Words of Infinite Possibility
“Easy things are quickly lost in the void of universal mysteries,
but the difficult stay with you for a lifetime.”
A Way of Seeing: Returning to the Beginning
Quote Copyright © Coran Foddering
This part has been six decades in the making, although not in the writing. I find the longer an article takes to write, the more intense the words become as I continually refine my thoughts and feelings about the theme in question.
Upon re-reading, I found that these words had profoundly changed and transformed my psyche and understanding, voicing what I could not initially grasp. Words that are groomed, sharpened and polished somehow have a solidifying effect on emotions and feelings, which are, in essence, abstract in nature and as a result are usually indescribable.
These words will change you, too. Not in a prescriptive way, but one cannot unread something and remain unaffected. You cannot unlearn something that is already in your awareness. It may be that these words will ripple across the waters of your emotion to arrive at the distant shores of your consciousness to be scattered over the sandy beach, never to be heard of again. Conversely, the words may cause tsunami levels of disturbance, triggering volcanic transformations within, and prompting significant changes to your nature and who you are as a person.
Whatever the impact these words have upon you, it is a worthwhile journey to experience, as change is always good. Change is the only constant in our universe. Simply read and enjoy, and quite possibly, your perceptions and senses will become greater than their sum. Your beliefs about yourself and the world may evolve into more refined and nuanced understandings.
The Ten Words
These ten words are vital to one’s evolution as a human being, as a soul and as a person who can relate to others on a completely different level. Each word is important in itself, but together they constitute a magnitude greater than anything that was possible before, a greater than the sum of their parts sort of thing.
Once you grasp their concepts and act coherently with them, you can journey through them into another state of being. I have experienced these words one by one, looking at the very core of myself, studying intently the epicentre of my soul to discover the parts that create the heart singing against that which tries to subvert the joy, bringing chaos, aches, and pains, and attempting to destroy that soul centre.
The words act in concert and essentially form a circle, with each word leading to the next, adding to and enhancing what came before. The circle thus becomes a spiral, a Spiral of Liberation, which constantly refines and perfects and so increases our ability to let go of all the baggage we carried for decades. It aids in the discovery of the Self inside. It creates an understanding of the Self that cannot be gained in any other way.
I intuited the first three words while at a workshop for the new millennium in 1999, the second three from the science fiction series Babylon 5 and the remainder originated from life experiences together with my business need as a website designer in guiding clients through the process of creating their website and what they must do to bring their message to the greater audience of the World Wide Web.
This process can be a very daunting task, and for some, a real emotional challenge, as it brings all those hidden issues and traumas, along with the weight of past baggage, erupting to the surface wholesale.
In experiencing my own spiral, which I have probably travelled countless times, I can help many people find their own words of infinite possibility, that which lies within, to discover the real person amidst the noise generated by those around them.
It seems I am not only a website designer but also someone who helps and guides people in their struggle to empty the contents of the Box they carry with them, their Pandora’s Box. A win-win situation! The title ‘holistic website designer’ is the closest I can come to describing my role.
Communication is the first and most vital step towards discovering the Self and the ongoing journey of mapping those infinite possibilities.
Once vulnerability is reached, you will begin the loop again, but with an entirely different perspective on yourself as a person and, in particular, on those around you. Even more important is that the baggage you carry lessens, giving you a wonderful opportunity to view it with new eyes and see it for what it actually is: life experiences and choices, your own choices. There are indeed ways to view life through different spectacles.
Communication for you will become easier, effortless and simpler. The looping nature of the spiral constantly refines and perfects, enriches and deepens, honing that connection you have with yourself, the world and the other people in it.
Communication
Communicating with Others
We build and evolve through the relationships we have with the people around us. If we cannot communicate effectively, we have no chance of relating to others on their level and thus cannot grow. Listening is perhaps more important than speaking, as it provides a vital conduit, a valuable pathway to a person’s modus operandi. Being heard, perhaps for the first time in their life, changes and alters them profoundly.
If your grievance is with another person, your perceived enemy or nemesis, how can you bring it to a close and achieve acceptance unless you are willing to engage in conversation? Shouting just alienates and resolves nothing. Swearing endlessly reveals that you are angry, but does little to convey how you actually feel or where the source of your internal and external conflicts lies.
Part of this communication is that people act as mirrors, reflecting back to us things about ourselves that we would prefer to hide. Those whom we find the most threatening are reflecting the most suppressed parts of us that we hid decades before, hoping that they would never see the light of day again.
Communicating with Ourselves
Sometimes we communicate less with ourselves than we do with others. We ignore what is parked inches from our face, telling us about some predicament or situation that needs resolution, screaming in our ears for a conclusion. Examining our deepest fears is the only path to completion, and one we neglect at our peril. The monster in the wardrobe has our attention and focus, rather than allowing us to see the infinite possibilities in the lands of Narnia. We sometimes focus on the minutiae of our lives rather than seeing the steamroller heading straight towards us in the distance.
There is a term, ‘listening to whispers’, that, if we follow its paradigm, can lead us to clues about what is wrong. Our body uses our senses to communicate with us. One of these is pain. If we feel discomfort or irritation, either physically or emotionally, this is our body trying to bring our attention to something we are ignoring.
You see, all that we ignore and suppress eventually finds its way into our cells, as it has nowhere else to go. This effectively prevents the body from refreshing itself, energising itself, and healing itself. The cells start to break down and wither, and this is what causes the pain.
If we choose to ignore the whispers, the body increases the volume gradually until it reaches a crescendo of chronic illness that substantially inhibits our functioning, our life, and eventually could lead us to create a dependency on our family or the state.
For me, I left my gender dysphoria alone and neglected, left to rot in the hidden depths of my mind for many decades, with a stark unwillingness to acknowledge it even existed. I was warned and cajoled by those around me into believing that other people were more important than I, so I continually suppressed those deep feelings of discomfort and uncertainty, and eventually was almost driven to suicide by my internal dichotomy and conflict. It took many years before I was actually able to acknowledge it, and finally many more to discover the willingness to open the Box wide enough to fully focus on its contents. Here, a wonderful partner does make an enormous difference in how one handles such a difficult, personal journey.
People often act as intense mirrors reflecting our internal demons, showing us the things we spend so much time and energy ignoring, suppressing or acknowledging they exist. If we crack those mirrors, blaming them for our situation, we miss a great opportunity to look at and let go of that pain and distress.
Once you are willing to communicate, be it with yourself or another, an understanding will eventually present itself, and it is this understanding that will move you into the next stage of the spiral.
Understanding
Communication leads directly to understanding.
Understanding Others
Once a dialogue is flowing, an understanding develops in the mind, allowing a vision of the other person’s point of view and their differing perspective. Their beliefs and philosophies no longer seem strange and obscure, and your fears about them diminish or even vaporise completely.
When you start to hear and listen intently, you begin to understand that they are in as much fear and pain about you as you are about them. Don’t forget that beliefs and philosophies come from knowledge gained over decades of experience, and it is not possible to explain those beliefs to another in one sentence or even a thousand.
When you listen intently, you become absorbed in the meaning and significance of their words and eventually realise that you have in fact much more in common than the perceived differences.
Words are the tool we use to express ourselves in the best way we can. Words, though, are very limited in scope and rely on a common dictionary of understanding. That dictionary is a personal one constructed over those same decades of experience. In the communication stage, which can take many years itself, the dictionaries coalesce into a common frame of reference, and the eventual understanding unites into a complete whole.
At this point, you will realise that your enemy has become, if not a friend, someone who is no longer a threat, providing you with a wonderful sense of freedom. This freedom means you can, at last, be yourself, express yourself, and start to take down the walls you erected as protection for that central core.
Understanding Oneself
Understanding oneself is probably the most difficult part of our journey called life. The language of YOU is unique, so you cannot learn it like you would French or German. Our language is intricately tied to our perception of life and the way we view the transition between the two states of birth and death.
We can only understand ourselves in relation to others, and through this interaction, we receive feedback from them that helps our boundaries take shape. This feedback may be direct, through castigation, admonishment, or reprimand, or could be more subtle, such as societal rules, religious dogma, and other insidious and vacuous limits.
Sometimes, those vacuous limits oppose an inherent facet of your personality, causing an internal struggle to suppress it so that it no longer surfaces or shows itself to other people, and particularly to you. If you cannot see it, it doesn’t exist. This struggle intensifies when your body contradicts who you feel you are inside.
For me, experiencing gender dysphoria means I have to not only endure society’s view of transsexuals but my own phobia against it. I hated myself and what I represented. You see, I am part of society, so I have taken on board their view of me. As you can see, suppressing such a condition is indeed a no-win situation. It is perhaps more difficult to experience than other conditions, as many people still do not understand it and thus attack what they do not comprehend.
Most people are unwilling to examine themselves in sufficient detail to achieve this level of self-awareness. They prefer the oblivious route until they realise they have ended up in oblivion. Not a nice place to be.
Watching your thoughts and actions helps you discover the you inside, allowing you to discard the baggage you have carried since birth. If you use the reflection other people provide for you, it is possible to release most, if not all, of your misperceptions.
By understanding yourself, you begin to feel and experience the freedom that this brings.
So begins the next stage.
Freedom
Freedom is a vital stage in the spiral, as you cannot move further until you have experienced what it is like to just BE. Freedom comes from the understanding that there is nothing to fear from outside sources, nothing to fear from the beliefs of others. It is only your own fears that you are fearful of, that weigh you down; the fear of fear itself.
This cycle of fear can be debilitating, preventing you from interacting with those around you. It is, though, those around you who can help you to face the fear and do it anyway, as Susan Jeffers says in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.
Freedom for Others
Giving others freedom supports them as they navigate their own path to self-discovery. Not judging them opens up their doors to opportunities where they can express themselves without fear of admonishment and criticism, as they learn to push against their own boundaries.
Giving other people freedom means they no longer have to act as the mirror that reflects back to you the parts of you that you prefer not to acknowledge. You see, people play roles for us, and sometimes, that role is an immensely difficult one.
To be the challenger, the agent provocateur, is something they signed up for before incarnating with you. The most demanding of challengers are those who love you the most, as they have accepted to play the most gruelling of roles. The greatest gift you can give to your challenger is their release from that role, allowing them to work and examine themselves in minute detail to clear away the issues and suffering they are prompting within you. Divesting yourself of that particular baggage provides them the opportunity to step from the stage and discover the parts you are reflecting for them.
Please remember, “The greatest gift you can give to your challenger is to release them from playing that role.”
Freedom for Oneself
Fear comes from the beliefs and philosophies you built over decades when you were not allowed to be just YOU. The people around you dictated what you must be and do to remain in their good books. Those people ruled and dictated because they didn’t want to deal with your idiosyncrasies; they essentially cracked the mirror that you were for them, you being that constant reminder, a reflector for the bits of themselves they hated most and were not prepared to honour. They manipulated you to stop their fear surfacing.
Your beliefs are no longer working, if they ever did, and have become a dead weight holding you down as you carry them with you from decade to decade, adding to them constantly as you journey through life. Beliefs become distorted and warped, inaccurate and biased to such an extent that they prevent you from growing and evolving into a fully expressed, fully open human being.
Freedom arises from the willingness to communicate with another person on their level, bringing with it a communion that becomes greater than the sum of the parts.
Freedom arises from the commitment to delve into the deepest cracks of your mind and psyche, dismantling and clearing yourself of old, worn-out beliefs and views to discover the soul residing within.
Freedom is not given to you by others. It is something that only you can gain for yourself by working through your difficulties and self-imposed boundaries, and by being willing to see other possibilities for viewing the world. Freedom is something you feel.
As one discovers and enters the canyon of freedom to be oneself, what emerges is freedom of choice. And thus begins the next stage of the spiral.
Choices
Choices are a fundamental rule of life. We all make them all the time. We cannot go through life without choices. At any particular crossroads, we may turn left or right, or choose to stay where we are. Even if we do nothing, we are still making a choice.
Choices for Others
Choices can be made for other people, but beware, as this will ultimately turn against you. Deciding what is good or bad, wrong or right for someone not only affects your growth as a human being, but it also monumentally affects that person much more. It stops in its tracks any potential growth they may be destined for and seriously inhibits their ability to learn from their own mistakes, mistakes that are essential for creating their particular map through life, complete with cul-de-sacs, blind alleys, bridges and glorious, green-soaked hills and valleys.
Foisting your own beliefs, philosophies and ideals, be they religious, political or racially motivated, onto your family, children, work colleagues or friends, anyone, can subject them to boundaries which will ultimately do them no good and, in fact, will actually do them considerable harm. It is important, then, to allow people to grow in accordance with their own journey rather than what you perceive to be ‘best for them’. Who are you to judge?
If you constantly give people fish to eat on a daily basis, you will be as tied to them as they will be tied to you. Not a very good and productive relationship. If you feel that you are made ‘whole’ by looking after another person, need them to serve an emotional need, and always become the rescuer, then perhaps you should look inward to discover the epicentre of this feeling. You cannot rescue another, and so by definition, cannot be rescued. You can only rescue yourself.
It is far better to teach people to fish so that they can feed themselves for a lifetime. Rather an overused metaphor, but it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Choices for Ourselves
And this is where it gets really interesting, if not downright challenging. It is impossible to grow, to learn, to evolve, unless we are willing to make choices, choices that sometimes (mostly) don’t have the desired outcome.
Fear usually gets in the way, and this comes from past choices, through repeated experience, prompting us to gaze into our crystal ball, trying to predict the possibilities in discovery of the ‘what if’s’; ‘what if’s’ that never happen, of course, since these are simply a construction of the egoic mind. We can move from worry to anxiety to fear to terror to paralysis, seeing mole hills becoming mountains right before our eyes. This is what happened to me.
We can, if we so wish, abdicate our choices to others for them to make, but this route has considerable disadvantages. This is what happened to me.
From a young child to my adult years, every time I made a choice —whether at home, school, or work —the people around me suggested that it would be wrong. It didn’t matter the choice or decision or even the subject; it was always wrong, and by extension, I was always wrong.
There comes a point where this constant derision and ridicule stick. We eventually give up. We become so downtrodden and demoralised that we look for a way to survive the onslaught. And so begins the abdication.
The result is devastating. Fear and anxiety are your constant companions, walking beside you everywhere you travel, an incessant reminder of the ‘what ifs’ in front of your nose. By far the greatest impact is the resentment you build for those in control. This too walks with you unless you choose to reclaim your Self.
Acquiescing control is just one of the consequences of not making any choices. The eventual explosion of your anger and resentment once the limits and boundaries are broken, surprises everyone, and most of all you. This is what happened to me.
So begins the next stage.
Consequences
Consequences are born directly from choices. It is said that life is about the choices one makes and accepting the consequences of those choices.
In my childhood, I learnt very quickly that when I made a choice, no matter what it was, someone else would say I was wrong. This ‘wrongness’ definition originated from my parents, siblings, and peers, both at school and later, as well as my work colleagues. It became clear to me that I had to let other people make the choices for me because in that way, I could never be wrong.
I realised that, if I abdicated my choices, I could relinquish all consequences. Life for me then was learning to make no choices, and thus I could ignore any potential consequences. I allowed them all in sundry to make those choices for me. This, I thought, was the easy way out, a simple strategy that would help me survive the journey of my life. As it turns out, I could not have been more wrong because ‘easy’ was the last thing I got.
Life, though, has a way of catching up with you. Making choices is the only way one can learn to correct them the next time. Allowing others to make those choices short-circuits the learning process, which severely hinders your personal evolution as a human being. How can one evolve if nothing ever goes wrong? How can one grow if one asks permission from others all the time? If one deliberates fully before taking a step, one will spend life on one leg.
We grow because of the mistakes we make in life. Mistakes are the dark side of our existence, for without them, life would be very bland, uninteresting and shallow. Would we really become something different to what we are now without that shadow constantly eclipsing our journey?
I managed to forget life for decades, living a life that wasn’t my own, a life dictated by those around me. My life, and my shadow, caught me in 1994 when I attended four funerals and a wedding, was made redundant after 21 years in the same job, and my wife left to live with another. All in the space of 7 months.
That year was painful in the extreme simply because I was unprepared and ill-equipped for the onslaught of trauma and suffering that came very quickly bubbling to the surface from all those unmade choices and even less, feeling the consequences of those choices. I had no experience dealing with these events. It wasn’t just a grey overshadow but a dark night of the soul, a night that was destined to become years.
It is said that we journey until the pain of where we are exceeds the pain of the unknown, should we break the shell of the chrysalis. My life was pain, pain and yet more pain. If all you experience is pain, it eventually becomes comfortable and familiar, a friend of sorts. You don’t want to rock the boat by climbing out, so you stay in the vessel that has become your life’s boat, your floating home. The external events of 1994 became the iceberg that my boat struck, and I began to sink. I drifted in the ocean of the unknown for months, grasping at the remains of the chrysalis that used to be my only protection.
1994 was a particularly strange year, as it became the catalyst for my undoing, yet also served as my Phoenix, as I grasped at the opportunity to rebuild from the ashes created by my destruction. The fight had gone, the anger had gone, and something new took its place.
This was a new vision of me ‘going through instead of around’. Before, I had fought against choices and problems, wanting only to ignore them. After that point, everything was up for grabs, including all my fears and doubts. All my problems and struggles vanished as I looked headlong into all that I was scared and terrified of. The box, my Pandora’s Box, which had been carried for decades, containing those fears, was opened, and everything came tumbling out, pouring piecemeal over the floor, obliterating my feet in the process. By looking, they vanish; by looking, they evaporate into insignificance.
Was I scared of the challenge? Yes, absolutely. But I looked and witnessed the destruction of my fears as they passed through me on their own journey towards oblivion. I had to feel the pain and the terror that was compressed into that Box, the pain that I had stuffed for decades.
This, though, was my choice.
So, we all make choices, we all have consequences, and we all have responsibilities. It doesn’t matter if you try to abdicate them to someone else. Eventually, those choices will arrive at your doorstep for you to deal with. The experience I went through in 1994 showed me that it is far better to let choices happen gradually, like a dripping tap, rather than allowing them to build up and then explode all at once, like a volcano.
This, though, was my choice.
Responsibilities
This portion of the spiral may be the one where you stay the longest, trying to understand responsibility and ultimately discover the willingness to accept it. You may get sucked down in the quicksand that is your belief, a belief that tells you everyone else is to blame; their fault, never yours.
We are swamped with adverts offering no-win, no-fee promises, ambulance chasers advancing hundreds of pounds with the potential of taking your employer to court. We become impotent, subjugated, malleable, controllable, always looking to discover who we can accuse for a situation that we ourselves created. We look for a scapegoat, a culprit; never us, we are the victim.
It is very easy to get drawn into the possibility of wiping out our debts since the current financial climate has fostered the idea of lack, of scarcity, of not enough. Don’t forget the term ‘No pain, no gain’. Well, it is as true here as when you are trying to exercise to become fitter. Here, though, you asked to experience intense pain, a broken limb, a broken back, complex operations and months, if not years, of recovery and hospital treatments.
I myself would rather look out for the pothole in the road, the slightly raised pavement slab, the wobbly ladder, the motorcyclist, the ditzy driver, all those minor inconveniences that could potentially become a huge disruption to our lives.
This ultimately comes back to the choices we make and the consequences that follow.
We are ultimately responsible for ourselves, our reactions to other people, and our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Someone may say or do something that causes a reaction within you, be it sadness, anger, rage, or a myriad of other emotions. It is easy to blame them, but did they really make you feel this or that? No, they merely triggered something within you that brought to the surface suppressed events that were years, if not decades, old. They became the reminder of something that you hoped had gone, but not forgotten.
No one will deny that responding to deeply buried emotion is difficult. In fact, it can be excruciating at times. Your responsibility is to face these emotions, to look at them intently, to blame no one else, for you made the choice to experience what you experienced. The choice was made before you incarnated into your current manifestation. You agreed to dance with your ‘perpetrators’ in a pre-prepared symphony of struggles, tussles and wrestling matches to learn and experience more about yourself as a soul and as a human being.
For me, realising that I made all the choices helped me to feel empowered rather than subjugated and dominated. What I discovered within was liberation and the letting go of a victim mentality, a freedom I had not felt before.
Honesty
This part of the spiral is crucial, as it enables us to look inward and discover whether we are truly able and willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of our choices.
Honesty with Others
Integrity begets honesty. Honesty begets trust.
Trust is therefore a vital ingredient in relationships, whether within a marriage or partnership, with a close friend, work colleagues, or simply with a casual acquaintance. Honesty is about being truthful and genuine. Honesty imbues confidence in those around you that you will be responsible for your actions.
My heart warms from the knowledge that I am trusted, trusted to do what is right. My relationships with people benefit immensely from my honesty. And I, theirs.
Honesty cannot be faked. Honesty is coloured from a palette of morality and ethical concerns stirred in with a gigantic portion of compassion. Morality and ethics stem not from religion, but from the natural human condition of cooperation, alliance, partnership, and loyalty. Collaboration works; conflict doesn’t.
One must, however, acknowledge that not all of our choices necessarily yield their predicted outcome. Taking responsibility for events that succeed is easy.
What is not so easy is when these events fail to achieve the expected results. Fear surfaces from within, forcing us to divert attention away from ourselves and towards our chosen scapegoat. Many act this way, particularly those in big business and politics, where it eventually becomes second nature, an insidious habit that is hard to break. Some will deliberately lie or withhold information that proves innocence, thus allowing the unaware and the innocent to be admonished or reprimanded.
Lest you forget, these acts of deceit will return sooner or later (usually sooner than later), climbing back up through the cracks when you least expect them, when you are at your most unguarded and careless, to remind you of your totally unacceptable and obnoxious behaviour. What goes around, comes around, sort of thing.
Honesty with Oneself
Probably more important, though, is the need to be truthful, honest and completely frank with yourself. The head-in-the-sand mentality is a methodology that is long past its sell-by date. Ignoring what is parked inches from your nose is truly perplexing and is certainly not conducive to your mental state. Ignoring what should be obvious just adds to the emotional and mental baggage we carry with us for decades.
In my struggles with gender dysphoria, I was anything but honest. I knew deep within that hormone therapy (oestrogen tablets and anti-testosterone injections) was probably the most significant answer to my continued journey towards self-acceptance, but I could not be frank enough with my partner, my family and the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Clinic doctors. How can one be honest with others unless you are truly honest with oneself?
After spending countless hours researching online and in books, I found information describing the numerous negative experiences of patients at Gender Clinics. My views became coloured by theirs, severely inhibiting my own expression, which undoubtedly led to the belief that my experience would be the same. My inhibition rose from fear of the possible consequences in my relationships with family, friends, and, in particular, that with my partner, whom I loved dearly. Add to this the health consideration of the possible side effects of the medication, and it is not surprising that I was stressed to the hilt.
Although I didn’t lie to the doctors, I did tailor my responses to their questions, and consequently, prevented them from forming a correct diagnosis for me as an individual. We are, after all, on a continuum with no one actually being the standard transsexual, no one being the standard man or woman. This significantly delayed my continued journey towards a proper diagnosis, and thus, I started hormones as late as 2008, when I could have begun them much earlier had I chosen to be honest. I felt tethered between Gender Clinic appointments as though they were the problem when, in fact, it was actually me all along. I cannot blame them for this and must accept responsibility for my own actions. I was not honest with myself and thus could not communicate effectively with them.
I was unable or unwilling to express these fears and concerns to those closest to me, and thus, they could not understand how I was feeling. Had they been able to understand my situation, I am sure they would have been much more supportive of my particular journey. Had I voiced my fears to them earlier, my journey to self-acceptance would not have been delayed by so many years.
The saying ‘honesty is the best policy’ is as right as it has ever been.
Are you able to express yourself fully and completely?
Can you be honest with yourself and those in your life?
If not, perhaps you need to rest within this part of the spiral just a bit longer so you can accept the consequences.
Openness
Openness is about the giving of oneself, about being able to express what is in the heart and mind and spirit, both fully and completely. Nothing is held back, nothing is hidden, nothing is taboo, nothing is secret. Everything is on show for everyone to see; not physically, you understand, but spiritually, mentally and emotionally. Expression is as important to us as it is to the person who is listening to your words of hope, courage, and wisdom.
If you have arrived thus far, then you will be providing others with the opportunity to follow, to travel the same, if not similar, paths that you have. You become a pebble dropped into still waters, an example for what is possible. Your words come not from books, workshops, or theory, but from life experience and an understanding of ‘what is,’ and this allows people to reflect before embarking on their own journey. Your collection of books, films, and t-shirts provides an indication of your level of experience in matters of the heart, mind, and spirit.
Being open can affect people in different ways, and most find it quite challenging. Some shy away from you as they find it difficult to voice their own life troubles. Some will listen and then reciprocate as the boundaries fall away, giving them space to articulate their struggles and distress. And some will be ready to explode, having finally discovered a kindred spirit willing to hear them.
By becoming an example, people will see that all is not lost, that there is hope and optimism for transformation and release. There is a very fine line to tread when being open.
When I first joined the spiritual path in 1994, I soon discovered that the self-created boundaries were starting to wither. The more they withered, the more I was able to express myself in ways previously inaccessible to me. I preached spirituality. Much to my chagrin, I acted like those born-again Christians who had just found Jesus; preaching, preaching and moralising, and yet more preaching. I realised I had become the very thing I had despised in others.
As our boundaries are shattered, we search for that limit once again, hoping to rediscover the protective prison. Prisons can be comfortable, as everything is done for you and you have no discernible responsibility. You will never find those limits again, that prison, as they were forced on you by other people. It is difficult, but you will have to set your own boundaries.
As our boundaries are shattered, we explode outward, affecting many with our newfound freedom. Many, though, will see this as a negative and would rather be without your presence as you come across as preachy, telling everyone who will listen of your newly found treasure.
As you start to discover your limits again, preaching lessens to become a subtle mention when asked, and then eventually achieves a state of rest when you find that just being yourself affects many more people than when speaking from your version of the pulpit.
Are you ready to tackle authenticity?
Authenticity
Authenticity is about the masks and disguises we wear throughout life. We choose different guises depending on the company we are currently with. For our family, it may be this one, for our friends, we choose another and for our working environment, yet another.
We may wear one mask, some or even all. We benefit greatly from the masks, so we grow a dependency on them and thus become reluctant to let them fall away. Over time, we may forget that we stand behind these facades, believing we are them, and fail to notice that our inner core is still there, untouched at our centre.
All these masks hide different portions of ourselves, protecting them from being visible. We manufactured our masks because they once played a vital role in minimising the hurt we felt as we grew from a baby into an adult. There does come a point, though, where a particular mask thickens to such an extent that it becomes a hindrance rather than a simple veil. It is time, then, to let it go.
- Are you ready to let the masks fall?
- Do you realise you are not your masks?
It may take many passes of the spiral to shed our veneers completely, and you may actually select a few to retain as these conceal some important aspect of yourself that no one is allowed to see. Certain masks, though, could actually prevent you from seeing these same aspects, and there in the danger lies. To be truly authentic, all the masks have to fall away, must be dropped, as people will still not be able to see the authentic, real you.
- Are there experiences in your life that the mask obscures that you would prefer people not to see?
- Are there still aspects that you yourself would rather hide from?
- Do you still remain behind the masks?
Vulnerability
If you have arrived thus far on your trek around the spiral, then you have reached a point of resolution, just one of many potential resolutions. The vulnerability of which I speak is not weakness, defencelessness, feebleness or impotence. I speak of power and strength, of ability and skill, of capacity and promise, of being visible and unmistakable. What was once hypothetical becomes possible.
Arriving here means you have let go of all that once defined you as a person and as a human being. Arriving here means you no longer have a belief or philosophy to defend. Arriving here means that people will be able to see the real you and not some construct created in defence of that inner core.
You rest in the knowledge that the time spent dismantling the wall you built around you to protect your inner self from being corrupted by others was spent wisely. You rest in a space of harmony with yourself and, in particular, those around you, discovering what people actually are; mirrors reflecting the parts of you that you are reluctant to see. You rest in the wisdom of the person you have now become, relaxing in the serenity of the now, the present moment.
Vulnerability means dying. Not literally, you understand, but metaphorically. What has died are the beliefs and philosophies that no longer serve, those that prevent you from developing and maturing into fully expressing the soul residing within.
Giving others the opportunity to view your soul in its entirety affects them in profound ways, ways that ripple constantly in their own soul and mind, preparing them for their own voyage around the spiral.
There can be no greater gift than allowing your soul to be fully seen by another. This is the true meaning of intimacy, ‘into me you see’. Vulnerability is not about giving in and allowing subjugation or conquest. It is about strength of heart, strength of wisdom and strength of mind. It is about being defenceless.
Are you ready to be defenceless?
The Common Factor
Yes, there is a common factor. Have you noticed the thread passing through the text, a familiar, recognisable something wending its way across the map that is this composition? Have you noticed the amount of text relating to the individual? The answer is you, the self, the soul, the human being. You, dear reader, are the common thread, the common factor.
First, let me ask you a question: How do you think you can change the world? It has a simple answer: you can only start with yourself. You cannot change anyone else or the world around you; if you try, that is called controlling behaviour and never works. At some point, it will always come back and bite you on the bum. And this won’t be just small nips; it will be huge chunks of flesh.
What I ask is that you be selfish. Not in a narcissistic, conceited, egotistical way, but one where you are willing to look deeply within the psyche in the discovery of the epicentre of your suffering and your pain. Your world is that perceived through your senses, your beliefs and your philosophy. You can only be released from your suffering and pain by altering your perception of that world. No easy task.
Transforming your perception can have profound effects on you. It is like casting a pebble into the still waters of your emotions, watching until the ripples arrive at the distant shores of your consciousness. Only this time, instead of being scattered and diffused, they create huge patterns of acceptance on the sandy beach. Acceptance is the pathway to healing.
When preparing to look within, don’t underestimate the resistance you will feel during the duration of your study and release. Acceptance and resistance are direct opposites. As you peel back the layers of the emotional onion, periods of acceptance follow periods of resistance, and sometimes they are experienced at the same time. The secret is to let go of any pattern as the liberation takes its own course. Any resistance you place on the route simply diverts the course down blind alleys and cul-de-sacs, which act only to extend the healing and releasing time.
I remind you of the statement ‘Resistance is Futile’ here. It is frequently used by the Borg from Star Trek to instil fear in their victims.
In The Spiral Loop
Yes, you will have to travel the spiral, the Spiral of Liberation, again and again in a rhythmically flowing voyage, continually finessing who you are. Every time, though, it is from a very different perspective, your former self gradually becoming a ghostly echo of who you are now, a misty fog gently clearing away to expose the soul within.
Gone are the walls (and yes, we do build more than one), gone is the collected rubbish you have been carrying for decades and gone is the view that others are the cause of your problems. There is a sense of freedom that permeates through your whole being, a freedom that is conspicuous and tangible, a freedom that opens your heart to its fullest, allowing you to see and be seen.
Your new spectacles steadily lose their effectiveness, allowing your own eyes to see and experience the contrast between the real and the manufactured, the difference between what is useful and what hinders. Your perception changes profoundly, your senses heighten, and you begin to see life as a wonderful experience. You communicate with ease, a feeling not previously experienced, and at a much deeper level, not only with yourself but also with other people.
I merely offer here a seed of infinite possibility for you to plant, water, and nurture in your own time and space. Will you grasp the opportunity?
In essence, it’s all a matter of perception, a different way of seeing.
Next on the agenda is how the discovery of the influences in our lives affects us, sometimes more than we expect. Seeds are sown for us by the people and events that happen during the time we follow the map we designed before incarnating to experience them. The many blind alleys we find ourselves in are the result not of bad choices but because we need to feel trapped and isolated from other people who, we think, may help us find the original path.
Standing on our own two feet, feeling our way with our fingertips, and gingerly moving over the rough surface of the walls provides greater opportunities to evolve than having someone hold our hand. If we were to be smothered and restrained all the time, how would we actually evolve?