It was another dusty hot humid morning. I didn’t realise those two things were possible at the same time until I moved to the Middle East.
The teachers’ bus jolted along at eye wateringly early 7:00 am to school. I pondered yet again my choice to come to this barren wasteland.
It was my first week of teaching primary and it was hell! I dealt with wailing, vomiting and screaming children most of who couldn’t speak a word of English. Most of the kindergarten students were unused to a classroom setting and they certainly weren’t used to sharing! They were constantly squabbling and bickering amongst themselves.
I had never had to raise my voice in the classroom until I worked with these kids.
In addition to having a limited range of art supplies, I had to haul said supplies from classroom to classroom. All of the while trying to deliver an engaging and enriching art lesson in twenty minutes. Because it took ten minutes to set up and at least fifteen minutes to clean up and be in time for my next class. It was proving stressful to say the least!
I was exhausted. I was unsure I could do this job. And still, I kept asking: “How does it get better than this? What else is possible?!”
Little did I know my time there would show me the magic of me and the true wonder of the Access Consciousness tools in action and that beauty truly is everywhere.
On most days I had a classroom assistant to help me with the children in each classroom. Which made teaching infinitely easier as they often also spoke Arabic. However, on this particular day and class, I was alone and had to do the best I could with miming and drawing my instructions to the students.
Halfway through the lesson, this sweet little girl decided she needed the bathroom but without an assistant to take her to the toilet I couldn’t let her go by herself. She was determined that she would simply go on her own.
I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, I couldn’t leave my classroom and I couldn’t let her go on her own.
I tried to explain to her in English but she just looked at me blankly. Not knowing what else to do I started reciting the Access Consciousness mantra to myself out loud as it was just me and the students: “All of life comes to me with ease and joy and glory“.
For those of you that don’t know the Access Conscious mantra “All of life comes to me with ease and joy and glory” is a tool that you can use when things are going really well in your life and when things get ugly. So that whatever the situation you can use this tool to have more ease and joy and glory (glory being the exuberant expression and abundance of life).
And I can tell you at that moment things were getting ugly!
The little girl unphased by my pleading simply lay down in the middle of the hallway and wailed at the top of her lungs. At wit’s end, I stood in the doorway of the classroom repeating: “All of life comes to me with ease and joy and glory” with increasing desperation.
And then something magical occurred. The kids in the classroom continued to play and make art quietly (completely unheard of if you have ever worked with kindergarten-aged children), while I was trying to reason with the little girl. Furthermore along came one of the school maids and said she would happily accompany the little girl to the bathroom.
Something else changed in me that day I began to wonder … I wondered what else could come to me with Ease and Joy and Glory? And that was the beginning of my adventures with the tools of consciousness in the Middle East!
Author of Things That Go Bump in the Night
Simone Padur BP