Wednesday morning I was supposed to be volunteering at the orphanage, however my fever on Tuesday evening put an end to that because I did not want to pass it on to the children.
Most of Wednesday morning I spent in bed reading and recovering, after letting the Shanghai Healing Home know I would not be able to make it. In the afternoon I took an easy two metro stop to meet the spiritual director of cslshanghai.com, a guy called Rob. We had a good chat and he pointed me in some good directions for my travels and gave me a great book to help me find my nobel purpose.
It was then back to the hostel for a further rest before seeing if I was up to a yoga session at the CSL centre. I am happy to say I was and I really enjoyed it and realised how much I’d missed my practise. It is quite difficult to perform the yoga moves in dorm rooms with 7 other people trying to sleep.
On the way back from yoga I saw a group of OAPs dancing in the street and lots of food stalls which seemingly had appeared from nowhere.
This morning waking up at 4am and not being able to get to sleep was quite frustrating at first, but in the end excepting it and lying there whilst meditating and thinking positive thoughts seemed to be the best I could get out of that situation until 6am when I could hope on the metro to go to a park.
Fuxing Park was amazing at this time of morning so many elderly people practicing so many different activities, keeping them healthy and very flexible. I really like this about China and how it is an integral part of their culture. Everywhere I have been in this country the older generation keep active in the mornings, I will miss seeing this when I move on to South Korea.
Arriving back at the hostel for an hour, before needing to leave to attend a Course in Miracles at a CSL members house on the other side of the city, I had time to buy a Melon from the fruit stall down the road and eat it for my breakfast. I was so refreshing as the day heated up.
The instructions to find Lynns appartment for the Course were spot on and I made it in time. I found the course so interesting and it was such a help to me. A recurring theme has kept rising for me the last few days and this course was no different. I think it is a sign that I really need to focus on this theme of ‘Reality’ . It seems like there can be nothing else but this, however getting distracted by thoughts and emotions about the past and the future can take us away from this reality and the place where true happiness sits is in the moment of accepting everything exactly how it is and this was touched upon on this course. How it worked was for each of us to read a paragraph from the Course in Miracles book and then if we wished we could discuss it. I really liked this way of learning and discussing because it took the conversations in many different ways.
Along with Lynn and myself were Lilly an American now living in Shanghai and Rebecca a Philosophy student from Shanghai. We all really enjoyed the course and after leaving Lynns apartment continued on for some lunch at a very healthy vegetarian restaurant.
After all going our separate ways I headed to a toy shop to buy some gifts for my last day at the orphanage tomorrow before heading back to the hostel to chill and read some more about ‘Reality’.
