Читать книгу Mia’s World: An Extraordinary Gift. An Unforgettable Journey - Mia Dolan, Mia Dolan - Страница 14

I sat on the hotel bed opposite Mia, enveloped in her big presence and her warmth. I had interviewed many people in my career but the focus was always on the other person. They trusted me with their stories and I tried to honour that with my attention and receptivity. It was odd, then, to suddenly find myself under the spotlight.

I’m a private person – Mia’s attention made me slightly uncomfortable. Yet in her first sentence she had connected me to a part of myself I didn’t always have time to think about. I wondered if this was one of the reasons people went to see psychics: to focus on their lives and feelings, to spend a bit of time with their deepest dreams.

Since my late teens, I had been intrigued by the idea of a more spiritual life and interested in a holistic approach to health and well-being. Ten years previously, I had gone on a year-long round-the-world trip and been drawn to the spiritual traditions I found in India. There, life is lived on the street and everything is visible – the beauty and the brutality. People live very openly and their spirituality is relevant to the ups and downs of their everyday lives.

In India, for the first time, I met people who were devoting their lives to their spiritual practice. One very old man lived in a cave on a sacred river. He had nothing materially, yet every day he found a way to cook a meal for wandering beggars and sadhus.

In the Himalayas, I met Buddhist monks and nuns, exiled from Tibet. I took to heart their message that all the suffering and happiness in my life come not from external things like success or money but from my own mind – my own attitude. I met teachers who spoke of the need for loving-kindness towards ourselves and the importance of a fearlessly compassionate attitude to our own pain – and that of others. I soaked up teachings on honesty, kindness and bravery. Mia was right. I found the Tibetan Buddhist instructions gutsy and helpful – and, a decade later, I was still trying to put them into practice as well as I could.

Mia and I were off to a good start but, as we sat in silence, I wondered if people were impressed with the readings they received because they unconsciously, inadvertently coached the psychic. Desperate for reassurance, perhaps they ignored the irrelevancies and errors and, instead, exaggerated the insights and references that made sense to them. It might not even be manipulative on the psychic’s part – but rather that natural human communication was given a supernatural spin by two parties desperate to believe. I understood the human need for certainty but if wool was being pulled over anyone’s eyes, I wanted to understand that too. This reading was an opportunity to test Mia. I determined to give nothing away.