Carmen Warrington starts to blog

I’m flying to Alice Springs as I write this. It’s the day after my birthday and my partner and I are heading to Uluru for a few days of much needed rest.  In the last year we’ve written, recorded, produced and promoted 8 guided meditation CDs for ABC Music’s “Meditations for Life” series. Wonderful, fulfilling work, but also intensely detailed and time-consuming and we decided a visit to the centre of Australia would be restful and rejuvenating.

I’ve been to Uluru twice before, and I’m really looking forward to the energy of the red desert.  I feel a strong connection to the land in Uluru, and the only other place in the world I’ve had a strong emotional response is the Solomon Islands.  I went to the Solomons for the first time in 1991.  As I stepped off the plane and put my foot on the tarmac, I started crying and had the overwhelming feeling that I had come home.  That was a surprise.  Maybe in a previous lifetime I had lived there?  It certainly felt like that.

My first time in Uluru was when I presented a meditation session at a conference in 1999.  My partner was presenting with me, and we had some amazing experiences which I’ll share in another blog (especially the ceremony with White Eagle Woman and her Grandmother Drum).  After the conference we hired a car to see some of the country between Uluru and Alice Springs.  As we drove away from Uluru, and as the red desert finally receded, I found myself crying.  I was sad to leave the desert.  At the time I felt like I couldn’t bear to be parted from the red centre and the powdery red dust that covered the ground and felt so soft under my feet and which made me feel that the whole landscape was my living room.

I have moved many times in my life since I was a little girl, so nowhere in the world feels like home to me.  I was born in England, to a Polish father and an English mother, I went to my first school in Nigeria in West Africa, then back to another part of England.  Since moving to Australia aged ten, I’ve lived in Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia, NSW and Victoria, yet nowhere feels like home.  So it’s wonderful to find places on this planet that touch me deeply and make me feel I’ve come home.

The second time I went to Uluru was on my 50th birthday, with a girlfriend who turned 50 the next day and we both wanted to mark the moment by being somewhere special.  We spent our first day at Kata Tjuta.  I’d developed a fever overnight so all I could do was muster the energy to sit and face the rocks. As I sat, I felt as if energy was pouring into me, into the centre of my chest, from the rocks.  The next morning we went to watch the sunrise at Uluru, and this time I felt as if “shadows” were being drawn out of me, and absorbed by the great monolith.  I should point out that this is quite unusual for me, I don’t usually sense, or see or experience energy so tangibly.  But I do believe that Uluru is a very sacred place, and I was grateful for these unique experiences.

I wonder what my trip home will bring this time?