My Shameful Hangover Saved My Life

The very first time I ever meditated, I was really hungover. I had gone out in Knightsbridge the night before, clubbing at one of the most exclusive places in London, and had got home after 2am, completely internally soaked in top shelf vodka sodas and head spinning. I had set my alarm for 9am so I could wake up, clean myself up and head over to Earl’s Court, where Gabby Bernstein was giving a lecture.

Instead, I woke up at noon in a panic. Oh my God, I had slept it. I reeked of booze, it was coming out of my pores. I was panicking and I was embarrassed just thinking to myself, is Gabby and Jenny going to smell it on me that I went out last night? In a wild panic, I got ready and headed out for the 1 hour journey to Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre where Gabby’s lecture was.

A play by play of my shameful demise

Let me rewind to before I started downing the drinks, before I met up with my friends and was convinced to go clubbing and before my drunken embarrassment started. Just two and half hours before I met up with my friends, I had been having tea with Gabby, Jenny, Kyle and Sean at Soho House in London. Instead of taking the opportunity to go back to Gabby’s hotel and meditate altogether, I got up, bolted out making some random excuse and ran home to get ready to go out with my friends instead. Clearly I was not comfortable being the high vibration of a spiritual teacher, a psychic medium, a health writer and angel of a friend and a guy who loves the universe.

So I ran away.

Rewind a few more hours. I arrived at the Dean Street Hotel, where Jenny and Gabby were staying while in London, and went up to their room to meet them. I didn’t really know what to expect or what was going to happen that day. All I knew was that I will get to catch up with Jenny, and hang out with these two amazing women, and show them the London sights all day. We spent the whole day talking, sharing, shopping, walking around, chatting, eating and drinking tea. It was pretty awesome.

Rewind two weeks. It was 11:30pm, before my 28th birthday, and I was sat on a park bench in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, breaking up with my boyfriend because I thought I wasn’t good enough for him. The month that followed was one of my lowest months ever, and I thought I wasn’t good enough for anyone, even my family. It was a month of self-sabotage, self-pity and a lot of moping around. Then Jenny came to town, and everything changed.

Feeling bigger than ever

Back in Earl’s Court, I ran in all frazzled and showed my ticket to get in. I was supposed to pay for an extra ticket to the Gabby’s lecture but because it was nearly over and there was only 10 minutes of it left, the guy at the door let me through for free. I went in quietly and took a seat at the very back of the room and hoped that Gabby or Jenny didn’t see me come in at all. Maybe I could pretend I was there the whole time.

I barely got a chance to settle in when Gabby invited us to join her in a meditation. All we would have to do is sit just where we were, in theatre style seating, and just close our eyes and rest our hands on our lap, palms facing up. That’s it. Then she guided us into a five minute meditation.

And it was one of the most powerful meditations of my whole life.

Even today, even as a meditation teacher myself, I don’t have meditations with intensity like that often at all. My being expanded beyond my body and I felt like I was growing, growing, growing, past my body, past my limits and had the sensation of hitting the ceiling.

After reading the chapter titled “He Forgave His Father” in the book Co-Creating At Its Best by Wayne Dyer, Esther Hicks and Abraham, I know now why it was ESSENTIAL for me to be hungover as hell that day.

My hangover saved me

If I hadn’t been hungover that day, I would arrive to Gabby’s lecture on time, listen to the whole thing and judge her and her message the entire time. I just knew I would have done that.

At that time in my growth phase, in my life, I wasn’t ready to be open. I wasn’t ready to accept new things. I wasn’t ready to accept the fact that I am bigger than my perception of myself up until that point. That’s why I got up and left the day before. That’s why I would have judged and attacked every word Gabby would have said if I had been there to hear her full lecture. My guard would have been up, my heart would have been closed and her guided meditation would just have made me uncomfortable and I would feel nothing.

But because I was hungover, weak, nauseous, embarrassed and sorry for being late and disrespectful, my heart was open and my guard was down.

Instead of feeling uncomfortable and claustrophobic in the meditation, it made me feel bigger than I ever had.

Instead of judging it and attacking it, I had no strength to fight it at all, so I welcomed it.

My resistance was at an all time low and that’s why I was able to finally perceive this expansion and I was finally able to accept the fact that meditation is actually a really cool thing.

Abraham said this to Wayne Dyer about the moment when he was crying at his dad’s grave, never having met him, hating him and being in extreme pain over this his whole life.

The best way for us to say it is that his love was stronger than your hate. And he caught you at a weak moment when your hatred was less focused.

And you felt it.

Sometimes it is our moments of weakness that save us because it makes us so weak that we can’t keep fighting. We have to surrender and that’s when something bigger than us makes us realize just how big we really are as well.

With my love,

Ritu

P.s. Here are some photos from that weekend when everything changed.