Isabel Losada - The Battersea Park Road to Paradise: Five Adventures in Doing and Being

Critical Acclaim for Isabel Losada

The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment

A total delight Isabel Losada navigates her way through the eccentric highways and byways of the new age and human potential movement with scepticism, humour and interrogative open-mindedness. Candid, thought-provoking, sassy and very very funny.

Mick Brown, The Daily Telegraph

Full of a crazy joy made me laugh out loud.

Impact Cultural Magazine

Humorous and refreshing.

The Canberra Times

Heart-warming and extraordinary Losada writes perceptively and with humour.

Wanderlust Magazine

For Tibet, With Love: A Beginners Guide to Changing the World

The world must be changed Isabels story brings this truism to life in a vivid, funny, heart-warming, delightful way. It is a great read, a live teaching! I enjoyed it, laughed and learned a lot!

Professor Robert Thurman, Tibetologist and Buddhist Scholar, Columbia University, New York

Isabel Losada is a 21st-century hero someone who is changing the world for the better and will make you want to, too.

Harpers and Queen Magazine

This remarkable tale of one womans dedicated personal journey captures the spirit of compassion in action.

Lama Surya Das

Fast, funny and inspiring too. Isabel Losada is a writer that changes lives.

Joanna Lumley

Men! (Where the **** are they?)

Isabel Losada has achieved the perfect combination of humour, poignancy and intellectual rigour.

The Statesman

Think Bridget Jones meets Michael Moore meets Men are from Mars only a lot funnier.

Glamour Magazine

About the Author

Isabel Losada has worked as an actress, singer, broadcaster and full-time single parent. She is the author of New Habits (which investigates why a woman would want to become a nun), The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment (an exploration of happiness that has now sold over 100,000 copies), For Tibet, With Love: A Beginners Guide to Changing the World (about how one person can make a difference), Men! (which explores the sociological phenomenon of the surplus of single women in major cities), 100 Reasons to Be Glad (a gift book about gratitude) and this book in your hand. Isabel remains firmly committed to narrative nonfiction and swimming against the tide. She really does live on the Battersea Park Road.

Five adventures in doing and being

WATKINS PUBLISHING

LONDON

This edition published in the UK 2011 by
Watkins Publishing, Sixth Floor, Castle House,
7576 Wells Street, London W1T 3QH

Text Copyright Isabel Losada 2011

Isabel Losada has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publishers.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Designed and typeset by Jerry Goldie

Printed and bound by Imago in China

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN: 978-1-78028-189-6

www.watkinspublishing.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All the people in this book are real. In rare cases I have changed someones name to protect his or her identity, but most appear as themselves, so I would like to thank everyone who is mentioned in these pages and has played a part.

Special thanks are due to Sylvia Bennett, Eddie Lui, Simon Brown, the consultant whose name I dont mention here whose intention I assume was positive, and the Feng Shui Society. From the Anthony Robbins course Id like to thank again everyone mentioned and Anthony for being so inspirational.

For sending me to Vipassana and warning me what I was letting myself in for, Id like to thank Thomas, Dale and Alison Key. Thank you to Jo for being sane, Frances Barnes for your patience, Christine for your good nature and Star for enjoying the sparrows. Also Helen, wherever you are thank you.

I am honoured to thank Mooji for his love and tolerance of my foolishness, and to thank all those who attend his Satsangs for their warm and loving welcome and for mistakenly thinking I had always been there. Thank you especially to Hannah for the invitation.

I would not have found the Ashaninka without the help of Amanda Shakespeare, Hylton and Noo Murray-Philipson. Thank you especially to Dilwyn for being my friend. Please stop smoking.

I could not have gone to Peru or to New York to meet my editor without my guardian angels JJM and CM.

In the publishing world, I am very grateful to Jon Elek, who made this possible by believing in me at a moment when it seemed that no-one else did, and to Michael Mann, my publisher, because I loved him from our first phone call. My editor (and now friend) Anne Barthel made editing this book a joy and every edit a pleasure to receive. She it was who knew that Jesus was not recorded as saying Know thyself anywhere in the canonical Gospels and that we ought instead to attribute the quote to the temple at Delphi. I have to tell this story here as Im still gasping with awe. Vicky Hartley, Anna Randall, Penny Stopa and Roger Walton have shown me what a pleasure it can be to be well published. Thank you, Watkins, for all your enthusiasm and hard work.

Closer to home Id like to thank Emily Lucienne and Gala Riani who support me every day and who know how to love without conditions and with eternal patience.

Finally, Id like to thank that that core bunch of loyal readers; CK and Julie, whose kindness in inexplicable; and every single reader, especially those on my Facebook page who offer words of encouragement, write reviews and buy copies of my books for everyone they know. Your loyalty, wisdom and generous friendliness make my job a joy. You are too many to list by name but if you are reading this then you are undoubtedly one of them. Thank you.

CONTENTS

F eeling stuck? Yes, me too. Im in a pothole on the road to enlightenment. You wouldnt have thought a pothole would be deep enough to get stuck in, would you? But Ive managed to get totally wedged in. Im battered, befuddled and too bruised to budge myself. And I get run over on a regular basis.

It would be lovely, I reflect as I sit in my hole, if I thought that anyone was going to come and pull me out; if any human or angelic being was going to find me, direct the traffic around me and lead me home for scones and raspberry jam. But no no-one is preparing tea. Im in London, you know how it is in our cities, everyone is too busy dodging the traffic themselves.

Its a strange thing, life, innit? I mean, in theory Im in one piece and some people even think Im clever. But in practice Im just a rather messy pile of flesh and bones, and as another ten-ton steamroller goes over me, attempting to flatten me out permanently, life certainly isnt how Id planned it.

I suppose I should tell you a little bit about myself and the particular disasters that surround me and then you can look at your own life and decide that youre doing fabulously. By profession I make TV programmes. Except I make them the month before the channel closes or something so nothing gets aired. And, as you know, I write books, but confused booksellers say, Its about what? and they dont know where to put them in the bookshop. Its not good. Im all over the shop. Literally.