METAMORPHOSIS

In the ‘about the author’ section of my new book I referred to a ‘spiritual awakening’ which led me to want to start writing some of my bottled up ideas down in some sort of structured way. Hence the book, finally, came into being. Yesterday I wondered about where to begin with my first blog. As the book is entitled ‘Wake Up. What are your emotions really telling you?’ I thought it made immediate sense to expand a little on my own awakening. To share with anyone prepared to read just what that was like for me.

Ever since I was young I remember feeling a bit of an outsider. An observer. I always remember, when I was about 9 years old, watching my brother laughing uncontrollably as he was spinning around on the Waltzer ride when the fairground came into our town. I was scared of fairground rides. My Dad held my hand and said to me ‘Chris life is about getting on the ride yourself, not watching other people on it’. Those words rang in my ears. Was I strange to seem to get more enjoyment watching my brother than ‘having a go’ myself?

The theme of being an observer of life, and of the lives of others, is one that has been prominent in my 54 years on this planet. It used to feel painful, like I was ‘missing out’. But now I have learnt to strike more of a healthy balance. I do ‘have a go’ but am still endlessly fascinated at watching others do so. It seems I was born to be a therapist of some sort. A witnesser of what, and how, others do what they do.

Looking back now, that childhood realisation of my quirkiness, of my difference, I think was probably the start of my interest in spirituality. I just knew we were all different, yet were meant to be so. And I also knew there was a reason, a pattern. How could all this stuff just happen haphazardly? There had to be a bigger picture.

That bigger picture became eminently clearer to me when I undertook my first ayahuasca retreat nearly 4 years ago. Sitting round with 7 other strangers in a small cabin outside of Eindhoven in Holland drinking a tea brewed from Amazonian plants in the dead of night. Listening to the angelic singing voice of the shaman I went on an inner journey. To the depths of my being….

If I could sum up the central message of my book in a sentence it would be ‘when we remain in ego we suffer, when we understand from our spiritual core we grow’. That cold January night in Holland, with only the light of the log fire to pierce the darkness, I was shown that I was was not my ego. I was shown the difference between who I thought I was and who I really was.

The inner journey was intense. The wisdom of my deepest self explicit, yet clarifying. I had committed to knowing as much as I could and my deeper self, my highest self, was not sparing me any detail. This time I was both on the fairground ride and watching it from above. I knew my ego was in the rollercoaster car being thrown about, but my deeper self was watching, patiently and wisely, from above.

Thus the book I came to write was made of a core knowing. Of a substance based on an inner reality that we don’t give much time or space to when we are busy tending to ego. As of course we ‘must’ in this earthly physical realm.

I wanted to write in a way which embraced both the inner and the outer. The spirit and the ego. I believe, in fact I would now behold and declare that ‘I know’, that we are here to see how these two elements of ourselves work together. Do they spat with, or do they serve, each other? Indeed can they serve each other?

If we are to make this world a better place for us all to be, then I firmly believe that they must now start to serve each other better. That’s part of the lessons that I sense the coronavirus, COVID-19, has come to teach us. And it is the central message in my book. In the preface I refer to the parallels of the ‘new normal’, with how we must now make ego work for us, rather than the other way around. Or it will destroy the planet, and blight our humanity, in the process.

Unless we face and embrace the need for our inner metamorphosis, to listen to the messages of our emotions and how they are trying to wake us up, then I believe Mother Nature will continue to do that job for us. In whatever increasingly profound ways as she sees necessary.

I hope that the words of my book help to facilitate your own wake up in some small way, that it might act as a catalyst to your own inner transformation. To help you see that you are not just helplessly on the ride, but learning from observing it too…..

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