Robyn’s Life Journey

Back to New Guinea
After a few months of marriage I was missing my parents terribly and decided to visit them in New Guinea.
It was Father’s Day when I arrived in Port Moresby and to my dismay no one was there to meet me. Had my father not received my telegram telling him of my arrival? How was I going to get into the highlands to Kinantu without his help? As I was asking for information at the terminal counter, two geologists overheard me and offered me a lift in their four-seater Cherokee plane since they also happened to be going to Kinantu. I sat in the front next to the pilot and they sat in the back. My only concern now was how to get to my father’s coffee plantation once we landed. I was looking at a four-hour drive up the mountains through very rough terrain and that was with the assumption that I would be able to find a car for hire. I was grateful that I was at least part-way there and I would face the challenge of the last leg when I arrived in Kinantu.
The plane took off at a ninety-degree angle as we needed to clear the huge mountain ahead of us. I was feeling grateful that I didn’t have people and pigs sliding into me this time! About thirty minutes into the flight my door suddenly flew open and I could see the forest hundreds of feet below. As I began to panic the pilot simply leaned across in front of me, reached out, and closed the door. He told me that the pilots in New Guinea were very experienced as this was one of the roughest terrains in the world and not to worry. Apparently the door was not closed tightly enough when we left, he calmly told me. The pilot then proceeded to instruct me to keep my eyes open as I would see some crashed planes below from years back. This did not make me feel very safe; however we did arrive in one piece.
At the same time my father had decided to make the drive to the outpost to collect the mail just in case I had sent him a Father’s Day card. He had no idea that I was on a flight to see him. My telegram was sitting at the post office waiting for pick-up. He was thrilled when he discovered that I was on my way and would be arriving soon. I was very relieved when I saw my parents waving to me as the plane landed. His timing was perfect, but part of me still wonders if it was his intuition that made him decide to make the long drive.
That first night I went to my parent’s bedroom to say good night. I noticed that my father slept with a gun beside him. When I asked why he did that he replied that he needed the gun because sometimes the wild pigs would come onto the coffee plantation and damage the plants. I then went to my room and opened my window to smell the jungle before falling asleep. In the morning I accidently found out that the reason for the gun was not for the wild pigs, but for the cannibals that lived in the next valley. The very next night I closed my window tight because I did not want to be someone’s dinner. Eventually I did relax and realized that the cannibalism might be slightly exaggerated – at least that was the thought that I clung to.
It was a good thing that I didn’t know too much or I would’ve been too nervous to enjoy my time at the plantation. I came across a news piece in the online version of the Sydney Telegraph that made it very clear that cannibalism is still very much an ongoing issue in the region. “The cannibal cult is accused of killing and eating seven people – five men and two women. . . The police commander said several members had confessed to eating body parts and making soup from the victims.” The Telegraph, July 13, 2012.
Luckily if anything like that was going on while I was there it was kept very quiet. I was able to relax and have a wonderful time with the locals.
One interesting custom that I discovered in the Sepik area of New Guinea is that they greet each other by caressing each other’s private parts as an acknowledgement. The men wear a penis gourd on their penis. Of course this sounds outrageous to us, but this is their custom and who are we to make judgement. Sometimes the older mothers also greet their sons with the same custom.
Of course the lovely visit had to end and I returned to married life in Australia.

Life is Simple Yet Complicated
By the time my husband and I reached thirty we had two children. We were living a middle-class life and were very comfortable. We owned our house and two cars but had not yet reached the promised millionaire status, so my husband stated that by forty we would become millionaires. He became even more focused and studied every book that he could find on how people became millionaires.
This idyllic existence changed suddenly when my father died at the young age of fifty-two whilst having heart surgery. I was devastated and could not comprehend this sudden tragedy. My spiritual journey had not yet begun and I had thought that my father would always be with me. I felt that my life had fallen apart. I reacted very badly and even went so far as to blame everyone from the doctors to my mother for his death.
I now realise that reacting this way was hurting many people, including my deceased father. I was only thinking of myself and now know that the deceased person stays for up to nine days before moving into another layer. When someone holds onto a loved one it causes much anguish for the deceased and they suffer terribly because they see and hear everything and this action can hold them back from a smooth transition.
I know that this is not my real home here on earth. It often feels like a dream to me and one day when I leave this body I will wake up and see that it was all a learning experience. I worry that it would be a wasted life if I die before learning and achieving what I came here for: to find my path and achieve enlightenment. Perhaps this is why so many people fear death. Deep, deep down they know that they haven’t done what they came here to do. My feeling is that if we achieve our purpose in life we will not be afraid to die.
Just imagine that creation is a vast ocean and we are tiny drops of water in it. When we take on a body from this ocean we begin a life. But we are always connected to the ocean, even when we are immersed in our three-dimensional lives on earth. When our life here is finished we simply go back into the ocean, i.e., source. It can be difficult to remember that we are not the ego, we are source and that really is the whole point of awakening – to remember who we really are.
Imagine also that our body is a glove and we are the energy in this glove so if we take off the glove it is not able to move. It needs us to move it. It also needs us to energise it with nourishment so we need to respect it in order to obtain maximum benefit from it.