My Turbulent Wrestle with Enlightenment

Reading time: 15 minutes

This story of my ‘life-flight’ will give you a 'behind-the-scenes' insight into how messy and beautiful spiritual and personal growth can be.  

I intend to inspire and empower your journey with Love!

This is a turbulent story so please fasten your seat belts and return your tray tables to their upright position.  

It was on an alarmingly turbulent flight that I had one of my biggest personal breakthroughs.

We were flying from Sydney to Budapest via Singapore and Helsinki in 2012, on a gruelling 24-hour flight. 

A few hours into the flight I felt the familiar restlessness and panic rising in my body as the plane hit the first slight patch of turbulence.  

My body-mind tensed into ‘ready’ mode, caused by the trauma that I underwent on my first air-travel experience. 

That particular flight was 20 years prior when my husband and I were leaving mother-Hungary behind, and flying to Australia with our three small children as ‘Independent Migrants’.

I didn’t know what to expect on so many levels. This was my first flight and I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “turbulence”.

It happened while we were having breakfast.  I wasn’t eating, as my stomach was already queasy and anxious about this new flying experience and moving my family to a new life and country.

A place where Steve's cousin was kindly waiting for us, but we never personally met, and I didn’t speak or understand the language.  I had felt physically sick for over 24 hours and my system had decided to cope in a half coma-like sleepy state.

Suddenly out of nowhere, the plane literally dropped meters.  

The breakfast trays with everything on them flew up into the air and almost hit the roof of the plane.  The food and beverages landed all over us and everything else.

 It felt like my guts were up in my throat and my brain had flown out of my head.

I thought we were going to fall right out of the sky.  We braced ourselves for a crash and thought the end was imminent.

As I did not speak English, I didn’t understand the announcements which only fed my state of terror.  

The flight attendants rushed to collect the trays and clean up, balancing and bracing themselves as best they could.  They were visibly in a worry-rush and frantically urging everyone to stay calm and fasten their seat belts. 

I didn’t know what to do or what was happening, so I just tried my best to be “there” for the children.  

Eventually, the turbulence eased and the energy in the cabin calmed to a point where I realized that we probably weren’t going to crash.  I just wanted it to be over, I wanted to arrive.

There were several more periods of extended turbulence before we neared Sydney Airport many hours later.

After flying at least three stressful airport circuits we eventually landed.  

And so, on the stormy night of Halloween in 1991, we arrived in Australia traumatized and exhausted.

Very intelligently, my nervous system decided, that flying was dangerous, and I did not have pleasant flying experiences after that. 

On every flight after that, I was panicked and scared to death...  until this particular flight back to Budapest in 2012. 

Just one year after Matyi, our 17-year-old son, suddenly passed away after what was a quite turbulent, short life of his own.

A few months after his death, after the initial shock and overwhelming grief, I decided that his tumultuous life and his untimely death would not be in vain.

I wanted to learn everything I could about how we humans operate and what assists or prevents us from flourishing.

I needed to make sense of what had happened so I started reading and learning everything I could get my hands on about worry, fear, anger, emotions in general, parenting, relationships, calling, purpose, body, family, community, healthy functioning, enlightenment, nature, and spirituality.

I was flying back to Budapest to continue this personal quest of emerging as an empowered, confident woman from the ashes of fear, guilt, shame, and regret of having “lost” one of our precious children.  

I wanted to go back to my own mother-country, parents, the land of my ancestors, and to the place where Matyi felt the belonging and acceptance of his heritage.  

We felt drawn back home to immerse in and complete the next phase of grief; the grieving-process that I knew would eventually lead to the next stage of my personal and relational development and heal the connections in the family.

As we finished boarding and awaited take-off, I reflected on everything I had learnt so far. 

I had come to the understanding that for me, having been born to very young, immature parents in communist Hungary just 20 years after the Big War; my growing up had unfolded in a turbulent, chaotic, worried family setting.  

I was growing and developing in the soil of worried love, with inadequate, unreliable, and unbalanced amounts of emotional warmth, sunlight, or rain in addition to LOTS of stress and anxiety, politically, financially, and relationally.

This translated into experiencing a lot of ‘worry’ through my own journey as well.  When I was a child, I worried about pleasing my parents and teachers, about my classmates when they were put down, ridiculed, and criticized.  

When I was older, I worried more.  I always wanted to be a wife and a mother, but each time, when my five children were born, I started to constantly worry about each of them.

When we arrived in Australia, I worried about them even more.

In Australia, I felt for the first time, very inadequate as a mother.  I didn’t speak the language or know how to function in a new, foreign land.

I was completely relying on my dear husband, and we clung to each other more than ever before. 

I started seeing the unfulfilled potential of my marriage and our children and felt very disappointed, bitter, and frustrated as I was failing over and over.  

I realized that I was functioning far below what I imagined and felt was possible and needed.

I wanted to learn how to partner and parent in a life-supportive way.  To learn to deal with those intense feelings that arise when we get triggered by our partner and children and experience unknown and unexpected impulses that move us.

I tried to find inner peace and direction through spirituality and religion. 

While one part of me found more peace through this, another part got worried more and more.  How to please God.  How to be a good wife, a good mom.  

The more I worried the more desperately I searched, deeper and deeper I dug in, to find meaning and purpose, answers to how and who to be.

In this relentless searching, I ended up in an intense situation with the whole family.

We moved to a religious commune for two years on a “trial” basis.  

It was a confusing time.  Just like growing up in communism, there were some romantic, utopistic, idyllic pictures of living in a lovely setting.  

But this was at a huge hidden cost of individual worth and dignity.  Eventually, we started to realize that the actions and relationships didn’t match the words and intentions.

We were experiencing a big gap between what we were hearing and seeing presented, and what we sensed to be true.

For me, that process of learning to trust the self, my own perceptions and discernment, pushed me to my edge and helped me eventually to see the extreme polarities within.  

I was experiencing inner conflict and could not reconcile my understanding of the Unconditional Love of Life and the fear of being cast into hell; the terror of imagining this for my children if they didn’t “obey”.

That inner pull into two extreme directions was so intense, so soul-crushing that I feared I would totally lose my sanity, be institutionalized and never be able to find and express how life makes sense.

It was a devaluating and disconcerting time where I felt like I was losing my entire sense of identity.

Finally, I found the path that would lead me home - to me.

I walked into the arms of Nature. I skipped on the grass in the dew early mornings, sat on the rocks, talked with the trees.

I looked at and breathed in the colours of the sunrise; colours of purples, oranges, reds, and pinks... listened to the birds chirping and singing, smelt the rose, lavender, and the earth, hugged the trees, and touched everything I came across.

I received healing.

During this time, my body-mind could only tolerate small amounts of reading or teachings.  I went from consuming books and hours of research to just reading one or two sentences about inner bonding.  

I turned within for answers, started feeling and listening to my body, my emotions, my thoughts, and feelings, and slowly with the help and guidance of teachers, mentors, and coaches, friends, and programs; I started to come home to my ‘own BEING’.

After leaving ‘The Community’ we had to start over - again.  

We settled back into our little village in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.  I honestly do not know how we made it through the turbulence of the next 10 months before the car accident and departure of Matyi’.

In that transitional crisis, the stress, anxiety, and uncertainty were palpable in all of us, and we felt totally disoriented. Belief systems had been shattered, values questioned, and we had to find our lost selves as individuals, and also; and perhaps more importantly, as a family unit.

Understandably, 17-year-old Matyi was not coping too well. He sought relief by way of the perceived freedom that he was unable to experience in the Community: drugs, staying with friends and learning to drive so he could be independent.

When he would visit, I would scratch his hair and back, and he would hug me and try to reassure me.  He would tell me, “It’s alright, Mom”.

On a rainy day in May 2011, he called me on the phone, and we had a turbulent conversation for a few minutes.  It was just two hours later...

I received the tragic call from the hospital about his accident.

While finding our way through the grief over the loss of our son, we went through more major hardships in the family.

Understandably, our marriage desperately needed saving and restoring. We were both shaken to our core and had to find the way through the valley of the shadows of heartbreak, fallings, and losses.

It was through this time that I found my inner-core-strength and started discovering an even deeper sense of who I AM and that I can count on me.

I discovered that indestructible and unshakeable essence that provides the roots to endure anything, to navigate any storm that life might bring.

I came to realize what it truly meant when Matyi had told me many times previously that “It’s alright”.

One year after his passing and sitting on that plane back to Hungary when we hit the first patch of turbulence, my nervous system was triggered again.  I got tense and ready to protect, to brace my body, ‘just in case’.

Yet somehow, in the middle of that turbulence, I became aware of a bigger, stronger part of me that is always present, always here. 

“I AM here,” I said to the small, scared, traumatized, and desperate part of me that was in fear.  

I realized that I had to recognize this frightened part of me for its caring, well-intentioned efforts and give it the attention and comfort that it needed.

Even though I had been practicing knowing myself for years - in nature, in meditation, contemplation, and somatic movement; it now felt that it wasn’t just “Presence” anymore.

Through connection, it had become a caring, strong, wise, and reliable Inner Queen and King, a Royal Couple: Caring and Wise Inner Parents to all the estranged and stuck parts of ME!

This Inner Carer is that reliable, and permanent I AM ‘Presence’ and ‘Intelligence’ that was, and is, much bigger than any turbulence.

It could ‘hold’ the turbulence with the plane and all passengers, including me and my aroused nervous system.

It felt awesome to be there for myself and feel safe in my own presence.  

I knew that this was not just an experience. This was an empowering connection, a relationship unfolding with myself.

I knew I had found TRUE CONFIDENCE. 

Confidence that had no conditions, no ifs, no buts, no whens, no needing of anything or anybody to feel safe and whole in existence.

I felt unstoppable and radiant as we walked off that plane. 

Our friend who was waiting at the terminal was amazed and asked me, “What happened? You walked through that door like a Queen!”  I beamed, and said, “I‘ve just had a huge breakthrough and yes, I do feel like a Queen (benevolent).”

Since that time, I have learnt and grown a lot. 

I have trained in Deep Nature Connection, Community Building, Culture Repair and become certified in Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT, aka “Tapping”), Inner Reconciliation Facilitation, Transformational Coaching, and also, as a Parent Trainer and Virtual Coach.

Through all this training I was seeking the ability to articulate what my inner process, experience, and development actually were in tangible terms so that the path could be communicated, transmitted, and reliably shared with others.

And now I am offering guidance on your path so that your journey doesn’t have to be as turbulent as mine. 

I am here for you. I am here to teach and to guide so that you can know yourself as bigger than any turbulence.

To teach you how to be ‘there’ for yourself and to carry yourself through the many challenges of Life. That Life is conspiring for you, not against you. That everything is Intelligent, benevolent and seeking a homecoming to Love.  The kind of Love that is warm and practical, kind and firm, wise and humorous, and finds delight and satisfaction in ‘play-work’.

May this story inspire, encourage, and empower you to embrace your own turbulences.

If you want to ask me a question, tell me about your turbulence, or find out how to receive personalised support from me, click here to go to the 'Work with Me' page for more information or you can write me here. Send me a private message.

Ildikó xo
Facilitator for Your Emerging Majesty Self

PS. Still jet lagged, the following day we went to visit the summer residency Castle of the beloved Austro-Hungarian Queen /Empress, Sisi. On the pictures with my youngest daughter... We felt like royals and I revelled in the ‘knowing’ that we were all created majestic, with a soul of dignity.