Dear Friend

Today’s Letter centres around a big event in my life, and how I reacted to it. Being human is not always easy, and sometimes big challenges come our way, and then it’s all about how we react.

I mentioned at the outset of the year in the first Letter that as an educator I know one of the best ways we learn about life is to hear the stories of other people’s experiences, and to share our own. In this way we learn from each other through real lived-out experiences, not just from the contents of books or curriculums or what the plethora of ‘experts’ tell us to be true (often it simply is not true).

As you read through the story, and then how I reacted to the situation, take time to reflect upon your own reactions to reading this Letter. Towards the end I will talk specifically about how we can use karma intelligently, but I’m sure you will have reflected upon that by the time you get to my thoughts on it.

As ever, apply what you read from me to your own life to learn your own lessons.

A working holiday that does not go according to plan

Krabi Province in the south of Thailand is about 1500 kilometres from where I live in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Many people think it’s the most beautiful of all the provinces in a seriously beautiful country. As it is a coastal province there are plenty of stunning beaches and islands for tourists and travellers to visit.

Less known about, and (thankfully) much less visited, is Krabi Town itself; the slower-paced travellers get there, but tourists give it a complete bypass.

In my 33 years of living in Thailand I have been to and stayed in over half of the nation’s 76 provinces, and Krabi Town is my very favourite provincial town! The travel buzz I always get when out and about is at its buzziest when I’m wondering around this town. So, there’s your travel tip for Thailand!

Chiang Mai itself is a good 800 kilometres from the nearest beach. Since moving up to Chiang Mai in the mountainous north, away from Bangkok where I lived throughout the 1990s, and when I regularly went to the southern islands of Samui, Phangan and Tao (in their pre-mass-development era, in other words, three total heavens all next to each other), I began turning my beach attention to the other side of the southern peninsular, to Krabi Province.

The reason was simple: it’s a two-hour plane journey from Chiang Mai to Krabi Airport; breakfast at home, lunch by the beach or in Krabi Town itself.

In 2018, six years after starting to write my book, and with increasing frustration that my book was just not getting finished, I decided to take two weeks off and I was going to spend the entire time in Krabi Town, no beaches. My big plan was to finally get the book over the line, and being in such a soul-affirmative place, doing my favourite activity of all, travelling, I felt I could complete my mission.

My plan of action was simple and I was going to love executing it: I would drink no beers at all so that I could get up nice and early each morning, enjoy a brilliant start to the day, and then set about a good six hours of writing from my waterside hotel with an epic view. I could then enjoy walking around the town an hour or so before sunset and dusk, taking photos and just thoroughly enjoying being in this fabulous town with its mix of modern and old, and outstanding southern Thai food, which is known for its fiery nature.

As is my wont, I would get up early each morning to enjoy the sunrises over what looked like a river, but was really the sea, take a walk along the coastal path built for walkers and cyclists, use the exercise equipment in the park at the end of the walk, breathe in the wonderful ocean air, walk back to my seaside hotel for a shower, have a proper English breakfast at one of my favourite breakfast places in the entire kingdom, and then be ready for writing.

With a start like that to each day, how could I fail??

Day one went to plan, but as I was sat enjoying my dinner at the seafood markets right by the sea, itself a tremendously buzzing place with outstanding freshly-caught seafood and lots of happy eaters, a new place across the street caught my eye. Funny how life works, and this is where the karma started to kick in…

It was a reggae pub, and on my previous trips to Krabi Town it was not there. Being as I love reggae—and it’s been a central component to my whole life—I decided to amble over there after I had finished my yellow curry with crab, and see if real reggae was being played.

It was, and the music was sublime. There was a pool table. There were happy friendly owners. The place was imaginatively laid out and decorated. It was my kind of place.

My no beer plan was over on evening #2.

I didn’t go mad at all, but even as I was having a great evening, seriously enjoying the tunes, beating all the Thais at pool and being in my element, I had that familiar feeling of having succumbed to the beer, instead of sticking to my word.

(I should provide context: since 2008 when I had my first natural healing experience to solve my back pains, which I wrote about in the first few Letters of this series, I had dramatically reduced my beer consumption, but despite many efforts since, had still not been able to completely abstain.)

I had a great evening, and then wandered back along the walkway by the sea to my hotel for my second night’s sleep in Krabi town.

Instead of 14 nights as anticipated, this was to be my last night of the trip.

The unexpected happens

Instead of waking up nice and early to take in the sunrise over the sea, I woke up a wee bit groggy, nothing too bad, but later than desired, so there was no sunrise or early morning walk. However, I was already looking forward to a top breakfast and a couple of cups of excellent Thai coffee. I took my shower, and after drying myself, my world and life took off in a completely unexpected direction.

Typical in many Thai hotel bathrooms, there is a towel mat in the bathroom, but here the mat was just outside the bathroom door. As I stepped onto it with my leading foot, stretching a bit as it was out of the bathroom, the mat instantly and effortlessly slipped forwards and, from waist height, I fell downward, crashing to the shiny floor pelvis bone first. It all happened in a whirr.

A rather foreboding pain immediately made itself known to me, something I’d never experienced; it was suggesting to me that something not mild had just taken place.

I found it difficult to move, but managed to get up, put some clothes on, and sort of drag myself down three floors of stairs to the reception. It was clear I needed to get to the hospital, and the girl at reception suggested I go to the main hospital for a better quality care. She organised me a taxi and off I went.

Despite my pain, I now realised I was going to miss my top breakfast. What a bummer.

Thailand and Thai people deliver

Now, I’m going to truncate the tale and just quickly take you through the day’s events, and then get to the main purpose of this Letter. However, it’s worth relating the day’s events as they transpired.

The taxi got me to the hospital, and I was put on a trolley and after being examined by a doctor I was told that I had fractured my right femur bone. I had managed to live 54 years without breaking a bone.

Until now!

Ah man, what have I done? Still, I didn’t fixate on this question, but wondered idly that my world had now turned on a sixpence.

I was given the option to be treated there, or to return to Chiang Mai to have surgery done at my social security allotted hospital. I wanted to be back with my wife Air and get some sympathy and love, so I chose to do as they advised me and fly home. I now pretty much had to wait at the hospital all day, laying down on the trolley, until the evening flight back home. I had plenty of time to ponder on my situation. I recall being phlegmatic and accepting of what had happened.

The hospital staff did everything. They rang my hotel and asked the reception girl to pack my bag from my room and bring it to the hospital. She did that later in the day after her shift was finished. The hotel waived any further room costs. Somebody at the hospital rang Air Asia and changed my flight for me. They fed me lunch.

Late afternoon an ambulance took me to the airport. The hospital gave me some painkillers before leaving, so that I could be ‘handled’ into the ambulance and onto the plane. We arrived at the airport departures area, the nurse went inside the building with my passport and ticket, and presently came back with my boarding pass. The ambulance then went airside and took me directly to the plane, but on the opposite side to where passengers always embark. It was as if I was in the food truck! They got me onto the plane, and as I looked down the plane I saw that it was completely full, everybody was waiting for me! They had given me seat number 1C, to give me room to keep my leg straight.

Two hours later we arrived at Chiang Mai Airport, and I was met by my wife who I was really glad to see (I had, of course, phoned her during the day to give her my unexpected news), and an ambulance which took me straight to the hospital.

They got me out of the vehicle and into the emergency room. I only waited about 15 minutes or so before a doctor came to my side. He looked 40ish, immaculate in presentation but he looked tired as if he’d had a long day’s shift tending to lots of accidents. However, his demeanour and way of speaking made me feel super relaxed and confident in his charge, and he explained my options to me. There were two kinds of surgery, or no surgery but I would have to be in a cast for a few months to wait for my body to heal itself naturally.

I went with his advice, and he told me that he would be my surgeon, and this would happen the next day. I thanked my lucky stars at getting somebody who I knew in my gut was going to be a top surgeon looking after me. (And he was, it also turned out he was one of the directors of the hospital.)

Something like 10 days later I was allowed to go home. I had my own room to stay in at the hospital, my lovely wife stayed with me every night, and the nurses were ace. And, if there was going to be a best time to have this accident, it was now, because the World Snooker Championships were on, and I love watching snooker.

I won’t explain all the less savoury bits of my recuperation, but suffice to say I just bided my time and accepted it all. Friends came to visit, and one did a reiki session on my leg, so perhaps that helped it heal so well, as it indeed did in the coming weeks. I also ensured I had a positive spirit and avoided complaining.

I then had to build up my muscles and learn to walk again!

Assessing what to do using an understanding of karmic law

What I really want to talk about is how I reacted to the whole situation. It’s so easy to feel sorry for oneself when bad things happen in life, but at no point did I feel this way during the day or during the coming days and weeks of recuperation and rebuilding myself. I just fully accepted what had happened as part of the travails of life, and my innate sense of Aries impatience never kicked in during that long day laying on the trolley at Krabi hospital. I also fully accepted all the inconveniences during my stay at hospital, including my first ever experience of a catheter which I plan to NEVER EVER have again!

Since nothing like this had ever happened to me before, it was not certain how I would react, but living in Thailand for so many years has given me a lot of what I call ‘Buddhist training’. One of my many life mottos, learned from living in this Eastern, slower-paced, Buddhist nation is, ‘Always expect the unexpected’, and linked to this is that it is very much to our advantage to learn how to do ‘radical acceptance’.

By radical acceptance, I mean completely accepting what cannot be changed.

Which of course is a challenge when we don’t like what has happened to us!

This is using the understanding of karma intelligently because, unlike manmade law, karmic law is incorruptible and non-negotiable! It is impossible to destroy or eliminate energy, we can only direct or redirect it. We can change it, accept it, fight it, transfer it, transform it, but we cannot get rid of it.

This is why those who kill their perceived enemies, or who, if in government, seek to commit genocide on a whole people, will NEVER escape their karmic dues. They think they’ve got rid of the person that they hate, but they did not kill the energy of their hatred, nor of their action in killing, and now they have their conscience to handle.

Karma is, in a nutshell, the flow of energy, and the flow of energy is life and all that happens in life. My observations of human life, in particular in the Western world, tell me that an understanding of how karma works, and therefore how life works, is a rare thing to be seen. The effect is felt, and dealt with instead of looking at the reason for the effect, and tackling the reason.

Hence all the troubles, conflicts and stress. Many problems people face are recurring problems for this reason.

You can revisit Letter #12 to remind yourself of our discussion on karma and karmic law.

But in essence it is cause and effect, action and reaction, and we reap what we sow.

Now, did I sow the seeds to my accident in breaking my femur bone, or was I just super unlucky that morning? Was it an ‘accident’ or a ‘happening’ that followed on from a previous happening or series of happenings?

And, then, the reaction: am I to blame myself for slipping on a mat that was on a highly slippery hotel bedroom floor? Did going back on my word to have no beers lead to a series of alternative happenings had I not had those beers, and got up early as planned?

Should I blame the hotel for having such a shiny, and in retrospect, slippery floor? Should I sue them? Well, in Thailand that’s not an option anyway.

Should I now sit in misery, thinking over and over how terrible it is that I’ve lost my holiday, and temporarily my ability to walk? And feel really sorry for myself?

These will all be natural and commonplace reactions to such an event in one’s life. It may be a much less serious event, situation or happening, but the blame culture is rampant in the Western word (much more than here in Thailand).

So, bearing in mind karma is cause and effect, reaping what we have previously sown, how am I to react to my misfortune intelligently?

As I did! Hence me relating this tale for you. And I would like to ask you to just pause for the moment and think about things:

• By blaming, or even suing, the hotel how do I make things better for me?

• By blaming or feeling sorry for myself how do I make things better for me?

• Is it easy to follow a no-blame approach to life when things go wrong?

Now, here’s my key point for this Letter:

whether we can find the past action we took that led up to our misfortune, or being on the receiving end of an act of unfairness or injustice that has come our way from somebody else (most likely our partner, or a person close to us), if we are to act intelligently then we must use the negative situation to our benefit.

We use it to proactively, consciously, and intelligently sow new seeds so that we are most likely to reap sweet fruits in the future.

We view the bad happening as a dark cloud that has a silver lining, and we create that silver lining; we use a crisis to create an opportunity.

This is evolution, moving along our pathway of life, this is learning rather than bemoaning, being wise rather than getting stuck in the blame game that makes everybody lame and is such a shame.

Usually, though, we can find a cause of the bad thing that has happened to us, simply by sitting in silence and reflecting honestly with ourselves.

I had yet again failed to make intention and determination work in my life. Was this why my book was taking me so long to write? Why do I have plans and then so easily break them? Perhaps this is a good thing sometimes, and a bad thing other times, and I need to be better at discerning when to stick and when to bust?

Perhaps I had been completely over-using my brain and not working smartly enough, and my body and the universe conspired in a way to slow me down to give me time to recuperate, rethink things, upgrade my relationship with life, and to then to take proactive conscious actions to help me live even more intelligently?

(For I am an intelligent and usually harmonious being, I’m not beating myself up for the sake of it. But there is never no room for improvement, and I feel this is an inherent part of evolution in life.)

Perhaps I could not know for sure, but the point here is that we take the bad shit that happens to us in life as an episode of learning - whether a total accident, whether something we realise in hindsight was an ‘accident’ waiting to happen, whether it genuinely is a bad act and provocation by somebody else upon us, acting out their own karmic energy.

And we can make this central to our way of approaching life:

When good stuff happens, think why it happened, and if we can find out what we sowed, then we can sow it again and reap the good stuff again.

When bad stuff happens, think why it happened, and if we can find out what we sowed, then we can do a different kind of sowing now, leading to a more fruitful and beneficial harvest next time.

When the bad stuff happens, and it seems we absolutely did not cause it, then okay, fine, how will we intelligently react so that we can let things be, drop the negative energy, and move on in our life?

Using karma intelligently means realising that life is simply energy and the flow of energy, and that while we cannot undo events, situations or happenings that come our way, we CAN choose how to respond to them.

It comes down to this, and for me this is the fundamental key to living a good life:

change what you can’t accept, but if you can’t change it peacefully and without violating somebody else or the preciousness of life itself, then accept it. And if you really can’t accept it, nor change it peacefully, okay, you have the third and only other option: continue suffering.

It’s your choice.

It might mean learning the art of radical acceptance, but here’s another important thing:

by choosing to use your understanding of karma and karmic law in this way, you will be living consciously for much greater periods of your life, and it is in this state of mind that you can think, speak and act wisely.

Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

Just accept the shit, pick yourself up off the floor, dust yourself down, recuperate, learn, heal, and evolve.

Forgive yourself, and when you do, you will realise you also feel directed to forgive others. Being human is a real test, so let’s be easier on ourselves and on everyone else.

Then you start feeling immense wellsprings of gratitude flooding your consciousness, because now you see life for what it is: an unfolding journey which is a full-on miracle, with a few challenges and bad bits coming our way from time to time.

Living by using karma intelligently puts you in charge of your own life, your health, your destiny, and your relationships. Less bad stuff happens.

Yes, we reap what we sow, but much more important from our understanding of karma is to reflect upon what sowing we did in the past, and what sowing we are doing today.

And never forget that you ONLY EVER GET TO LIVE LIFE TODAY.

Until next week, have a fabulous karmically intelligent time!