The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a hostile or friendly universe.
Albert Einstein
For a long time I believed the world was a dangerous place.
I like it better these days. I’ve done a lot of work. I feel safe. I feel enthroned in myself.
I still get thrown off balance, but I now see these moments as opportunities for integration. I get back on the horse a lot faster.
Orienting, shrinking and numbing
I grew up in the UK in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I loved the music. Still do.
Like a lot of us, I didn’t feel right as a kid, and I thought I was the only one.
My parents broke up early on. There was fear and uncertainty, booze and shouting.
I was loved. And my mum had a lot to deal with. I don’t know how she did it.
I’m deeply grateful.
Subconsciously, I suspected that I was the problem. I made myself small to compensate. I felt lost and not good enough for most of childhood.
I was bad at football and fighting and this put me low on the pecking order of the kids around me.
I was sensitive and daydreamy.
I discovered alcohol when I was about 15 and I pedestalled it. I hoped it could help me become somebody that didn’t care. I saw booze as a gateway to love, either through the barriers it broke down or through its numbing embrace.
Alcohol always gave me a guaranteed result, where people could not.
I was brought up catholic. I found the stories fascinating and was interested in the lessons they carried.
As I got older, I had some questions about this whole god thing. Hoping to get some clarity, I studied philosophy of religion at university. It left me more confused.
I discovered weed around the same time so that whole university chapter was a bit fuzzy.
Weed brought a whole new level of melting when added to booze. It gave me a connection I’d been craving. It made music feel like it was part of me.
I’ve tried lots of different substances to alter my consciousness.
It was as much an attempt to move toward something as it was to move away from the discomfort of being me. It was always a connection and transcendence thing.
I rarely quite got the bliss I wanted. There were moments. But it was mostly agitated over-consumption.
In 2019 I gave up the hunt. I gave up getting smashed. It wasn’t getting me where I wanted to go, and I understood that it never would.
Nowadays I stay aware of where I am emotionally. If I feel a desire to act-out I connect with what’s being triggered and reach out for help.
Exploring and expanding
I had my first therapy when I was 22. My girlfriend’s father noticed that I could do with some help (in hindsight, he was looking out for her welfare more than mine). I was angry and blaming and not great to be around. I started to learn about blind spots; the unconscious, the stuff I shoved down that was invisibly driving me.
Ever since then I have been hooked on peeling back the layers of illusion around who I think I am. I’ve done a lot of courses and retreats and trainings. I love it.
In my 20s I studied spiritual psychology of acting and learnt a bit about how our wounds define the adaptations that define our personalities.
In my 30s I studied to qualify as a psychotherapist but after a couple of attempts at different modalities I knew that it wasn’t a good fit.
In my 40s I qualified as a hypnotherapist and started to explore the body’s role in healing.
I did massage for 15 years and got pretty good at it. It got me tuned in to the whole mind-body connection thing and honed my intuition.
It was constellations that finally lit me up. It was like the moment when the Wizard of Oz goes colourful.
I suddenly got it. A way to connect to and understand people better.
I had a visceral experience of our interconnectedness to everything and everyone.
We are not just the result of our childhoods. We also hold in our cells the unfinished business of our ancestors.
I undertook a constellations training that incorporated aspects of shamanism and tantra. I wanted to really explore the mind-body-spirit connection and that’s what I got.
I love constellations. I love watching people have their first experience of constellations. Suddenly they realise the world works differently to how they thought it did.
For those of us dedicated to bringing love to the world, this is one of the most potent tools of that movement.
My most recent certification was Gabor Mate’s Compassionate Inquiry. CI has brought a glue of articulation to my work. Gabor’s articulation of how childhood trauma affects our adult life is second to none.
Bits and bobs
I am an advocate of psychedelics as tools for healing and integration. At age 30 I had my first journey involving a handful of mushrooms and a bunch of talkative trees. Things got clearer. I received my first embodied teaching that everything is connected and conscious.
I meditate every day.
Some days I’m in the zone and some days it’s noisy.
My inner kindergarten thinks it’s boring.
I exercise regularly and when I don’t I’m shitty to be around.
I enjoy boxing. I like to work physically hard. I like the edges.
I grow vegetables and keep bees.
I love music a lot. It settles my nervous system.
As I’m getting older I don’t like it as loud as I used to.
I am friendly and direct.
I am very amusing, especially to myself.
I strive to honour the hippie code of peace, love and understanding.
I frequently fall short.
I’m very human.
