In the Shelter of Her Arms

Can any of us say precisely when our conscious journey of awakening begins? Oftentimes it is only years later, in retrospect, that we hone in on the exact moment when the first glimmer of Truth caught our eye — when some person or event caused us to become aware of the world as it truly is, and from that moment onwards, never to perceive it as we did before.
For me, it happened in a bookstore near Tivoli Gardens in Denmark. The day was beastly hot for northern Europe, and I had taken refuge in an aisle of books labeled “Mythology,” scanning the titles for what might be a good read on the train back to Norway, where I was studying for the summer. The University of Oslo was hosting an eight-week, international summer school for world peace led by the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), in which I was enrolled. Little did I know that my weekend getaway to Denmark would change my life forever.