We love supporting our contributors and their great causes. Over the next few months, we will be showcasing stories by Dr. Dragos as he embarks on a ninety-day writing marathon to raise $10,000 for water projects in developing countries Learn more here.

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I went to lunch with the Soul Mechanic in the garden of an organic farm in Hawaii, when the waitress – a gorgeous brunette in her twenties, with spiky hair, black piercings, a black dress that slightly covered her body like a silk cloth placed over a precious cello, a Plumeria flower tattoo on her naked shoulder and red beanie on the top of her head – walked by us. My brain shut down all signals coming through my ears, including the conversation I was having with the Mechanic, and I stopped hearing him, as my mind focused on this beautiful being.

“Why don’t you say hello to her?” asked the Soul Mechanic.

A wave of terror and heat surged through my body at the thought of saying hello to her and asking if she would like to go for a cup of coffee with me. “No, it’s ok” I said, “I have to write, I don’t have time for this.”

“You’re afraid” he replied, and winked at the waitress as she ran around the tables. She smiled back to him and her green eyes glittered with kindness. “She is sweet and very gentle, and you’re terrified of her.”

All my life I hated myself for being this way. I thought to myself. Shy and stupid.

I said nothing, but an ancient, too-familiar pain clawed and ripped my chest open from the inside.

“Kid, you are not afraid of her. She has the sweetest soul in the world.”

But we are almost never in the present moment to see people for what they really are. Dr. Dragos (Click to Tweet!)

“We almost never see the love in their eyes, nor the lamp that is lit in all of us for other another. We almost never see the love in their eyes, nor the lamp that is lit in all of us for other another. We drag the shadows of our past hurt over our holy present moments, and we see only the past, but never the present. We pull over our eyes the veil of the past – imagined meanings behind what somebody once said to us, remembered pains and disappointments, unreturned love, memories of sorrows and rejections, perceived injustices – we gather all our past hurt and carry it to new relationships. We hope to change our life by changing our partners, but it seems that we always meet the same people that hurt us or reject us in the same way. The reason why we get the same partners is not because people are the same, but because we are – we pull the dark shadow of past hurts over our eyes, and then over reality, and we live the same all over again. We change the actors, but never the masks we give them in our play.”

He touched my shoulder: “come back to this holy moment, there is only love in the now. There is perfect peace in this moment.”

“Hi. May I take your order?” she said in a gentle voice, smiling.

“Yes, I would love a coffee please” I said to her looking in the distance at the blackboard with the coffee written in chalk.

“With you” said to her Soul Mechanic in a laughter. Another wave of terror, much bigger than the first, surged through my body. I held on to the menu for my life, but I said nothing. I couldn’t breathe, but I said nothing.
She wrote down our order and walked to the bar without saying a word.

“Okay” she turned around after a few steps and smiled at me. I was still clinging on to the menu.


DR. DRAGOS – Internationally renowned scientist and filmmaker, director of the award winning documentary film, THE AMAZING YOU, featuring NASA legends, Rock stars, New York Times bestselling authors and the Angry Birds. Dragos spoke at conferences on five continents and his work has been translated in sixteen languages. Check out his new book: Sleepers. You can follow him on FB.

 

 

Image courtesy of Samilla Maioli.