Meeting of Mind's Eyes, VI Davis International Symposium, UK, Oct 2018 : My Diaries

To live for a time close to great minds is best kind of education 

- John Buchan

'Meeting of minds' eyes * what an enthralling symposium it was. I am awestruck, spellbound and inspired to the superlative degrees by so many beautiful & intense minds and people with golden heart from places all across the globe.  Above all presence of Ron & Alice**, making the environment filled with compassion, love and knowledge. It can be considered as 'sangam' (union) of these 3 most powerful virtues only mankind possess. No emphasis is needed to understand,  when these three attributes meet only miracles can happen.... Yes! Davis facilitator fraternity make miracles happen by their dedication, passion and skills, day in day out, client by client through their COMPASSION, LOVE and KNOWLEDGE! 

I am filled with cocktail of varied feelings! The foremost is the feeling of pride. Ron mentioned this multiple times during his lectures ‘to pride is sin’, but we lesser mortals at times enjoy doing sins!

My pride is, in being part of this noble fraternity.  And why not so! In the age of cut throat competition, if people come forward and share openly their knowledge, wisdom, little zings they add in programs to help their clients achieve success, their intellectual knowledge base, experiences and learnings thereon, so others can benefit.  

So much of collaboration and knowledge exchange happened in both formal and informal engagements…

It was short but a HUGE period of time... I am filled till brim and quite disoriented! writing this piece while I am on the flight back home and trying to put together the hustle bustle week spent at the Great Malvern!

The classy hall named as The Big School at the magnificent Malvern College, was the most vibrant place during these days. Facilitators & specialists have flown from all across the planet; Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Iceland, Germany, Russia, France, Spain, Switzerland, USA, Hong Kong, Poland, Holland, Denmark, Riyadh, Lebanon, Italy and of course India (the list is big and still I might have unintentionally missed some place).

It was like a global school… where each one passionately driven with emotions and skills, working for the cause of giving the gift of capabilities to nurture the true potential of fellow humans and help them come out of their labels of LD, helping Autistic brains to integrate and participate fully in life, making young children learn the way they can... in nutshell making life beautiful for everyone and in turn making our planet earth a much happy place! 

You can now easily imagine how much I  gained and coming home with an enriched life after finding new friends, soulful friendships, meeting my mentors from other side of the globe...I am finding it hard to switch off my  disorientation kicked in due to my cocktail of thoughts... it will take some time to process information hangover!

I am so excited & happy, I shall be able to I assimilate & apply all what I learn on the programs I do and pass on benefits to more and more people.

  

Now wait! If you are still hooked on to this page and reading further... I want to share on the fun we had... the gala banquet dinners, melodious songs...beautiful autumn with quaint location of pristine hilly town of Great Malvern was making the affair more romantic... early morning walks to the college with soulful conversations... wanting to soak in every moment... capture every beautiful tree, every gothic stone building, through lenses in the memory… 

One hilarious and memorable incident I need to essentially mention here... On the day of my arrival, me and my new found soul friend ventured into a book shop, attracted by books and of course (hush-hush) a board displaying delectable ice cream flavors! The shop owner was courteous & very kind enough to tell us that she doesn't sell ice cream; it's the other store, but we are welcome to bring it and have it at her place! (Again this was a awed moment for me!), and like good kids we honoured her request, went to other shop in excitement and asked for ice cream!  After barging in this small shop, we realised it was an exclusive wine shop, a family was relishing & tasting wine… we kind of quickly sniffed around and saw a small freezer with ice-cream pints… and then  we announced ‘May we have some ice cream please?’... least we bothered with their snare & laughter  'ICE CREAM' that followed, we rather selected our pints from the freezer, which the shopkeeper has to open up by actually scrapping out the ice... then dutifully we went to bookstore to relish our ice-cream and thereafter had coffee too, as book store sold coffee too.  Not to mention this was a hard earned treat for myself & my friend, of more than 20 hours travel and then dragging luggage for almost 20 minutes on Malvern hills to my hotel room. Don’t you agree this deserves no less than an out-of -the-world drooling ice-cream... 

My ice-cream- soul friend was as new to me as I was, to her town Malvern. We were on the same train from London to Great Malvern.  On this 3 hour journey we chatted happily like long lost friends, shared stories our interests.. 

She shared her roots and connection with India, her grandfather had helped in designing Mumbai railways… on knowing I am travelling thus long and had arrived same morning in UK, she was determined to not to leave me alone but to make sure I reach my destination safely. She came along with me to show my way, which was quite opposite direction from her destination. Not only she did came along with me, she lifted my luggage too when Malvern hills gradients got too steep and I started panting..! As I was resisting and burning in embarrassment, she so nicely calmed me down saying, ‘Wouldn't have you done the same if you were at my place?’…this incident was outside symposium scope, but symposium diaries will not be complete without mention of my dear ice-cream-soul-friend... hope we meet sometime soon again! 

💕I hope all my Davis-Soul-friends meet sometime soon again💕

I have so many photographs want to include each one of them... have to figure out a neat way to do so... until then let me soak in some more & you take good care of your selves...

	Please share your thoughts, I shall be encouraged and motivated to include those in next pages I am planning to write when I get back…