when one is truly in need, inspiring story part two
By stuart morris
When One is Truly in Need - (Jess)
The above title is a quote taken from ‘The Lotus and the Rose’ - the textbook of pranayama yoga. Pranayama is a gentle form of yoga, which became my saving grace for so many years. It teaches that when you are truly in need, help will come.
The following little story illustrates this quite clearly.
I went to a spiritualist church many years ago and I still go there from time to time. After this particular service, I got chatting to a lady about healing and the like, and I asked her how she got involved in the spiritualist church; we had a cup of tea and she began her account:
“A long time ago I was married to a handsome man from Turkey. We had been married for about six years and life was good, or so it seemed. We had a holiday three or four times a year, which was great; we would drive over to his home country and stay in a top hotel and drive back the following week.
One particular year, we set off as usual and arrived at the hotel without any problems.
He told me to carry on up to the room and that he would join me shortly, he just had a bit of business to sort out, so I continued and began to unpack. One hour passed and there was no sign of him; this was a bit strange, but I thought that things must be taking time. After three or four hours passed I was worried and rang down to the desk, but no one had seen him and I was very concerned. (There were no mobile phones at that time.)
I sat on the bed trying to distract myself from the fears running around my head - then suddenly the doors burst open and, in a flash, a policeman with a gun grabbed me off the bed and threw me onto the floor by my hair. He screamed at me that I should stay there as the room became flooded with other shouts, as police ran around throwing draws and doors open, completely ransacking the room, which was demolished in seconds. I was picked up by my hair again, pulled out of the open door, literally dragged down through the hotel and thrown into the back of a police van. By now I was crying, shaking and absolutely petrified. I was taken to a police station and, without a word; I was thrown into a jail cell.
You have seen old stories of jails built of stone; dark and damp; places that look like dungeons, well this was just like that and I lay on the floor crying, absolutely in bits.
I was alone for many hours until a police woman came in, gave me some water, uttered something about drugs and my husband and then left. The next day I was taken into another room and questioned; it turned out that my husband had been smuggling drugs in my car and he had blamed me. I was taken back to the cell – I’ve never been so frightened in all my life. A few hours later they let me go, saying that they were keeping my husband.
I was shocked, scared and completed bewildered; these things only happen in films don’t they? I went back to our hotel room, which was still in the ransacked state the police had left it in. I lay on the bed and cried myself to sleep - God knows how long it took. Part of me knew that I had to sort out the problem, but another part wanted to run. I hardly had any money left, so I had to move out of the hotel into a run-down guest house.
I wired my parents who wanted me to come straight home, but the need to find out what had happened was stronger than the impulse to run. Everyday I went to the jail to see my husband - I didn’t want to believe this was happening and in the end I was just going forward on auto pilot.
You remember the old arcade game Space Invaders? Well, there was an arcade on the way back from the prison that I used to go in to play that game. Believe it or not, this was my saving grace, because it was the only way I could distract the thoughts in my head, otherwise I just couldn’t function. I would play hour upon hour, then go back to the guest house and sleep; I lost 3 stones in weight in as many weeks - by which time I was running out of money.
One particular day, when I came back from a visit, I was at my lowest ebb and the only money I had in the world was a few pennies. I started to walk up the hill towards the arcade. I’ll never forget it; it was raining and getting dark and with my head down I put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t even see her, but from the opposite direction came an old lady who bumped into me and, in broken English, muttered something like, ‘Please spare some money for an old lady.’ I stopped, looked at her, pulled out of my pocket the only money I had in the world and gave it to her. She smiled at me gently – and then she was gone! It was quite strange, Stuart, there was a wide space there, but she had bumped into me.
I carried on to the arcade, sat in a chair and just waited and waited, ready to be thrown out - at least it was warm there. Suddenly a man sat next to me; I didn’t have the energy to tell him to go away.
He said, ‘Please meet me tomorrow.’
I looked up at him and told him that there was no way I was going to meet him.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘I have been watching you, I know that you are in trouble, I don’t need to know how or why, I only know that you are and I want to help you.’
He was so insistent. I know it sounds foolish, but I agreed; I thought ‘At least I may get a free meal.’
When I met him, he told me that he was the owner of the arcade; he placed a wad of money in my hand and a key to a little house, saying that he didn’t want anything from me, he just wanted to help and that I could stay there until I sorted myself out.
It may all seem totally unreal, but it’s true! You know, Stuart, I never saw that man again! I stayed there until I got to the bottom of what was going on with my husband. It was true: he had been running drugs and using me. Luckily for me, the police didn’t believe him and he was sentenced. I eventually came back home, we were divorced and that was the end of a chapter of my life and the beginning of another.”
I met Jess once more; we met for a walk in the park and she told she’d been to place a yellow rose on her mother’s grave. We carried on to the spiritualist church.
“Come with me,” she said, “you’ll get a message, people do when they’re with me.”
During the service, the speaker was going around the room; I was petrified thinking he was going to come to me, but he went to Jess and said that her mother was coming through. He started saying some things that were personal to Jess, at which point she began to cry, as much from the comfort it gave as because of the content.
At the end of the message, he said, “Your mother is going now and, by the way, she said thanks for the yellow rose you gave her today.”
At this moment, my hair stood on end and my eyes widened, because that was exactly what Jo had done before we went to the church, how could someone know that?
So, as you can see, the philosophy from the yoga; that when one is truly in need, help comes; had been shown to me. I hope this little story gives you hope that in your own life, help will come at the right time and life will find its balance. I believe it will.
stuart morris
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