and it will kill your soul. You have to do many tasks but they can’t be repetitive. You have to go along your own path. You don’t need many people around. You should research spiritualism; it would give you understanding and greater purpose in life. You will achieve balance only by looking into it. Let your word be heard.

“You won’t get very rich in life, but you won’t be poor either. Your health is good and your diet is balanced.

“Now, your grandma is standing by your side. She’s wearing something like an apron and she’s pointing her hands into the front pocket on her outfit. She’s telling you to put all your money aside and keep saving as much as you can because you will need it. But don’t worry too much, the money will come.

“There’s one man who keeps going away and then coming back again. Don’t worry about men and boyfriends, someone will find you at a later stage in life when you achieve balance. Just keep finding yourself first. He is waiting for you.”

And then the psychic asked me to put the palms of my hands above his.

“You have healing hands,” he said. “There is heat coming from both of them… One more thing! Your grandma is telling me that you should sew the button that is in your pocket back on the jacket.”

That’s when I remembered. I reached in my pocket and there was the button that had fallen off my jacket that particular morning. I was speechless. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I thanked him for his time. He mentioned that I should read the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. My mind was blown away! It was such a profound experience that it left me thinking there was so much more to life than what meets the eye. I had thought the Universe had heard my call prior to this episode, and when I asked if this was all there was in this life, I was then introduced to a man who turned everything upside down. There was a new light, a new path that I should explore unfolding in front of my eyes. It was extraordinary. How could a man I’d never met in my life speak to my grandma and see the village where I grew up? I couldn’t get my head around it. After we left, I went to write everything down, and then I called my mum. Only she knew some of the things about my grandma, who had passed away a few years before. I was still a child back then.

My mother was born prematurely and was transferred into an incubator. She weighed only 3lb 15oz and the doctors at the time didn’t give her much chance of survival. Her heart was very weak; they thought it was a miracle that she’d lived. From the reading of the psychic, it was clear that my mother was the middle bird, my grandma the eldest, and I was the last bird.

My grandmother had a difficult life. Her own mother died when she was only twelve years old, and being the oldest of five children, she had to support her father to help raise her younger siblings. Apart from playing the mother figure for them all, she also helped with childcare in the household of a local doctor in her town. My mother always told me that I reminded her of my grandma very much, but I was unaware until this point that she also looked after other people’s children too. At the age of nineteen, my grandma married my granddad and they had six children of their own, three daughters and three sons. My grandma’s house was the last one in the village next to a huge field, and in summertime it was full of red poppies. My grandmother became very ill towards the end of her life with Alzheimer’s disease. She died in April 1997 aged only fifty-nine.

For someone who has never met me, the statements and the accuracy of the prophecy from this man was incredible. Now, people are sceptical about those encounters; they don’t believe them. If someone had told me about such a story I wouldn’t have believed them myself, not unless I’d experienced it. I was even more surprised when he saw my local village. My tiny little village has only eight hundred inhabitants, and he saw it! There is only one main road as he rightly pointed out, and above it, tucked away among the trees is a small peak with three crosses. The history or the meaning of those crosses is slightly mysterious, as not even the locals know exactly what happened there. One version says that there was an aeroplane crash during the Second World War. Another legend says that someone was killed there. There are two caves below the hilltop and another wooden cross just outside this sacred place with the year 1934 engraved on it. This is a place of sanctuary for me, and my first destination whenever I go home to see my family. The crosses aren’t very visible from the main road; you wouldn’t see them unless you knew they were there.

These visions from the psychic gave me new hope, new direction and a ‘beacon of light’ to believe that there was a reason behind all that was happening. Someone once said that it’s not important which direction you take in life as long as you are growing along the way. He revealed a new path for me, towards discovery, enlightenment and trusting my destiny. Although it felt very unreal and mysterious, I was intrigued by it all. And then I remembered one more thing. They say that only with the passing of time will the truth be revealed. We might not understand ‘the here and the now’ of that particular moment in life, but as the time passes by, the meaning will be revealed when we are ready to understand the ‘why’. With this in mind, the memory of my grandma’s funeral came to the forefront of my thoughts.

I was only fourteen years old when my grandma died. I didn’t have the chance to see her towards the end of her life when she was fighting the illness in hospital. On the day of the funeral, I saw her fragile body lying in the coffin. She was unrecognisable – very thin, only skin and bones, nothing like I remembered her while she was alive. It felt like she wasn’t there any more. The frame of her body was like a cage, the soul, the essence was gone. As we stood above her grave in the cemetery, a strong wind started blowing. All of a sudden, I felt a presence, and a feeling of happiness entered me. I didn’t understand it. Something had taken over me. I couldn’t grasp the feelings within me. None of it made sense in the context of the present moment. People were grieving and yet I felt like jumping up and down with immense joy and happiness. I thought that I might be going insane.

It’s a custom in my country to share lunch with the family and loved ones after the funeral. I sat across the table, watching my mother with her two sisters, each side by side, tears rolling down their faces. I had to hold back my feeling of newly encountered bliss. My emotions were such a contrast to their grief that it felt insane. It felt like watching a dark black and white grotesque, or a comedy. If in that instant I had let loose and burst into laughter I would have been looked upon as a disgraceful child, so I kept quiet. I managed to sustain my sanity. I just couldn’t tell anyone. There was no other way. They wouldn’t understand.

Now, according to the psychic’s prophecy, my grandmother is always with me, and I believe her spirit came through on the day of her funeral. You can call me naive, a lunatic or a dreamer, but I know it was her. The shift in the energy field of my body was her soul entering mine. Our souls are eternal, they never die, they travel through space from one lifetime to another. This is a truth that I acquired through reading a book called Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr Brian Weiss a few years later. This man accessed the wisdom of the ascended masters while taking his patients through past life regressions, and the wisdom gained and the encounters experienced from these sessions were mind-blowing. It opened up a door to a different reality.

On a number of occasions, mostly when I travelled abroad on my own, a poppy flower would suddenly appear out of the blue. I knew it was a sign, a sign that she was with me wherever I went. This also explains the fact that I feel happy alone.

One of the books the psychic advised me to read was Jonathan Livingston Seagull, written by Richard Bach. It’s a story of a bird, a seagull who wanted to fly higher and faster than any other bird in his flock. The rest of the seagulls were mostly concerned about flying within a familiar distance from shore to shore in search of food. Their lives were ordinary and their routine was the same every day. Jonathan, however, was different. He was obsessed with learning to fly higher and faster than any other gull had reached before. He was hard on himself, and each day he tried to break his previous flying record. He acquired such a speed that it raised an alarm among his own folk. After one such flying episode, his own parents disowned him, for they didn’t want their son to break the rules and differentiate himself from his own flock of birds. Jonathan didn’t understand their reaction and had nowhere else to go but to follow his own path. He met the ascended masters, teachers who become his guides. Once he’d reached his own goal, he became a master and a teacher himself. At the time of reading this story, I was immersed in the part of Jonathan’s growth while wanting to learn more and more. However, towards the end of the story, I felt very disappointed with the fact that after all his efforts he was to become just a plain teacher. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time. After all the hardship he had been through, I thought there would be more to life than that. But today I understand. Today I know the word ‘teacher’ has a very different meaning, for we are all teachers living life through our own mysteries and the acquired knowledge that we seek becomes a gift for the rest of humanity. Because the knowledge we acquire belongs to us all. It came from the Universe and it belongs back from where it originated.

***

As the year 2005 was coming to a close, I travelled home to spend time with my family. Upon my return to London towards the end of January 2006, I signed up for a short course to study ‘Fashion History: The Evolution of Style’ at the London College of Fashion (LCF). My determination at wanting to study this subject was stronger than ever and I decided to apply for full-time study. At the beginning of March, three weeks after the invitation was sent, I was invited for an interview. On the 9th of April 2006, I received a letter telling me that I could enrol on the Foundation Degree in Fashion Design with Marketing at the LCF in October 2006. I couldn’t believe my luck. The stars were on my side!

2. Childhood Memories

My mother carried me in her womb as she was climbing up a ladder building a house with my dad for me and my brother. I blame my high energy levels based on this, because I must have been bounced up and down inside her stomach. We were an ordinary family of five with a simple background. Neither of my parents went to university; they worked hard to provide for us. My brother is two years older than I am and my sister came three years after that. I was the middle child. My mother often reminded me that during my christening ceremony the priest said I stared back at him with my eyes wide open, observing everything as if I already knew what was happening.

We lived in a small village in South West Slovakia under the Carpathian Mountains. My parents built their house from scratch with savings made during the communist years. It was a single-storey semi-detached house, where the left-hand side of the building looked exactly the same as the right. My dad’s sister – my auntie – lived next door to us. I was never fond of such close proximity and neither was my mum. This closeness created years of a copycat relationship and amusing rivalry between my aunt and my mother as I was growing up. It might have been about new curtains, a change of front door or the shutters on windows; if one of us was doing some work on their half, the neighbour would follow. I found this very amusing and equally boring.

I have very fond childhood memories, as the village was our playground. Our house was more or less in the middle of the village, along the main road. This made our house the epicentre of the Universe. Having an older brother, younger sister, cousin next door and my best friend living a few doors away, it made this an idyllic set-up for our mischief all year round. All our playing happened outdoors, whether it was spring, summer, autumn or winter. Out in the streets, gardens, hills or forests, we felt as free as a flock of birds. Being out there in the fresh air from dawn to dusk, exploring and discovering new, barely trodden paths, climbing and swinging on ropes hanging from mighty trees, playing hide-and-seek or breaking into old windmills were our favourite things to do. The other property next door to ours was unoccupied for many years, and it was an easy target as the backyard had no fences around it. At the back of the property was a garden, and a narrow stream ran through it, but there was a steep hill further down and the gentle stream turned into a cascading waterfall that was a marvellous sight in its own right, singing its own melody. In the summertime, the pool below the waterfall was full of small fish. It was safe to jump in and cool down in the heat. In the winter months, when everything was under a blanket of snow, the waterfall transformed into an icicle cave with a curtain full of glittering light. It was a wonderful sight. I would stand there silently and wait for the sparkle from the sun and the shimmering of the light. Nature and its kingdom was the place where I felt most alive. That was my home, the purity of it all, where I felt complete freedom. Those were the golden happy days that I loved most of all.

Father was very strict though, and games were allowed only after chores were done. We had to work hard in the fields all year round to please him, and each season brought different chores. He only ever knew how to do things the old-fashioned way, which meant hard labour for us all. He wasn’t changing with the times, moving ahead, and his ideas never changed. His moods altered like a see-saw and we never knew what to expect. We had to honour him, do the work and keep our mouths shut, for we were scared. I learned discipline through hard work, dignity and perseverance. Our mother filled in the gaps with her loving heart and caring nature. Every day after school, we found three plates on the table with meals made from fresh vegetables. Mum was always there. Love was never spoken about out loud, but it was felt.

When it came to education, I was the smartest one among my siblings. My brother and sister weren’t blessed this way. I took pride in education and enjoyed learning new things as it made me happy to make my parents proud. All homework became my sole responsibility. I gained freedom through my independence from a young age and my parents fully supported me in every single way. And I value my upbringing to this day as it spread across many aspects of how I choose to live my life. I was a little rebellious too. My mum never said ‘No’ to me; she basically couldn’t. Even if she disagreed, we would keep it secret from my dad to avoid causing an unnecessary fight. She knew that once her stubborn daughter set her mind to a thing or two there was no turning back. She would always say: “Go and do whatever you want, but if it doesn’t work out, don’t come and cry on my shoulder” – that was the warning in advance. I was a stubborn child and always did things my way at whatever cost, and my childhood was ruled by this wisdom, which was gained through my own experience. For me, it was the best way to learn.

But there was something else. Ever since I could remember I’d felt a little different from others, as if I never truly belonged. My auntie living next door helped to contribute towards this feeling. I know she resented me as I was doing better at school than her daughter. I remember one particular hot summer day my siblings and cousins and I sat on the steps in front of our house. The rest were all blue eyes, rosy cheeks and blond hair; I was the odd one out – a brunette with freckles on my cheeks that were even more visible during summertime. I can’t remember who was there to take a photograph of us all, but I clearly remember the statement my auntie made about me not fitting into the tribe. I don’t think it bothered me that much when she said it, but it surely went deeper than I acknowledged at the time.

Another act of refusal happened during my first Communion ceremony. Going to church every Sunday morning was a rule set by my father, as the village was strictly Catholic. It’s a custom in my country that the godparents are present during this ceremony. The godparents are always family members, unlike in England, where a good family friend or any relative would do. My godfather was my dad’s brother, so his wife would ultimately be the godmother. As the ceremony was coming to an end, it was a custom that the parents invited the godparents for lunch, and that’s what my mother did. She’s an excellent cook and was well prepared for this special occasion. However, outside the church, my godmother announced that she no longer wished to be my guardian, and in fact they decided there and then not to be part of our family any more. The icing on the cake was her comment hoping that if I did get married my dress should be a prettier version of the one I wore on that day. I was only nine years old. My dad was hit the hardest by this statement as it was his favourite brother cutting the bonds of the family. For a simple man from a village with a strong connection to his roots, this was something very difficult to overcome. It was a bizarre situation and we’ve never seen them since. I was only a child. My biggest regret was that I never saw her again. My godmother was something of a style icon to me. Whenever we went to visit their house she was always immaculately dressed, and I would eye her up and down and admire her style. I didn’t know she was wearing a mask and behind those clothes was a heart as cold as ice. My godparents were the only people I knew that travelled to far-off countries, and this added to the mystery of a child’s curiosity. They visited Melbourne in Australia, and I recall old Kodak pictures of this land down under...

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Table of Contents

1. Beacon of Light

2. Childhood Memories