I lost the roots of my homeland to gain the wings of the world. Nothing experienced is ever lost because our greatest pain is always lighting the path towards our highest aspirations.

An essential aspect of life is to experience joy. Just as it is essential to have contrast. Contrast is often experienced as pain. Especially if we are resisting the situation. Pain is obviously unpleasant, but the underlying messages are actually our greatest guides and teachers.

Take a look back on your lessons learned, you might discover that many of them were birthed through our buddy-in-disguise, 'pain'.

For me, life seems to have been all about learning that I was clutching and far too physically attached. Attached to my idea of how a loving home ought to be. Attached to people like my dad who was no longer around after the divorce. Attached to my baby brother, my-heart-life-raft, who was so rudely yanked out of my life during the crumbling of our family home. Too-attached-to-the-physical lessons became bigger and more painful as I emotionally shut down after each occurrence. I refused to even consider accepting the gifts concealed and wrapped within each painful package.

Ultimately I lost my homeland, the country that I loved so dearly, Rhodesia. I also lost my horses, my Siamese cat, my police-trained dog, my home and my lifestyle when I became a refugee from Mozambique after it became Communist. I was one of Africa's broke, broken, walking wounded. But as Nietzsche so aptly put it, "That which does not kill me serves to make me stronger".

I've been given many gifts from my painful life lessons. Gifts of understanding and compassion. Gifts of awareness and intuition. Most of all, I have come to realize that nothing in life is permanent so best enjoy the experience to the fullest while you can. One day at a time.

Finally the most liberating gift of all is the discovery that we are all Infinite Beings with the ability to experience life as a brilliant Soul Adventure.

"To believe that you are only the body, is like being lost in a foreign land. Our true homeland is Infinity, Omnipresence. Here on Planet Earth we are only visitors - Soul Adventurers on a brief excursion."  - LuxmiH Eve-Lyn Forbes