12/4/2009 WWW - Freeintofull.com Bruce Oom

Awake
A true story of humor, love, suffering and enlightenment
12/4/2009
www.freeintofull.com
Bruce Oom
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Awake
Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 3
Awake ............................................................................................................................. 6
Pleasure ....................................................................................................................... 6
Failure and recovery ................................................................................................ 6
Synchronicity ........................................................................................................ 12
Lust ....................................................................................................................... 15
1st Books................................................................................................................ 22
1st Gateway ............................................................................................................ 27
Pain ........................................................................................................................... 29
The calm before the storm ..................................................................................... 29
Attachment ............................................................................................................ 37
The Good, the bad and the ugly. ............................................................................ 44
Marathons.............................................................................................................. 49
Dissapointment ...................................................................................................... 52
Disempowerment ................................................................................................... 58
Leaving ................................................................................................................. 65
Inquiry....................................................................................................................... 68
Arrival ................................................................................................................... 68
On the path ............................................................................................................ 71
Teaching ................................................................................................................ 76
Meditation ............................................................................................................. 80
Travelling .............................................................................................................. 92
Donna .................................................................................................................... 98
Tony Robbins ...................................................................................................... 108
Face Everything Avoid Nothing........................................................................... 115
Returning Home ...................................................................................................... 119
Focus/intuition ..................................................................................................... 119
Farewell............................................................................................................... 125
Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

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Meeting the right people ...................................................................................... 128

Absolute Failure ...................................................................................................... 136
Giving power away.............................................................................................. 136
Missed opportunities ............................................................................................ 142
Holding on........................................................................................................... 145
Faith Crises.......................................................................................................... 149
Breaking Patterns................................................................................................. 153
Following heart.................................................................................................... 161
Awakening .............................................................................................................. 166
Helplessness ........................................................................................................ 166
Second Chance .................................................................................................... 169
Mei ...................................................................................................................... 174
Big Mind ............................................................................................................. 187
Natural Goodness ................................................................................................ 195
Unconditional Self Responsibility ........................................................................ 197
Tonglen ............................................................................................................... 201
Discipline and Faith ............................................................................................. 203
Clear Land ........................................................................................................... 210
Love (the heart opens) ......................................................................................... 221
Being Human....................................................................................................... 227
Awake. ................................................................................................................ 234
Epilogue. Ramblings on Liberation. ..................................................................... 238
Introduction
Hi, I am Bruce. I wrote this story after a spiritual awakening journey I went through. Are
you interested in what the inner experience of awakening is like, and what it feels and looks
like from that place of awareness? Would you like to know what a path to awakening
entails? If you can complete it, this book will take you on that journey, and help you to feel
and see that experience.

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And why seek awakening? Imagine if you were unconditionally free, no matter what.
Imagine if you were free to choose in the moment how you wish to be, instead of being
controlled by your habits and your surroundings. Imagine if you were free to create the life
you really wanted, and you knew it was possible and had confidence you could achieve that.
Who wouldn‟t want this?
This little book is simply written and straightforward, and from the heart. It‟s my story, and I
have tried to share my path, going from being okay with life, heading into suffering, realizing
that my inner world had something to do with the results I was getting in life, and then
committing to a path of inquiry and transformation in search of my ultimate freedom and
love. I went through many challenges on the way, and I have tried to share some of those.
The book ends with my attempt to describe some of the key realizations I had, and how the
world appears through a lens of all embracing love and unity consciousness.
I can‟t prove what happened here. My proof is my testimony, and my beliefs and
understandings of the world come from my experience. They may give way to new truths
and realizations as new insights emerge, and so, in a sense, the book is simply my path to a
station on an ever unfolding journey, and the journey itself will continue to educate and
evolve me. Along the way, I had what is called a kundalini awakening, or the Holy Spirit
came into me, and that started to release an ever unfolding series of spiritual insights. Of
course, each path is different, and some may be easier or more difficult. Some masters say
that suffering is the first grace, and is often a motivator to begin the process of
transformation that can result in enlightenment.
This story is offered to you as a beacon of hope. I suspect that you, like me, dream a dream
of happiness and freedom, and given the choice, would choose love over suffering, wealth
and abundance over poverty and scarcity, peace over worry, connection over loneliness, and
ease over struggle. It may be, that you, just like I once was, are caught in a world of
difficulty, repetition and struggle, and is looking for a way out, yet there may seem like no
escape, no solution. I have reached somewhere. After a misspent youth, I am balanced, free
from bad habits, free to choose in the moment, and I am slowly taking clear creative actions

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towards my goals and starting to get some of the things I want. I know, beyond a shadow
of a doubt, that Spirit is both helping me and powering me, and I am experiencing the fruits
of Spirit, such as confidence, vision, joy, abundance and trust. Most importantly, I am at
ease, at peace, and that is perhaps the highest blessing. First, I had to heal before I could
create, and in many ways this book is a journey of healing, of becoming whole, so I can
finally begin to create a life that reflects my destiny.
I am not offering a quick and easy recipe for success, or a magic painless bullet that you can
swallow that will make everything okay. Yes, the magic bullet exists as your awareness, if
you can only trust that, yet the journey to learning how to trust Spirit is sometimes long and
hard as your deepest beliefs about life have to be confronted, and you have to learn a new
way of being. The search for awakening is notoriously difficult, as you need to confront the
inertia of your habitual self and your fear and your doubt, and the masters say that you
should commit to practice with the urgency of a man whose hair is on fire searching for a
pond.
Don‟t let that deter you though. I hungered for awakening, for the supposedly unattainable,
impossible realization. I had to accept that it was possible for me.
Perhaps I can say just one more thing to you.
It‟s possible for you too. If you want it.
Love and blessings
Bruce

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Awake
Pleasure
Journey Home
The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my
voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most
intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander
through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!'
The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the
world with the flood of the assurance `I am!'
Rabindranath Tagore
Failure and recovery
At school, I was a bright kid. Academics were my strength, and if I chose, I could get
whatever results I wanted. I used to go to an all boys high school, where I spent my days
surrounded by 1000 testosterone filled awkward teenagers. We were in the time of
apartheid and extreme censorship. When I was 13, my classmate Craig bought a picture to
school of a topless woman from a magazine his dad had smuggled into the country. It was
the first time I had seen nipples. I think the whole class had an erection. I‟m pretty sure
Justin Evans came right there and then, because his glasses misted up and he had to run for
the bathroom. I was a typical kid. Skinny and tall, I had braces on my teeth that were
difficult to clean, and I loved sport, even though I never made the top teams. I did play for
the first tennis side on occasion though, where I usually lost heavily. Besides academics, I
was also good at procrastination and performing below my potential. I never worried about
achievement; I always figured I could pull it off when push came to shove. In the eighth

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grade, I was classified as an underachiever, and I had to keep a daily record of my

performance in class, which was signed by the teacher of the lesson. I was supposed to take
the report home on Fridays and get my parents to sign it, and then return it on Mondays to
the school department head. I usually forgot the thing in my shirt pocket when I went home
on Friday afternoons, and it would be destroyed in the weekend wash. On Mondays, when I
tried to produce the destroyed report, I would be caned for irresponsible behavior. Caning
stung for a few minutes, and then the pain was over. I learnt that pain was transient.
In the ninth grade, I was demoted to a lower class, where I enjoyed the pleasure of being
an average student, away from A class kids, who only cared about who got what result. I
cared more about having a little fun in life, like pea shooting your friend in the ear, or
cracking cocky comments at cute teachers, like saying „Do you want a screw, Miss?‟, then
holding up a carpenters screw. In the tenth grade, towards the end of the year, I read in
the school manual that school colors would be awarded if students achieved a certain
average. The final exams of the year were heavily weighted, which was in my favor, as my
results for the year had been mediocre. I calculated what results I needed, and did a little
studying. After I got the results, I had to remind my teachers that I was also eligible for
school colors for academics, and that by school law they had to award them to me too. I got
what I wanted. I eventually graduated from high school with a first class average and full
school honors.
Cocky, arrogant and peacock like, I strutted to university to do a degree in engineering. The
first year was easy. Besides the beer and the drunken stumbling attempts at picking up
female students, I passed my exams without difficulty. „Nothing to this‟, I thought, and I
headed into the second year. I started smoking pot, and I found surfing much more fun than
studying the thermodynamics of industrial boilers. Lectures considered of scribbling down
equations from a blackboard which some squint engineering professor had chalked up. This
wasn‟t education. This was an experience in memorization and exams were regurgitation. I
learned more from surfing, and smoking pot, and listening to Jimi Hendrix orgasmically
playing „The star spangled banner‟, than from pretending to be interested in partial
differentials.
Somehow I maintained my illusion that I would still pass the year. I would drive my old Mini
Cooper to university every morning, listening to the radio for the surf report. If the wind was

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blowing offshore and surf was up, I would turn left down the tree lined Berea Road instead
of driving up the hill towards college, and drive straight to the beach. I could always
photocopy the notes that I needed so passing would be no problem. It came to exams and I
stayed up all night before each exam, cramming information into my head, drinking too
much coffee, grimly looking like the freshly dead in the morning. In my ignorance, I thought
that my exams had gone okay. It was a cool sunny mid winters day when I went to check
my results. „Probably somewhere in the 60‟s,‟, I thought, „Not enough to get a first, but
passing is all I need.‟ I scanned the boards for my results. It took a while to find my number
in the endless white lists of thousands of anonymous students. I looked at the numbers,
eager to go and get some food, and thinking about the party later that night. I found my
numbers. There must have been a mistake. How could I have so radically overestimated my
ability? I averaged about 38%.
I started, stunned. My face went red with instant shame; my heart started pounding and
beating in my chest. „Calm down,‟ I thought. I felt screwed. My family could not afford to
pay for my tuition, and I had taken a student loan. The renewal of the loan was conditional
on passing the exams. I would have to repeat the year, and I didn‟t know how to pay. My
home situation was also a mess. Dad was drinking too much, and mom and dad had
recently separated after 18 years of marriage. I thought that I hadn‟t been affected by my
home situation, but years later, I would only begin to understand the impact of what had
happened at home. For now, I was in it deep. I ran away from the board, hoping I wouldn‟t
meet anyone I knew so I wouldn‟t have to tell anyone my results. The steps disappeared
under my feet; the concrete became rubber. I was in shock, deeply shaken. I did the
responsible thing. I went and got high, and convinced myself that it didn‟t matter.
I still wanted a degree. Leaving university was not an option, and neither was remaining a
down and out failure. I did some research, and I had a lot of credits for chemistry. I could
register as a part time student the following year, do one chemistry course, and then I could
get back on track the following year, and graduate with a chemistry and applied chemistry
degree. By doing that, my fees would be a lot less, and then I could get a loan again.
Besides, I could go surfing with all my free time. I regretted not continuing engineering. I
really wanted to be a chemical engineer, but for the wrong reasons. I wanted the status and
the money, and I wanted to be a successful professional. I had no love for the heat
conductivity of pipes. The only thing I really loved was the sight of oil refineries at night.

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One of the most beautiful and striking sights I ever saw was the mass of complex tangled
steel at a national refinery, several silver kilometers long, with flames burning up towards
the sky. The enormity of the refineries was overwhelming, and I was awed by the
complexity and brilliance of the design, the shining steel and the rasping jets of steam. I still
have a sadness that I did not continue with engineering. I threw away what I had begun to
build up, taking the easiest option I could find. My life has often been one of annihilation, or
breaking down, of throwing away what is valuable. It‟s a cycle that has repeated itself many
times, and it‟s been a journey to understand this destructiveness, this death instinct that
repeatedly reared it‟s premature scathing head. There is something about destruction; there
is an elegant simplicity in rubble and broken pieces, and a stark clarity in death. When there
is emptiness, there is a raw beauty and there are no further questions. It‟s like winter; if you
still have hope, there is the possibility of a fresh start unfolding in the spring. There is also a
deep sadness standing among anything that has been broken. It may be among the ruins of
shattered dreams, of vacant hearts longing for love but secretly admitting failure, of empty
spirits staring out from the eyes of beggars and homeless amputees, of failed mystics with
lives numbed by the relentless thrashing of their souls.
I always got up again and kept going after failure. I paid a little more attention to my
studies, and did my tutorials. I raised my average and got accepted with a full scholarship
into the chemistry honors program of one of the top universities in the country. I repeated
my cycle of crash and burn, barely passing some of my honors courses, acing others. I was
accepted into a top Masters program, again with full scholarship, which I breezed through,
after which I entered my first job as an environmental manager. Before long, I had a new
car, a housing allowance, bonuses and annual leave.
The day I got my first new fuel injected car was interesting. My colleague drove me through
the wide South African streets to the dealer where the car was waiting for me. I should have
been excited. I was glad that I wouldn‟t have to deal with my 12 year old car breaking down
every time it started raining heavily. I had stood too many times in the cold rain, spraying
water repellant into the electrics trying to get that old piece of steel to start. I walked into
the dealership, and there was my shining new white possession, gleaming like an impeccable
ice-cream on the black workshop floor. I walked towards the object of my happiness, and
got in. I felt the steering wheel smooth in my hands, and shifted the effortless gear shift. I
tested the indicators, and with reassuring Japanese efficiency, they all seemed to work. I

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drove the car out the garage, new tires squealing on the spotless floor as I turned my first
tight turn. I felt a damp sponge-like depression, an overripe wave of waiting sadness lifting
through me. It was a feeling akin to finding out that the magician on stage was just a
trickster. There was a blend of disappointment, of anger at being duped. I sat in my car, and
I realized that I was that young professional I had always dreamed of being, sitting behind
the new car, driving to his cushy and sheltered job. I had stepped into the illusion of
happiness, and found that it was just an illusion. This piece of white steel, no matter how
reliable or technologically advanced, was nothing more than object. I leaned forward and
turned on the crystal clear German stereo system. The music was an empty clang in my
ears. I turned it off again. This car would not, and could not make me happy. I drove slowly,
dazed, through the streets. My mind drifted forward. Maybe happiness could be found in any
of the following. I made a list.
 a bigger car
 a bigger salary
 my face buried between grapefruit silicone breasts.
 a larger house
 stronger biceps
 endless traveling.
 dogs, TV and a wife
Every one of the items in the list seemed empty. I couldn‟t see myself hanging onto to this
job, being a grey and empty man in his forties, coming to work each day, popping
tranquilizers to deal with the hypertension. I watched my dad do that. He tried to hold onto
his money, his happiness, his houses. He loved his work for what it gave him, and how he
looked to the world. He loved being that guy behind the wheel of a Mercedes Benz or four
wheel drive imported Chevy, towing his boat to go fishing on Sunday mornings, and then
sitting drinking whiskey on the rocks with his buddies in the afternoon, while mom cooked
dinner and read the bible. He eventually lost his business. He lost his happiness. He lost
himself in endless bottles of tranquilizers, anti-depressants and the smell of his whisky
breath. I was seeking vibrancy and life. I wasn‟t seeking a career that excruciatingly slowly
nailed me to death, year by year, decade by decade, pension installment by pension
installment. I was already tired of medical plan consultants, and tired of the fear they tried
to strike into me. I wanted to die with nobility, like an animal that had braved the wildness
of this life and stood defeated by age, not by fear. I remember reading „The Glass Bead

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Game‟ by Hermann Hesse. The main protagonist, Joseph Knecht, died as an old man,
chasing after his young pupil into an icy alpine dam. He died living. He died chasing the next
wave of life sweeping through him. That‟s how I wanted to go. I didn‟t want to be old, grey,
fat, prone to heart attacks and spiritually dead before my 26th birthday, hanging onto the
reruns of an empty dream. I wanted to have a spark in my eye. Sadly, I didn‟t know anyone
living the western dream who shone with the light I wanted. (Besides, Maria, my work
colleague, who we will meet later).
Cars hooted. A red traffic light came near, and I carefully stopped my new car, waiting for
my turn to go. I tested out the windscreen wipers and the automatic washers. I hypnotically
watched the beads of soap falling diagonally to the side, swept by the washers and by the
howling wind. Trash blew across the road. I turned the sound system back on, tuning the
radio to a commercial party radio station. My mood lifted. My attention had shifted, and the
vision of a life of empty goals had disappeared into the empty space that consumes
thoughts, along with the pleading cries of the beggars by the car window, the smashing of a
boxer‟s fist, and the still beauty of azaleas in the African morning. I noticed the movie star
looking girl in the car next to me. She had a balanced smile, wore sunglasses over her
unspecified eyes, and allowed her straight black hair to drift in the wind through her open
window. I always loved straight black hair on women. My first love had been Mary Fisher,
who had long straight black hair, blue eyes and freckles. Her dad was a serious accountant,
yet always laughed at my bad jokes. I thought Mr. Fisher was great. I smiled at the girl next
to me. Maybe there was something to this car, and to my youth. I imagined kissing her, and
I bet she looked hot with her clothes off.
The traffic light turned to green, and I drove off. I smugly eyed myself in the rear view
mirror. „Who‟s that handsome fellow‟, I thought. And, for the first time, I got really proud of
myself. I had failed. I had come right, and got a decent degree and a professional
education. I had a job and a new car. I would get more things that I wanted, and live a
happy successful life, with loads of women, hot cars, big dogs, and my own boat one day. I
was strong and proud, and could do whatever I set my mind to. The commercials were
right; I would be young forever. I was in control. I was a success. The dream was real, and
there were many goals to reach, women to bed and beers to be drunk. The next car would
be a BMW. Without knowing, I had fallen straight back into the illusion that attainment and
pleasure would make me happy, and it would take me ten excruciating years to dig myself

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out of that grave. I was lost in the dream. The dream was going to make me happy. There
would no more major setbacks, and I was going to kick ass and have my kicks.
Synchronicity
Definition: „the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar
thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it
happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality -
- used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung‟ ..Mirriam and Webster Online Dictionary.
I had left Durban to study for my honors degree in Cape Town when I was 22. I had never
been to Cape Town before, and I had never heard the word synchronicity. I had caught an
airplane to Cape Town, with no idea where I would stay, with my life packed in two small
suitcases. That‟s how I liked to travel, I liked to go without a plan and see what happened.
Kind of made it fun, being on the edge, living outside the edges of control. On arrival I had a
hired car for two weeks, as an insurance benefit from my car in Durban that had just been
stolen. That day my car was stolen, I awoke in the 5 am summer heat to hear it being
started, and looked out the window at the horror of it being driven away by a stranger. I
took the theft as a sign it was time to leave, and applied for university in Cape Town that
afternoon. Being in a new city was exciting. I spent the first few days staying in the
university hostel, looking for a place to stay, and driving around. I was lucky; I found a place
with the sweet and huge hearted Kate Hassenflug, an Austrian immigrant, about 65 and 5
feet tall, who rented out rooms in her house to students. It was summer, and I had a two
week vacation and transport before class began.
Walking to a corner grocery store, lost in my thoughts, I bumped into an old friend called
Gareth. We had worked together as waiters in a Durban restaurant. I had always liked
Gareth. One time there was a wedding reception at the restaurant, I had gone upstairs to
clear some tables, and I saw the slightly drunk bride and Gareth kissing behind the door. I
couldn‟t believe it. She had only been married a few hours, and she was already having an
affair. She looked at me, put her fingers over her lipsticked lips, silently colluded me into
keeping her secret, and walked out, as dignified as a peacock. I was envious of Gareth. I

Copyright Bruce Oom 13
also wanted to have snap affairs behind the dining room doors with older women. I was 21
at the time.
„What are you doing in Cape Town?‟ Gareth asked.
„I came down to study. And you?‟
„I live here,‟ he replied. „Have you done any surfing yet?‟ I hadn‟t, and shook my head. „You
should go to Lundudno. It‟s cold compared to Durban, but there are always strong waves.‟ I
thanked him for the advice. We chatted for a while about parties, and then sauntered on
into the communal heat of our day.
The following morning, I got into my rented car, and drove to the beach. Cape Town is
glorious in the summer. Clean fresh air blows in after traveling for thousands of kilometers
over the South Atlantic, and the sandstone Table Mountain rises about 1000 meters straight
up from the clear blue sea and white sand beaches. I had fallen in love with city the first
time I saw it. It‟s rare when that happens. Something or someone would strike me and there
would be an immediate connection, an unmistakable resonance, and I would know without a
quiver of a doubt that this was the path of my soul, as if a hidden gate was opening and the
only right thing was to walk straight through it. I had met my first great love, Sarah, that
way. She was dancing in a smoky night club wearing a Coca-Cola t-shirt and a green leather
skirt, smiling, staring at me. She shone and the rest of the world disappeared, and so,
spellbound, I walked over to ask her for a cigarette. I proceeded to lie compulsively about
having lived in London for the next half an hour, until she caught me out. It was okay
though; we still fell in love, a love I carelessly threw away that morning my car was stolen
and decided to go to Cape Town. That‟s what happened in Cape Town too. It was love at
first sight, it was a safe love with no hint of rejection, and I was spellbound. I drove through
the cool forest and winding roads to the beach. I turned right at a small fishing village, and
drove on the highway for ten minutes, passing over a small hill. Around the bend, at the end
of the small road leading off down below, lay a half moon arc of fine cream sand, waves
breaking in the light off shore wind trailing their steaming manes in the air, with brown rocks
flanking the utopic paradise.
I drove down, parked, and walked onto the 40 degree sand, hopping like a jack rabbit as the
sand burnt my feet. I couldn‟t wait to get my poker hot skin into the water. As
I settled on the sand, I heard a voice calling me through the hazy heat.

„Bruce! Bruce!‟ This must be the Lord, I thought, as I didn‟t know anyone besides Gareth in
Cape Town. My spiritual delusion was quickly broken as I saw Steve, a fellow student from
Durban University, running across to greet me.
„Hi Bruce. How you doing? What are you doing in Cape Town?‟ he said.
„I‟m here to study. What about you?‟ I replied.
„My Dad lives here. Actually, I am just leaving. I have been sitting about a kilometer down
the beach. Why don‟t you give me a call later and we can go for a beer? I am staying at a
friend‟s house. It would be great if you could meet him.‟
„Ok,‟ I replied as Steve left, „I‟ll call you later.‟ I stayed on the beach, secretly watching
topless girls from behind my dark glasses, resting in my luck.
A few hours later, I headed back to Kate Hassenflug‟s house. As I drove towards the house,
I saw a green motorbike coming from the opposite direction. It was Steve. He stopped his
bike and I stopped the car. We looked at each other in astonishment.
„What are you doing here?‟ I asked.
„This is where I am staying,‟ he said. He was staying in the Victorian house across the road.
He invited me in, where I met Mike and his family. It‟s funny the things you first notice
about people. I noticed Mike‟s forearms; the way the muscles beautifully pushed out like his
skin was going to give birth to something. I always had a thing about forearms; mine were
long and bony and ever since my athletic best friend at school Gary Winter had had a sexy
girlfriend who loved to sit there stroking his vein-mapped forearms, I had wanted veins on
my forearms too. Mike‟s brother Paul was a tall lanky artist, and his mom, Judy, a radiant
woman with a head of burning red hair that reminded me of the sunrise. That family smiled,
they smiled with goodness and warmth and welcomed me in and made me bottomless filter
coffee and I knew straight away that Mike and I would be good friends. I felt gratitude and
a sense of being in the right place. I had been blessed with a good place to stay, and with a
new good friend who lived right next door. All the pieces seemed to be falling into place, all
because I had once worked with a waiter called Gareth who had had a secret one minute
affair with a woman who had been married for less than an afternoon.
That night, as I was laying in bed about to go to sleep, I thought about the string of
coincidences that had unfolded that day. There was Gareth, the choice of the beach, the
timing of my arrival on the beach and the timing of Steve‟s departure, the introduction to
Mike, and the location of Mike‟s house. The picture was perfect. I was curious. Was it all just

co-incidence, or was there a deeper pattern playing itself out? I tried to figure out what had
happened. Had an invisible puppet master pulled hidden strings? I had been in a relaxed and
open flow state, and could not have predicted any of the day‟s events occurring. I hadn‟t
been in control; I had just taken steps towards happiness. If it was more than just chance,
would it be possible to live my life guided by meaningful events, and to trust that hidden
order? It was the beginning of a series of questions that would arrrest me for years, the
beginning of a great fight between my self-serving need to control and my desire to
surrender to life, to a life led by God. What would it mean to tap into an intelligence that
seems to support me? Why are there long periods where nothing seems to happen, and
then bursts of activity when life suddenly seems to have movement? Could I avoid suffering
if I was intuitive enough? Why did magic always seem to happen when I was traveling? As I
was to learn in the future, synchronicity was a double edged sword, control was the villain.
Lust
I had a great year in my first year as an environmental manager. I had my new car, I was
young, ageless without wrinkles, and I felt handsome. I wasn‟t too concerned about my job.
It was easy, routine and non-challenging, and there was little pressure to perform, I was
just concerned about feeling good. As part of my duties, I was allowed to spend two days a
week driving around the Western Cape countryside, inspecting factories, looking at the
rivers, taking water samples, going to laboratories, and getting to know the people of the
land. I loved nature. I relished being out in the country and getting paid for it. I couldn‟t see
a career for myself as an environmentalist, but I always had a joyous love affair with
mountains and the sky.
Something else made the year much more interesting that it would ordinarily have been. It
was the year that I discovered women and lust. Until I graduated, I had been a poor student
of love. My relationships had been limited to drunken encounters, short term relationships,
far too many unrequited crushes on pyschology and art students, and an addictive
relationship with swimming pools and then my right hand. I had discovered orgasmic
sexuality at the early age of 10, when I watched my older sister in the afternoons through
the window of our house. She was in the swimming pool, and when she thought she was
alone, she used to spend about 20 smiling minutes in the pool with her pelvic region
hanging near the water jets. I though I would try it. When I sure I was alone one day, and

after leaving all the curtains wide open in the house so I could tell if anyone was watching
me, I jumped into the pool, swam to the jets, and suspended my waist near the rushing
stream of water. I started to experience a pleasurable sensation in my loins. I don‟t think I
had ever had an erection before, let alone an orgasm. I wanted to pull away as the strange
tingling sensation got stronger and stronger. I didn‟t know how long I could bear the feeling,
yet strangely I didn‟t want this to end, as I held myself voluntary captivated in this place of
happiness-pain that I had no reference for. I noticed that I could control the intensity of the
feeling by shifting my body. I didn‟t want the feeling to go down; I unconsciously shifted
myself into the most unbearable position, letting the intensifying pressure guide me. I felt
contractions in my butt region; I didn‟t know if I needed to pee or poo. My arms clamped
onto the side of the pool, holding me in position, locking me into early rigor mortis. The
feeling quickened, until in a rapid few seconds, the intensity overwhelmed me and forced me
into a gasping crescendo. I couldn‟t bear it any longer; pleasure had shifted in pain. I pulled
away and swam into the middle of the pool, thoughtless and shivering. What had just
happened? I immeadiatly prayed to Jesus to forgive me. I had obviously sinned. The next
day, I told my friend Sean about it, and he said it was a called an orgasm. We looked up the
word in the dictionary.
“Etymology: New Latin orgasmus, from Greek orgasmos, from organ to grow ripe, be lustful;
probably akin to Sanskrit urjA sap, strength : intense or paroxysmal excitement; especially :
an explosive discharge of neuromuscular tensions at the height of sexual arousal that is
usually accompanied by the ejaculation of semen in the male and by vaginal contractions in
the female.” Sean and I repeatedly laughed uncontrollably when we read the definition. The
history teacher threw us out the class for disruptive behaviour.
I always thought of my sister differently after that first orgasm. When we all went to church
together, I wondered if she also prayed to Jesus to forgive her for the pleasure of her
vaginal contractions. She looked so innocent and pure singing “Jesus loves me, this I know”
next to my mom. It dawned on me that people had secrets. All those tight lipped women
who busied themselves with conversations about growing roses and cooking crumpets, did
they all do it too? Did they all have secret vaginal contractions in the swimming pool, and did
they fantasize about their contractions as they served each other tea while dryly exchanging
niceties about the weather? For some reason, the minister never spoke about sex. He spoke
about good living and the word of Jesus. At that age of my life, I was terrified not to follow

the word of Jesus. I really wished Jesus would have told some parables about „intense
paroxysmal excitement‟; that would have got my interest and made into a real follower.
From that wet day in the pool onwards, I loved orgasms. In spite of the pleasure, I carried a
hint of guilt about orgasms and masturbation. I always felt a little bad after ejaculating, and
I would usually say a quick prayer for forgiveness. In my young mind, sin was okay because
all sin was forgiven. All I had to do was ask. So, I figured that barring the unfortunate
scenario of being hit unexpectedly by a truck from behind, then so long as I said my prayers
just before bed every night or just before I died, I was guaranteed eternal happiness
because all would have been forgiven, and in the eyes of the Lord, I woud be as white as
snow. There was nothing to this eternity thing. My ten year old mind had God outwitted.
Sex was something that my family never spoke about. I was terrible at relating to women,
and that pattern continued through my university years. And then, I found myself in my first
job, with that snazzy new fuel injected car.
Maria was one of my colleagues at work, and she also happened to be my training officer.
Fate threw us together, and we were given almost eight hours a day, five days a week,
together. Her office was next to mine, and she was responible for my professional
development. She was Afrikaans, and had recently got married. She had dark straight hair
to her shoulders, and a tall, straight body. She was a dancer, with firm legs and a lean,
toned upper torso. I adored her lips; she like to wear glossy lip balm that made her mouth
shine like a ripe plum. On cold mornings I would stare at the shape of her nipples as they
pushed through underneath her sweater. We had a strong connection from the start. I spent
a lot of time talking to her, and we both enjoyed partying, drinking, smoking cigarettes, the
same music, and we had an interest in spiritual matters. We thought ourselves rather wise
on matters of God, yet, looking back, I am stunned by our ignorance. Maria and I used to
often go into the field together on work trips. I loved her company. I didn‟t realize it, but I
was deeply attracted to her, yet had succeeded in stuffing my feelings away. I could never
allow myself to admit that I wanted her, because she was married and I could not imagine
myself ever sinning so deeply and having an affair. Sin was always a fascinating thing,
especially when pleasure was called sin. I could understand that killing or hurting or stealing
wasn‟t right, but pleasure? I always felt following pleasure, and seeking bliss was the

gateway to God, not the royal road to hell it was made out to be. If pleasure was really
sinful, then devil had to be one happy chap.
Maria and I had been on another great field trip together. We had been through beautiful
mountains, eaten in colonial tea houses, and driven back into town watching the sun set
over the ocean, painting the sky in rapturous red and orange as it glowered on the horizon.
As we pulled into town, happy and relaxed, Maria turned to me and said “Is it infatuation?”
“Is what infatuation?” I asked. I didn‟t know what she was talking about.
„Our feelings. Is it infatuation? I am infatuated by you,‟ she said. I stared at her. Here was a
sexy woman with peanut nipples whom I admired and loved spending time with, telling me
she had a crush on me, tempting me into sin like the snake in the Garden of Eden. I didn‟t
know how to respond.
„I don‟t know what it is,‟ I replied. I got out the car and walked into the house. What the hell
was I going to do? A married woman was coming onto me. I flashbacked to Gareth being
kissed by the newly wed at the restaurant. I felt my erection rising in my pants. I could see
Maria‟s nipples in my imagination, and pictured her bending over, her fitted pants tight
against her butternut ass. I figured the best thing to do was to go and smoke a joint, and
get high with Mike. Thinking a little, I wasn‟t surprised. Throwing me into an office with the
sensual Maria, leaving me there for 6 months, and sending us together into the beuatiful
thrusting mountains twice a week to play, was a sure fire cauldron pot to stew my desire.
The tension between Maria and I was electric. We both wanted it. I wasn‟t going come onto
her, but I wasn‟t going to avoid her. We had time and a solid friendship and shared interests
and sexual infatuation, so there was plenty of glue to keep us bonded. The impasse was
broken on a trip to a conference up country. I had a hotel room booked, and Maria had a
private apartment booked. It was a beautiful late winters day, with fresh clean air and the
the naked trees waiting in prayer towards heaven for the grace of spring. After the first
day‟s meetings, Maria invited me to her apartment for dinner. I walked in and she had a
bottle of red wine, a tin of canned oysters, some dips and some snacks. She placed them on
a coffee table and invited me to sit on a sofa next to her. I had half a joint, which I added to
the mix. We sat down next to each other. I could my body radiating heat, and I turned to
face her as she crossed her legs towards me. I was still of the mindset that I was not going
to have an affair. I had since matured a little since my days of being a ten year old who

thought every sin was okay because God would forgive me if I asked. I had an emerging
sense of morality laced with an opposing edge of guilt, which was soon about to be tested.
We drank some wine and smoked a little marijuana. We both had an inborn fear of being
watched, and a desire to watch others in their secret games. There was a large painting on
the wall of a romantic mountain scene. We played a little game where we pretended that
our midddle aged conservative colleagues, complete with their badly trimmed moustaches
and sagging pot bellies, were hiding behind the picture, spying on us. We laughed at the
thought. What would they think if they could see us, drinking, smoking, doing drugs,
laughing on the sofa together? We could imagine the scandalous gossip and the detailed
note taking, as they, in their fossilized perfection, condemned us as anarchistic sinners. We
could see their shocked round eyes as they choked and gulped on our illegal actions and
took our photos to show to the police. We laughed at the image. We pretended we were
outsmarting them, and they never knew we were watching them. The joke was on them;
their sneaky ploy had backfired. The play that someone was watching us made the night
more exciting. There was the underlying fear of getting caught. If it wasn‟t going to be God
to catch us and cast us into hell, it was going to be someone else. We were going to make
damm sure that we were doomed.
We finished the wine. I looked at Maria and saw her flushed cheeks. She smiled, stood up
and sat on the arm of the sofa. She asked if I would like an Indian head massage. Not
having an Indian head, I figured the risk was minimal. I said yes, and she pulled me back,
resting my head between her legs, the back of my skull pushing down on her pubic bone
and feeling the soft ridge of flesh. I closed my eyes and relaxed as she pushed her fingers
into my scalp and through my hair. I felt luxuriously comfortable and warm from the wine
and her legs clasping my ears. I drifted into a world of darkness, warmth, the touch of
hands on my head, and the seductive smell of Chanel perfume. Sunk deep in the snug
embrace, mouth effortlessly open, I felt the surprising touch of velvet smoothness on my
lips. I rested motionless, soft, receptive. She pulled her tounge snail-like over my lips,
tracing them with the invitation of her humid breath. I arched my head backwards with
slumbering slowness, opening my mouth, drinking myself into her. I had one flashing
hesitation. I had a vision of the spies behind the picture snapping furiously with their secret
cameras, getting it all on film while washing down their tranquilizers with cheap brandy. I
returned to my emerging world of pleasure, descending. Any form of moral objection against

affairs I once may have had now lay discarded on the commercial carpeted floor, entangled
in my underpants.
That night was the beginning of the affair. We spent the following year having risky sex. I
got blowjobs on mountains overlooking busy highways, we made love behind the curtains of
a stage while a rock band a few meters away played for thousands of people. I spread her
on the bonnet of her car and ravished her on secluded roads. I had an operation, and
bedridden in my recovery, she sat on top of me, angel like in her white gown, and pulled me
inside her. There were other girls too that year. One screamed like a seagull when we
copulated. Others lay still, receptive flowers willingly being pollinated. At a December fancy
dress party I made love to a girl dressed as christmas tree. She was one of the best gifts I
ever unwapped. I told myself that I was not to blame. The only thing that was wrong was
thinking it was wrong. I maintained that I was not having an affair, Maria was because she
was married. I loved the non-commitment, and the sexual liberation. I enjoyed all the girls,
and wanted more. Many times I thought about stopping the affair, but as soon as we saw
each other and the feeling started to rise, I would get lost in the moment and ride the wave,
following lust to its pleasurable end. I felt satisfied and without craving after each orgasm,
and then the desire would start again the following day. I couldn‟t see that I was going in
circles of craving and satisfaction. I was fortunate that year. I had enough access to
pleasure that my days were a succession of happy and pleasurable experiences. What I
wanted, I got quickly. I didn‟t have to wait for pleasure. The objects of my desire were close
and accessible. I thought I was happy.
All things are impermanent. After about 9 months, I wanted more with Maria. I really liked
her, and had a great time with her. I started to want to go home with her, to call her at
night, and to do regular things with her. Maybe I wanted to possess her. Looking back, I
think I did want to own her. I wanted control and certainty. However, I also desired health. I
knew she was lying to her husband. I was lying to my friends. My desires for connection
were frustrated. I started to push her to tell her husband what we were doing. She wouldn‟t
do it, and instead, they had a short time of separation. I still was not satisfied. The situation
was not healthy, and I could not exist any longer in this web of deceit. Around that time, she
left the company we worked for to take on a better job. We still saw each other, but I had
sense that the end was coming. I have always been blessed with a fair degree of intuition. It
was rare that any change in my life had caught me by surprise. I could always sense change

occuring in the future. I may not have known what change was going to happen or how it
was going to occur, and I would often screw things up by trying to control the process. but I
could sense it coming. I could sense the inevitable, and once I had that sense, it was just a
matter of time before something shifted. It‟s that feeling you have when the seasons are
shifting, or the rain is coming. I was connected to the weather. I knew when a storm was
coming or the weather was going to shift, a day or so before anybody else did, and long
before we had satellite weather forecasts. I could never put my finger on it; something in
the air just felt different, and something in me was connected to the elements. Maybe it was
the way the birds nervously flocked or the way the crickets changed their chirping. It was
just a matter of time of waiting for the shift, and I was never wrong once.
The end of the affair happened undramatically at the swimming pool, where we used to
meet and train together. We shared a sexual love of water. She had also discovered the
pleasures of pressure jets as a young girl, and from then on, neither summer or winter could
keep her out of the water. I was sitting on a chair at the side of the indoor pool, noticing the
smell of chlorine in the air and cleaning bleach wafting from the bathrooms, waiting for
Maria. Some children in the pool were swimming like flying grasshoppers, and I was
fascinated by their flailing and thrashing. I looked and Maria was walking towards me. I felt
certain and thoughtless as I watched her. The invisible rubber band holding us together had
snapped. There was an emptyness in the air. She came close, smiling. The first thing I said
was „That‟s enough now.‟
„What‟s enough?‟ she said. From the way she looked at me, she knew. I didn‟t have to
explain, but I did.
„It‟s over,‟ I said, „I don‟t want this anymore.‟ She looked at me, cried, and walked off. The
sounds of the children swimming had never been crisper, and water seemed to splash in
slow motion.
Soon after, Maria told her husband what had happened, and they got divorced. He wanted
to see me, so I went to talk to him. I sat there like a stone and listened to him while he
shook with anger, went on about how a man should fight for what is his, all the while never
lifting a finger to hurt me. I had the nerve to cadge one of his cigarettes, and then I walked
off. I had followed a connection with Maria. We remained excellent friends. The funny thing
was that I had no guilt; we had followed a natural flow. What goes around comes around,
and in the future, I would break someones trust, and I would have my trust broken. Life is

often the same play repeated, just with different actors in different roles. That‟s a part of
life. Unless you wake up the play just repeats itself and your life becomes a numb dry rerun.
That‟s why I had to wake up. I couldn‟t bear the suffering of being castrated by my habits.
Sometimes you have to follow your connections, and let your stories unfold. It would still
take me many years to understand how letting my stories unfold would reveal my soul. At
that stage, with Maria, I was blinded to the mirrors of my relationships. I was locked into
finding pleasure and avoiding pain, and that search for pleasure and happiness and control
was my master.
1st Books
A lot was happening in those first working years. There was my first job, the new car, and
the affair with Maria. The first year and a half of working, I had sought nothing but pleasure.
After studying for so many years, all I wanted was to go home after work, goof off and do
nothing, living the good life. I had spent years writing reports at night, focusing towards
exams, studying on the weekends, and I was tired of all that. It was time to reap the
rewards of all my hard work, and it seemed as though the goal of life was a comfortable
sofa in front of the television. Most evenings, I would stop by the video store, grab two
videos from the art selection, and then head home. After cooking a simple dinner, I‟d sit in
front of the TV, roll a large joint, and then stay glued to the couch for the next three or four
hours. I kept a regimen of swimming three times a week, and partying hard on the
weekends. Even though I wasn‟t studying, I was always pushing into newness. I was
pushing my limits in the pool, I was getting higher and higher, I was partying harder on the
weekends, and I had an emerging friendship and affair with Maria. Life and pleasure
satisfied me for a while. However, I was never content with an ordinary repetitive life.
Beneath my routine habits, there was a gently stirring sense that I wanted something
special, something to hold me and fill me and consume me with interest and feeling.
Something continually kicked restlessly within, as if something wished to be born through
me.
After around 18 months, having gone through all the videos in the movie store, I was
getting a little bored. Around the time of my birthday in June, my friend Kate Emberton gave
me a book on Tibetan Buddhism, saying that it was the type of thing that I might enjoy as I

had a philosophical mind. I still can‟t figure out why Kate selected that book for me. She
hated reading and studying, instead she loved Camel Filter cigarettes and red wine. Eastern
philosophy was way off her radar, and at the time, off my radar too as I had never even
considered buying such a book. I wasn‟t doing much reading at all then; I had studied
science, and, besides philosophical conversations at university with my friend Jules, who was
a body builder with long brown biblical hair, a fan of Nietzsche and famous for dropping his
pants in public, I was a literary and philosophical philistine.
Then, Kate gave me the book. I figured it would be rude not to read it and give her a little
feedback, and so one night, instead of lighting up a joint, I sat down and began to read. I
felt an immediate connection to the words, and was effortlessly pulled into the chapters. I
had never been exposed to ideas such as „unlimited freedom‟, „illumination‟, „transcendant
bliss‟, or „liberation from suffering‟. I didn‟t know all that was possible, and I wanted to have
it all. I thought all people were all looking for happiness and freedom; who would not want
this? I carried on reading late into the first night. Ideas such as „you are not your thoughts‟
were instantaneously and startlingly liberating. As I read the sections on meditation, I
became aware that when I was surfing, I would naturally drift into meditative states of
awareness, openness relaxation and reduced thought activity. A memory of being 6 years
old was triggered. I was lying in my bed one night, all warm and tucked in, just after Mom
had put the lights out. I noticed I could think my name, without saying it. I lay there,
thinking thoughts without saying them, carefully noticing what a thought looked like and felt
like in my mind, and how, if I wanted, I could connect the thoughts to the muscles of my
jaw and make a sound. I realized that I was not my thoughts, and that I could watch my
thinking. I could equally explore the feelings in my body, and notice how those originated
and changed. I said the sentence “My name is Bruce,” repeatedly in my mind, watching and
feeling the words arrive and disappear. Where did thoughts disappear? Where did they come
from? How did I know thoughts were there? Until that time, I had never noticed that I
thought, and had always been lost in my thinking and my speech. That night was deeply
fascinating. It was the first night I started to wake up, the moment I started to step out of
my slumber. The next morning I tried to share my discovery with my sister. She told me I
was stupid and it wasn‟t important, and she returned to trying to understand a cookie
recipe. I told my Dad and he smiled non-responsively as he took another sip of his whiskey
on the rocks. Having two flat responses from people who I regarded as wise in the world, I
figured that this was nothing special. My inner revolution of understanding was squashed.

As I read the book on Tibetan Buddhism, I realized the implications of what I had recognized
almost twenty years ago. If only I had recognized the immensity of my revelation at that
young age of six, and continued to pay close attention to my thoughts. I may have been
enlightened and a challenge to the Dalai Lama at the age of 12. Maybe I was a tulku that
had got his rebirth wrong and I had landed in Africa instead of Tibet and there were no
masters here to recognize me. If only someone with a little wisdom had said „You‟re onto
something, boy. Pay careful attention to your thinking and your feelings, because that‟s the
key to liberation.‟ Godammit! 20 years wasted because my sister only cared about cookies
and my father only cared about whiskey. I had spontaneously being doing other meditation
techniques for years. I had learned to relax each muscle in my body by placing my attention
inside it and turning it into lead, and had instinctively been doing that since I was fifteen.
Sleep had never been a problem. I just had to relax the body and no matter what I had
been doing, it was lights out.
Reading this, I felt like a meditation genius. I finished the book and re-read it another two
times, thinking I was now an expert on Tibetan Buddhism. In reality, this was nothing less
than a re-entry into self-created suffering, of getting fixated in the idea of the mind. I was
locked in the Western education paradigm that learning was retaining and repeating
information. In my ignorance, I thought information was wisdom, and had no idea how true
wisdom gave birth to information. Of course I was enlightened! Who was not, as the book
put it. My ego ran rampant in its emperors new clothes of Buddhist ideas and I was unable
to see my ignorance.
I went out and bought myself a bunch of popular new age spirituality books, and quickly
became fanatic, trying to preach my new religion to my friends. I don‟t know how they put
up with me. I read books on the principles of spiritual success, on creating the life I wanted,
and on attaining my birthright of abundance by applying spiritual rules. It seemed I had
found my destiny. All I had to do was follow the recipes for success and say the mantras,
and I would have my dream life of effortless luxury. I paged through book after book and
recited endless information to my friends, telling them what they needed to do to find
happiness. My understanding was deeply flawed, but my massive ego and the lack of any
worthwhile guidance blinded me to my ignorance. Spirituality became another drug, another
fix to make me feel good and give substance to my fantasies, making me think that I could

have anything I wanted, and it was all possible. All I had to do was stay positive and believe
and I would be young and beautiful and successful forever.
I was becoming awake to other possibilities. Maria had left the company I worked at. I
would routinely drive to work each day, staring at the clouds and the distant mountains,
thinking I was trapped in Groundhog Day. There were no more movies in the video store
that I hadn‟t seen. I wanted a change. I felt spiritually awake, and was excited at the
possibility of ordering God around. After all, if all these books were correct, then I had the
power to control the universe, if I could just shift my thinking enough.
For years, I had been in a spiritual desert. I had left the Christian Church when I was about
21, the same time that I had left Durban to go and study in Cape Town. Since I was about
16 and had been confirmed for the second time because there were cute girls in the
confirmation class, I had been going through the motions at church and feeling no
connection to the congregation. The minister was preaching sermons and telling stories that
had no relation to my life. My parents had got divorced and may father was broke and
drinking heavier than ever before. I remember standing in the church when a foreign
evangelist came. The first half of the service was a rousing round of songs and worship and
hands waving like coral tentacles into the sky. Even my conservative mother, with her big
round glasses and curly aubern hair kept in place with styling spray, was clapping with gusto
and a beaming smile on her face. It was a happy night in that church, filled with love and
feeling and it felt as though the spirit of the lord was among us. I was clapping and
dancing, all the time keeping my eye on the cute blonde three seats to the right, fantasizing
that she and I could clap happily into eternal sunsets together, singing the name of the
Lord. The evangelist came forward and did an alter call for those who wanted to surrender
to Christ. I desperately wanted to surrender. I desperately wanted to be a chosen one and
let God fill me with bliss and clarity and joy. I wanted to be reborn in the kingdom of Christ
and get to drive a Mercedes as a reward. He shouted that all who asked for Christ, were
received, and called for all to stand up. I felt the urge to stand. I was afraid; I didn‟t want
to make a spectacle. I couldn‟t resist; I had to do it. My knees trembling, my heart aching
for love, I braved my shyness and stood up in front of the congregation, lifted by the rising
roar of five thousand pairs of hands clapping like a pounding waterfall in the name of the
lord. I prayed in the depth of my soul for God to come, and I waited. Others around me fell

down and passed out on the floor, slumped like sacks of grain or eyes rolling back in their
heads. Attendants rushed to fan them and to shoo the demons away.
I felt nothing.
Jesus never came.
Time slowed down as I stared at the preacher, his hands upturned in ecstasy as his rock star
performance played through the encore. I felt an arrow or rejection and a slamming blast of
shame roast my face into redness. Everybody else got it and I didn‟t. I stood as people cried
and wailed in euphoria around me. I wanted to fall. I wanted to be crumpled and helpless
like everyone else. Instead, I was the rock of Gibraltar. I turned, head down and acid tears
forming, and walked through the crowd to the door and outside. I went to the bathroom and
sat on the toilet, carrying my disappointment like an unwelcome cross on my shoulders.
After about ten minutes, I felt better and returned to my mom. God Bless her. She just said
that Jesus would arrive when I was ready, and each person would hear the word in their
own time. She bought me hot dogs and tea after the service, and we drove home, me an
outcast from the kingdom of God. I awoke the next morning and rationally thought about all
this. I decided that religion was just emotion, and that everybody had been conned.
Traditional religion was for suckers. That was the day that I stopped praying.
For years, I didn‟t pray. Mom would ask about my faith, and I wouldn‟t have any. God did
not exist. Sometimes I would pray out of fear. I prayed empty prayers asking for forgiveness
for my sins, just as a dutiful pension plan for eternity. I thought it was better to cover my
bases, just in case the worst case scenario was real. In reality, God and anything beyond did
not exist for me. And then I found new age spirituality, positive thinking, and the laws of
abundance, all fronted behind flashy white smiles of success and cloaked in incense mist.
This was nothing like I had been taught in Sunday school. There were no parables about
prodigal sons and people walking on water. There were just clear instructions on how to
become a millionaire and how to get hot woman. That appealed to me, and I started to seek
the connection to the beyond again, looking for a God that would make me feel good and
make all my self serving dreams come true. I was searching, I was hungry, and I was
starting to move.

1st Gateway
The restless spirit within me was aching for a way forward, and knew I had to leave my job
and do something else. Above all else, I wanted more freedom. I used to drive to my job
every day, leaving home around 7:30 am to arrive at work on time after a half hour
commute on the highway. The journey to work was a drive in the direction of a range of
mountains about 50 kilometers away. I used to look at those large purple colored rocks,
dreaming I could keep on driving and never turn back. My dream would come to a
predictable end when I saw the sign for exit 12, which I had to take to reach the offices. At
work, I met the responsibilities of my job, doing what I had to do, then breaking for lunch at
12:00 pm, being back in the office by 1:00 pm, and then working until 4:30, spending half
the day staring out the window to the mountains in the distance. I always had a thing about
staring out the window into space. When I was in Grade 11, I sat by the window in English
class and stared at the sky and the butterflies through most of Shakespeare‟s Hamlet. The
English teacher hated it that I never paid her any attention. Staring at the mountains from
the office, I yearned for the freedom the open space offered. I had always sensed that every
human being desires unrestricted freedom, and if they denied that I thought they were
lying. I think that‟s why I loved the sky. The sky was free. Nothing could hold it; it was the
holder of everything, and no matter what happened in the sky, the sky itself was always
perfect and untouched. Storms came and went, days and nights passed, wind blew through
and the clouds formed and vanished, and the sky was able to hold it all, always untouched,
always perfect, and I wanted that vast sky like freedom.
Maria had left the company. Playing in the mountains was not so much fun now that I
wasn‟t getting laid and having an affair anymore. I figured that being free would mean
having enough money to live well and being able to choose my working hours. I still had to
earn money; I just didn‟t want to do it being tied into a salaried job with regular hours. It
was a Friday night that I met Irene. I was hanging out in a downtown bar by the pool table,
waiting for my turn to play. I had a whiskey in the one hand, and I was sitting in the corner
of the room, watching a striking looking thirty something woman in black leather pants, a
tank top, black leather boots, and Tarzan like brown hair coming down to her shoulders.
Her tank top showed her belly, and I was fascinated as I watched her six pack rippling like
snakes under skin. She played a mean game of pool, with a take no prisoners attitude. She

was strong, sexy, and her eyes had the staring ferocity of a jaguar in a cage in a zoo. I was
having fantasies of having sex with her. I was also riveted to her, and I didn‟t know why.
Rachel, a friend of mine I hadn‟t seen for a long time, saw me and came and sat next to me.
Rachel didn‟t usually come to this bar, so I was surprised to see her. We started chatting,
and then she leaned closer to me, and in a half whisper, said „You see that woman?‟
„Yeah,‟ I replied.
„Well,‟ said Rachel, „a good friend of mine knows her. She used to be a he.‟
This was incredible. I had always been attracted to the bizarre and I had never met a
transsexual before. Being naturally blunt and socially inept, I walked up to the woman.
„Excuse me,‟ I said.
She gave me a disdainful look, intended to brush me off.
„Not now,‟ she said, „I‟m busy. I‟m playing pool.‟ I looked at the pool cue in her hand and the
balls on the table. I knew I was taking a risk. With those predator eyes of hers, she could
turn violent, and I wouldn‟t like to be attacked. I hadn‟t had a fight since I knocked out
Timothy Browns tooth on a football field fight when I was nine, and I had been petrified that
I would have to pay the dentist bills from my pocket money. I had always been slightly
cocky, and sometimes it had backfired. Once when I was in Grade 7, I was standing with my
class mates outside our classroom. Discipline was important in our school. If the teacher
wasn‟t in the classroom, we had to line up in order of ascending height outside, and wait,
without speaking, for the teacher to arrive. Any talking or moving out of line could be met
with caning. One of head of department teachers, who was a formidable man and an ex
rugby player, walked past.
„Why are you standing outside?‟ he asked us.
„Because we are not standing inside!‟ I responded. He didn‟t appreciate my flippant and
humorous remark. As far as I was concerned, my primitive logic was impeccable; I was
caned on the spot.
I looked at the woman. There was something to be said. I could sense she was irritated with
my presence, and I was clearly not her type.
„What?‟ she said, her voice rising.
Now was my moment. It was now or never. With the inspirational courage of several
whiskeys, I asked „Have you had a sex change?‟

The pool cue quivered in her hand. She threw it on the table and walked to her drink,
slugging back a double gulp. For about a minute, she looked at me. I figured in one bestial
leap across the table she could be tearing my throat with her nails. She walked to me, and
said “How do you know? No one knows.” There she was clearly wrong, because Rachel
knew. I figured a lie would be the best answer.
„It‟s my intuition,‟ I replied, „I can sense things other people can‟t.‟
That answer cemented the friendship. In her eyes, I had psychic powers and was privy to
the secrets of her soul. She must have thought it safer to befriend me than to attack me.
We started to talk, and surprisingly, we hit it off.
Irene seemed very intelligent. She was a freelance computer programmer, and she earned
the type of money that I wanted to be earning. She had the life I thought I wanted, with
flexible hours, plenty of work, high pay, and freedom. I could see myself living her life and
being satisfied. We became friends, and after several conversations, she asked if I wanted to
be a computer programmer. She could teach me, and I could work with her. It sounded
great. I calculated that if I cashed in my pension benefits and unclaimed medical benefits
from my job, I would have enough to buy a good computer, to study and live for six months
without getting paid, and then to start earning. I had been using a computer for years and
had done a little programming at university, so I felt comfortable with computers. Best of all,
I would have an experienced tutor and new friend to guide me. It seemed like a perfect
match, and it provided the doorway which I wanted to leave my job. I made the decision to
leave everything I had built up and to make a dramatic career shift. I didn‟t see the death
instinct biting me as I left what I had built. I started to make preparations for the jump. If I
had any taste of the suffering that this would cause me, I would have never approached
Irene in the bar that night. But then, one of my talents has always been to get myself in
trouble and find myself in places where I didn‟t know how to swim. And, as the old saying
goes, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions.
Pain
The calm before the storm

The first six months of leaving work hanging out with Irene were a time of freedom, fun and
learning. I had returned my car to the dealership and had bought an old classic 250cc
motorcycle with gleaming chrome mudguards, which was perfect for riding around Cape
Town and perfect for stray dogs to pee on. This was my second bike; my first bike had been
a borrowed Enfield India 500cc, which I had been destroyed when the back tyre went flat
once on the highway, and I had fallen off and slid across the road with the bike. The gas
tank had popped open and my jeans had got covered in petrol which ignited, setting me and
the bike on fire. I remember standing there on that hot highway under the burning sun with
motorists screaming at me, and seeing I was burning, I slapped out the flames. I wish I had
been cooler; I should have lit a cigarette off my burning pants first and smoked it. That
would have given James Dean a run for his money, standing there calmly lighting a cigarette
off my burning jeans near the blazing wreck of my bike.
Summer in Cape Town is a glorious time with long warm evenings until often explosive red
sunsets that ignite the sky. Many people head down to the beaches after work, where they
spend a few hours swimming, playing different games, and relaxing until the sun drops. On
still summer days when the wind is low, candles are lit on the beach and anonymous groups
sit around the fire lights, picnicking, chatting, being eaten by shadows. There were few
things I loved more than riding my bike over the neck of Table Mountain, then down the
winding forest road towards the beach. I would breathe in the fresh smell of clean salt water
air, and then freewheel down in silence, the only sounds the rubber tires humming on the
tar and the wind whistling badly in my hair. I usually met friends, and we would play and
laugh and allow the beauty of the place to sink into us and make us golden beautiful too,
day after day, week after week.
Something inside me always shouted against being trapped by a conditions, against the
necessity of having to work, against the fact that I was not always free. I always wanted
freedom; I yearned for it, and I thought freedom was being able to do what I wanted, when
I wanted. I loved being free from regular employment. I loved that I could sleep as long as I
needed each night, and ease into the day. I have always hated alarm clocks and loved the
night, which is when I like to work. Not getting violently ripped out of my sleep on cold cold
dawns, instead allowing my day to start with a natural ease and slowness, was a blessing I
had wished for ever since I started my first day of junior school. My days began meeting
Irene mid morning, having espresso and hot milk in a local coffee shop, and then getting

into work. Irene and I were getting along well. I would go to her house, and we would talk
programming, discuss code, work on projects and look for work. I was eagerly learning
everything I could from her and was fascinated by her past. She had lived in America and
had driven a Porsche from the East Coast to the West Coast; she had lived in Italy with an
Italian boyfriend, she had had her sex change, and she was highly intelligent. She also liked
to party. We went to local bars usually two or three times a week, where we played pool
and drank whiskey and I watched her frighten people with her untamed eyes. I liked to get
high by smoking pot, and she liked to do little bits of cocaine. I had money, time and youth,
and I moved in a circle of feeling good highs, with the beauty of the landscape, the freedom
given to me by time, the rationality of programming and the drugs and alcohol and liberation
of the parties at night. Everything seemed perfect.
About three months after I left my job, I was at a barbecue with an old school friend. It was
a classic late summer day in Cape Town. We were standing around the fire cooking our
meat, tanned and fit from the summer and the hours of sport on the beaches. I was looking
for a new place to live. I had been staying with an old friend who worked in the movie
industry, an industry famed for hard work, hard parties and hard drugs. Our house had
become a local hang out joint, and every day and every night and all through the weekend,
there was a steady flow of pot smoking stoners, trading their life energy, lost in their
Faustian fantasies of self-fulfillment. Lord alone knows how the police never noticed. You
could smell the pot from our house as you walked up the street, and you could see smoke
coming out the windows and hear the endless happiness of Bob Marley singing about
freedom and love. I enjoyed getting high sometimes, but I didn‟t enjoy being around stoners
from morning to night, speaking the same conversations, sprawled back with the same
dazed dull eyes, clutching cigarettes, seven days a week. I wanted to live somewhere
healthier and cleaner so I could escape this dead end pattern of drug use that was
beginning to consume me.
Standing at the barbecue, turning the sizzling chicken and trying to control the flames
burning from the dripping fat, I noticed another old friend arriving. It was Trevor, someone I
had known for years. We had been roommates in a commune before, and had known each
other since we were 17. Trevor was with his newly ex-girlfriend Helen. Helen was wearing
tight fitting blue jeans, a red t-shirt with a wonder bra underneath that made her breasts
look three times their normal size, and she wore her long brown hair tied back and hanging

down her back, looking like a mix-breed between Madonna and a Red Indian. She was slim
and petite, my ideal shape in woman, probably because my mother has always been thin
and petite. Helen and I had crossed paths for years. The first time I had met her had been
in a bar run by Indians called Grady‟s in Durban, my home town. I was 19 and she was 17,
and I was in the bar because it served cheap tequila. It was also across the road from my
favorite night club, The Rift, which played rock and alternative music. I was getting drunk
and this girl came in, and somehow we started talking. She had had hepatitis B, and was
telling me about the sickness. That‟s how I first met this beautiful young woman, sunburnt
from surfing, slamming back tequila and listening to her telling me stories about disease.
There were other times I met her over the years. The funny thing is, I never thought of
meeting up with her again. We would just meet. And then, when Trevor and I had been
roommates in a commune, she had lived in the commune for a while. Even then, I was too
busy to really pay her any attention. She was Trevor‟s girlfriend. I was having an outrageous
time with Maria, and the fragrance of sex always hung in the air like expensive perfume in a
rose garden. Once, Maria and I had taken another illegal detour from our work trip into the
mountains, and had headed back to my house. Steamed up in passion, we had our pants off
and were getting hot and flustered on the landing on the stairwell. I heard the front gate
open and keys in the front door. Within a few hasty seconds, we had our clothes back on
and were smoothing down our ruffled composures just as Helen breezed in.
“Hello Bruce,” she said with her sweet colgate smile.
“Hello,” I panted. We didn‟t talk much more than that. I had a tomato red face and was
sweating, and Maria was breathing heavily behind me. I had been near orgasm, and was
bursting with unreleased energy. I bet Helen knew what we were doing; only a fool could
not have put two and two together and got S-E-X! I turned to Maria, and spoke in
unconvincing flatness. „
Good thing we rushed back to check the house. I thought I had left the iron on this
morning. It could have burnt everything down! We‟d better get going. Bye Helen.‟ It was an
idiotic lie for a pathetic excuse. Maria and I busted out of there like two jailbirds on a
jailbreak.
That day by the barbecue, I told Trevor I was looking for a place to stay. He was looking for
a roommate because he and Helen were separating. They had been living together, and she
was moving out. He offered me to stay with him, and it seemed great. He lived 200 meters

from my current house, and the rent was cheaper and he was clean. I accepted, and two
weeks later, we were sharing an apartment. Helen and Trevor were still close friends, and
she often came to the apartment, where she and I started to spend time together chatting. I
loved walking on the mountain, going for hikes of three or four hours. We both loved nature,
exercise and we had an emerging interest in spirituality. I invited her to go walking, and we
started to go on regular outings together.
Those few months were an extraordinarily happy time of my life. My best days were when I
could meet with Helen, and we would make the ten minute drive together in her little white
car to the mountain trails. My favorite route with her was over The Saddle, a walk which
began by following a winding, gravel path that lead up the front face of the mountain. We
would climb through a little forest, and then emerge into rocky grassy terrain. As we
followed the mountain contour, we would round a bend, and there, standing on the flank of
Table Mountain, we would see the vast front face of the mountain spread out before us, raw
and majestic. One thing I always loved about mountains was their sheer brute size that
stunned me into appreciation. High above the city, there was just the empty sound of the
wind in the grass and the birds shrieking. We would continue walking along some narrow
ledges with drops hundreds of feet to the side. That where I overcome my fear of heights.
Everytime we walked along those narrow paths I thought of my high-school mate Larry
Folckers who was terrified of heights, and used to crawl on the corridors of the third floor
possessed with fear and his tounge pushed out like a dog, too afraid to walk near the
railings. I liked Larry; when we were in Chemistry class we found out that silver nitrate
solution turns human skin black. Larry was caned and almost expelled for spraying Michael
Fogsworth in the swimming change-room with silver nitrate, trying to turn him into an
Instant African. The mountain path lead over the Saddle, between Devils Peak on the left,
and Table Mountain on the right. We seemed to have a connection to animals when we
were together. A pair of nesting black eagles often swooped down near us. Mountain goats
appeared as we walked. Owls flew past in the daytime, and hawks would circle above us.
We were mesmerized by the land and the color and the silence. I noticed how I would find
peace on that mountain. My mind would settle as my thinking would quiet, and the vast
silence of the rocky mountain piercing the sky and the silence of my mind would greet each
other in their stillness. Helen and I talked little as we went deeper into our walks, following
the rocky descent over the saddle into Newland‟s forest. We would descend a few hundred

meters, and then drop below the tree line. The forest was always damp and the air rich with
the smell of the earth and vibrant with life energy. There was frequently rain on the
mountain, and after good rains, there were countless silver tumbling waterfalls and clear
streams of fresh drinkable water running down the rocky slopes. Our favorite stop was a
magical waterfall where we could lean against the smooth black rock and be showered by
the cold water. Ten minutes further, the forest would break and we could stand shivering,
drying in the sun.
The fairytale was perfect. I was spending time in one of the most beautiful cities on earth
with a beautiful and pure young woman. If someone had pushed the pause button in the
movie and left me frozen in this image of perfection, I would have been happy. Time
disappeared. My dream had swallowed me and I was lost deep, deep within my fantasy.
With her, and with the mountain, I found peace. I wrote poetry for her.
Thief
Do you know what she could do?

She could do a thing great masters could do.
Minds like Einstein,
Hearts like Jesus Christ and the Buddha
all told us it was possible.
It was great for dinner conversation,

but I never saw anyone do it,
until she arrived.
Do you know what she could do?

She could Steal Time.
I would walk with her, and when I left,
after hours and hours,
I could never figure out where she put it.
Perhaps she hid it in her pocket or threw it behind a rock.
I don‟t know how she did it,
but she did it faster than I could see,

and she never told me how.
We were not lovers, and I didn‟t think I wanted to be her lover. Looking back and being
honest, of course I wanted to be her lover. Of course I wanted to jump her; that‟s what hot
blooded young men want to do when falling in love. I was so lost in my lie of plutonic purity
that I couldn‟t see that I would have loved to get naked with her, touching her nipples,
kissing her in an endless dance of mouths mating. Yet, I never imagined having sex with
her, and it just didn‟t feel right to my delusional mind to fantasize about that. It would have
shattered my glass illusion that I was pure and of noble intention, that I was somehow a
chivalrous knight and not a shaggy beast of the forest.
The day I knew I was in love with her began like many of our other days together. It was
April, and the mid afternoon air was crisp and cool as we began to walk, with some cloud
and rain in distant parts of the city. I carried a bag with some fruit and nuts and water, and
she walked silently as a nun on a pilgrimage behind me, serenity her habit. We climbed a
path up the front face of the mountain, and I went through the familiar process of noticing
my thinking settle, my thoughts of the city disappear, and I started to breathe in the smells
of familiar herbs and bushes and flowers. My attention settled into the moment, and I could
feel every rock beneath my feet, the movement of my body, and the sweat starting to build
on my forehead and my temples. We climbed for about an hour and a half, and I was
grateful when we arrived at one of the contour paths. We stopped and shared some fruit,
breathing in the fresh crystal air, then started to walk towards a waterfall that fell over a
path. The rocks were slippery and we trod with caution to avoid any falls down the steep
sides. I was nothing more than breath and steps, and watching Helen, who was now in front
of me, I could see that she too was calmly grounded in her walking. We approached the
waterfall, a curtain of water falling over an overhang on the path. Without speaking, we
both stopped on the path behind the water and started to stare through the shimmering
screen into the washed view of the city and the sky before us. The sun was setting in the
distance, and the golden rays lit the tumbling water, turning it into a mumbling mass of clear
sparkling light. The rain had stopped, and a rainbow had formed in one of the clouds.
Surrounded by this kaleidoscope of rock and water and light and rainbows, lifted above the
city and bonded in our silence and our breathing, we began to laugh. The laughter started
as smiles, and overflowed into the sky as we senselessly threw out our joy. There we were,
two wanderers seeking perfection, opening our spirits and loosing our happiness and casting

ourselves outwards through the water and into the sky, adding our love to the sunset. It was
right there in this vast openness and light that I knew there and then that I loved her. This
was my dream. I had always wanted someone I could travel with through the silence and
find the joy hidden on the other side of the noise of our minds, recognizing the beauty veiled
behind our thoughts and desire. I had met the rarity of another soul who understood grace,
and the revelation stunned me with fear, closing me up. I knew immediately I couldn‟t tell
her. The risk of rejection was too great, and the revelation would destroy the friendship. I
leaned forward and wet my hands under the cold water, washing my face and slapping
myself back into reality. The path was getting dark as dusk fell. I smiled at her.
„We should be heading back before it gets too dark,‟ I said. She nodded, and we began our
descent, with my chest contorting against the descended wall of restriction. That night, I
had a dream.
My body rises out of my bed and I leave the house. I fly over the city and towards some
distant mountains. There is a soft white light emanating from deep in the mountains. I am
drawn towards a strange and beautiful sound. I fly, over forests and more mountains, and
rising over a high peak, I see a valley beneath me. There are countless beings dressed in
white standing in the lush valley, singing as choir wordless songs that are different tones of
beauty. The rocks and the mountains are the instruments. From the rocks and the
mountains earthy tones and angelic music emerges, with a power that dwarves the thunder
of the loudest storm, yet is a delicate and pure as the softest silk. I want to stay in the
valley. I watch for a while, and then I am told to go back, as it‟s not my time yet.
Reluctantly, but without choice, I am drawn back to my room and my sleeping body.
I saw Helen the next day. We were driving with friends next to the ocean watching out for
whales, and I was sitting next to her in the back of the car. I told her my dream. She didn‟t
say anything and just gave me her Mona Lisa smile and hung her head out the window to
catch the wind in her face. She was always like that. She never spoke. She was so goddam
quiet.

Attachment
I started to crave the peace and the quiet that I experienced when I went hiking on the
mountain and had been spending time with Helen. Addiction has always been one of my
forte‟s and I was back in the hole again. It didn‟t matter how I felt when I began to walk. I
could be stressed, tired, bored, excited, anything except physically sick. Hiking was a
refining and stripping process, and by the time I finished each walk, I would be grounded
and still. Returning to the city, it would seem as though I was immune to the restlessness of
the endless urban humming. I would head back to the comfort of home and keep the
apartment in silence, trying to hold onto the stillness that I had found on the empty
heavenly slopes. I found a home in the simplicity of feeling the warmth of a cup of tea in my
hands, savoring the taste of warm toast spread with fresh butter, and filling the house with
the inviting smell of pumpkin soup that I would eat with fresh bread, listening to the wind
and sometimes the evening rain relentlessly trying to enter through the roof. I was usually
alone; if I had been walking with Helen, she would have returned home by now.
All I wanted was hiking and Helen. I would wake up in the mornings, and all I could think of
was getting outside and hanging out with her. The year had past the halfway mark, and was
July, the middle of winter. I wasn‟t so enthusiastic about programming and spending time
with Irene each day. Getting out of bed on the cold crisp days and writing code to control
databases with Irene wasn‟t bringing me happiness. I would ride to meet her, and she would
start to talk about programming and business and all the usual stuff, and all I wanted to talk
about was the mountain and how great hiking was and my spiritual ideals and my obsession
with Helen. I suffered because I didn‟t want what I had, and I didn‟t have what I wanted.
Irene had an office with views of the mountain. I sat, hour after hour with her, trying to
code and yet feeling like an innocent prisoner jailed for a crime he didn‟t commit. I wanted
to get the hell out of that office; I wanted my bliss. I often felt life was fundamentally unfair;
being human, I didn‟t ask to be born and thrown into the human cesspit, and now I was
presented with suffering not of my choosing. Sure, everything is a learning opportunity, but
really, sometimes fuck the lessons!

I didn‟t have a contract with Irene; we had an unofficial relationship. I was free to walk out
anytime I wanted and do what I wanted, yet I had my responsibilities to the work, I had my
ongoing learning, and Irene was my mentor. I didn‟t want to disappoint her, and I didn‟t
want to leave my new career. The catch 22 was that I didn‟t feel competent to survive
without her, and I had given her my power and become dependant on her. I tried to be
interested in code and databases and logical loops, yet all I wanted was the relief and the
freedom of striding heroically on the mountain side and finding my peace and my stillness.
The desire to get out of that office would get stronger and stronger as I sat there, building
like a thundercloud, until I felt I was going to storm. I used willpower and force to focus my
attention and to concentrate while programming and to overcome the resistance I felt to
being there, but that was exhausting and never seemed to solve the problem that I wanted
to be somewhere else. When I relaxed, the desire to leave just swelled up again and I was
back to square one. I easily drifted in fantasies of being in nature and with Helen, and I
started to feel contempt for people who lived their barren dry grey lives stuck in offices and
cubicles, living day after day in a monotonous routine, chained by their fear of losing their
security, handcuffed to mediocrity by their doubt and their worry. I could not see at the time
that I was really feeling contempt for the part of myself that was bound by safety, and I
hated myself for being stuck. Instead, I projected my dissatisfaction out into the world, not
being mature enough yet to look inside and see that how I perceived the world was simply a
reflection of my soul.
I wanted life, I wanted feeling. I wanted liberation. I wanted peace and I wanted stillness. I
wanted beauty and joy. I wanted love. I wanted to stand between the rocks and the sky
having conquered the mountain yet again. I wanted to feel alive and I wanted to feel good.
I wanted my legs to get stronger and fitter, and I wanted to sit unmoving and silent without
a ripple in my thinking at night, as strong as the mountain which I adored. I wanted access
to Helen, I wanted her to listen to me validating myself through expounding theories of
spirituality and heaven and I wanted her to lose herself in my fantasies of my perfect future.
I wanted it all my way.
Instead of having it all my way and finding the pot of gold at the end of my rainbow, I
started to go insane. Trying to control and order my thoughts was like herding cats. I
wanted out of this. I had fantasies of being the Incredible Hulk and jumping up and running
through the concrete walls, demolishing anything that stood in the way between me and my

desires. I didn‟t want the slow rationality of a quality profession; I wanted the high of being
a hero and an adventurer and the living of my fantasy.
My relief came when I would finally leave Irene‟s house and ride my bike, wind in my hair,
racing towards the mountain side, where I would walk alone or with Helen. I was walking
more and more alone, as Helen increasingly had other commitments. I would stride off into
the mountain, knowing that it took about 20 or 30 minutes to let go of the thoughts circling
round in my mind. I knew it was just a matter of time until I stated to enter the peaceful
zone and reach my target of clarity and beauty. If I didn‟t feel the beauty and serenity that I
wanted, I would seek for it and search for it until I found it again, and the mountain and
Helen were the keys to the puzzle. I found that if I ran hard for the first twenty minutes and
exhausted myself, then the crazy thoughts would leave me. I had tasted the beautiful and
the still and the pure, and I wanted to hold onto it, and I would take myself to exhaustion to
find it again, to find that place where, for a while, my wanting would cease and I would be
at peace, and at peace, free of desire and at ease with my world, I felt my freedom. Life was
an urgency to get the feeling I wanted, day after day, week after week. I was little more
that a hamster on a wheel, endlessly spinning round and round using vast amounts of
energy, all the while going nowhere. When I was locked in wanting something, my craving
blinded me to the world around me. I couldn‟t notice or appreciate anything. The slow creep
of the clouds crawling across the holding sky or the luxury of a sensual woman trailing
Chanel were irreversibly lost. I couldn‟t focus my attention. I lost out on the miracle of my
experience, and instead, my only goal became a feeling-memory of a happiness I once had,
and I wanted to go back to that memory, to find the same place again and again and as
often as I could, thinking that if I threw together enough happy experiences, my life would
be free of pain and I‟d be okay.
My addiction to Helen was growing, and so was my desire to be perfect in her eyes. She
worked as a healer and I was attracted to her qualities of love and service and compassion.
I saw her as being a spiritual person and as embodying the ideal of spirituality that I aspired
to. She ate only healthy food, with lots of fresh fruit; she awoke early to welcome the
sunrise and celebrate the light in the mornings, and she rarely said a bad or negative word
about anyone or anything. I wanted to impress her, and so I continued to read pop
spirituality books and then repeat what I had learnt, fooling myself into thinking it was my
own wisdom and doing little more than deepening my pit of self deception.

My favorite book at the time was a popular book on spirituality by a successful international
author. Many days in the morning I sat with my coffee and honey on toast and that fateful
captivating book, sitting on the stairs at the back of our apartment. Trevor and I had a
ground floor apartment, the back of which opened onto a little garden, which had an
expansive view of my beloved mountain. After I had had my morning meal, I would sit and
contemplate the koans in the book. (Koans are short questions or statements that cannot be
understood through the rational mind, and through an intuitive understanding of them,
spiritual wisdom is developed.) My life had an unresolved intensity from the conflict between
my work and my pleasure, and my unrequited desire. I idealized myself as a free thinking,
open minded, non possessive human being who embodied liberation and an altruistic
perspective. I convinced myself that the friendship with Helen was a pure God-ordained
affair uncontaminated by sexual desire and the common drama of regular relationships,
whereas all the while I was blind to the truth of my addiction and had unwittingly shoved my
desire to possess her into the dark bowels of my mind, where it festered and simmered,
bubbling as control and possession. I wanted her and I couldn‟t have her; I wanted to live
on the mountain and I couldn‟t, I wanted to get out of programming but I was stuck. I was
caught in the middle, between a rock and a hard place, and was unbelievably blind to the
possibility that I was the cause of all my suffering, that I was creating my response to the
situation. I didn‟t have the joy of being united with my beloved, and could not yet
understand that suffering is the first Grace. I figured my angst was due to my spiritual
hunger and if I could just apply enough willpower and focus, then I would break through
these koans and realize the truth and attain my enlightenment. After all, who was not
enlightened? Willpower and focus were the keys to success that had bought me this far, and
I wanted them to carry my forward. I didn‟t see that they were my biggest thorns on the
path.
Popular new-age spirituality promised all the things I wanted. It promised unconditional
liberation, unfettered love, abundance and deathlessness. It promised the ultimate whoopee
feel good solution and I was totally sold. “Who was not enlightened?” All I wanted in my self
centered tiny little life was to feel good, and anything that promised happiness and freedom
from suffering and worry had my vote. The descriptions of enlightenment seemed to
describe how I felt when I was out hiking for a day and with Helen. When I was out in the
open, well fed, together with my romantic fantasy and surrounded by the perfection of

nature and the smooth knife sounds of the eagles cutting the sky, I was radiant, I was
happy, I was enlightened. Yet, returning to the city, my enlightenment vanished and I was
back in the stockade of my misery. Why was my spiritual path bringing me so much pain?
Where was the unconditional love and freedom that spirituality promised? Why was my
happiness so fucking conditional? Was there any way to be unconditionally happy? Wouldn‟t
that be ultimate freedom? I sat, morning after morning on that red backdoor step, trying to
solve these seemingly intractable problems, trying to ease my suffering. I had no teacher
and no wise guides. I could only bear the tension for so long before I felt as though I
needed either Prozac, a straightjacket or a double whiskey. Then, I would have to head to
the mountain and walk off or run off this energy that threatened to erupt like a volcano, and
I would find a temporary relief as I hunted for the stillness. And then the discomfort and
craving and neurosis would start again the next day. The more I contemplated the koans in
the book, the deeper I seemed to dive into suffering. The truth seemed like a tricky thing;
just when I thought I had it nailed and had finally got to the root of the problem and found
peace, then I would lose it again. Enlightenment seemed conditional, yet when I was in a
feeling good state, then everything made perfect sense. Something just wasn‟t right,
obviously I never had a handle on this enlightenment thing, and I didn‟t have a clue how to
figure it out.
I began to think that silence was the key, and I started to spend a day or two at a time,
often on the weekends, without speaking or reading. Irene was increasingly demanding on
me and I wanted to escape her growing control over me. I considered leaving and living in
a cave somewhere, but that seemed like a cowardly escape. I could not balance the world of
sound and responsibility with the stillness and peace which I sought, and there seemed to
be no way to reconcile the two. I knew I had to find an answer in the silence about Helen. I
needed to know why my love was bringing me so much suffering. This was a paradox that
fascinated me for years. Why was the underbelly of love, hate? Why was my beauty
embedded in suffering? Why did something so blissful so easily turn into something painful?
Was it possible that good and evil were the same thing?
Trevor and some other friends were heading out for the weekend. It was a perfect
opportunity to spend quiet time alone and seek for the answer which I wanted. I told Irene
that I would be unavailable for a few days, without offering an explanation. She said it was
okay as there were no immediate deadlines that we needed to meet, but she expected to

see me on Monday morning. I entered into silence on Thursday evening. I stayed home and
cooked a light meal, without any music or TV playing in the background. The first few hours
of being silent were a little bumpy as I habitually looked for distractions to occupy my mind.
After dinner, I sat down with my journal and emptied my mind onto the page.
I awoke early the next morning. I had planned a solitary day in nature, and so, after a
breakfast of fruit and coffee and porridge, I jumped on my motorcycle and headed to the
mountain. My mind was full of expectations and thoughts about the week and negative
thoughts about programming, and I wanted to find the peace and clarity from walking. I did
The Saddle alone, which took bout 4 hours. I kept on asking the question in my mind „Why
am I suffering from love?‟ It was a warm sunny mid winter‟s day, and I was feeling much
more peaceful and centered after the walk. I returned to my bike, and rode down the
forested mountain road towards another of my natural loves, the beach. I inhaled deeply
and savored the fresh sea air as I neared the ocean. Getting off my bike, I took my heavy
hiking shoes off and felt the relief as I walked light footed across the soft sand, noticing
crinkled pieces of driftwood and shattered shells scattered on the ground. I headed to the
waters edge and wet my feet in the cold South Atlantic ocean, shivering from the shock.
Cormorants swooped and dived into the water, disappearing after invisible fish shooting
between the kelp beds. I walked along the waters edge to a rocky outcrop on the side of the
beach, and climbing onto the rocks, I sat watching the waves rolling in and breaking, leaving
swirling patterns of blue and green and brown in their wake. The repetitive crashing of the
surf hypnotized me, and as I sat on the rocks, I kept on asking the question „Why am I
suffering from love?‟ Concentrating on the waves and the sea, I hammered my mind into
silence and eventually headed home.
I repeated the trip to the mountain and to the sea the following day. It was Saturday
evening when I headed home, and I still didn‟t have the answer which I wanted. I made a
resolution to sit on the back step and not move until I had the answer, and I kept on
repeating the question. I was entering my third day of silence, and I sat still on the steps
under the cold stars starring at the silhouette of the mountain. I started to get cold and
tired, but I refused to budge. I spun the question round and round, repeatedly, urgently.
„Why am I suffering from love? Love should not cause suffering!!‟ I gotto give myself credit;
I was persistent. I think I got it from my mother, who at the age of 56, started to run 90 km
marathons. It must have been a mutant gene or something.

After several hours, approaching about 2am in the morning, the realization struck me. I had
it! I was Love. I was Love without condition. Helen and the mountain side were nothing but
channels that allowed that love to flow out of me. They were not the source of my love. I
was the source of my love and that love already existed inside me, and all it wanted was to
be released into the world, towards something for a good purpose. I suffered because I held
my love, my happiness, inside. I was free because I was the source and all I had to do was
stay open. I‟d confused my love with being dependant on her, yet I was always love. Love
and radiance were my natural states, and I suffered when I forgot that and I believed Helen
and the mountain were the sources of my bliss. I didn‟t need her or the mountain anymore.
I felt an expansion and relief flooded my core as I penetrated to the root of my problem. I
knew without doubt that this was the answer, and I understood how Helen had been
necessary to help me realize this. I was Love, and Love was my inner radiance, my true
condition. My mistake had been to confuse the love coming from within me, with coming
from something else. I WAS LOVE!! I couldn‟t shout that loud enough. Exhilarated by this
discovery and filled with gratitude, I rushed inside to write it down and into a letter I would
send to Helen, proclaiming my freedom from her and my new found identity with Love. Who
was not enlightened?
Unfortunately, I seemed to be the one who was drastically unenlightened. I felt extremely
proud of myself for a day or so. I wrote the letter and made sure Helen received it, and then
I sat in eager anticipation as I expected her to come running to me and see me for the
spiritual genius I truly was, and finally we would be together as we plutonically basked in the
true radiance of our deepest most loving shining selves, two open hearts unconditionally
together as one. Instead, I went backwards; my new found radiance rapidly faded, and my
anticipation soured into a hunger to see her, and a desire to get my fix on the mountain. I
didn‟t have a clue how to integrate that realization into my being. My mind retained the
memory of the realization that I was Love, but the memory was little more than an empty
thought, and I was back in the slammer of my insane craving, wanting, tortured by the
absence of Helen, desperately seeking my unconditioned freedom.

A sufi story comes to mind here. Mulla Nasruddin has lost his keys, and he is outside by the
lamp crawling on all fours in the light. His neighbor comes to him and says „What‟s wrong?‟
„I‟ve lost my keys‟ says Mulla.
„Let me help you,‟ says the neighbor. The neighbor and Mulla crawl around for hours, and
finally the neighbor says „Well, I can‟t find them. Are you sure you lost them here?‟
„No,‟ says Mulla, „I lost the keys over there, but this is the only place I can see.‟ Helen was
the only light I could see, yet I had long lost the keys to my happiness, to my light, in the
darkness in my soul that I didn‟t know how to look inside.
The Good, the bad and the ugly.
In some ways I was pretty close to being my perfect self. I was healthy, fit, into spirituality
and was pursuing a career as a programmer that I was confidant would make me successful
and wealthy. Back at the ranch, I was more a case of Jekyll and Hyde as I rejected my
imperfection. I lived a clean life in the apartment during the week. On the weekends, I used
to head to the bars, either with Irene or with other friends of mine. I promoted values of
health and goodness and purity, but when it came to the weekend, I turned into another
animal. I would hunger for another high to lose myself in. I had always enjoyed alcohol and
marijuana, and come weekend, I would binge drink and smoke and party all night long.
Sometimes I would get back at 8 in the morning, perhaps even later. Occasionally I would
take other drugs, such as ecstasy or cocaine, only getting to sleep around mid day, or not
even sleeping as I stayed awake in an empty, fragmented wasted state. Countless nights my
friends and I roamed the streets of the city, seeking and searching for another joint, another
pill, anything to get high and erase the night. Most of my friends liked to have fun, and we
had a good time together. We were young and attractive and filled with promise, and life
was out there to be lived and enjoyed. And it‟s true; when you‟re young, you do think you
will live forever.
I remember one Saturday, about 12pm in the afternoon. I had been up all night and had
been doing ecstasy. I couldn‟t sleep and had bought a dozen beers and was lying in the
apartment, drinking and smoking pot, trying to come down so I could fall asleep. I had some
depressing music playing in the background, and was smoking joint after joint. I was a

wreck; my pupils were dilated, my face was puffy, and I couldn‟t say anything coherent, let
alone do anything requiring intelligence like connecting the cables of the DVD player. I was
aware of was going on, but my mind was a wire sculpture. There was a knock on the door
and then the door opened. It was Helen, all bubbling with energy and fresh and healthy. I
was painfully embarrassed that she should see me at my worst, and if I could have hidden, I
would have. She was in the area and had come to say hello and to collect something from
the apartment. She was always welcome, and if the door of the apartment was unlocked,
she would come inside. The apartment reeked of pot smoke. She stood there and looked at
me flopped on the sofa like a stranded and dying whale, and said hi. Even though she was
smiling and I was wasted, I could tell that she was disturbed by the sight of me. I don‟t
blame her; I was also disturbed by the sight of myself in the hole of my self destruction. I
couldn‟t really speak and so I mumbled something which I don‟t remember. She just looked
at me and walked out. She didn‟t return any of my calls that week and I didn‟t see her for a
while. I felt like scum; I literally hated myself for being such a mess. I had a sense that
there was something inside me that was wounded and wanted its release, and it took me
over each weekend. I didn‟t know what it was, and I didn‟t want to be so self destructive
and annihilate myself repeatedly, yet I felt it was better to release the tension than keep it
inside, even if my release was unhealthy. I figured that if the demons were not released,
they would turn against me, and hurt me even more than the drugs and the alcohol were
doing. I desperately wanted to be pure and beautiful, and I tried my hardest during the
week to do that, yet most weekends, the pendulum would swing to the other side and I
would be going down the party tunnel again, hurtling towards another smashed sunrise.
There was a lot I liked about parties. I loved the energy and the friends and the promise of
women. Life was fun in the bars when we were silly and we were dancing. In moments of
euphoria we would share our deepest secrets and for moments, just moments, there was
love. When I was high, I loved drugs. The ordinariness of every day experience could not
compare with the high of ecstasy and a beautiful woman wrapped in your arms, lips melting
into lips and sweat into sweat and heaven manifesting in the sublime drenching of two hot
humid souls raining into each other. Everything was a relentless search for love, a search for
the good, the beautiful and the true. My alternative to partying was to sit at home, alone on
the weekend nights, sedately watching the infected wounds of Apartheid festering on the
evening news. Staying home, I felt I was missing out on something, and I had a seemingly
inborn commitment to live life and not to shy away from it. I wanted the streets. And so, I

would head into the night lights of the city with my friends and our funky hairstyles and our
designer jeans and labels jackets. On the surface, it was all about looking cool and we
idolized each other for our style. On the inside, it was a selfish rush to get high. Once at
university, a green bird had flown full speed into the window above me, confused by
reflection of the trees and the sky in the glass. I heard a crack like clapping hands and it fell
to my feet. I picked it up, still warm and twitching, its neck broken. I held it in my hands as
it died, silently crying at the wasted beautiful life. I was like that bird. The parties and drugs
looked beautiful, but each time I flew into them, mesmerized by their false beauty, I broke
myself a little bit more. After the party the come down would smack me like that bird flying
into the window snapping its neck, and I would lie stunned, unable to move, wondering
what the hell I had done again.
Tortured by guilt and sadness, I would recommit myself to a life of purity and renunciation,
and then break my vows when desire struck the next Friday night. Yet, a part of me loved
the addiction. I loved being consumed; I loved losing myself and I strangely, in a way I
could not understand, I enjoyed my repeated destruction. I wrote poetry to this love, my
addiction.
I sit,
Quiet and peaceful in this afternoon room.
This Friday is dressed in innocence.
Warm light caresses the windows;
the sky has been painted from a children‟s book.
I know my Angel of Fuckedness, My Bride of Desire,

is waiting somewhere outside.
Now she is resting,
Yet,
it‟s just a matter of time until
dusk nears, when
she will start her walk around the garden,
and begin her tapping on the window.
He diamond encrusted rings will entice me with their beauty
and mesmerized by her appeal, I will open this window and

allow her into my pure clean retreat.

She will drop her noble facade and shed her jewels,
Flushing them with careless impunity down the toilet.
Inviting and naked,
she will come near and begin to entwine her
naked body into my flesh.
I succumb to my desire and abandon my mind
To enter her; drinking, smoking, consuming, ravishing.
We dance and sing and growl and laugh, all the while
she, a vampire, bleeds me,
Until at dawn she leaves.
I crumple, exhausted, broken,
Alone to tidy this filthy mess.
She will be back.

She will return
To fix me again.
I was on the edge. The intensity of life and unrequited love was almost unbearable. Many
nights I walked home from working with Irene instead of riding my bike. My favorite jacket
was a German army style coat, which had a fur hood for the winter. Cape Town in winter is
cold and wet. The mist would often descend at night and the street lamps would shine hazy
orange halos into the gathering damp. It was the winter of my discontent. I looked at
houses with their yellow lights behind the curtains, and imagined people inside their warm
houses, content after hot baths and then drinking tea with their lovers while snug in their
robes. I hungered for that comfort and love. The intensity of my feeling illuminated the
nights. Strangely, while holding that urgent tension within me, I was struck by ethereal
moments of beauty. Life could be astonishingly beautiful in the midst of my darkest
suffering, and there were times, when the suffering seemed too intense, that I would fall or
be catapulted through the walls of angst into an ocean of liberating beauty and clarity. Each
water drop on a steel railing shone with the repeated reflection of the silent midnight city. A
dog iced the sky with its vacant howling. A run-over rat lay pancaked on the street and its
gruesome death shone with perfection. My coat turned up against the cold to warm my
neck, I loved the extremities of life and I knew I would never be content with safety and

mediocrity. Even though I suffered, I was alive, and I knew it and lived it with every cell of
my body, and somewhere in my soul I knew I desired to hold the light and the dark within
me and embrace it all with an unconditional love. Suffering seemed to be a doorway to
redemption, a key to the emancipation which I was seeking, but I had no idea how to stay
on the other side. I was determined to feel, and no matter how good or how bad, I was
determined to feel whatever arose within me to fullness, because there on the edge, where
the boundaries became blurred and my comfort was lost, life became interesting and I
became full. I had no way to reconcile these opposites. It just seemed that sometimes
suffering, when pushed to its extreme, revealed itself to be underpinned by grace.
Fortunately, I did not spend all my time pushing and breaking my edges, although each day
had its share of that irresolvable tension. I had enough normality to keep a semblance of
balance, and in those times of okayness, I would rationally think about my situation and be
concerned that I was not feeling. I wrote a short poem for Helen trying to describe this
dance.
Sometimes, I worry that she does not concern me,

like Blue Sky.
Othertimes,
I miss her presence,
like I notice a hurricane.
I was a fractured human being. All my experiences were true for me, yet my mind had no
way to hold them together in a sane and meaningful way, and I both loved and was repelled
by part of my character. The fracture was painful and I intuitively knew it needed resolution.
The day the urgency of for wholeness struck me I was hiking up Devils Peak, which flanks
Table Mountain in Cape Town. I was alone and had taken my familiar route up to the
saddle, and instead of continuing over and into the forest, I climbed a few hundred meters
up the peak. It was a clear cool September day, and I sat on the top of the peak warmed by
the sun and feeling the sweat dripping down the back of my shirt. I could see the city of
Cape Town below me, the suburbs and squatter camps spreading like a fungal infection out
to the horizon, and the Indian and Atlantic oceans meeting in the distance. I was clear from
the climb and on top of my adorable mountain, once again a self proclaimed king of the

world in my spiritual natural paradise. I breathed in the clean air, relaxing into the
unfettered peace of the moment.
The wind carried the sound of sirens and ambulances up from the city. Somewhere, amidst
the concrete and the trash cans and the noise, there was suffering. Perhaps another
senseless killing in the backstreets of Africa, with a volatile kid high on glue fumes stabbing
an old lady for 5 dollars, leaving her gasping like a fish out of water as her blood dyed her
dress red. Who knew? All I knew was, that I was running from it all, hiding in my ideals of
purity and isolation. I was searching for God and I always had been. My search for God had
to go beyond the idea of separation that God was present in one place and not present in
another. That day I sensed that God had to be everywhere, including among the trash cans
and rotting sewers and dirty concrete streets. I had to find God down there, in the melee of
being human. I had to find the presence of God shining among all the shades of this loving
and terrifying human experience, and only then, would I be whole and my inner fracture
healed. I had no idea how I was going to find God among the garbage cans, and the
thought troubled me. I did not want to be a Mother Theresa, selflessly helping the starving
and the sick while being able to admire the beauty of a violet flower growing through cracks
in the sidewalk. I had a life of unfulfilled dreams and pleasure and ambition that urgently
wanted my attention, and giving it all up to do the good work of the Lord in the squatter
camps, while noble in intention, was just not going to cut it. An inescapable and terrifying
sense of destiny polluted my grounded clarity. I knew I was headed into unavoidable but
necessary difficulty. I headed back down the mountain side into the growing dusk, knowing
that the romance with Mother Nature was over.
Marathons
I was on the edge emotionally with Helen, intellectually with Irene as I tried to develop my
programming and design skills, and I was also on the edge physically. Trevor had asked me
if I wanted to run a half marathon with him, and initially I was aghast at the suggestion. I
had never run more than two kilometers before, and the couple of times I had tried running
when I was younger, I had found it a horrible and painful experience. At primary school, I
always came second or third to last in the 800 meters, red faced and gasping with breath,
only beating the fat kids. Surfing and hiking were great, but running carried memories of

pain, failure and discomfort, and just the thought of running five kilometers without stopping
seemed an insurmountable challenge. Anyway, Trevor convinced me that with the correct
training plan, solid friendship, lots of bananas and a comfortable pair of running shoes, a
half marathon should pose little challenge. He sounded convincing, and being my best friend
and trusting him, I agreed.
It was around mid July 1999 when we started to train. Our first run was along a road that
wound itself along the flank of Table Mountain. It was lined with pine trees, steep drops on
one side, and the mountain rising on the other. I don‟t remember much about that first day,
except that 5 km‟s took an excruciating thirty something minutes and I was stiff for days
after. My belief that running was an unpleasant thing to do seemed well justified; still, we
ran again two days later, and then after another two days. Our training schedule required
three runs a week, to be increased according to a set plan. Before long I was running 8km‟s
and then 10km‟s comfortably around 4 ½ minutes a kilometer. We ran a 5km time trial in 18
minutes. I was amazed. I had never imagined that I could run one km, let alone 5, in under
4 minutes a km.
That day we ran the 5 km in 18 minutes is branded in my memory. It was a cool clear
morning about 6 am, and the route followed a road that ran next to the Atlantic ocean. The
sun was just beginning to rise and the sky was a clean grey color. Trevor and I did some
stretches, and then we started to run, Trevor bolting like a rabbit being chased by a fox.
„This is too fast,‟ I thought, „We can never keep this up.‟
Trevor was always competitive in any run, even a training run, and his competitive nature
used to bug the hell out of me. We would agree to run together, and I would be looking
forward to a relaxing canter, enjoying the smells of the forest and the sea and taking time to
look at the beauty which surrounded us. Sure as sin, it wouldn‟t be long before Trevor was
pushing to run faster and harder, and the run would shift from being pleasant exercise into a
drive towards speed and achievement. He seemed unable to resist winning and going for the
kill, and he was a stronger runner than me, so he usually beat me. I was unbelievably stupid
to think that he would not be competitive each time we ran. I hadn‟t quite grasped the idea
that a leopard doesn‟t change its‟ spots overnight. I would suggest that we ran for
enjoyment, and that we ran together, and that if one person was tired, then the other would
slow down to help him and give him strength. Every time he agreed, and then every time we

ran, his instinct would kick in and he would streak off ahead as if his life depended on it, and
I would get pissed off.
True to his character, Trevor had started running fast that day, and true to my character, I
started my internal stream of complaining, and started to resist what he was doing. Yet,
another part of me decided to run along as best as I could (we were only going to do about
5 km), and to try and keep up. The conditions were perfect. There was no wind, the air was
cool, and the street was empty. My feet were hitting the ground correctly, as compared to
the awkward slapping that sometimes happened when I was having an off day. I found
myself keeping up, yet inside, I was telling myself a convincing story of failure.
„This is too fast. We have to slow down.‟ The thoughts were circling in my head while my
breathing got faster and faster. My legs began to feel tired, and I felt pain in my legs and
chest and stomach. I kept on running. „I can‟t keep this up,‟ I thought. „Something is going
to break.‟
The urge to stop got stronger and stronger. I wanted to slow down, to rest, to let the
intensity that was burning my legs and chest fade, to end the hurt; any more and I was
going to break. Trevor showed no signs of breaking and kept on going, and so did I. Any
second I thought I would collapse, every fiber within me wanting to stop, my mind
screaming at me to stop. I was locked in an inner fight, my will pushing my body while the
rest of me wanted this to end and return to where it didn‟t hurt.
Freedom.
I was free. I‟d let go. My lungs still hurt. My legs were still getting tired, yet my mind had
dropped its story of having to stop and my thoughts of danger and collapse had
disappeared. As my resistance to what I was experiencing dropped away, a surge of energy
flooded into my body, energy that could be directed towards running, instead of fighting the
inner experience. I still felt pain, but my suffering, my resistance to what my experience,
had been released. I felt as high as I had ever been on any drug, and a wave of euphoria
swept through me, pulling me forward. My body ran, seemingly by itself, and I was there to
enjoy the ride, more connected to every breath and feeling and wave of pain than ever
before. I yelled with pleasure and shouted at Trevor. „Keep going. Faster!‟ We ran on, as fast
as we could, my legs unable to go any quicker. There were moments when my mind kicked
back in with its thoughts about stopping, but they were short lived and I quickly fell back

into the flow of the run again. Trevor and I finished strongly. He beat me by seconds, but it
didn‟t matter. I had run where I didn‟t think it was possible.
There were many more training runs, and we eventually ran our half marathon of 21 km. I
finished in a time of 1hr 43 minutes, which was below my 5 minutes a kilometer target time.
Running that marathon was the most positive thing I did that year. It was my one true
success of that period; I had fought tooth and nail with myself to overcome my struggle in
training again and again, and I had done it. It wouldn‟t have been possible without Trevor. I
would not have had the discipline or drive to push myself repeatedly and sustainably
through my limits to complete the training and run that race. I learned that a lot of my limits
were self imposed, about what I thought was possible and what was not possible. When I
approached those limits, fenced in by walls of emotion, my entire body would scream at me
to stop, and I wouldn‟t, and then I would go through those illusory walls and enter into new
realms of performance. My limits were there for a reason, but they did not always serve me,
and the ones that were no longer purposeful, needed to be seen and dropped. I felt strong
and powerful. I had used focus and willpower and determination and discipline, and I had
broken through my limits to go faster and further. I was transcending myself when I went
into my suffering with Helen, but that was different. That wasn‟t going anywhere. Running
was different. I learnt to go into my discomfort and repeatedly break through my limitations
as I headed towards a goal. This was to be one of the most important skills I could ever
learn.
Dissapointment
Early October 1999. I had been walking regularly with Helen for about 6 months, and we
had met at one of the paths on Table Mountain to go for an afternoon walk. It was a late
winter‟s day, with patches of cloud and a cool breeze blowing. Most people in the city were
out at work, so the mountain road and paths were quiet. Helen and I had agreed to meet on
the road before walking, and I had parked my bike on the side and was waiting for her. I
was always happy to see her, and relished the time together. She arrived in her white car
and I walked towards her, smiling at her clean fresh face and feeling the brisk freshness of

the air in the shadows. I was relieved to see her. Increasingly I felt I was going insane when
I was without her, and she had become my medicine, my fix, my antidote to my craving.
I knew I loved her. There had been moments of perfection together. We had sat in a room
after walking, and she had been on the floor in the corner, and I had been sitting on the
bed. She had painted my room, and it had a blue roof with large fluffy white clouds. Every
time I awoke from sleep, the first thing I saw was the sky on my roof and I could imagine I
was out in the open. She was sitting around 2 meters away from me, both of us under the
fake sky. I would have loved to have kissed her. I noticed her face, and felt a warmth in my
chest as a watched her. She was flushed and warmth was radiating through her body. I felt
sexually aroused in a loving way. Looking at her, I knew she felt it too. We were both sitting
there like two hot coals, glowing. Perhaps it got too much for her that day; she stood up and
left the room. There were other signs. I had been to a middle aged chain-smoking fortune
teller, who refused to let me speak. Apparently she listened to the spirits next to me, and
they told her that Helen had had a problem with her period for about two years and that
was going to be solved soon, and that we were in love and destined to be married. I had
confirmed the information with Helen about her period which had shocked her because no-
one knew about this. I didn‟t tell her we were destined to be married. I felt that would have
been too much for one day, and decided to keep it as an ace up my sleeve.
We exchanged greetings on the mountain road, and started our walk up a steep rocky path,
taking step after step up the boulders that lay strewn in front of us, walking in silence. My
attention was focused on the path below and making sure that I placed my feet correctly.
Sometimes I looked up to see her ahead, her straight brown hair hanging down and tight
little butt mountain goating up the climb. We climbed up next to a small stream, and
stopped to drink the water. We had been climbing about 15 minutes, and I knew I had to
tell her. It was D-Day.
„Are you a little crazy when you are not with me?‟ I asked, „because I only feel peace when I
am together with you.‟
She looked at me and nodded. „Yes, my thoughts do make me a little mad when you are not
around,‟ she said. She didn‟t say too much more. She leaned forward and drank a little more
water. It was the first time I had ever bought up how I truly felt about her. I took her
answer as a sign that she liked me too.

„Don‟t you think that it‟s strange, that we are both crazy when we are apart, and we are at
peace when we are together?‟ I said. She looked at me, not smiling, not frowning. It was
typical of her. She hardly ever spoke to me, she never shared what was going on inside. We
shared time and we shared the mountain and the beauty, and I spoke and shared my soul
to her, but she never spoke much back. Perhaps she was wiser than I could have ever have
imagined. When faced with a silent world, I am faced with the clearest mirror of reflection
my soul could ever desire. The greatest teachers hold the silence; they let you be yourself.
This was my dream reflected back into me in the silence. It seemed that this beautiful
woman and this mountain and my love and my desire were all I ever wanted. They were
waiting together in front of me, and all I had to do was listen to my heart and reach out and
hold on and trust that I would be received in my forward embrace, that all I had to was
jump and I would be caught. The feeling built up inside and it became unbearable to hold it
in. I had no choice but to honor my truth. „I love you,‟ I said, „that‟s just how it is.‟
She looked at me with shocked bright eyes and walked away. I knew it. It couldn‟t have
gone worse for me. There were no open arms waiting and I had fallen flat on my face. My
leap of faith had become a leap of failure. I felt as though I had dived into a swimming pool
without water. I had scarred our friendship with the blunt claw of my desire. Numb, I
waited. I knew I had thrown a spanner in the works, and somehow the masquerade
between us had been foiled as my truth was revealed and the lie was over. It was one of the
bravest things I ever did, standing there baring my soul, risking loss and disappointment. I
think I knew before I said anything that she did not want me, perhaps my story had always
been one of rejection just waiting to become real. She walked away a few steps and walked
back. She didn‟t say anything. She looked past me and started to walk back down the path.
Our walk and my delusion was over; the game of love had been played and the painful
result was clear.
My chest closed up on me. It felt as though a snake had coiled itself around my ribs and had
started to squeeze. Breathing hurt. I didn‟t know how I felt. I was empty handed and hollow
hearted. I followed about 10 steps behind, following her, not daring to look. My throat was
dry and the sound of my swallowing seemed to echo through my neck and mouth and
reverberate off the mountain up above me, it seemed so goddam loud. Fuck! FUCK! I
remember that time I was six and I had told my Dad that I loved him while I held his giant

hand as we walked though a shopping center, and he had laughed at me, and I was filled
with shame and rejection. Walking down that path lit by the last of the afternoon sun, I
cursed this fucking world. I hated pain. I was that little six year old kid again, desperate for
love, bravely reaching out, desiring with his heart and soul, and getting shunned. A wall had
been thrown down inside me, and all my desire, all my love, was trapped inside and could
not be released. I tried to escape. I told myself that I was love and she just helped open the
channel, but it made no fucking difference. I felt sick to the pit of my gut and an ache in my
chest as disappointment squeezed itself tighter and tighter, blocking my life force. The
silence of that afternoon exquisitely and flawlessly mirrored my shame, throwing it harder
and harder into me and making each step heavier. At least the truth was out. I got full
marks for courage. Now I had to deal with reality, and reality had one hell of a bite. My
dream lay soiled on that mountain side, crumpled and discarded and stinking like dirty toilet
paper. I may even have lost her for good. The crumbs of romance that fed me were
finished, and my heart was faced with a slow starvation. We got to the bottom of the walk.
Helen looked at me and said goodbye. I wished she would talk to me. I was too polite, too
nice, to demand her to speak. I had no right to demand anyone to do anything. I should
have shouted at her and made me tell me how she felt, because that‟s what I deserved.
She got into her car and drove away. I climbed on my motorcycle, kick started it, thought
about driving off over a cliff, and then headed home.
I still held out hope. It‟s amazing what I did to avoid my pain and get things my way and
keep my fantasy alive. It‟s an incredible human ability to have such strong hope for the
impossible, and the depth of that human stupidity never fails to amaze me. It‟s a horrible
joke of God to have to dash that hope and slam us with the wet slap of disappointment, yet
maybe that painful wakeup call is exactly what is required. A week later, Helen and I met by
chance at friend‟s house. I ached for her. I wanted her. I loved her and I would have died
for her if she had asked me to. I stood in the kitchen helping to make some sandwiches,
when she came in. I didn‟t want to speak to her in public. I focused on the mayonnaise.
Helen stood by the door, light shining in from the window. She looked as she always did, all
sporty and ready to run a marathon in her cute little trainers and tracksuit pants. We said
hello.
„Benjamin,‟ she said. She often called me Benjamin. „I had a great date with someone.‟ My
heart jumped. Maybe she was referring to us on the mountain last week. „I have been
watching him at the gym. He asked me out. He‟s a model.‟

The polite part of me wanted to smile and say „That‟s nice. I am happy for you.‟ My reality
was different. The bottom of my eyes swelled and pushed tears onto my face. I looked
down. I did not want her to see me weep. I wish I had got mad and smashed something.
That would have been dramatic. Instead, my rage lay hidden deep inside. I remember
feeling the breath inside my nostrils and then feeling it disappear into the pit between my
lungs. I stood for what seemed too long, but was only a few seconds, and then walked out,
into the living room, and through to the door. I kept on walking. This was not the time for
crying. I walked out and to my bike, and numbly kicked the starter. I could have had
frostbite for all I felt in my arms and legs. I got on and rode home and sat on the red step at
the back of our apartment. I had never been so wrong about something in my life. My heart
was damaged. Something was broken. Something inside had been split, and I could not
have prepared for this rift. It just hurt, and there was no other way to put it. I hunched
forward and rocked and shivered and started rolling joints.
Tired and cold.

This is my third sweater, and still
My heart shivers.
I am trying to swallow my heart
And digest it in my stomach.
It‟s not working.
My swallowing is futile.
I want to push this rock-heart out of my chest.
Maybe if I run chest first into a wall as fast as I can,
Then my heart will break and I will be free of this hurt.
(I am too much a coward to try though).
I try gorilla thumping.
It‟s no use.
I put on another sweater.
There is no escaping this.
What the hell happened to free will, God?

I certainly did not choose this.
(And any new-ager who says I did can go to hell).

A few weeks passed. It wasn‟t long before my sadness turned to anger. I continued to walk
on the mountain to find some peace and take my mind off the events that had happened. I
was walking along a forest path, noticing the trees and the grass and appreciating the
beauty and stillness of the area. By keeping focused on the positive, I could change my
mood, and I told myself that I had a lot to be thankful for, including my health, my family
and my education. The path was fairly flat and I moved quickly along the gravel surface
without concentrating too much on where I was putting my feet. I started to think about
Helen again; she had not contacted me since that day in the friend‟s apartment and I felt
betrayed and abandoned. I felt that we had a beautiful friendship and had shared many
experiences together, and that it would have been the decent thing for her to come and see
me and ask how I was. Rationally, I understood where she was coming from. She had a new
relationship with some pretty faced guy with big muscles and who looked good on the cover
of a magazine. She was busy with that, and I represented too much trouble and baggage to
be around. I was a fake mystic, had drug issues, was broke; why should she have wanted
me? Yet, rationality did nothing to appease my emotions, and I was stuck with my reactions.
Walking on the mountain side was supposed to relax me and get my mind off all that had
happened and turn me into a nice peaceful guy. Instead, I had been turned into an enraged
bear.
From the outside, I must have looked like any other hiker. I smiled pleasantly to other hikers
walking past and commented on how handsome their dogs were. I said good afternoon to
an elderly couple and we agreed that it was a lovely day. On the inside, I was in a different
world. Hot springs of anger were erupting inside of me, suffocating me with their poisonous
fumes. I didn‟t want to be mad. I was a peaceful person who had realized his true nature of
love, and yet here I was, inwardly contorting in fits of rage. I refused to allow love to turn
into darkness, to allow the purity of what I felt for her to be warped into something
smothering and destructive. I pushed the anger back down. It was not right to be so angry.
I was not an angry person. I practiced tolerance and compassion. I couldn‟t always keep it
down. I would swear and curse Helen and get lost in my stories about how terrible she was,
and then I would catch my thinking, step out of this mental hell, offer my missing God a
silent guilty prayer of forgiveness and focus on the beauty of the mountain. It was just a
matter of time before anger erupted again, and I would fight myself again, pushing back the

venom, trying to be my ideal of a man of peace and love, trying to resist the devil that was
spitting inside instead of honoring the part of me that was hurting and letting it thrash as it
needed to. I walked and ran that day until I found peace in my exhaustion and had no more
energy left for the fight. I lay down on the path and started up at the canopy of green
branches in the trees above, listening to the wind whispering through the leaves as my chest
heaved. I was caught in a cycle of pain, of cause and effect, of desire and beauty and anger
and suffering and disappointment, and what had started as a beautiful dream had contorted
itself into a horrific nightmare, where pleasure and beauty were only masks for pain and the
filth of human nature.
Disempowerment
October 2000. A year had passed since I had told Helen that I loved her, and she had
promptly run off with that bird-brained model from the gym. I still thought about her and
wanted to see her, but there were other important things to focus on. I was working flat out
with Irene. She had an idea for a computer program that she was sure would make her a lot
of money, and I was helping her in whatever way I could, with the agreement that I would
get a small percentage of the profits if the system was successful. I hadn‟t earned a salary
for several months as we were focused on this product, and we were working together
twelve to sixteen hours a day to try and complete it. Day after day we sat in her little office,
fueled by large pots of fresh brewed coffee and cigarettes, trying to do this work. Even
though Helen was gone, I was still feeling trapped and was hating the situation I was in.
Financially, I had run out of money. I was living off my credit card and was barely able to
pay my rent and buy food, let alone have anything over for emergencies. I used to cringe
when I went to the bank machine to get money, and I kept a running total of every cent I
spent in my head. It was the best crash course I accountancy I ever had. Irene claimed to
have little money, but she was spending healthy amounts of cash on her girlfriends and on
cocaine, all the while proclaiming not to have enough money to pay me. The project
promised a big payback, and I was hanging in for the day of success. But then, as they say,
don‟t count your chickens before they hatch, and I was counting a lot of potential chickens
running around chirping happily. If I wasn‟t at the office, Irene would call me anytime of
the day or night to discuss the project, and I couldn‟t escape. I dreaded the phone ringing,
because it always seemed to be her, and I felt like she was the Gestapo keeping me under

constant surveillance. I was tired of the world of drugs that surrounded me yet didn‟t know
how to get out. Irene was doing cocaine; my friends were doing ecstasy and marijuana, and
periodically I kept on getting sucked back into that hole. After every time I got high, I
committed to giving up and staying clean, and then a few days later or a week later I was
going down that futureless road again. No matter how I tried to escape, I ended up around
people doing drugs and I didn‟t know where to move to or where to go. The only answer
seemed isolation, and I wasn‟t ready for that.
If I had had enough money, I would have left that situation. I didn‟t have enough to survive
for more than a week at a time, and Irene would give me little payouts just to keep me
going. The problem wasn‟t just financial though. I didn‟t feel competent enough as a
programmer to go and get a professional job and hold my own unaided in a technical
workplace. I also didn‟t feel good enough as a geochemist to get a technical job, as I had
worked in an environmental administrative position before and I had been out of the field for
another two years. I didn‟t feel good enough to do anything at the time, and so I didn‟t even
try to look for other opportunity as I convinced myself of my premature failure. Looking
back, the reasons were all masks hiding a deep seated sense of worthlessness, and staying
in that situation simply reinforced my identity of not being worthy and of having to live in a
harsh world of scarcity. (Today, as I write this, I see now that the world is how I perceive it,
and not always how it really is.)
Ironically, it was more a case of not counting any chickens that could hatch, as I had
potentials which I blinded myself from recognizing. I also had my pride. I wanted to be
independent, and I wanted to be responsible for my choices. I wanted to be able to make
the right choices and show the world that I knew what I was doing. I didn‟t want to burden
my family or go and ask them for help, and yet I didn‟t know how I would survive if I left
Irene. My family had other problems. My father was really sick and approaching death. I was
in another part of the country and couldn‟t afford to go and see him and to support the rest
of the family. I had no clear idea what to do to change this situation. I was exhausted, and
would get home around 2 am each night after working, and then get up again around 8:00
am for another day of square eyes and struggle in front of the computer screen.
Each day, as I rode my bike towards Irene‟s house, I would pray a desperate prayer. I
prayed for God to get me out of there. All I wanted was an easy job where I could get paid

for what I knew how to do well, I could earn enough money to live well and I could figure
out what to do with my life, away from all these bad people I seemed surrounded with. I
had no idea how I was going to get out of this jam, and I did not have the courage or power
to leave. Everyday as I rode up that hill, I would repeat that prayer and pray for deliverance
from this intolerable situation. I felt as though I had been thrown into a hole and I could see
no way to climb out, and no matter how hard I screamed there was no one to rescue me. It
was a desperate situation; I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Nothing was
working and I needed some way out of this trap, and hadn‟t yet seen I was the trap maker.
I prayed daily with urgency and desperation. I was calling out with a vacant faith to a power
from which I had turned away from for a long time, and I had no way of knowing if there
was any response. I had no power. Irene controlled me. Poverty controlled me. The world
was demanding of me and I had nothing to give, and what I could give, wasn‟t enough. I
felt empty and impotent and useless, and the weaker I got, the more I wanted to hold on to
the security that I found in Irene, even though the relationship was destroying me. The fear
of leaving was too great. When I considered walking out, walls of anxiety would brick in my
chest and I would feel nauseous. Questions of survival raced through me. How would I pay
the bills? What about rent? I thought that if I couldn‟t pay rent, Trevor would kick me out. I
didn‟t want to risk not being able to pay my way. A man is a man because he can provide
for himself and his family. That was another level of my suffering. I thought I had to do
everything alone, and shoulder all my burdens in private. I thought I had to be in control. I
thought no-one cared or would help me, and I felt as though God was dead. I thought that
if I asked anyone for help I would be rejected, and they would tell me to go and solve my
own problems and fight my own battles. I was fighting the battle as best I could and
becoming more and more isolated as I slowly lost the fight. Each day I drove past beggars
and homeless people on the street and felt fear as I looked at them in their desperation. I
felt perilously close to that fate, inches away from that destiny.
It was all addiction. Addicts keep returning to the thing which is destroying them. It doesn‟t
matter if its addiction to drugs or abuse or money or sex or a violent husband or religion. It‟s
all the same. The addict wants out but finds a home, a temporary haven of safety in the
shelter of the addiction. Leaving that home is too terrifying, especially when it‟s the only
home there is. I was addicted. I had found a shitty shelter in Irene and I was too afraid to
leave. I was grinding myself lower and lower and forces beyond me had taken control and
were feeding off me and I felt I had nowhere to turn. Irene was the chief vampire. She fed

off my weakness and it gave her strength, obsessively controlling me and keeping me down.
I felt bitter. I had trusted her and gone into the relationship with good intentions. I had
done my best and tried my hardest and given my friendship and support and she was taking
advantage of me. I was the victim and it wasn‟t fair.
December 23 2000. Another two months had passed. I was writing some code to generate
reports for a client, and we were using some new software. I had spent a week or so
studying the new software and learning how to use it. Irene had requested a certain style of
report, which I believed the software was not capable of generating. I had been trying for
two days to do this and it just wasn‟t working. It was a bleak time. All my friends were on
holiday enjoying the South African summer. My family was meeting for Christmas in my
home town and I was not with them. My financial position was still terrible. It was close to
40 degrees centigrade in the middle of summer, and I wanted a break. Irene and I were in
her office.
„Where are the reports?‟ she demanded. „They should be finished by now.‟
„They can‟t be done,‟ I replied, „the code doesn‟t allow us to generate this type of format.‟
„They can be done,‟ she curtly replied. I was tired of taking her attitude, and I was tired of
always feeling that I was the one to blame for other peoples failures, and that it was always
my fault. I had always been that way. I remember sitting in assembly at school, sitting all
quiet and obedient in my blazer and tie with 1000 other well dressed boys, listening to the
scrawny headmaster threaten the school. The headmaster was a runt of a man who used to
saunter round the corridors after the bells had rung, cane in hand, waiting to beat stray
students. He was God; he had the power to cane, to ruin lives, to create futures. He stood
in his suit and greased hair with a side parting on the podium, thin, angry, stern voiced,
reminding me of a giant ferret, threatening the school. He threatened that the entire school
would report to detention for a week if the culprit never owned up. Someone had broken a
window and hadn‟t admitted responsibility and he wanted to know who it was. I felt that he
thought I had done it, and if I didn‟t stand, he would look at me, shout my name, say that I
did it, and expell me from the school. I was terrified and mesmerized, and felt a powerful
urge to stand up in assembly and save the other students from being punished, although I
never did. Secretly I dreamed of being a martyr. No one stood up that day. The headmaster
went red and purple with rage, changing colors like a polluted sunset. Everyone stayed after
school for a week, and I felt it wasn‟t fair that we all paid the price for someone else‟s

behavior. I scratched caricatures of the headmaster on the wooden desks that week; there
was no way he was going to win.
That day, though, with Irene and the reports, I was sure I was right and I was confident of
my truth. I was sure that the reports could not be done. I was not going to let her run over
me. I replied again, „They can‟t be done.‟ Irene didn‟t like being questioned. Her response
was cold and sharp. „You have a choice. You do them or you leave and you don‟t come
back.‟
Actually, I had no choice. I could stay there and try and do the impossible, or I could go and
lose my job. I think she figured I would stay as I had always bowed down to her before. I
had reached breaking point though, and enough was enough. I would only take slavery for
so long, and that day my spirit rose up and did what it had to do. I didn‟t think about it. I
got up, picked up my bag, and walked straight out the door.
„Where the hell are you going?‟ she snapped. I didn‟t turn around. I kept on walking. I
should have been really cool and said „Hasta la vista, Baby,‟ and lit a cigarette off the gas
stove on the way out. Cigarettes are powerful symbols of rebellion. Instead I was fucking
numb with shock. It was the last time I ever spoke to her.
I met some friends for drinks the following night for a Christmas eve celebration. Irene was
there. She glared at me with those headlight eyes of hers, and walked across and gave me a
white sealed envelope. I tore it open at one end and pulled out a typed letter. It was an
official letter of dismissal from her little company. I stared at it. It made no difference to me.
The following day was a terrible Christmas day. I was broke, emotionally shattered, away
from family, my father was dying, and I had no job. Life sucked.
January 2001.
Even though I was in a desperate situation, I felt liberated. It was an incredible relief to be
free from Irene. I had nothing to show for the months of hard and relentless effort I had put
into the project, yet I was free. I received a message from her asking if I could do some
work for a client. There was no way I was going to return to that situation. I replied saying

that I was permanently unavailable. I did have some good luck though. A friend put me in
touch with someone who needed some database work done in their business, which I was
able to do it and make some money to pay off my credit card and to pay my rent. I received
a call that my father was very sick. Fortunately I had enough money from the database work
to buy an air ticket and to return to my home town to see Dad before he died.
I was still shocked and numb from the previous year, the relationship with Irene,
unrequited love with Helen, financial strain and stressful work. I was an emotional imbecile
and had no way of knowing how to work through these difficult experiences. I had pushed
the unpleasant emotional material away hoping that would solve the problem, and instead
the problem was still alive and waiting to surface. It was like throwing the trash in the
bedroom cupboard and thinking that because it was out of sight, it wouldn‟t stink. The last
thing I needed to deal with was a family crises and death of a relative. I sat on the plane
flying home, drinking wine and staring at the clouds out the airplane window. I used to see
beauty and clarity when I looked out at the sky; now I saw sadness and emptiness. The sky
and the clouds were always there, it was me who had changed. The engines droned as the
plane flew onwards. I noticed some people laughing in some seats, some sleeping, some
reading, some eating. Each person was lost in their unique little world, and although we
were together on the flight, we were galaxies apart in our minds. I felt deeply alone in my
sadness, painfully separate from everything.
I got to visit Dad for a few days. He had been a proud man, and when I was young, he had
been wealthy. He had a fishing boat, a Mercedes Benz, nice houses with swimming pools
and a successful business. He also spent his life on medication, was prone to heart attacks,
and he had a problem with alcohol. When I was sixteen, he lost his business. He never really
recovered and spent the next 12 years of his life battling alcoholism, until it destroyed him
when his liver packed in. When I saw him, he was thin, weak, confused and a couple of days
away from his death. He still had his smile and put on a brave face that everything was okay
and it always had been and always would be, yet in between the smiles, his desperation
emerged. I don‟t know if anyone was able to guide him into his death. I wasn‟t able to. I
just spent as much time as I could talking to him and helping him light his cigarettes. God
knows how lonely and terrible and hellish his death must have been. He had lost everything
and his demons and failure had broken him, and now he was going to lose his life. I told
him I loved him, I sat with him on the side of his bed in that hospice, staring at his frail arms

and bony legs, remembering how much muscle he used to have and how terrified I was
when he got angry. I don‟t think anyone ever really understood him enough to share the
contours of his mind, and his whole life he must have been unbearably lonely yet he was
unable to open himself up. He was a stubborn man, resistant to change, open to Scotch. I
don‟t know what I was feeling with him. I put some money in his front pocket so he could
have the independence to ask the nurse to buy him more cigarettes.
His fate terrified me. What drove a man to destroy himself? I looked at him and saw
irreversible failure. I was always an optimist, and thought that things would just naturally
work out and I would be rich and happily married and successful and life would be rosy and
peachy. I just figured that success was a done deal. Yet, I was staring my nightmare in the
face as I watched the closing scenes of a human tragedy play out. Was this also my fate?
What if I lost everything and could not recover and I ended my life after a hellish journey
into hopelessness? The reality hit home. This was no longer a story that I read in the
newspaper, happening to another family. This was real, in my face, and I saw that life held
the potential for immense suffering from which death was the only welcome escape. I think
he wanted to die. He had stopped living a while ago, and death was the only solution.
The last day I went to visit him, I told him again how much I loved him, and how I was
grateful for what he had done for me. Dad was a generous and giving man, and he had
always done his best to provide for me. I honored him for that and I let him know it. I
turned to say goodbye to him. He was lying on the bed and I was crying and he was crying.
It was the last time we would ever see each other. It was too much for him. He became like
an afraid child and started calling for his mother. He must have desperately wanted
someone to comfort him and to love him and take away the dreadful suffering he was
experiencing as he was about to see his only beloved son walk out the door for the last
time, never to return again. At that moment he was a parent losing a son and that must be
one of the most tragic of human tragedies. If I could change one thing, I would have
cancelled my ticket and stayed with him until he died. Instead, I selfishly flew back to finish
my database project, trying to save the skin on my own ass. Also, I wanted that death over,
so our family could move on with life. Walking out that hospital room that smelt of
disinfectant and urine was horrible. Something inside me died that day, something
irretrievable, and Dad died a couple of days later. Mom said he had been waiting to say
goodbye to me and it had meant the world to him. Looking back, it meant the world for me

to say goodbye to him too. Thank God for him. He made me want to understand human
nature deeply enough to find out if it was possible to avoid the same fate of suffering.
Leaving
January 2001. I was urgently seeking a way forward. I didn‟t feel ready to get a regular job,
and I felt I needed to get some distance from all that had happened. I did a stress test on
the internet, and adding up the family death, financial problems, work problems, changing
countries, and emotional issues, I had a 95% chance of being hospitalized with a serious
illness. By all rights I should have been in hospital on life support, yet thankfully I was
physically strong and have always been mentally tough. It was a hot summer‟s day and I
was at home with Trevor and his brother Steven, reading the newspaper and looking in the
job classifieds section. A small article caught my eye.
„Teach English in Taiwan. Work 4 or 5 hours a day and easily save 1000US a month. No
experience needed, just a degree.‟
This seemed too good to be true. It was exactly what I thought I needed, which was a non-
challenging job, some excess money, travel, and enough time off the job each day to read
and try and figure out what was happening. I needed answers, I needed to reflect, and I
needed a job, and this seemed like the break I needed. Steven liked the idea as well and
wanted to come. I decided there and then to go. I had absolutely no idea about anything in
Taiwan, except that lots of computer parts were made there and everyone spoke Chinese. I
loved the Chinese Chop Suey restaurant just down the road from our apartment, so I figured
a life of cheap and accessible Chinese food couldn‟t be all that bad. That night, I had a
dream.
I am swimming across an ocean. I come to the shore and I get out the sea. Everything is
grey and concrete, and I can‟t see very far down the roads as the light is dusky. I don‟t like
this place because there is no nature and no beauty. No matter how far I walk, the concrete
buildings repeat themselves.
I called the agent the following day. His surname was Montana and I made an appointment
to go and see him immediately. That day, I came across the word „Montana‟ at least seven

times. I saw a street called Montana Road, a business called Montana chicken, an article
about the state Montana in the paper, a radio advertisement with Montana, another street
called Montana drive, the agent‟s surname, and a clothing label called Montana that I had
never noticed before. Montana was everywhere and I took the synchronicity as a sign that
my path was aligned. Three occurrences would have been enough to convince me, and I
had seven. The deal seemed straight forward; I would get housing, a job, I would get picked
up at the airport, and I would sign a years contract. All I had to do was pay for my air ticket
and get across there. I borrowed some money from a friend and bought an air ticket the
following day. There was no turning back.
February 2001. The day before I left, I was on the beach with my friends. It was a clear
sunny and warm afternoon, and Cape Town was paradise. I had about 500US$ to my name
in cash, and I owed money on my credit card again. I was clueless about traveling and had
never been further than the neighboring countries around South Africa. While I was sitting
on the sand, I received a phone call from Mom that there was a small sum of money from
Dads estate due to me, and it was being deposited into my account that afternoon. I would
have just enough time to go to the bank in the morning on the way to the airport to change
it into foreign currency. It was a beautifully timed blessing, as I needed money for various
unexpected things when I arrived in Taiwan. Dad was providing for me even after his death.
That night before a flew out, I partied in celebration of the exciting future I was looking
forward to. I took ecstasy with my friends and had around two hours sleep. I awoke with
telephone ringing feeling as though I hadn‟t slept and that I didn‟t need to sleep. I was
charged and excited about the trip ahead, blissfully unaware of any future challenges, and
only seeing the happiness and freedom that awaited me. Maria was supposed to take me to
the airport in the morning, and half an hour before she due to come and fetch me, the
phone intrusively rang.
„Hello,‟ I said.
„Bruce, its Maria. I can‟t take you to the airport. An intruder broke into our house and
stabbed my husband in the chest. The knife missed his heart by an inch. He will be okay,
but I need to stay with him.‟
Maria‟s husband had been stabbed in the chest! I knew her husband was heartbroken about
Maria‟s affair with me and he hadn‟t shown it. I often intuit that there are no accidents and
we are intimately and deeply connected to the events and situations in life, and if we don‟t

own up to our truth, something will happen to force us into awakening. You can‟t hide from
the truth. Your truth is like a boomerang and if you don‟t watch it, it‟s going to smack you
hard on the back of your head. I didn‟t think that Maria‟s husband being stabbed in the
chest was any accident. His soul was bleeding, now his body was too, and his truth was in
the open. I called Trevor, and he kindly agreed to drive me to the airport. I hugged him
goodbye and went into the airport to get on the plane.
It was the year before the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. I had always had a
dream to stare at the stars from the cockpit of a 747. Whenever I went to the mountains or
the desert, I used to love sitting outside at night and staring up at the stars, no matter how
cold the air. I could easily spend hours, just staring, allowing thoughts of wonder to bubble
up from my oceanic mind. I once spent the whole night sitting in the desert, head resting
back, staring at the stars, waiting for the dawn, enjoying the freezing early morning hours
because I knew light and heat were coming. The stars were vast and beautiful and cold and
untouchable and there were too many to look at, and my mind couldn‟t grasp the size and
the numbers and the distance. The only way to look at the stars was to relax without trying
to understand, and when the relaxation happened, their coldness would turn to warmth and
their remoteness would become an intimacy I could feel, as if they were resting on my skin
as I expanded into the vastness. That relaxation that dropped me into peace was the prize I
sought, and the stars were the gateway. I wanted to see the stars from the cockpit. I had
met a young woman on the flight and we had been drinking wine together. It was night time
in the flight, and we decided to ask if we could see the cockpit.
The stewardess asked the pilots, and they agreed to let us in. We entered the cockpit and I
was mesmerized by all the dials and switches glowing in the dark. The pilots were friendly
and welcomed us in. I hope that we didn‟t smell too badly of red wine, and I was trying to
breathe through my nose just in case I smelled of alcohol. The 747 was flying at 30 000
feet, and I looked out. The sky looked like it was snowing stars. There were stars above and
below to the horizon and to the left and the right. I had seen a lot of stars in the desert, but
here the dark sky was shattered with pinpricks of light. My whole life I had wanted to sit in
the cockpit of a plane at night. It was one of the blessed moments when a dream became
real and the only response was gratitude. The fight between East and West and 21 st century
terrorism really is tragic. Besides the death and destruction and hatred the warriors are

caught up in, they have also taken away some beauty in this world. Dreamers and star
gazers can‟t go into cockpits anymore and life is emptier for it.
Inquiry
Arrival
14 February 2001. After a long flight with stops in Kuala Luampar and steamy
Kota Kinabalu, the airplane approached the southern city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
There was a lot of cloud, and I was eager for the plane to drop below the cloud
line so I could see my new home. I was happily imagining palm trees, rice fields
and lots of bicycles. The plane descended through the white cloud and I had my
first glimpse of Kaohsiung. I was appalled. It was a mass of similar shaped bland
grey concrete buildings that stretched to the horizon, with no greenery, and the
air was full of smog. After the beauty of Cape Town, this looked like hell, like one
big concentration camp. The plane landed and I disembarked, and was met by a
staff member of my school, who easily recognized me, as I was the only Western
looking person at the airport. Everyone was shouting Chinese, cab drivers were
hustling passengers, and a lot of people had bad teeth. By the time I had gotten
into a vehicle, dusk had fallen and the city had dissolved into a mass of
confusing neon lights. It was Sunday 7pm and the entire place was an endless
traffic jam, unlike South Africa where the streets were empty at the same time
as South Africans went to church, barbequed or watched the news. I stared out
the window as we drove, horrified by the thousands of motorcycles weaving in
and out of the traffic, the cars, the trucks and buses, the Chinese writing, and
the endless grey concrete. “What on earth have I got myself into?” I thought.
The place looked just like the image in my dream. My thoughts went back to the
moment on the mountain top when I knew I had to find Spirit among the
concrete and the trash cans. Well, the angels had been kind and had given me

my wish. I had more than enough concrete here to keep me looking for lifetimes,
and Spirit was hiding well.
I was taken to dinner and then checked into a hotel. My escort left me for the
night, and I walked out onto the street. It was narrow, with hundreds of
motorized scooters parked everywhere and jammed into every available nook
and cranny. The streets were dirty and grey dust covered every surface. I
bought some Marlboro Lights and a Coke from a convenience store as I tried to
find something familiar to anchor my confusion. I didn‟t have too many thoughts;
I was silent in my horror and felt I had fallen into a bad scene in a B-Grade
science fiction movie. I had never seen anything like this before and I had no
idea how to respond. I just knew I didn‟t like it. I started into the mix of pollution
and night lights and the buildings that disappeared into the haze 100 meters
down the roads, too afraid to walk to far from the hotel as I knew that if I got
lost, I would never find my way back again among the sprawling maze of
apocalyptic roads. Every street and every direction looked the same to my
illiterate eyes. I felt helpless. I felt vulnerable and exposed, and in between the
shock, I felt a heavy feeling in my stomach. I had never been so isolated in my
life, alone on the other side of the world.
May 2001. Three months had passed. I had started teaching, I had made friends
mainly with Canadian teachers, I had an apartment, I had got laid, and I was
drinking a lot of draught beer every Friday night. I was earning enough to pay
back some of the money that I owed, and my life was taking shape in this new
land. I painfully awoke one Saturday afternoon with a hangover from the cheap
pitchers of beer that I had been drinking the previous night, sweating from the
tropical heat, the humidity and the alcohol, and lay in bed groaning to myself,
wishing that the piercing headache was gone. I loved drinking but hated the
hangovers, and was irritated that so many of the fun things in life had a sharp

bite to them. I lay wondering what to do with the day ahead, thinking about
going to the nearby polluted beach, or watching movies, or heading off to the
department stores to watch sexy rich Asian women shopping and buying
designer Italian clothes. “Thank God for the women here,” I thought, “it makes
everything else bearable, even worthwhile.” I was finding the Asian women
increasingly attractive, and was starting to get a bad case of “yellow fever”, the
attraction many foreign men develop towards the exotic and beautiful Asian
women.
As I lay in bed all wrapped up in my hangover and sweat and fantasies of

women, I had a disturbing realization that woke me up faster than a double
espresso.
„I have recreated my life in South Africa!‟ I thought, „It wasn‟t just my
environment and culture that was to blame for my failures and bad habits. It was
something inside me.‟
I had the same type of friends, the same drinking and partying habits, the same
doubts and fears, and the same exercise program as I had before. I had had a
vision of being a heroic human being living a life of purity and searching for his
truth out in the world, and instead I found myself astonishingly repeating what I
had done before. I was back in the slammer of my own doing, or, as
Shakespeare put it, „like an engineer hoist by his own petar‟, caught in a trap of
my own making. I was wishing I had friends who were into noble and pure
pursuits, and instead I was once again hanging out with drunkards and
potheads. It wasn‟t just my environment that made me who I was, it was
something deep within me that was attracting me to this way of life.
I realized there and then that I was part of the problem, and that if I didn‟t
fundamentally change, then my life would never change. I had no more excuses
and could not blame the outside world for my failings. I stared at my reality like
the reflection of an unwanted drunken face in the mirror, and I could not

pretend that I had not seen it and hide my head away like an ostrich in the sand.
I didn‟t want to look at the ugly reflection, yet I could not turn away. I had to
accept responsibility and go inwards, into a horrible inner space. The reality that
somehow I was partly to blame for my situation shocked me like an infected
nerve. I immediately wanted to sue someone, to take someone to court for the
mess I was in, to make someone pay for my mistakes and my pain, to say that I
was OK and there was nothing wrong with me, that it was the world‟s fault that I
was a mess. There was no one to sue but me, no one but the hungover face
lying on the bed. I abandoned the idea of watching the girls in the shopping
center. I got dressed, swallowed two aspirin, bought a greasy hamburger to line
my stomach, and walked to the bookstore to start reading self-help books.
On the path
I had no clue where to start with reading. I stood and looked at the mass of books in the
store, and a book on creativity caught my eye. It seemed as good a place as any to start
and I figured I needed some creative solutions to my predicament, and so I took it off the
shelf and paid it. I went outside the store and ordered a bowl of noodles from a street
vendor, and as I sat down, another wave of isolation, born of feeling disconnected from
everything I love and stranded in a far corner of the world, swept through me. The feeling
turned into an underlying panic as I wondered if I would ever find my way forward again.
That was happening more frequently; I was afraid to relax, afraid to be still, as anxiety and
panic would surface, emotions that I did not wish to be with and would rather they stayed
buried within my depths. As I sat there busy with my food, a heard a crystal clear voice in
my head say, „You are on the right path.‟
I was flabbergasted. It was the second time in my life I heard this voice. The first time had
been one early morning when I was walking through a park to meet Helen, and the voice
had said „You have to write a book.‟ The voice had certainty, clarity and gravitas. It was very
different from a regular thought, and was felt as both a source of wisdom and an

unmistakable guide. The voice didn‟t elaborate and annoyingly didn‟t answer questions.
Whoever said those words got right to the point, and didn‟t beat around the bush. The voice
wasn‟t exactly flowery and poetic, yet was unquestionably clear and powerful, and had a
thudding impact. I had started writing a book about Helen at that time, and after around ten
pages, had run of things to stay and I hadn‟t written anything more. I had never forgotten
those words about writing a book; they were like a tattoo in my thoughts, and I figured that
when one day I had something valuable to say to the world, I would write something.
I continued to read, and for a few months, I devoured every self help book and pop
spirituality book I could find. They were all useful and interesting and they made me think
that if I only just followed a few simple formulae, then all my dreams and desires would
come true. They didn‟t answer my questions though. I wanted to understand my interior
world and my psychology, because I knew that my interior world determined my actions,
and actions created my results. I figured that if these books were all so wonderful and
contained the secret that you needed to know to create your dream life, then why wasn‟t
everyone in the world onto this „best kept‟ secret? There had to be something else going on,
and perhaps everyone was hoodwinked to the truth. I intuitively sensed that life wasn‟t as
simple as just learning a new behavior; if I wanted to transform my life, I needed to know
how I made meaning of things, and I needed to transform my interior first. In other words, I
had to fundamentally change before anything in my world would change, and I had to
understand myself before I would be able to change anything. The long journey inwards
had begun.
July 2001. It was yet another Saturday and I had yet another hangover. Reading gave me a
sense of safety and security, and when I wasn‟t reading, the dreaded anxiety and fear
returned. With the heavy rumbling of the passing buses making me want to shout in anger,
I had walked down the busy street to the bookstore and was looking at the books again,
when my attention was drawn to the philosophy section. There were some books by an
author, KW, whom I had never heard of in my life. I picked up one of them and it looked
extremely boring and academic and I didn‟t think this type of intellectual inquiry would go
well with my hangover. I was more in the mood for comic books and a joint than these
paper bricks.
„This guy must be some dry professor somewhere with a beard and curly hair and bad
breath and never gets laid,‟ I smugly thought to myself. Then, I noticed a picture of him. He

was the exact opposite of what I imagined. He was wearing a t-shirt, had a shaved head,
seemed muscular and athletic and he had a strikingly good looking intelligent appearance.
He looked cool, and for whatever reason, I was powerfully drawn toward him. „He must be
an interesting guy,‟ I thought. Then, I noticed he was from Colorado in the United States.
My thoughts went back about six months to Cape Town, South Africa. I had been to see a
psychic who has the ability to see auras and to hear messages from our spiritual guides. I
have been to a psychic three times in my life, and each time it has been due to feeling an
urgent need for guidance from a higher power. I am wary of most psychics, and I think most
of them are charlatans and are wisely avoided, and I also feel it is easy to fall into a trap of
disempowerment and always look for someone else to supply answers. Yet, on occasion, it
may be useful to seek guidance. There do seem to be a few beings who have the capacity to
tap into a knowledge the rest of us do not have access to, and this man was one of them. I
had made an appointment and gone into his little room, where I had sat on a little wooden
chair against a white background, which apparently made it easier to see my aura. I didn‟t
speak; he did all the talking, and he recorded what he was saying. He spoke about some
years of traveling that I had ahead of me, and he told me I was a teacher. He spoke about
my parents and my family and other events in my life that had happened, and he was pretty
much right on the money. Then, he also made special mention of Colorado in the United
States. I don‟t know if I had even heard of Colorado before. He said there was a time of
learning and study ahead, and that Colorado was the key connection to the learning process.
KW lived in Colorado. There was no more hesitation, and experiencing one of those beautiful
moments of certainty that this is what is needed, I bought the book and headed home, now
remarkably undisturbed by the grunting traffic.
Lay on my bed with an ice coffee, and started to read this W. guy. I was hooked after the
first page, and for once in my life, my shallowness in judging people had paid off. Reading
W‟s work was exhilarating and freeing, and I felt an almost immediate liberation as his work
started to give me many of the answers I was looking for, and gave me a framework in
which to begin to understand my psychology, how I gave meaning to the world, and in
which to order my experience. It provided the map of my inner and outer world that I was
seeking. For the first time, I was able to make sense of many of the different things I had
experienced, and fit them together in a way that was whole and not fractured, in a way that
included and didn‟t exclude. He tried to honor the truths of different approaches to life, such

as science, religion, psychology, meditation, Buddhism, Christianity, fundamentalism, and

terrorism, and asked what the structure of the human mind would need to be like if it was to
hold all these seemingly conflicting approaches to understanding reality.
I felt whole reading his work, and feeling whole felt correct. Here was finally someone who
understood and had inquired thoughtfully into the complexity of this world, and had tried to
create a map to explain what was going on. His work included answers to questions like
“Why are we here? What‟s the meaning of life? What is most important in this human
experience?” He proposed a model to explain the patterns and process by which humans
develop to higher states of awareness, and suggested that mediation (or awareness
practice) was one of the most important tools to support the continuing growth of
consciousness within a human being. I felt that his model allowed me to understand what
happens in meditation, and with that understanding of the interior meditation process, I
could teach myself to meditate, and I didn‟t have to be locked into a tradition or a teacher.
Perhaps the greatest relief was that reading his work, I felt freed from the dogma and belief
systems that I had struggled with growing up in a Christian culture, and which I had fallen
back into in my journey into new age spirituality. He suggested that if an individual
committed themselves to an experiment involving doing transformational practices, then
spiritual truth and realization would unfold in that person‟s life, and blind belief was not
necessary.
I was riveted by his work, and stayed up late, sweaty night after sweaty night, racing
through his books. I loved that excitement; I loved that feeling of being intensely connected
to something, enlivened by it. I search for that connection; I hunger for the soul that that
elated connection offers. That‟s the only time I ever really feel alive, the time when I have
broken free of stale habits and I am once again plugged into a current that opens me and
widens me and takes me further, takes me higher. That‟s always been my hunger, my
desire, my restlessness, that compulsion to connect to life with an unbridled urgency. I had
felt the same reading Hermann Hesse, or the work of Ann Rand, neglecting my examinations
and risking further failure as I stayed up enraptured by The Fountainhead. Reading W‟s work
was also daunting. Embedded behind the sense of relief and freedom, I was also faced with
the tedious reality that I had many years of hard and sustained transformational practice
ahead of me if I wanted to reach my highest potentials of consciousness and awareness. For

a lazy pleasure seeker like me, desperate to achieve in life while lying in a hammock, this all
seemed like one long concrete wiping toothache. The goal posts had shifted, and I sensed
that my time abroad was going to be much longer than one year. Reading about this stuff
was not enough. I had fallen into the trap before of confusing intellectual knowledge with
wisdom, evangelically preaching to my friends with words I had stolen from someone else‟s
book and fraudulently claimed as my own. I had to commit to daily practice and do some
work to make the changes I wanted, and according to what I was reading, meditation was
the golden key that unlocked the door to the changes I wanted. I didn‟t just have to read
about God; I was given the tools to be God, to find God within my most inner being. That
sounded cool; I imagined being God would be nothing short of a total rush! If you are gonno
climb mountains, you may as well climb Everest! I groaned. Now that I knew what was
possible, I would never be able to rest until I achieved it, and there was a part of me that
deeply wished to have remained ignorant.
I had a map, I had a goal, KW was my new teacher, and I had the resources I needed to
begin to practice. I had absolutely no clue what this transformation process was going to
entail, how long and difficult and painful the path to enlightenment and its fruits of
unconditional freedom and simplicity would be, and how I would have to break myself and
die repeatedly in the inner journey. It is highly recommended to pursue enlightenment with
the help of a teacher, and looking back, KW‟s books should have come with a warning that
says „Do not try any of this at home and by yourself.‟ I started meditation the next day. I
used to ride a motorcycle to work through the busy traffic of Kaohsiung, and the ride usually
took about half an hour, involving riding through groups of thirty of forty other motorcycles,
dodging buses, avoiding taxis, breathing in exhaust fumes, and always being aware of other
drivers and riders doing the wrong thing on the road. Riding that bike was fun and exciting
and edged with danger, as any mistake could lead to severe injury or death. I read that one
of the first steps in meditation training is being able to keep a count of the breath, to learn
to concentrate the mind. I figured concentration would not be a problem; I could already
easily concentrate on the curvaceous bottoms of fine young women, so I knew I had the
skill. I read that meditation, or awareness training, should be done twice a day to make it
effective. So, I decided to use my motorcycle rides to and from work as my practice. I
figured that I would use what I was already doing, and then it would be easier to include
meditation into my life. Part of my naturally lazy way has been to find the most effective
ways of doing things, and by meditating and riding a motorcycle, I was killing two birds with

one stone. I would try and keep a count of my breath, and maintain awareness of the breath
going into and out of each nostril while I was riding. Getting on my bike, I kept about 20%
of my attention on the breath and the counting process, and the rest of my attention on the
road and the traffic. Safety was paramount; I had fallen off a motorcycle before and taken a
chunk out of my knee, and I didn‟t want to do that again. This was meditation straight into
action! The ride to work took about 130 breaths. A few times I lost count as I became
distracted by other thoughts or a truck racing past too close for comfort or I choked on
diesel bus fumes, and I would begin the count again. I didn‟t like beginning the count again,
so I made a real effort to keep track of the breaths. Having a clear target of 130 breaths
helped me to maintain my focus on the task at hand. My goal became to keep track of my
breath for 5 consecutive days while riding my bike to and from work, and so, if I lost count,
the stakes were high as I could be set back to day zero. Meditation was fun!
After a couple of weeks, I started to make progress in the meditation. I noticed random
memories from the past surfacing into my thoughts as my mind started to open up, and for
a moment, I would be back somewhere I hadn‟t thought about for years. It could an
afternoon playing rugby on the field at junior school, or walking down the tree lined street
near my childhood home, or listening to the birds screeching at dusk in a park. This was a
positive sign; I read that one of the first things that happens when someone starts to
meditate was that memories from the past surface as the hold of the mind is loosened and
the repression layer starts to lift. I was on the path and I felt freedom and excitement,
buoyed by the miracle of the tremendous possibility lying ahead of me. This path of
meditation and reading KW was going to be my salvation; I had passed through hell and
was racing towards heaven, and it wasn‟t going to be long before I arrived.
Teaching

In that first year of living in Asia, I was far out of my comfort zone, and missing the safety of
my environmental job, many times thought „What the hell am I doing here!‟ Periodically
waves of anxiety continued to flood through me, as I considered the loss of my professional
identity and my isolation on the other side of the world, far away from home and family. I
refused to let difficult emotions rule me and I refused to bow down to my fear, so I
continued my practice of refusing to feel what I didn‟t like and stuffing away unwanted
emotions. I had also read in many times that fear is „non-spiritual‟ and at the time, I thought
that there was something wrong with allowing fear to exist, and I still needed to learn that
the trick was to let fear exist with full awareness, and neither act on it or push it away.
Meditation was an act of willpower and concentration, and not yet an act of acceptance.
Everything was changing, and I no longer knew where my life was going. I felt as though I
had set off on a weekend trip to the mountains, expecting to return in a day or two, and
instead, I was being irreversibly carried further and further away from my starting point,
until I couldn‟t see where I began, and I didn‟t know where I was going.
I made a choice to focus on what I could do. I continued to meditate. I physically trained
hard at swimming and running and going to the gym. I ordered a pack of books every
month across the internet and read on business and psychology and success, trying to
understand more about the world and understand a little more what was happening on our
planet. I still harbored a dream that I would change myself and heroically return to South
Africa, strong and fit, transformed into an idealistic superman after conquering all my
difficulties, and armed with a clear mission for my future. I dreamed that someone like Helen
would finally fall for me, and everything would be happy and perfect, and my romantic
dream would come true. That dream was though, was valuable. The dream hooked deep
into my soul, stirring my waters. I needed a dream; without a dream, without a shiny vision,
life just runs out of gas. I had often watched people without dreams before, people slowly
suffocating death in their numbing routines of habit and convenience. Without dreams, we
die slow empty deaths and I felt that blessed are those with either great dreams or great
suffering that shake them to their depths, enlivening them into action. I was motivated by
the possibility of achieving the perfect life, and I thought it was possible, determined to fill
my life with love and beauty. Without that dream, and without the belief that I was going to
succeed, I would have got lost in Asia like countless other foreigners do, circling in my
routines, working a low hour job and spending my free time watching TV and smoking pot.

I worked as an English teacher in Taiwan. In a way, one of my dreams had come true. I
recall when I had been programming with Irene, and so many days when riding my bike to
her office, facing another day of just wanting to get the hell out of there, I had prayed in
desperation, saying „Lord, please give me a job which is easy for me to do, and where I can
get paid well to do it. Just give me enough money that I can live well, have fun and not
worry about how much the milk costs.‟ Well, lo and behold, I was now doing the thing in the
world that was the easiest, most natural thing that I could imagine, and that was being paid
for speaking my home language. As the old adage goes „Be careful what you wish for.‟ The
only catch was that I was on the other side of the planet! You can‟t win them all!!
The kids were both amazing and terrible. I wasn‟t used to kids, and I imagined that they
would be all well behaved and obedient. That day I first walked into the class of 17 five year
olds, I was walking into a world in which I had to learn more than they did, and we (me and
the kids) both had no idea about each other. Starting off on a clean slate is one thing, but
this was taking things one step too far. I am around 192 cm, and so, as I walked in, they sat
in a circle with scared and interested eyes. There were thin ones, fat ones, big eyed ones,
small eyed ones; the only common denominator was that they all had black hair and black or
brown eyes, and they spoke Chinese. Lord alone knows what they thought of me with my
blond hair and blue eyes.
„What a pleasure‟ I thought, „they are all so well behaved.‟ Problem was, they couldn‟t
understand a word I said. I pulled out some alphabet cards and was trying to get them to
repeat after me. It wasn‟t more than a few minutes before they started to lose interest and
one got up and hit another one on the side of the head.
„Okay Kids‟, I called sweetly „come and sit down!‟. They didn‟t understand me and were
laughing at me. Luckily, I had a Chinese co-teacher in the class, who blasted them like a
military drill sergeant, rattled off something in Chinese, and they came and sat down with
terrified looks. That set the tone for the year; they didn‟t seem to have much respect for me,
and it was only the saving grace of my co-teacher Becky that they ever listened.
I was faced with a different world with different rules to mine, and I quickly learned that
how a 29 year old white Christian South African trained in science makes meaning of the
world is far different from how a 5 year old Taiwanese kid understands the world. I had to
get out of my headspace and into theirs, busting my brains trying to figure out how they
made sense of their world. I jumped back into my studies of cognitive developmental

psychology, trying to understand how they constructed their worlds so I could design games
and activities that they could relate to, and then, just maybe, god-willing, some of the
English I was trying to teach them would stick. Sure, I had course material and a curriculum
at the school, but it just seemed pointless teaching them if I couldn‟t enter into their worlds
and try to see a universe of magic, just like they did. Looking back, I bent my head trying to
understand them, and I am deeply grateful for them, as it helped take me out of my
perspective and into the eyes of others who were very different to me, a skill that continues
to serve me well. To be honest, I don‟t know if I loved them. I tried to love them, but it was
difficult when they ran around, puked on the floor, wouldn‟t listen, blatantly lied and
thumped each other. Sometimes they behaved like despicable human beings and I wanted
to throw them through the window, and having to be a nice teacher with people (even
though they were only 5years old) I didn‟t always like seemed like premature hell. On the
flip side, there were moments of love. Annie had no front teeth and a big smile and I think
her and I must have known each other in the previous life, as she was just my favorite and
she loved me too. She would come and sit on my knee and look at my eyes and blow little
kisses towards me, and try and read from her book, always listening attentively to
everything I said. She gave me faith, faith that there were still good kids in the world, and
that at least I was doing some good for someone in the class.
Each day, I went to school and gave five or six hours of high energy lessons. I would read
and meditate in the mornings before school, and do exercise after school. I did this for the
entire year without vacation. During that year, I also dated a beautiful Chinese girl, had
fabulous sex, and got drunk on cheap beer on Friday nights. I paid off the remainder of my
student loan and saved enough money for five months of traveling. It came time to leave
after a year, and I still felt stranded in no-mans land, not ready to return to my old life, and
not far enough forward to know where I was going. I didn‟t yet know myself, I was still
unraveling my inner world, and I didn‟t know what I wanted. The meditation journey was
taking longer than a month, and somehow seemed to be making life worse and more and
more difficult emotions came to the surface. My anxiety and fear were driving me to make
decisions, to return to the safety of my professional career. All I knew was that I had to
know myself before I made any further commitments, and even if it took me ten years to do
this and find my mission on this earth, then I was going to do it. All I wanted was

enlightenment, which had always been the dream that I had most deeply wished for. I had
read a quote somewhere about the search for enlightenment.
„Enlightenment. Better you don‟t start. And, if you do, better you don‟t stop.‟ It was one
thing to read about the difficulties of the path to enlightenment, as they didn‟t seem to bad.
Yet, experiencing them was something else.
At the end of that first year, in January 2002, I left for a long vacation. I always felt that
long vacations are essential for the soul, allowing for a deep letting go and the birth of new
ideas. I needed a break after that year and the previous difficult years, and enjoyed the rest.
Meditation
March 2002. I had returned to South Africa for a few months to visit friends and relatives. I
was in my hometown of Durban, and had ambitiously decided to go on my first ten day
meditation retreat. I didn‟t feel any real change yet from meditating by myself in the year, if
anything I felt more confused and messed up. Looking back, I see that more confusion and
difficulty is exactly what is supposed to happen as the repressed part of the soul emerge
and need to be experienced, often painfully, and then healed through the grace of Spirit.
However, in spite of the difficulties, I felt stronger and more confident that ever. I felt
liberated from the reading I had done, and I was fit and in shape and out of debt. I was
loved reading KW‟s work, and I was zealously (and usually unsuccessfully) trying to tell
everyone I met all about it. His work had revolutionized my world and the applications
seemed profound and held the answers to the world‟s problems, yet no one seemed at all
interested in listening to all this stuff about development and interiors, let alone being
interested in reading his books. „Just my luck‟ I thought. „I have finally found a field that is
profoundly fascinating and is about every human beings journey of becoming, and no one

seems to care. Great!‟ It got to me that people were not interested in this stuff. How could
you not be into your soul? How could you not care about your potentials, about freedom,
about God, about the vast and fundamental questions in life such as „Why are we here?
Where are we going? What would give this life the deepest meaning?‟ Yes, I got it that
people have reasons for being the way they are, and apparently part of the vast game of
God is that we stay sleeping because waking up is so damned hard and the game wouldn‟t
be any fun if it was easy. There is tremendous inertia against change, yet, when someone
shouts at you that there is much more to you than you ever thought possible and more to
you than you could possible contain, and you yawn and reach for another beer and change
the channels on the TV, then fuck! Wake up, get out of your comfort zones, and stop dying
and start living!!!
I sat in mother‟s living room, watching the monkeys in the trees outside, and called the
retreat center and asked for a list of names of people who were going on the retreat. I
wanted to get a ride to the center, as it was in a rural hilly area of Kwa-Zulu Natal Province,
and I didn‟t want my mother to risk driving home to Durban after dropping me off. The area
had a history of car hijackings and robbery, and I was concerned for her safety. I called the
numbers but no one seemed to have space in their car. The last number was a man called
Mark, and he agreed to give me a ride. Mark picked me up in his old Volkswagen Beetle, and
we puttered the 100 miles to the center. We drove through a lush green landscape towards
the rolling hills of the Natal Midlands, an area rich in livestock farming and the air filled with
the smell of smoke fires from the rural tribal people. We turned off the main road, and drove
the final stretch along a dirt road. As the car bumped and hopped along, I sat their thinking
„What have I got myself into?‟ Ten days of silence lay ahead of me, and I didn‟t have a clue
what happened at meditation retreats. I had never sat more than an hour at a time in
meditation, and sitting there all day for ten days instead of chasing women in the bars was
going to be interesting. I couldn‟t even sit cross legged for more than 20 minutes without
my knees beginning to burn; still, I have always been an optimist, and tend to forget that
things have the possibility to be painful and difficult.
We arrived at the center. I looked across the grounds and was struck by the blue eyes of a
man looking towards me. He was about 30 meters away, yet the presence of his headlight
eyes stunned me from the distance. He was wearing a woolen cap, and he looked around
30. I would find out later her was around 50. Mark waved at him.

„Who‟s that?‟ I asked.

„That‟s one of the teachers,‟ replied Mark. I silently wondered, „What did I recognize in his
eyes?‟
Mark showed me to my bunk where I would be sleeping. The rooms were clean and simple,
and had two wooden cots, a small cupboard, and a fan. I would be sharing with another
man. We put our bags down, and headed across the grounds to the kitchen and dining area.
I had planned to look the spiritual part. I was wearing a pair of long loose white cotton
meditation pants and a light cotton shirt, along with a pair sandals. All in all, I was thinking I
was quite handsome and sexy in this outfit, and was already looking out for cute girls and
romantic fantasy. My first retreat began as terribly as I could imagine. We entered into
silence just before the meal. Something in the vegetarian food (it must have been the
pumpkin curry) moved my stomach, and as I was walking out of the dining area, I urgently
needed the toilet. I ran back in the dining room, but the toilet was in use. I couldn‟t wait. I
was too afraid to ask someone where the nearest toilet was in case I broke the silence
within the first hour of retreat, so I desperately ran out again, looking for the next building.
It was at least 50 meters away, as the buildings at the center were spread out. Would I
make it? Could I hold it in? I half ran, half walked, squeezing with all I had, dreadfully
praying there would be a bathroom in there and I would make it in time. I briefly considered
dropping my pants behind a bush, but being caught squatting behind the agapanthas in the
retreat gardens was too horrifying to imagine. Just before I made it to the building, the
worst case scenario happened. I shat in my new white cotton meditation pants. I hurried
inside and thankfully found an empty toilet. I found myself in a predicament. I was stuck in
the bathroom with soiled underwear and pants on a spiritual retreat, and I had just done the
most anti-spiritual thing I could imagine. This was first time in my life I had shat in my pants
as an adult, and it was by far the most humiliating thing I had ever experienced. I had to
make a decision fast. I couldn‟t flush my underwear down the septic tank toilet. There was
no disposal bin. The smell in the toilet was awful. My only choice was to run for the
dormitories, hoping to avoid any of the other meditators who were hopefully still at lunch,
find a bin to throw away the dirty underpants, and hand wash my meditation pants in the
bathroom. It was now or never. I wrapped my dirty underpants in toilet paper, prayed a
quick prayer of invisibility and ran out, straight back to the dormitories. Thank God no one
was there. I threw the evidence along with my shattered pride into a large outside bin, went
and put fresh pants on, washed my trousers, and breathed a sigh of relief.

The retreat was challenging, and each session seemed nothing less than an endurance test.
The sitting was held in a white circular room, with slatted windows and a thatched roof with
poisonous vipers living in the ceiling. Being a Buddhist center, all living things were allowed
their place, whether they had no legs or 8 legs or could kill you. Each session began with
the teacher ringing a little bell, and the participants and I would take our postures and bring
the attention onto the breath. No matter if I sat cross legged or in kneeling posture, my
knees and legs would start to hurt after a few minutes. I eventually settled for kneeling with
a small bench behind my legs, and that made the pain bearable for about half an hour, but
into the second hour the pain always felt like uncharted territory. Hour after hour I sat in the
meditation hall, watching my breath or the candle ahead of me, trying to block out the pain,
locked in an inner fight with my feelings, hearing every slow tick of the clock, praying for
time to speed up so we could get onto the walking meditation. I would get lost in thought,
and the teacher would seem to know when to intervene.
„Let the attention rest on the breath‟ he would say, and I would come back to the breath,
back from being lost in the fantasies of the mind. Each time he bought me back from my
mental fantasy, I felt as though I had been thrown a life raft and rescued from the sea. I
was in awe of the teacher and his wife, viewing them with respect and admiration. They had
such balance and poise and serenity, and seemed wise in the ways of the human soul in a
way that I could not fathom. In the evenings, as the crickets filled the star decorated air
with their crisp clean sounds, the teachers gave Dharma talks from the Buddha‟s teaching
that pointed out the terrain of the inner world. The teachings fit my experience, and I was
astounded that people could be so wise. The insights were both revolutionary and obvious,
and I didn‟t understand why Buddhism, with its penetrating insights into the nature of
reality, suffering and the human condition, wasn‟t taught more widely or accepted by other
religions. I had come from a family where for most of the family, the inner world of depth
was not a world that was bought into consciousness, and instead life was a lonely obsession
with surface appearances and habitual routine. Sitting in meditation for long periods,
desperately wanting the pain to go away and wanting to feel comfortable, I understood
craving and attachment. I understood how we suffer when we have the things we don‟t
want, and we don‟t have the things we do want. Sure, I felt pain in my legs, and I suffered
because I didn‟t want the goddamn pain. But then, there was also my reaction to the pain,
and that reaction, my craving for release, my thinking that relaxation could only be found

when conditions were different to what they were and instead how I wanted them, was the
essence of my suffering.
I loved the silence and I started to have my first spiritual experiences. Reflecting, shitting in
my pants was also a spiritual experience as God is everywhere, yet I was still a ways away
from that depth of realization. After a few days, I was having lunch, and I noticed I could
not tell if I was hungry or not. I looked at the carrots and potatoes in the bowls, and took a
spoon of each. I couldn‟t tell how big the spoon was or how much I needed. I was Alice in
Wonderland. I looked at the other retreat participants. They all seemed to be moving too
slowly. It felt like someone was playing the movie of my life at a quarter the correct speed.
Time was grinding to a halt. I started laughing to myself and couldn‟t stop. One of the
participants looked at me. I felt paranoid, and not having ever spoken to this person and
just having spent three days living with him, I had no idea what he was thinking. Maybe I
was in a movie and someone was filming all this. I watched how he held his fork. Was he
about to attack? He could have been psycho; I had to get out. Paranoid, I picked up my
bowl of vegetables and went and sat outside. I looked at my spoon. I thought it very odd
that a spoon was called a spoon. It didn‟t seem necessary to name things. I could look at
things without naming them. The spoon seemed remarkably beautiful and worthy of care.
Perception was obvious and experience was naked. I had an insight.
„This is how reality is,‟ I thought. „There is no more search needed. There is nothing more to
do. There is nowhere to go. The grass is green and the sky is blue. It‟s this simple and
things are perfect exactly how they are. It‟s just like this.‟
I noticed how the spoon reflected my face, contorting my features. I tried to eat a carrot
and couldn‟t. I didn‟t want to put that orange thing in my mouth. I looked at my legs. I
didn‟t know if they were long or short, and they didn‟t seem to belong to me. My body
seemed like unnecessary baggage that I had to carry around, and I wanted to be free of it.
Time and space were all confused. Everything seemed okay though, and I thought that I
just had to get used to my new world. My thinking mind kicked in, and I started to think that
this wouldn‟t be okay if I stayed here. I had to get back to normal, or else I would be
happily insane in gaga land for life! I left my plate on the grass and went for a walk, and
after about half an hour, things started to return to normal and I started to think again. I
asked the teacher about it the next day during a short interview, which each participant had
with the teacher to check that everything was okay. His response was „It‟s just the mind
loosening its grip.‟

There were other experiences. I was sitting on a bench one late afternoon during a rest
period, when everything disappeared into darkness. I was still there, yet there was no
sound, no sight, no feeling, no body, just a presence of being that was what I had always
been. I guess it lasted a few seconds, maybe a little more, until the world re-emerged again.
Not much had changed, and people were still in the same places as before. It was my first
experience of emptiness, and it was the most normal natural free thing. The first five days
of the retreat were insight meditation, designed to explore and understand the nature of the
mind. The second half of the retreat was focused on compassion meditation, designed to
awaken the heart of compassion. I had been contemplating the suffering of some of my
family members. On day seven, I awoke earlier than the usual 4:30 am wake up call. I had
been having a dream.
I am with some friends at a party. Everyone is beautiful. A handsome stranger gives me

ecstasy tablets, and I take them. I am filled with love and warmth.
I awoke from the dream with my entire chest area burning with ecstatic warmth and I just
lay in my bunk, feeling this gorgeous sensation. The wake up bell sounded, and climbed out
of bed, put on my coat and went outside. The morning seemed still and perfect in its silent
beauty, and I was radiating pleasant warmth from my chest. As I walked through the cold
dark autumn morning towards the hall, I could feel the presence of grace in the air; I felt a
timeless connection to all the souls who had walked the path of love and awakening. I
moved along with the other participants into the hall, and, with a blanket around my
shoulders, kneeled in the dark room which was lit by the light of a single golden candle. My
chest continued to burn with warmth. I knelt, ensconced in loving ecstasy for about an hour,
until the sensation started to fade.
And then, there was the comedy of life itself. One evening we were sitting in the meditation
hall, and the silence was broken by a fluttering sound. Desperate for a distraction and
wanting an excuse to open my eyes and stop meditating, I looked and saw a bat that had
somehow got inside the hall. There were some slatted windows through which the bat
wanted to get out, however, a fellow female meditator with a large crop of curly red hair
was sitting next to the window, against the wall. The slats were narrow and under any
circumstances would be difficult for the bat to fly through. Yet, with the meditator sitting in

front of the window, it made the task of escape more difficult. Each time the bat came
towards the windows, it also sensed the hair, and at the last moment, would veer off and
circle around for another try. Everyone else was locked in meditation; I seemed to be the
only one watching this natural escape drama unfold. Each time the bat got closer to the
curly red hair and the slats, before aborting the escape attempt. Increasingly desperate, the
bat came around again. Going for the window, it flew into the side of the woman‟s hair. A
scream broke the silence and everyone opened the eyes. In a panic, the red head women
had jumped forward and was shouting „What is it? What is it?‟ The bat had almost
immediately struggled free and escaped out the window. Everyone just sat there, freshly
ripped out of deep meditation, staring at the gasping woman, trying to figure out what was
going on. I was trying not to laugh. After Spirit had played a joke on me with my new
meditation pants, well, I figured it was my turn to witness Spirit making a joke out of bats
and hairdo‟s.
After ten days, the retreat ended. It was time to break the silence and return to the world. I
didn‟t want to break the silence. My first retreat had been a meditation honeymoon and I
wanted to stay in bliss. At first I didn‟t want to talk, but when I started, after not having
spoken for so long, I couldn‟t stop, and babbled away for hours.
The Search for wholeness
June 2002. Bouyed by my meditation retreat and convinced that enlightenment was just
around the corner, I returned to Taiwan figuring there wasn’t too much to this spiritual
thing, I had the hang of it now. I went via Hong Kong, where I spent two wonderful
weeks staying in a Scandinavian Mission house, and also some time near Hong Kong’s
beaches. I found money several times in Hong Kong, which is not something that often
happens to me. I found banknotes several times in busy streets and crowded locations,
just lying on the floor. Returning to Taiwan, I continued to find money regularly over the
next couple of weeks. I was looking for a job, and was with a friend Chris when I found
more money. An opening became available at Chris’s school for a teacher. I went to do a
demonstration, and got offered the job. It was the highest paying job I had ever had, and
at a great school. I was getting around 3000US a month, and considering I lived like a

king on 1000US, I had a lot of disposable income. Synchronicity seemed to be happening

again and it was my year to be rich.
June 2002 to July 2003 I spent the year rolling in cash, buying what I wanted and eating
in the best restaurants. Paradoxically, it was a time of both discipline and liberation. I had
idealized a monastic style life of meditation, discipline and teaching, and I thought I was
going to do that and nothing else until I reached enlightenment. This was the year when I
was going to break free of my need for society, and find my unconditional inner freedom.
My job was in a little country town around 30 km outside of the city, and I lived in an
apartment with the front facing towards the town, and the back facing towards farms and
fields. I was working 2 hours each morning, and an average of 3 to 5 hours each
afternoon, and lived a few convenient minutes walk from my school, and a few minutes
walk from a swimming pool and a running track. Each day, I would meditate in the
morning for half an hour, go to work, return home and meditate at lunch time, go to
work, come home, and meditate and read. I also had fitness goals, of being able to run 10
km in under 40 minutes, or to swim 2000m in the pool in less than 40 minutes. I tried to
achieve the running and swimming goals simultaneously, and so I trained about 5 times a
week. I missed the beauty of running in the mountains or swimming in the ocean. Instead,
I learnt to set a performance goal that always hurt to achieve, and staying as present as I
could to all my body sensations as I trained, I would repeatedly try and hit my target. I
am not a great athlete, and so completing these distances in these times were considerable
achievements. I learned about nutrition and training and strength. Day after day, like a
hamster on a wheel, I would set off on my training, knowing that the training would hurt
and not be easy but it would be possible.
Spiritual growth and transformation requires continued discipline and achievement to

effect an inner transformation before resting in effortless awareness can be stabilized as a
way of being. There is a tremendous energy inside living things that resists change and
wants things to stay as they are, and is felt as inertia and manifest as an unwillingness or
difficulty to change. There is also a natural internal drive to grow and go beyond current
limits. As I would approach my limits, I would feel an increasingly powerful resistance to

stop whatever I was doing. That was the point that it was most important to keep on
pushing through. The key to my growth was to find my limits, be they physical,
emotional, financial or whatever, and to push on through those boundaries, breaking
through to the other side. What mattered was finding my edge, and continuing to push
that edge. When I trained, the mental story was the devil. I would jump in the pool and
set off on my swim, and after a few laps, my mind would kick in with thoughts like ‘I
should slow down. I can’t continue this pace. This is not possible. Maybe I should rest for
ten seconds after each lap.’ Sometimes the stories were very convincing. I learnt not to
listen to them, seeing them as unreal fabrications, and instead keep my focus on my
stroke and the movement through the water. Again and again I would notice the mental
story and return to my training target, pushing forward through the water. The last five
minutes, by which I was usually pretty tired, I would push harder and faster, until my
mind and muscles were screaming with resistance, and every cell in my body wanted the
swim to end and wanted rest. There were times I really would not know if I was able to
continue, or if I would collapse. I always continued, refusing to rest until I was finished,
and sometimes a strange relaxation would occur, a release into freedom. My arms would
be pulling fiercely through the water, my muscles hurting, my chest heaving, and my
mind would break free. All resistance had dropped and my body was swimming, as if on
automatic. It was the same feeling of freedom I used to have when I was running, when I
broke free of myself and found liberation. There was still pain and tiredness and
shortness of breath, but it didn’t matter. I was free from it, I was strangely free from my
body. I was so free that I could write poetry in my head, that in the midst of this
tremendous physical exertion I could create prose from the pregnant silence of my mind,
and there were times in those final laps when I did create verse in that paradoxical
stillness that lay hidden behind the movement of the body.
The Taiwanese swimming pools often have a sauna, an ice bath and massage jets next to
them. After my swim, I used to go straight into an 80 degree centigrade sauna for 20
minutes, where, already hot from the swim and needing to cool down, I would meditate
on the unbearable burning as I got hotter and hotter. Avoiding the desire to jump up and
run out, feeling an intense aversion to the heat, I learned to see pain and version as just

sensations. I would jump straight into the ice bath, which was about 7 degrees centigrade,
and I would stay there for up to ten minutes. My temperature would drop, I would get
colder, I would start to shiver, my arms and legs would literally ‘burn’ with pain from the
cold, and then my whole body would slow down and I would stop shivering. I knew I
was voluntarily going into hypothermia when the shivering stopped so I didn’t stay too
long. My breath would slow until I was breathing about 3 or 4 times a minute. My
practice was to keep pushing my limits, and be with the feelings as fully as possible,
without avoiding them. Finally, I would get out, and relax for ten minutes in a moderately
warm bath, enjoying the warm up process and the relief of letting go. I didn’t know it
then, but this would be great practice for the times when I was going to need to push
through the limitations of my emotional walls in later demanding and relentless inner
transformations. Ultimately, spirituality is a lovely thing as I connected to my own
intrinsic beauty and perfection, yet to make it real, I would have had to push through and
shatter many of my self boundaries which were felt as limitations. That push takes effort
and pain and discipline, and a connection to that innate internal drive to go beyond what
is safe and into the unknown.
I trained hard for most of the year, taking a break for a week or two when I felt my body
was not recovering from the training and was starting to wear down. However, I found
that I still needed people, and that I just wasn’t cut out to do this thing all alone and
become an island. So, come Friday night, I would jump on my 125cc motorbike, and ride
the 30 km into town to meet up with my old friends. Each Friday followed a similar
cycle. We would start off by drinking some beer, and maybe smoking some pot, which
was highly illegal but readily available. After some beers, we would hop back on our
motorcycles and head to a nearby bar, where we would continue to drink. There was
always a party happening somewhere in town, and the parties at the clubs would continue
until 7 or 8 in the morning. One of our favorite clubs was called Shrooms in downtown
Kaohsiung, where to enter, we would knock on a steel door on the side of the road. A
click would be heard and an electronic lock would release, opening the door. Walking
down a smokey stairwell to the basement to another stairwell and another locked door,
we would buy ecstasy from a skinny acne faced Chinese kid, and head into the club,

taking a pill immediately. It was heaven; there were plenty of beautiful girls who loved
foreigners. There were maybe a thousand Westerners in this crowded city of several
million, and we were in demand by the local girls. We had good jobs, spoke English,
were well educated, good looking, liked to party, and were more liberal in our thinking
than many conservative Chinese guys. The ecstasy would kick in, and I would explode
with chemical love. The world needed love and I was there to give it. I would hit the
dance floor and disappear into a rhythm of base and drums, and then return to large sofas
to rest, always searching for the lips of a gorgeous young woman. I loved the high; I
loved going beyond, and several times I went beyond into a world of light and timeless
patterns from which forms crystallized. Enraptured in music, warm and sweating and
sensually lost in the perfection of endless warm salty lips touching and mating like snails,
lying sprawled back with visions of angels in my mind and drenched in bliss, I found
heaven, I found delight, I found unity. Coming down, I would take another, riding the
wave, peaking and reaching to go further and faster and to love more and hold more and
find that place where there is no wanting. I wanted to find the place of immaculate
fullness where I was whole, where I was complete, and for a blessed moment, my craving
and my searching were ended and there was peace in oblivion.
Finally oblivion would fade. Looking at my watch and it would be 7 or 8 in the morning.
8 hours of my life would have disappeared, lost forever, and the clubs were closing. We
would get back on our bikes and ride back to a friend’s apartment, where we sat wide
eyed and came down, relaxing to music. I hated the comedown. It was a disappointment
from the night, and it was the start of the return to craving and grasping. After a few more
vacant hours, not high but not yet tired, I would climb on my motorcycle and ride slowly
back to my hometown, detached, praying that I would make it home safely. Thank God I
was never in an accident; the angels must have been working overtime to protect me. I
would feel terrible after bombarding my body with a toxic flood of chemicals for 12
hours straight. Getting home, I used to sit by the TV for the rest of the day, looking
shocking, drinking beer to try and sleep. The cycles of guilt would start. ‘What am I
doing? Why am I doing this?’ I would vow not to do it again, and would train extra hard
during the week and meditate with greater focus to compensate for the bad things I had

done, and then the following weekend I would do it again. I could always see the
weekend coming, and something inside of me didn’t want to stop, as I was too addicted
to the pleasure. At all levels, I was pushing hard, pushing to the extreme, pushing myself,
meditating, reading psychology books and looking for a solution to transcend this strange
set of behaviours. During the week, I was a monk, a clean, aspiring spiritual practitioner,
and in the weekend I was a lover, a hedonist, a dancer and an indulger, and they all
seemed equally important. I knew I had to break the cycle after I had a dream, a few days
after a particularly hard night of partying. I had a headache after the party which had
stayed for several days, and I was starting to experience memory loss. I knew I was
starting to damage something deep inside.
I come back from the clubs, and dive into a swimming pool. Swimming down, I notice a
bright red spot on the bottom of the pool. I swim down to look and I see there is blood
emerging from the bottom. The pool is bleeding.
The dream was unmistakable. Deep down inside I was hurting from the damage, and I
had to stop. I was sitting downtown one day, drinking green tea and staring at the sky,
thinking about what I was doing with this destructive behavior and why I was doing it. I
had a girlfriend. I had a job and I had a spiritual path. There was a lot of good in my life.
Then it hit me. I took drugs because I wanted unity. I wanted that feeling of wholeness,
and I wanted the feeling of separation to be gone. Everything I did; sex, drugs, exercise to
my limits, I wanted to do it so for a while I felt whole and my fractured being was healed.
I thought that somewhere, in the ideal of being fit or strong or being high I would find a
home for myself where I could rest and everything would be okay. Yet, nothing lasted.
My fitness faded. The high faded. My lust for my girlfriend faded. The problem was that
all experience faded and drifted away and left me feeling uncomfortable and dissatisfied
and wanting something again, like pulling the plug out the hot water bath and watching
the water drain and starting to get cold and shiver. The realization silenced me like the
unexpected darkness of a power failure; everything humans did was to feel whole, to find
completion. It was The Primal Human Drive to become whole, and separation, separation
from being whole, was the essence of suffering. The brutal catch was that each time I

acted from that suffering sense of separation, trying to get or do what I wanted in order to
feel whole, I strengthened the root causes of that suffering. From that day I took my inner
transformation very seriously. Inner transformation promised original wholeness, in a
healthy and permanent way. The only way I was ever going to permanently end my
suffering and find my wholeness was if I was successful in transformative practice.
I would love to say that I am a quick learner, and I never went to a club again. Actually, I
am more like Pavlov’s dog; well conditioned to head towards pleasure and do the same
dumb things repeatedly. I went back about a month later. After that, a few months later,
where I did it for a couple of weeks. I quickly descended into the old patterns, but could
see them, and I was guided by the knowledge that I wanted unity. There were times over
the next few years when I did start to fall back, yet each time I got out of the hole quicker
than before, and returned my focus to doing what was good for my soul instead of getting
lost in regret. I still wanted to dance, I still wanted to meet people and have fun and laugh
and get silly, because the sterility of a monk was not for me. I just started to do it
differently, searching for new ways of fun and celebration without so much help from the
local pharmacist.
Travelling
July 2003. My contract at my school was coming to an end. I felt I was on the correct path,
but I was still unsure how it was all going to turn out. My plan was still simple. I was going
to continue doing what I was doing until I was good enough to create value out of it and
build a life for myself doing what I loved. In reality, I continued to feel inner tension and
anxiety about life and didn‟t always have confidence in my vision. I was 31 years and I felt
far away from the life I want. I was without a profession, without a home, without my
country, and away from my family. I was 2 ½ years into this adventure into the depths of
my own being, and was experiencing a sense of desperation to get out of Taiwan. I had
thought that following the path of transformation would increase my chances of fulfilling my

original dreams, which had temporarily being put on hold. My dreams and comforts of my
past were calling for me, and I was feeling a sense of slow growing panic as I watched them
get further and further away. My little traveling stint had turned from the rosy Asian
vacation that I had imagined, from a little innocent Sunday afternoon excursion into the
forest, and had become a long adventure in a jungle rich in challenge, in loss, in fear, in
alienation, in doubt. This was my life, and it seemed as though a drunk driver was at the
wheel and the journey was careering out of control. Traveling had become a search, and as
the transformational practices I was doing began to change me and break me and took me
further into the unchartered wilderness of my soul and further away from my original
dreams, I was getting scared and wanted to return back, anywhere, to where I was safe and
could find shelter and where things were certain. I wanted dreams that were going to fulfill
me and provide me with meaning and happiness and comfort, with all the things that I
thought would ensure a happy time on this earth and bring me pleasure and avoid me pain.
I didn‟t want a path that took me deeper and deeper into darkness and anxiety, that made
my life seem like it was full of more holes than a termite ridden house. As they say, the road
to hell is paved with good intentions. I thought meditation was supposed to make things
better, not worse, and having decided to throw myself into this journey without a teacher, I
was in a fix. Instead of bringing peace and happiness, meditation seemed to be bringing
more inner chaos and despair, taking me in the wrong direction, further and further away
from enlightenment. Even though I read that that the transformational practices were doing
exactly what they should, and I had to be broken down and my inner world had to get very
messy before I could be rebuilt, it was horrible to have to experience it. I was just
unprepared for the immensity of the inner change required and didn‟t know if the light at the
end of the (very long) tunnel would ever come. I wanted my life, and I wanted it my way,
and I wanted it sooner rather than later.
It was time for some change, and I decided to look for a job in the city again. There were
some growing problems at the school I worked at in the small town, so I sat down in front
of my computer, looked on the internet, and applied for a job at a school which seemed
attractive. I attended an interview which went well, and the manager guaranteed me the job
I wanted. I felt quite pleased at how easy this all was, confidant that I had made the right
choice. I happily rode back to my country town, and immediately gave notice to my school
that I would be leaving. As usual, life was full of curve balls, and the following day, I
received a phone call from the manager at the school in the city, that the job had been

given to a more qualified candidate who had walked in later in the day. My first response
was anger that I had been let down, and I had already resigned from my current job. I
brewed a cup of good coffee, and sat on my balcony, staring out over the fields at the
horizon. My mind drifted out, wondering what lay out towards the sky. That was the key; I
would head to the horizon, I would go backpacking. I had some money in the bank, I had no
commitments, and I was in Asia. I was a little scared about just going, but figured it was a
great opportunity, and I had always wanted to wander with nothing but the clothes on my
back, so I bought a one year return ticket to Bangkok, Thailand and left two weeks later.
I arrived in sultry steamy Bangkok, and the first thing I did was head down to south
Thailand and attend a 10 day meditation retreat on an island called Koh Pang Nan. I planned
to get the serious stuff out the way first, then have some fun after. I had always been like
that; when I used to have dinner at home, I would first eat the vegetables which I didn‟t
like, then leave the tasty food for last. The retreat felt like a grind from beginning to end; it
felt as though the days were wrapped in sandpaper, with none of the euphoria and peak
experiences of the first retreat back in South Africa. The retreat center was on a hill, and at
the time of the retreat, there was a giant party happening down the hill at the beach. Koh
Pang Nan is famous for its full moon parties, and I have always wanted to attend one. I
could hear the music coming up the hill, and I almost had to chain myself to my bunk bed to
stop from running down and getting a beer and having some fun. Instead, I sat there
miserable in the silence, my neck and back aching from tension, trying to figure out what
the hell I was doing feeling depressed watching my breath and walking up and down in the
heat on little meditation paths for hours on end with a bunch of unshaven dusty retreatants
wearing clothes that looked like pajamas. It was a tough retreat; 50 participants began, and
22 finished. I watched people cracking and breaking down in tears as it got too much.
The retreat finally ended, and I returned to the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, where I had to
wait a few days while my visa application for Laos was being processed. I love Bangkok, and
spent many hours walking around the city, looking at its temples and magnificent palaces,
breathing in the exotic smells hanging in the air, eating Thai curry every day and having
street barbecues for dinner, being hustled by Thai ladyboys, and sitting on Kao San Road
watching travelers from around the world come together in transient fusion. I had also
started to dream a lot, and was having several dreams a night, sometimes lucidly. I would
remember on average four or five dreams when I awoke, and I would lie in bed in the

morning, not having a clue what all these strange stories meant. I had a strong desire to
learn about dreams, realizing I needed a way to understand them as another key to the
puzzle of my soul, in a way which was a little more advanced than looking up preset
meanings in a dream dictionary.
That evening, I was walking along a busy street, thinking about getting some beer
somewhere and making sure not to make eye contact at the Thai prostitutes so they didn‟t
start hassling me, when I looked down an alley and saw a woman in a flowing white dress
move quickly into a well lit building. In the flash of time I had to see her, she looked
radiantly beautiful and I was drawn to see her again, so I walked down the alley, and I
noticed she had disappeared into a bookstore. Curious, I walked inside, and I couldn‟t find
the woman anywhere, and there seemed no way out the bookstore besides the front door. I
looked at the shelves, and a single book caught my eye. It was “Dreams” by Carl Gustaf
Jung.
„My lord!‟ I thought, „What good luck!‟ I took the book off the shelf and opened it and it was
exactly what I wanted. I had been a fan of Jung for about 6 months, and avidly read
anything of his that I could lay my hands on, and had a sizeable collection of his work at
home. This was one book I had always wanted, and now, through a miraculous encounter, I
was standing with it in my hands. I bought it and went straight back to my hotel, lay on my
bed in my underpants, forgot about the beer, and began to read. I felt myself expanding as
I read it; all the dream images were aspects of the dreamer, and only I could give meaning
to the dream. Here I had the theory and the tools to start to understand this complex world
that was playing itself out within me!
I spent the next three months on an exhilarating journey of inner and outer discovery.
Externally, I had a blast. I traveled through the jungle on elephants, smoked opium in
remote villages in the Thai/Myanmar border, met drunk Polish tourists, and traveled through
the rain forest down the brown Mekong River through communist Laos. In Luang Prabang,
two days boat ride down the Mekong, I found a misty old town surrounded by jungle, with
ancient Buddhist caves carved into the hills. The monks in Luang Prabang asked me to stay
and be their English teacher in return for food and shelter and I considered it, but felt my
path lay back in civilization. I spent a few glorious afternoons lying in a library drinking pots
of coffee, reading Hermann Hesse and staring at the hills. Continuing my journey, I went

spelunking, kayaked, got so ill I lay plastered on the floor of my bathroom for 2 days
thinking I was going to die, went to the ancient temples of Angkor in Cambodia, drank beer,
and got thin. I meditated a few hours every day. Internally, an inner world was unfolding,
and my free time was spent trying to unravel this internal mystery that was presenting itself
through my dream world. I was feeling very clean and pure, and only eating vegetables.
One afternoon in the meditation, I quickly went into a lucid dream state.
A couple of travelers are walking up a hill towards the dawn sunrise. The sun hasn‟t yet
appeared, but the sky is getting rapidly lighter. The sun bursts above the horizon, blinding
me with a shocking white light, as if a magnesium flare had exploded in my brain.
I recoiled and was instantly thrown out of meditation. I don‟t give much weight to spiritual
experiences. I don‟t know how I would be able to live with blinding light in my head all day
long; still, they are useful markers. My consciousness was opening up yet I was still some
distance away from being able to hold what was being revealed.
After three months, it was time to return to Taiwan. There was no reason for the decision; it
was just time to go back. I was tired of traveling and wanted to go and work again. I have
always been curious why synchronicity seemed to happen much more frequently when I was
traveling than when I was locked into the repetitive grind of every day life, having a job,
paying the rent, and so on. It seemed Spirit could only work when I was on a trip, but lost
it‟s voice in the city. I finally realized that when I was open and let go of how I thought
things should be, and when I let go of control and my fixation to my plans as security in life,
then Spirit could speak to me anywhere. I used to get extremely frustrated that Spirit was
not communicating with me. After a lot of head banging, I eventually realized that it was me
who didn‟t know how to listen, and God can speak to me anywhere. My role is to let go,
relax and open. When I hold onto a fixed idea how things should be, and how they should
turn out, I always suffer. That understanding penetrates to the root of suffering. As a good
friend of mine used to say, „The nice thing about hitting your head against the wall is when
you stop.‟ Traveling opened my mind, and in that openness, life was allowed to happen.
I returned to Taiwan, relaxed and ready to find a job and get down to work again. It was a
Thursday, and decided I would go into the city the following day and look for a job. I prayed
that night for guidance to find the correct job, and went to sleep. I dreamt that night.

It is Sunday. A friend of mine is sick, and I am offered his job. I don‟t need to look for a
job.
The dream seemed very clear and intuitively I believed it. I awoke, and decided I could relax
for a few more days, see if this dream was true, and then look for a job on Monday. I called
some friends on Friday, and in casual conversation, asked how everyone was. All the people
we knew seemed in perfect health.
„Maybe someone will have a cold and I will get temporary work for a few days‟ I thought. On
Saturday, I went to a party at a friend‟s house, morbidly curious about the dream. At the
party, I once again asked about my friends, and everyone was well. „That dream must have
been my imagination,‟ I thought. I got another beer and hit on another girl.
Around midnight, a close friend went out the party to collect something. He hopped on his
motorbike, and as he drove off, not 100 meters from the house, a drunk driver in a car came
out of an alley way and hit him. He was badly injured and required surgery to a broken
pelvis. The following day his boss called me, and offered me a job which became my
permanent position. The funny thing is that the job was at a branch of the same school I
wanted to work for before I left traveling, and was disappointed by the manager. If I had
taken the first job, I would never have gone traveling and had all the experience and
growth. In the end, I got my dream job, and had a dream trip. I can‟t help thinking of a little
Buddhist parable.
A poor farmer has a male horse which is indispensable to his livelihood. A ploughs the field,
carries the vegetables to market, and takes his wife to church on the horse. One day he
awakes to find the horse is gone. All the neighbors come to him and say „Your horse is gone.
Such bad luck‟.
„Good luck, bad luck,‟ replies the farmer, „Who knows?‟.
A week later the horse returns, and it has seven wild female horses with it. The farmer now
has eight horses and is wealthy in the village. The neighbors say to the farmer, „You have
eight horses now. Such good luck!‟
The farmer replies „Good luck, bad luck. Who knows?‟
A few days later, the farmer‟s son decides to break in one of the horses. He climbs on the
back and quickly gets thrown off, breaking his leg. He is bedridden and will have to rest for

two months. The neighbors come to the farmer and say „Your son has broken his leg and
cant work on the farm. Such bad luck!‟
„Good luck, bad luck. Who knows?‟ replies the farmer.
A week later, the General of the Army rides through the town, enlisting all the able bodied
young men for an impending battle. The farmer‟s son can‟t go because of his injury, and so
stays behind. The other young men of the village go, and most are killed in the battle. The
neighbors go to the farmer, „Your son is still alive. Such good luck!‟….
And so the story goes on….
Donna
May 2004. I was still in Kaohsiung, and had recently been blessed with a new job. I had
been sitting in a coffee shop one morning, wondering about my future and having my usual
coffee, bacon and eggs, when an old friend walked in. His school was looking for a teacher,
and he wanted to know if I was available to teach adults for an international English
institute. I went for an interview, got the job, and found myself very happy teaching adults
in a professional environment. I didn‟t yet know about the garbage cans and concrete
streets, but I certainly found God in espressos and lattes, and life often unfolded for me in
coffee shops. My enlightenment was apparently still just around the corner, and I was
grinding away daily at meditation and other practices, dominated by inner tensions and
feeling anything but liberated. I was still learning a lot and reading a lot, yet internally I was
far from being at peace, and continued to have frequent attacks of anxiety and worry. I had
no idea how I was going to leave Taiwan and get a life again in South Africa, and everytime
I thought about it, I felt an inner sense of desperation. Those cursed words kept on flitting
back to me. „Enlightenment. Better you don‟t start, and if you do, better you don‟t stop‟. I
just had to keep going forwards though, through many long periods of no man‟s land,
travelling alone through an inner desert in search of a promised land. It was a tough time,
as I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. My dream of awakening hadn‟t become
real yet, my old dreams still pulled me backwards, and I didn‟t seem able to let go of any of
them. Perhaps I didn‟t want to let go of them, as I was too afraid there would be nothing to

take their place if I did. Deep down, I think I knew that my path of spirituality and
transformation was the key to my future, but I still had no idea that these things I were
doing were tools to change me, instead of tools I would use to control my world.
I had been without a girlfriend since February of this year, and I was starting to get
extremely horny. I had gone to Thailand for another 10 day silent retreat that February, and
when I came out of retreat, went to an internet café to check my email, and opened a mail
from my long term girlfriend at the time.
„Dear Bruce,
My uncle died while you were away and I have been spending the time with my family and
relatives. I realize how happy I am with them and how I need people around that I can
connect to. I can‟t live with your traveling and uncertainty anymore and need someone to be
there for me. Because of that, I want to break up with you. I won‟t see you anymore.
Regards
Fran‟
That letter had sucked, yet in a way, I wasn‟t shocked. Fran had wanted to get married and
have children with me, yet I was in no space to commit to anything while I was on an
intensive inner journey that was taking me to an unknown destination. For a while, after
Fran gave me that dear John letter, I was okay being single, and then I was convinced that I
needed to get a girlfriend again and explore relationship with someone. Actually, my
testosterone convinced me that I needed to get laid some more, and every day I used to
look at all the sexy Taiwanese girls in Kaohsiung through eyes of lust and longing, and
slowly my desire grew and grew. My sexual drive didn‟t care the slightest bit about my
higher self; all it cared about was self gratification. I thoroughly convinced myself that I
needed to take some action and meet a soul mate, and began to pray intensely for another
relationship. I had some dreams.
I am going up a hill. There is a small town on the other side of the hill. The girl I need to be
with is waiting for me in a coffee shop in the small town, and I will meet her soon. She will
come and talk to me. The town is a place of healing and recovery.

I am a doctor and I am treating a beautiful young woman. She is naked and sexy, and has a
wound shaped like a vagina on her abdomen. I can bring her to health.
I was still a novice at dream analysis, and there were certain things that I didn‟t really
understand about dreams. Intellectually, I knew that in many dreams, the different parts of
the dream are different parts of oneself that have been unconscious and are emerging into
consciousness. However, in my earlier stages of dream analysis, when the symbolism of the
dream components was not immediately obvious and the extent of my repression lay
unbelievably deep, I tended to dismiss the dreams, or to try and interpret them literally. Still
being amazingly blind to many parts of my unconscious, I arrogantly decided that these
dreams literally meant that I was going to meet a beautiful young woman soon, and
because of my expertise with meditation and psychology, I was going to help her to heal
and become emotionally and sexually healthy.
About a week later, I walked into the open air coffee shop across the road from my new
school and sat down. Cat Stevens was being played on the sound system, and I was
planning to write in my journal, listen to music and watch the scooters and the taxis dodging
each other on the road outside. A beautiful young Chinese woman, a siren of around 25
years old with straight black hair and a smile the size of a tennis ball was sitting in the coffee
shop, and she gave me a little smile as I sat down. I smiled back, but, considering the pitiful
state of my Chinese, I didn‟t talk to her. Not too many people spoke English around here. I
got lost in my writing, yet I was always aware of her sitting there.
After around 20 minutes, she got up to leave, and in the most perfect Australian English
accent, she said hi to me.
„Hi‟, she said, „where are you from?‟
This was a surprise; I didn‟t know the girls from Australia looked like that. If that was the
case, then I had to go to Australia sometime.
„Hi,‟ I replied. „I come from South Africa. Your English is great!‟
„Yeah. I lived there for ten years and I just returned. My family lives in this city.‟
We chatted a while. Her name was Donna, and she was lonely. She didn‟t connect with the
Chinese culture anymore, and liked to hang out with Westerners, and being a South African,
I sort of made the grade. And, she was cute as hell. She had long straight black hair, low

body fat, natural muscular tone, and that big wide smile with perfect teeth that looked like it
could hold just about anything. I have always been a fan of big wide smiles; my smile has
always been a little too narrow and I needed braces as a kid, and I had at times secretly
dreamed of being a Colgate toothpaste model.
Donna and I met up again a few days later, and were sitting at a sidewalk café having a
beer in the evening, when some strange men walked past. A wave of fear came over her
and her eyes widened with an unseen terror. Leaning forward, she grabbed my arm and
squeezed her nails into my flesh, painfully digging them in as she stared at the strangers,
holding me as if they were going to tear her away and she needed to stop that happening.
As quickly as it had arrived, her fear passed and she let go, breathing a little heavily.
„What happened?‟ I asked.
„Nothing,‟ she replied, „it‟s just that sometimes strangers make me feel a little nervous.‟
I didn‟t think that her reaction was normal. The men hadn‟t appeared dangerous to me, and
so I thought that her reactions must been triggered from something deeper. My thinking
drifted back to my dreams I had had. Donna must have had some experiences in the past
that had terrified her and left her deeply afraid, maybe badly hurt, and that hurt from the
past was still festering in her depths. Something in those strangers had triggered some
buried consuming fear, and that fear would keep on rising to the surface and she would
keep on reacting until she healed herself. I remember a story she had told me that she had
been taken away from her parents at the age of two to live with her grandparents, and that
had always disturbed her. Maybe she thought those strange men were going to rip her away
from me. I don‟t know. I did not recognize my presumptuousness at the time in thinking I
could diagnose her, let alone heal her. Armed with my precognitive dream and a pack of
meditation tools and psychological processes and an unrealistic amount of self-efficacy, I
became fixated to the idea that I would heal her, and that our relationship was meant to be.
In the hands of the blind, a little knowledge is dangerous!
We soon started dating, and it wasn‟t long before we were sleeping together. I fell quickly in
lust with her satin olive skin and infectious laughter and was enjoying every moment. My
meditative awareness was also growing; I was noticing how thoughts of her started to
flower as if blooming from hidden buds in my mind, where suddenly in the midst of
swimming or teaching I would notice myself lost in a fantasy of her. I started to have flights

of the imagination about marrying her and spending my life with her, walking across the
Indian highlands together, never letting go of her hand and being completely in love until I
died. I laughed at myself, laughed at how quickly falling in love cast a spell of immortality on
my mind, making me imagine a permanent blissful future based on a great kiss and a great
butt. More importantly, it was time to fix her. It was time for me to be the healing hero, and
I would talk endlessly about meditation, projection and psychodynamics, and for a while she
actually appeared interested.
It wasn‟t long, though, before she started to have fits of anger with me, behave irrationally,
and react to the slightest things. She would alternate between extreme venomous criticism
or between sullen childlike moods. The more she did that, the more I tried to analyze her
and show her what was wrong and how to change. I really wanted to help her, yet
everything I was doing seemed to make things worse and worse, and the more I intensified
my efforts, the more screwed up she behaved. I couldn‟t understand this. According to my
theory, I could see her problem, I could recognize how she was locked into being a
judgmental parent or a rebellious angry child and she wasn‟t stepping into her responsible
adult, and I could see how she irrationally reacted to emotional triggers. I wracked my
brains; I contemplated the problem and lay in my bed at night, staring out the window,
wrestling with problem, tossing and turning. Why wasn‟t my healing intervention working?
By this stage, I started to suspect that I didn‟t understand the problem. I have always held
the belief that if you understand a problem correctly, then that understanding automatically
brings with it an answer. I had to take a big step backwards and look at this thing from a
different angle. What was I missing here? I went to a nearby cafe and sat back and stared
at the trees blowing in the wind, for a change not interested in sexy woman with intelligent
glasses, and kept on asking myself „What the hell is going on!!‟
In the vacant empty space that my mind held between the trees and the clouds, a
thunderous thought struck. I was part of the problem. I could not see myself as an observer
separate from the problem rationally trying to understand her. I was inside the problem, I
was part of the problem, and all my analysis had been about her, not about me and her
together. She and I were one system, different parts interacting to create a whole, not
separate disconnected entities. What was I bringing to the table here? Donna and I were
intertwined. I was the healer and she was the wounded feminine, and the more wounded

she was, the more I needed my job as a healer. If there wasn‟t something wrong with her,
how could I heal her? In shock and horror, it struck me that ironically I needed her to be
broken if I was going to be the emotional healer I wanted to be, I needed her to be broken
so I could preserve my identity as a healer or a fixer. And, she needed me to be a healer if
she was to be broken. The more I tried to heal her, the more I made her broken!! Together,
we completed each other, we were two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle coming together to make a
picture, and if I was successful in healing her, the game would be over and my job would be
finished. Unconsciously, I had a vested interest for her not to get better, because if she did,
my job would be over and my egoic identity project would be finished. My good intentions,
coupled with my ignorance, were making the problem worse, not better!
The lights were going on with dazzling speed. The dream I had had was about me; I had a
wounded feminine part in my being that needed to made conscious and required the healing
light of awareness. As long as I couldn‟t see that I was the damaged one, I was looking for
the lost parts of myself through my relationships with others. I was locked into relationship
with Donna, not just because of her, but because there were parts of my soul that needed
to be made conscious and bought into the love of my awareness, and she was the mirror of
my soul. The more she screamed for healing, the more it was I who was screaming to be
healed. I had to find the part of myself, the beautiful sexual feminine, the critical parent, the
rebellious child, that was damaged, that had been hurt, that required love, and not further
condemnation.
I cringed on the chair in the coffee shop, both laughing and highly embarrassed at my
ignorance. I was such an idiot. I drank some more of the cooling coffee. As long as I stayed
identified with being the fixer, this game would continue. The first realization was that I was
far more than just a healer, and I didn‟t need to stay limited to that role. I knew all about
projections and the unconscious, yet as long as I had been caught up in only being the
healer, I had been unable to spot my projection which had been staring at me in the face
like a chained guard dog staring at an intruder. This was not the first time I was blind to my
own projections, and it would not be the last. This dance with Donna had been little more
than a relentless self obsession as my hidden parts called for help, and the more I thought
she was the problem and I was okay, the more intense the problem became as it called for
its resolution. Talk about being blind in the shadows!! This left me in a quandary. What was
I going to do now that the spell had been broken?

Our relationship changed dramatically. Once I could see the game of healer and the
damaged soul, I could choose to stop playing it, and instead have a different basis for
relationship with her. I made a commitment to accept Donna without trying to change her,
heal her or fix her, and I committed to not reacting if she went into one of her moods. I
came from a family where conflict had to be pacified, and so learning how to just let
someone be was a big step for me. The funny thing is, that Donna started to get better. I
committed to unconditionally accepting her and understanding her, even though I still acted
like a jerk for reasons I didn‟t understand and made a lot of mistakes and was often selfish
and caused some problems. Living up to my intention needed a fair share of inner work and
effort, and sometimes I wanted to be right and it was frustrating to hold myself in allegiance
to higher values, not reacting when she flipped into one of her moods. I was on the right
path though.
Diary entry: July 2004
Yesterday was Donna‟s birthday. I had been working all day, and had arranged to take her
out for dinner. The problem was, I hadn‟t arranged anything special for her, and I knew that
she was expecting something special. I hadn‟t even spent time buying her a gift, so during
my lunch hour at work, I dashed off to the gift store, and bought her the first thing he saw.
Candles and a diary and a birthday card. The shopping was all over in 15 minutes; I was in
a slight rush, lunch was waiting, and I didn‟t have much time. So, by the time I finished my
last class, I had a hastily bought and poorly wrapped gift, and had an idea for dinner at an
Indian curry restaurant I liked, but knew she didn‟t particularly like. I could feel her response
already. Her disappointment would turn into anger. I would start to get upset, thinking that
she was ungrateful for my time and my efforts. It would all be one horrible cycle which I
could see coming and which was somehow inevitable and unstoppable. I would justify my
actions by saying that it was the time spent together that was important, but I knew that it
wasn‟t. I had been too lazy to be creative, and consider something special for her.
After I finished work, I called her, and she came running down the stairs. The first thing she
asked was where we were going. I said we were going for curry. She was silent. She looked
at me, walked away and walked back.
„I thought we were doing something special?‟ she said.

„We are,‟ I replied, „we are going for dinner.‟

„You didn‟t think about it, did you?‟ she snarled.
„It‟s about the dinner and you and I together. You don‟t have to come.‟
„I‟m coming,‟ she snapped, „let‟s go.‟
We walked to my motorcycle and I needed to avoid this becoming a disaster. I was thinking
that perhaps there was another solution. An idea came to me. Teresa‟s, a little Spanish
restaurant perfect for such occasions. I didn‟t say anything yet. We would have to drive past
the Indian restaurant on the way to Teresa‟s and I wouldn‟t tell her, I would pretend it had
been a surprise all the time. We climbed on the motorcycle, and started to drive, driving past
the Indian restaurant.
„Where are we going?‟ she asked. I told her it was a surprise. She was silent, still pissed off.
We arrived at the Spanish restaurant, and went inside.
I gave her the gift I had bought her, and she opened it, unimpressed, and looked at me.
The waitress came to take the order. Donna snapped at the waitress.
„She has no class,‟ I thought to myself, embarrassed to be with her. She only knew how to
behave when she liked what was going on. When she didn‟t, I thought her behavior was
despicable. We ordered food, and I didn‟t react to her mood. I could feel her anger, but
decided to keep cool. The food arrived and she looked at it angrily.
„What‟s the problem?‟ I asked. „Why can‟t you enjoy the meal, and appreciate the only
person in the world who is showing you some care and concern today?‟
She slammed her fork down and the other diners stared at us. Here I was, caught up in one
of those awkward moments where I didn‟t want to be the dastardly star of the show. She
said how terrible it was to have spent the day alone, stood up, and stormed outside. I sat, a
little stunned at the table. I didn‟t know what to do. She had made a scene. I was left alone
with a table full of food for two.
I continued to stay unreactive, and instead I waited a little. Perhaps she would come back
in. I ate a piece of fish, thinking how among the emotional chaos, a single mouthful of food
in a Spanish restaurant could appear so delicious. My senses seemed heightened by the
tension, and I realized that she could be gone for a while. I also started to think. People only
behave with anger when they have been hurt. She had been angry all day, feeling hurt

nobody among her family and friends had called her, and her hurt had turned into anger.
She had lived in anger all day long, and strangely, I was feeling almost compelled to act in
ways that were non-caring and selfish and which further entrenched her anger and her pain.
She was using me as a magnet for her anger, and I could not blame her for that. Perhaps I
could offer myself to her. I could allow her anger to wash against me, and through me. I
could take her storms into me and let them be. I could breathe her anger inside me, and
give her love in return. She needed love, not judgment. She didn‟t need my response to how
I thought things should be; she didn‟t need my solutions to her problems. She needed love
in the form of radical, unconditional, acceptance. She was not mine to judge, she was not
mine to fix. I had no right to tell her how to be. My desire for judgment was strong, but I
would not act on it. The world would not always be how I wanted it. She was in the world. I
was in the world. Both our reactions were in the world. And the only way was to accept
myself and to accept her. Anything other would lead to division, in myself and in her, and
division was not the way of love.
I called the waitress across to the table. She smiled awkwardly and politely at me, in the
way that someone smiles as someone who has just been in a fight. I smiled back, and
wished her peace. The dinner was not eaten, it was expensive, and would be delicious later,
so I asked the waitress for take away. I paid and walked outside, to find Donna leaning
against a lamp pole, sullenly smoking a cigarette. I walked up to her, put my arms around
her, and held her. She took another large drag on her cigarette, and relaxed a fraction. I
suggested we go back to her apartment to eat dinner. She said that I didn‟t want to see her
anymore in her state. I said I did. She agreed. We climbed on my bike and left for her
apartment.
We entered the apartment. I took off my shoes, and put the food and some plates on the
table. I lit the candles that I had bought her, while she lit some incense, and sat down on
the red leather sofa. I sat down next to her, not speaking. She started to talk. She spoke
about her independence. How strong she looked. She talked about how soft she really was.
She talked about how friends had hurt her. She spoke about pride, about moving on, about
never turning back. One moment, she showed the faces of tenderness and vulnerability,
then anger, then fear. She spoke about friends who had abandoned her, to how she had
survived. She moved between blame for them and blame for the world. I listened, and
gently allowed her to keep talking. I allowed myself to feel her anger, her hurt, her

loneliness, her disappointment. I could feel how much she had loved and wanted people, but
had never told them. I felt her hurt when they had left her. I saw her defiant covering of
rejection.
I felt myself opening into her. My judgments and my walls were fading and dropping, and I
stroked my hand softly across her back. I was becoming her words, her thoughts, her
emotions. I moved with her as she allowed her pain to come forth; I felt her barriers when
she defended herself and blamed the world. I continued to listen. Just to listen. And
whenever I started to think, I would go back to her voice, the movement of her lips, and
give myself up again. I listened to her again and again, with every breath a new born
listening. What I was receiving, and how I was reacting were both embraced. I heard it, I
sensed it, and she could not have been more perfect in all her shades of sadness.
In this clarity, in this receiving, I recognized I had once again found love. For a blessed
moment of timelessness, all my searching was over. All my dreams, all my getting and
gaining and losing, were gone. All my ideas about good and bad were let go. Every
judgment I had made about truth, every person I had left in search of that which would
make me happy and beautiful, was forgotten. After years again of hungering, hunting, and
exhausting myself in this brutal torturous journey towards happiness, I was faced with the
ultimate irony. Love was not ever to be grasped. Love was to be gained by letting go, truly
and fully, and in letting go, I was whole. In that forgetting, grace was allowed to emerge
and hold out her perfect arms. I had given myself fully tonight, at the expense of myself. I
had given up my wishes for comfort; I had given up my tiredness, my opinions and my
judgments. And giving, not wishing for my own completion, I found myself empty, the open
joyous vessel of soft, immaculate, radiant beauty.
She stopped talking. She had grown soft. With no walls of criticism to push against, she too
was spent. She leaned across and kissed me. I returned her kiss. For a long time, maybe an
hour, we lay, kissing, wrapped together, one mouth, one breath, two lips, one body. I stood
up. This time there was no resistance from her as I left. Just gentle peace.
I walked outside. Tonight, the city was beautiful. Plastic bags lay strewn on the streets. The
early autumn air was thick with haze. Yellow streetlights shone their halos into the night.
Benches lay deserted. A few cars and motorcycles drove past. The world was new, in all its

oldness. I was new. I was forgotten. I breathed out. How wonderful this perfect and empty
earth. I had a strange dream last night. A different awakening to another Face.
I am on a beach. The sand is gold. The blue sea stretches before me, flat to the horizon.
The sky has a few clouds, but is golden red, the color of sunset. The sky and the sea meet
at the horizon. They are coming together. The land and the sea are coming together; the
land and the sky seem to merge. I cannot hold all this. There is something that holds all this,
that is bigger than all this. But to say there is something would be to say that there is
something other. There is no other. I am in it. It is an experience. Infinite. But to say infinite
would be to say not finite. All is contained. It contains me. No thought is big enough to know
it, no emotion wide enough to hold it. I know it though. It holds the sky. It holds the land
and the sea. I know my limitedness. I feel my insignificance. It is bigger than could ever be
imagined. I stand on the horizon. To know it would be to explode. I am afraid. Perhaps I am
not ready.
End of Diary Entry.
I tasted Love that night. In my dream I tasted my future
Tony Robbins
February 2005. It had been four years since I had left South Africa, and I was becoming
increasingly desperate to return home. I was sitting downtown Kaohsiung, staring at the
skyscrapers again, thinking about where my life was going for the millionth time. I had been
in a constant pattern of meditation, exercise, dream work and shadow work for the last few
years, and half the time I seemed to be going in circles. Time was ticking, my life was
slipping on by and I had a life to live. All my self discovery was supposed to have helped me
reach my goals and have a dream life, yet I didn‟t seem to be getting anywhere, and was
still wondering what the hell to do with my life. I had to do something, anything, to break
this pattern. I sat in a coffee shop with my journal, staring at my ice latte, watching the girls
walk on by with their long brown hair blowing sexily in the hot air, and writing whatever

confusion was circling in my head. I thought that if I didn‟t make my life happen, then I
would be stuck in Taiwan for the rest of my life. I would be trapped eating noodles and
breathing exhaust fumes from polluting scooters until I died of emphysema. I felt I was
carrying an immense burden. I had got myself into this mess of being trapped on the other
side of the world, and I had to rely on myself to get myself out again. I could wait to be
rescued, but if I kept waiting, I could wait until I died. My dreams of a house with swimming
pool, walks on the beaches with friends, romantic kisses on Table Mountain and great surf
off Durban wanted me, and I wanted them. I was suffering. I didn‟t have what I wanted and
I had what I didn‟t want: an industrial polluted Taiwanese metropolis. My life wasn‟t what I
thought it should be, and I was going to have to use force if necessary to get things back on
track. I had forgotten all my insights about wholeness and liberation, and was back as a
slave to my desperate grasping ego, hanging on to dear life to dreams and ambition and
suffering as a result. My strategy was still what it had been; I would find what I liked, which
was now spirituality, psychology and transformational practice, do it, embody it, get
enlightened, and then go and apply it and make some money. Around that time, two things
happened. First, I had a dream.
I am sitting on a bench at a train station. A monk comes and sits down next to me. He turns
to me and says “Evolution is the prime directive.”
The dream seemed obvious. The monk was my higher self telling me that there was nothing
more important than the evolution of consciousness. This is what I had been doing the last
few years, and now I had the go ahead from above. I felt it was the Christian equivalent to
the hand of God writing on the wall.
Secondly, I met Tony Robbins, a famous American motivational guru. Well, I didn‟t exactly
meet him. I saw his gigantic blinding smile shining out at me from one of his books, and I
bought his book. I read it in one night, and then I bought his CD‟s and listened to those. I
was hooked and had swallowed the entire line and sinker. My plan became crystal clear; I
was going to return to South Africa and be the Tony Robbins of transformational practice. All
the pieces were falling into place. If the evolution of consciousness was the most important
thing in life, then the world needed go-getters like me to awaken others to their true
purpose. I would be supporting the real purpose of life, I would be doing what I loved, I

would be making things happen, and of course, life would support me back. Wasn‟t that how
it all worked?
I became obsessed with Tony Robbins. My inner giant was awake and I had all the power I
needed. I was ready and committed to take, as he liked to put it, „massive action‟. My
strategy was simple.
1. Summarize all his books and tapes.
2. Create my own system of transformation integrating his work and the other work
I had studied.
3. Design workshops.
4. Go to South Africa, sell the workshops to companies and make lots of money.
5. Have my dream life.
I was highly motivated after listening to Robbins‟ tapes. He made everything sound so clear
and simple, that even an idiot could be successful if they followed his formula. In one of his
talks, he shouted out something like „You gotto jump out of bed in the morning with your
running shoes on because you are so eager to reach your goals!‟
That was the line that sold me. There was to be no more sleeping in and procrastination, no
more slow coffees easing into the day listening to Bob Dylan, watching the rain falling
outside and the birds squawking on the telephone lines. It was a time of action, a time of
leaping out of bed in the morning and sprinting towards my goals. I planned how long I
would sleep and meditate. My days became a series of lists and schedules to follow. After
all, if I wanted to reach my goals, I had to focus, didn‟t I? I had to commit. I planned every
minute of each day and became a driven, focused human machine. My schedule went
something like this, and not a minute of the day was wasted.
7:00 am: Wake up.

7:10 am: Eat breakfast.
7:25 am – 8:25 am: Meditate.
8:30 am. Go to gym.
8:50 am to 9:30 am. Work out.
9:30 am to 10:00 am. Shower and return home.
10:15 am to 12:45 pm. Dream work, study and develop workshops.

12:45 pm to 1:20 pm. Get ready for work and eat lunch.
1:30 pm to 9:30 pm. Go to work and come home again.
9:30 pm to 10:00pm. Eat dinner.
10:00 pm to 12:30 am. Study and develop workshops.
12:30 am to 1:30 am. Meditate.
1:30 am to 7:00 am. Sleep.
I had a direction to go, and I was running as fast and as hard as I could. I was still dating
Donna, and she didn‟t fit into my schedule. I only had time for her on the weekends, where
we would go for a movie or eat some dinner. Everything was about me, about my goal,
about my plan, and I had to do it all alone.
Day after day I jumped out of bed and worked the schedule. My life had meaning and it had
direction. I drove myself through tiredness and fatigue, and I blocked out any resistance I
felt. I gave up entertainment and relaxation. I ate noodles and bananas and protein powder.
I took creatine and got stronger and fitter and bigger. There was no leisure. I ran to and
from my motorcycle. I walked quickly into convenience stores to buy food. I wrote in my
journal while eating lunch. I was more focused than a lion staring at its prey. My life was
going to work, I had the power to make it happen, and I was in control. The ball was rolling
and I was being bold and great forces were going to come to my aid.
In meditation, I visualized myself in front of packed auditoriums, feeling the satisfaction as

the crowd roared and cheered and made life changing decisions. I felt my goal as real. I
practiced walking confidently around the room, living my success. I felt tremendous power. I
believed my mind could program my body; I believed my actions could program my
neurology. Anything was possible if the mind was focused, and the mind, the thinking, egoic,
future obsessed, control dominated, pleasure and pain addicted mind, was the key to the
riches of the universe and a life of satisfaction and fullness. I thought it and believed it to
be true. I had dreams of Tony Robbins. I was bought and sold. I planned out my future. I
wrote down my ideal wife, my ideal house, my daily activities I would do when I was rich.
Tony Robbins was right; if I could repeatedly string together enough happy and positive
experiences, my life would be full. If I could meet my needs of connection and certainty and

contribution and growth and love, I would be okay. I would find a home of happiness for
myself. In my desperation to get out of Taiwan, all my Buddhist training went out the
window. I forgot that there was no home for the separate self to be found in the world of
conditions, and things were clearly not always already perfect. The home I was going to find
for myself in the future was irresistibly appealing, and I was going to get there. Who didn‟t
want to be a millionaire with a hot wife, living in paradise and helping people unleash their
potential?
May 2005. I had been relentlessly focused towards my goal for three months. I hadn‟t taken
a break for one day, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw the cold hard determined stare
of a fighter stepping up to the challenge. I liked what I saw; I would have been ready to
take on Mike Tyson of he had walked in the room. Focus was the key. Life, though forced
me to take a break. My passport was expiring, and I needed to travel to Taipei for two days
to renew my passport at the South African embassy.
I am always curious about breaks in the pattern. I sensed that I needed a break from
becoming Tony Robbins the second, and this trip would be a welcome shift. I climbed on the
bus late Sunday night, planning to watch some movies on the ride and then sleep for a few
hours. The bus eased out of the busy streets of Kaohsiung and onto the highway. It was a
relief to be away from my schedule, and I vacantly stared out the window at the city lights
and the concrete passing on by. I savored my breath, and fell asleep.
I awoke early the next morning as the bus entered Taipei. I am usually a late riser and a
late sleeper, so I enjoyed the rare opportunity of seeing the city waking up. There were old
men drinking coffee, students buying steam buns, businessmen on the way to work, and
stray dogs sniffing the trash cans for any left over food. I took a bus to the South African
embassy, found it was closed for the day because of a South African national holiday, and so
went and booked myself into a five star hotel for the night. I had a day ahead of me in a
new city, and was eager to explore. Taipei was great and I immediately felt comfortable.
„Maybe I can live her one day,‟ I thought to myself. I liked the clean streets and big
buildings, the shops and the endless restaurants. I spent most of the day looking at fashion
billboards and reading and drinking coffee in Starbucks, along with a lot of glances at the
thousands of beautiful women in the city. I wondered if I would ever overcome this

obsession with beautiful girls. I didn‟t think so. I felt cursed and blessed, trapped in eternal
heavenly desire, driven by testosterone. Mostly, though, I enjoyed relaxing, I enjoyed being
free of my schedule and the relentless pressure I had been placing on myself for the
previous three months, and I was remembering what it meant to feel at ease.
I returned to the hotel where I was staying, walking through a small park, enjoying the early
hours of the evening and the smooth summer heat. My mind wasn‟t on much except the
upcoming dinner. The hotel served a buffet, and I was looking forward to feasting like a
king. My favorite was sashimi and I planned to have an entire plate of fresh salmon with
wasabi. I entered the hotel dining hall, gave my room number to the assistant, and happily
took my seat at a small table. I had my notebook with me, and I planned to write down
some thoughts after I had eaten my meal. I meandered my way through several courses of
sashimi, smoked salmon, salads, curry, vegetables and desert, and finally sat feeling like a
bloated puffer fish with a fresh brewed espresso. My thoughts drifted in reflection about the
previous few months. I was feeling anxious again about the future.
„I am going to have to make a decision to go home sometime. Is what I am doing a huge
mistake, or will it work out?‟ I knew I was getting closer to leaving Taiwan. I had finished all
the Tony Robbins tapes and I had to take massive action. How was I going to do this?
Memories of serendipity came to me. Meeting Jerry and his family. Experiences with Troy.
The time when I had been canoeing on a swollen dam at a river mouth when I was a child,
and I had a sudden urge to use the bathroom and so I had paddled back to the shore and
run to the toilet and when I came back, 15 minutes later, the sandy river mouth had burst
and the water had all flowed into the sea. Needing the bathroom had saved my life. I
thought of numerous experiences when I had been protected or helped, and good luck had
come my way. I realized I had always been protected, and I knew I had nothing to worry
about. I started to write about all the times life had supported me in the past. I started to
feel lighter and liberated, and I began to smile. I was protected. I knew I was, and there
was nothing to be afraid of, and God would help me. A tremendous weight began to rise off
my shoulders. I looked around at the people in the room, noticing businessmen and families,
and waiters dressed in white and carriers taking empty plates to the kitchen. I noticed the
colors of the foods on the table: the red of strawberries with their little black seeds on the
outside, and the phosphorescent green of uneaten kiwi fruit in the salad bowls. Everything

shone with an inherent perfection. It all seemed perfect exactly how it was, and nothing I
could have changed could have made anything more perfect.
I smiled. Grace had descended into the room and bathed all things in gentle radiance. I had
seen the world as beautiful many times before, particularly when I used to go hiking, and
after I would return after hours on the mountain, the rocks, the black streets, the ants on
the road, were all beautiful. Beauty was strongest after I used to hike at night under the
silver light of the full moon, and when I would return after hours of keen focus on the night
path, the world would be exquisite. I used to search for beauty and hunger for it, seeking to
repeat it and find it again and again, and it would reveal itself after intense periods of
holding on, then, in that act of grace when something inside let go, such as when I ran or
swam or loved or opened, beauty would shine out unimpeded into the world, delightfully
and unconditionally painting every item in my world with its radiant glimmer. When I first
moved to Taiwan, I suffered because I had no way to find the beautiful in the packed and
polluted streets. I suffered withdrawal from the serenity of moonlit nights, and lost my fix of
the sublime. Once I had searched for it on the streets of the city, and I had found it in the
form of a pair of angel wings sewn onto the back of a white wedding dress. Finally, I had
given up searching for grace. It was easier just to take ecstasy. Today though, grace was
back, unannounced as a rare gift of surprise, and I sat ensconced in the serene peace that
seemed to subtly vibrate and shimmer and bounce in the air around. I didn‟t know where it
emanated from. Was I beautiful or was the world beautiful? There was no difference.
I got up, glided through the smiles of attendants and walked outside. Everything was ok,
everything was deeply okay. I imagined I could spend the rest of my life sitting happily on a
park bench, never wanting, just resting in the immaculate perfection of all that was arising.
Movement or non movement didn‟t matter. I heard the sound of a cicada clearly through the
evening traffic. I would have heard a pin drop across the street. I watched an old man with
one leg fall on his crutches across the street, and noticed a tired woman slowly carrying her
daily shopping. They all shone with radiance; did they know how perfect and astonishingly
beautiful they were? I was free. Was this my enlightenment? Something inside had let go,
something was released.

That night I dreamt. I am in a city and ancient heavenly stone pathways appear suspended
in the sky and the clouds above. I am walking on these pathways and I have no fear of
heights.
The next day headed back on the bus to Kaohsiung. I had a splitting headache and I
couldn‟t think well. I felt detached from everything that was arising, as if I had separated
from my body. It wasn‟t as if I was hovering above myself or anything like that. It was as
though a switch had been thrown inside me, and nothing that happened, no thoughts, no
feelings, no experiences, had any effect on me. Was this my enlightenment? I was
unmoved by whatever happened. I decided to wait a month before pronouncing myself
enlightened and leaving to start the next phase of my life as a teacher of enlightenment. I
went through the following two weeks clearly feeling every experience within my, yet
paradoxically almost totally unreactive to whatever happened and feeling an extraordinary
and unshakeable peace. Life was neither meaningful nor meaningless. Experiences
happened and I was there to be aware of them. After the months of intense fixation on
trying to become Tony Robbins, combined with daily meditation, the trip to Taipei had
caused a massive internal letting go to occur. I entered a permanent state of witnessing
consciousness in the waking state. I knew I had to come down again. Looking back, I wasn‟t
ready for such an immense level of peace. I needed to connect to the fullness of my body, I
still wanted some of the longings of the worlds, and I wanted to be more responsive to life
around me, so I made a point of exercising, swimming, dancing and meeting girls, to try and
come back into my body. Finally after around four weeks, I felt connected into my body and
the world, I felt normal again.
Face Everything Avoid Nothing

June 2005. I was getting closer to making a decision to go home and I was thinking about it
all the time. I was on my scooter, riding down the tree lined Minsheng Road, and a wave of
anxiety hit me. My heart started to beat faster so I pulled over to the side of the road to get
my breath. I had been thinking about South Africa at the time. I was thinking about how I
hadn‟t started a business before and I didn‟t know what to expect. I thought about the crime
and the violence in South Africa. I could see the cold scarred faces of desperate black men
cruising the streets looking to rape and kill. I could hear the voices of policeman with
Afrikaans accents taking down the details of crimes. I had had an aunt that had been
murdered and had gone with my dad to see the crime scene. I hadn‟t been allowed to look
inside the house, but I remember seeing blood stains on the walls as the police opened the
door for dad. I had a cousin who had been attacked and another who had a nervous
breakdown from crime. I could smell the glue from street kids, high as they banged on my
car window begging for money. White people lived behind electric fences and hired armed
guards with shotguns. I also felt alone; I wasn‟t prepared to ask my family for assistance,
and I didn‟t know how I would do what I wanted. I just trusted that I would have the
support and guidance that I needed.
I sat on the side of the road, holding on tight to the handles. Cars and scooters shot past on
the side. Maybe I was having a heart attack. I felt the summer sweat dripping down my
neck and arms. I had to go back to South Africa and felt my deepest fears of survival were
being thrown at my face. I turned the bike around and headed quickly home. The risk of
failure was real. I might lose 5 years of savings and hard work. I was taking a massive risk
based on faith, perhaps stupidity. I felt sick in my stomach. I had to face my fear; I had to
be stronger than it. I remembered reading that what you fear will come true if you don‟t
face it. I was terrified of starvation, homelessness, failure and suffering. I was terrified of
losing all my money. I was terrified of not acting, of knowing that I had been too afraid to
risk everything for what I believed in. There are certain times in life when it‟s necessary to
jump off a cliff and trust that there is a safety net waiting. I would only know if my beliefs
were true if I tested them to the limit. Either the belief would break and be shown not to be
true, or it would hold true in the face of challenge. I believed that Spirit would support me in
my path, and I had to go and try and test out that belief.
I lay in bed after work, and thought about the anxiety attack and recalled the thoughts I
was having. I could feel the tension in my chest rising again, and noticed my breath getting
faster. I had to face this beast. I could see the deranged faces of hungry criminals prowling

the African streets. A vision of myself, destitute and homeless and alone arose. I lay in the
darkness, sweating in the 30 degree night heat. Every fiber in my body wanted the fear to
go away. I couldn‟t move; I wished I never had to make the choice I was making. Yet, I was
committed to staying with this. I was sick of being caught between wanting to leave yet
being too afraid to go. I closed my eyes. All I knew was blackness and terror. Paralyzed, I
shivered and shook and finally passed out.
Terror continued for a week. I suffered repeated anxiety attacks during the day. When I
rode my motorcycle to work, or bought dumplings from the street vendors, anxiety lay
lurking like an alert viper ready to strike, and sometimes it did, stunning me with its venom.
Each evening as I lay down to sleep, I went into terror that reminded me of my childhood.
When I was 6, before I went to sleep I had to pick up every item of clothing that was lying
in the floor of my room at night. If I didn‟t, then when the lights went out, the clothes would
turn into bears and lions. I would carefully put my arms under the blanket trying not to
make the smallest noise, because I didn‟t want the lions to gnaw off my limbs while I slept. I
would slow down my breath so the bears wouldn‟t hear me and scalp me, and I would lie
there too terrified to move or shout for help, until I finally slept. Each day when I awoke, the
clothes were just clothes again and the wild animals were gone. Now, I was a 33 year old
adult and I was plunged back into the raw slamming of childhood fear. This time I stayed
with it. For a week, I used to willpower to hold back the insane tide of my instinct and I
bathed in fear. I lay for hours each night in anxiety and paranoia. On the seventh night, the
snake bit with all its force.
„This is just a feeling,‟ I told myself. „There is no reason to fear. Right now, I am safe. Stay
with it.‟ It was unbearable. My chest constricted, I had to force myself to breath. The fear
was dense and I felt as though I was weighted and thrown into the ocean and I was sinking
and the pressure was getting stronger and harder. I gave up. The fear won and exploded
and I died.
Relief.
I was still awake. The streetlight shone golden light in its electric angel halo. The curtain
caressed the window. The damp pillow cooled my fever as I turned my head to the side.
Peace. Fear was gone. I felt the softness of the bed and listened to a toilet flushing in an
apartment downstairs. My heart rate started to slow and return to normal. The fear was

gone. I had gone through it, and it had been released from my body. The snake had bitten
me and I was immune to the poison. A fever had been broken and I knew I was better. I
rested in the relief of peace. I rode to work the next day, breathing warm air, resting in the
sounds of the city. Life was good again. The anxiety about returning to South Africa didn‟t
return. Somewhere deep inside, something unknown in the dark had been faced, and I was
okay for now.
I knew this snake was waiting.

It lay coiled around street poles and garbage cans,
ready to strike,
ready to hold me in my terrified darkness.
I didn‟t always see it coming,

But I knew it was there.
I felt that hellish creature wrapping its cold curls
Around my fragile chest‟
I started to fight and gasp and panic.
Frantic arms tore the air, grasping for the serpent,
All I clawed were shadows and sweat
in the midday heat.
Exhausted by fighting,
I finally gave up.
„Take me, Fear. You have won.‟
The snake, greedy in its hunger,
devoured me, but,
A strange thing happened.
It needed me to fight.
It needed my resistance,
It needed my opposition.
The serpent‟s victory was hollow.

There is no fight without an opponent.
I emerged, died and reborn,

With the reptile conquered and consumed by Love within me.
The snake is gone.

My eyes gleam
With Serpent Love Power.
Returning Home
Focus/intuition
I knew I was going to return to South Africa, but I just didn‟t know when I was going to do
it yet. I thought about just arriving back home and seeing what would happen. I always felt
life is a gigantic experiment, and I was doing little more with my life than just trying things
out, never being sure what was going to happen. I was born not knowing what to do, and I
have had to learn how to live. One day I will die, and when death comes, there will be
nothing to hold on to, and all futures, all dreams, all memories, all my money, will be gone.
I always believed that God would look after me, and if he didn‟t, well, then I would be dead.
The only way I know if my truth is truth, is if I test it to the limit, and it holds. If I believe
something to be fundamentally true, I have to take risks without a safety net based on that
truth. Only then will I know if what I believe is true or false. If what I believe is false, well,
then either I am dead, or I am still alive and I have failed, and that which I took to be
absolutely true will have been shown to be a lie. Being able to separate truth from lies,
especially when they are our deeply held beliefs, can take some doing.
I was obsessively caught up in wanting to leave. I had emailed my friends telling them about
the transformational practices I had been doing. One day I received an email from a dear
friend, Leanna.
„Dear Bruce,

You should get in touch with my friend Lillian. She is into personal growth and coaching and
spirituality.
Love
Leanna.‟
I emailed Lillian. It turned out that I had one memory of her, and that was when we had
kissed each other in a parking lot sharing a glass of wine after a drunken night of partying
many years ago. We began to converse through email and it seemed as though fate was
smiling on me. A week or two later, I was walking in a park near my apartment. It was clear
day, and I was enjoying sitting outside on a rock, watching some kids play ball with each
other. I was in a relaxed mood, not thinking about anything in particular and watching the
clouds drift lazily across the vast sky.
A thought entered my head. „If Lillian asks me today to come and stay with her, then I will
book my return ticket immediately. That will be my sign to go‟. I returned home about half
an hour later, and sat in front of my computer. As I sat down in front of the screen, I saw
Lillian sign onto the internet.
„Hi Bruce. How are you doing?‟

„Fine, and you?‟
„Great‟, she wrote, „by the way, I was just thinking today. I have a large house with wooden
floors, so why don‟t you come back and stay here with me for a while. Maybe you can get
into personal coaching.‟
I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The opportunity was too big to ignore. A quote
from a Carlos Castaneda book flickered through my mind.
„All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out
in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between the average man and a
warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately
waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the
prowess, to pick it up.
„Are you sure?‟ I replied.
„Yes.‟

A part of me knew that this was dangerous. Lillian and I had been having an internet
romance, and I knew she held me as something of a God realized ideal which I knew I
certainly was not, while in reality my enlightenment was still apparently around that endless
corner and I was a messy muddy human being, more in touch with nipples and whiskey
than with God. Still, a door was opening, and I had a choice to jump in and let myself go, or
to say no. I only learn in life by jumping in, by learning how to swim when it really matters,
and I know that we need to learn our lessons. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. In life, you
gotto take some risks sometimes.
„OK. I will come. I will book my ticket today.‟ I finished the conversation, walked out the
apartment, jumped on my motorcycle and headed directly for a travel agent, acting on the
moment. I bought a ticket to leave six weeks later. I had made a decision. I was going. I
was concerned though; something troubled me about her. I felt she saw me as an answer to
her problems, as a` missing piece in her puzzle, as something to complete her, and I knew
that she didn‟t really know me. I wrote her a poem trying to share my feelings.
„Stop Together‟.
I ask what I want

from this writing,
and I find, its nothing more,
nothing simpler,
than the inner becoming the outer,
and then stopping.
I stop, to honor that.

How?
The hot summer air is warm on my cheeks.
The faded sun hangs onto the late afternoon.
Leaves tremble on trees, and I fall,
easily,
into the utter ordinariness of this
day.

I think to her; of her.

A woman in the distance,
breathing, somewhere.
I don't know her, but,
I know something of people,
and a little of the mind.
I think to her.
I can see her fucking,
her white flesh spasmodically jerking up,
and down.
I can see her lost in heat, lost in the stars,
lost in music, lost in dancing, and life,
and people, searching out, reaching out,
getting high, again and again.
And again.
Restless.
Perhaps it will lead to a hotel in Bangkok;

group orgies of hedonistic voyeuristic
masochistic dependant indulging sex,
until spent bodies are left,
gasping for breath like stranded fish in the
beginning mud of a drought.
Satiated.
Broken.
Exhausted for today.
I don‟t know.
But I see 6 billion people;
6 billion people seeking, hunting,
looking to be made whole
through their world of experience,
to find themselves and lose themselves again in their actions,

and again.
And I don‟t know any of them.
I don‟t even know myself,

this collection of sight, and sound,
and memory, and feeling, and movement.
I don‟t know what forms will arise
by the completion of this poem,
what shapes of beauty or destruction will start to
shimmer in my mind.
That, (the unknowing)
is the miracle,
the surprise,
the mystery,
the Light.
I do not know endless empty blue black night skies any more;
my head held back in wondrous rapture,
drinking, drinking, drinking
every star I can see.
I used to know, but I don‟t know anymore.
All I know,
right now, is this poem.
The movement of a hand across a page.
A child pedals his bicycle across the street.
A bus stops.
The wind waits; the air is still.
This is my message, my poetry, for her.

That perhaps,
among our frantic searches to end this brutal
sense of separation, among our drive to ease our fractured incompleteness,
in our search for something, anything, in which we can compulsively lose ourselves for a
while,

in our search to ease the ghastly discomfort of our dream so just for a moment we can
become whole,
we could,
sometimes,
Stop.
Stop!
Stop and wait, stop and be still.
Stop hurtling through Samsara.

Stop listening to the slave driver commands
of our Separate Minds of Future Dreams and Past Loves (and Hurts),
and let go for a little while.
If we could stop,
Perhaps we could dissolve our longing in the peace of Being.
Maybe we could find,
together
(just sometimes)
a simple place,
a simple place that is already complete.
We could rest in the caress of the wind on our cheeks,

in the stirring ache of hunger in our bellies.
In wet grass after the storm.
Animals breathing in the cool shade.
Scattered clouds against the sky.
Just like this.
She said she thought it was romantic and touching. I felt she didn‟t have a clue what I was
saying, she didn‟t have a clue that I yearned for someone who understood the perfection in
stillness, who understood the still point at the turning of the world and wanted to find that
stillness in relationship with another as their deepest hungriest yearning. Being a closet
gambler, impulsive and reckless, I decided to go forward with my plans.

Farewell
The weeks until leaving Kaohsiung were a crazy time. I was risking everything for this
upcoming adventure, and yet now that I was committed, I felt at peace with the decision. I
had to pack and ship all my items home, I had to finish off at work and sell some
belongings, and I had to leave many good and established friends. I felt I would be okay for
at least a year in South Africa, as I budgeted that‟s how long my money would last. My
security was in my money; after that, it was in the hands of God. The weeks passed in a blur
of activity. I worked out every day and trained harder than ever. I wanted to return to South
Africa a fit and strong superhero, in the best shape possible. Ironically I had always wanted
to get out of Kaohsiung and leave Taiwan, yet I felt a strange sadness about leaving. As I
went to a nearby the park for the last time, and passed coffee shops and restaurants where
I had sat in confusion and lust and happiness for many afternoons, I realized I had grown
to love this hot, sweaty crowded place. I had come to accept the city. My thoughts drifted
back to the arrival in Kaohsiung 5 years earlier and the painful years, where I longed for the
beauty of South Africa and the privileged lifestyle of nature and beaches and majestic
mountains in which I had played. Now, the city was a part of me, and I had grown to
include the streets and the traffic within my soul. At times the streets shimmered in that
loving grace that would descend in moments of forgetfulness.
I had some signs that seemed to reinforce that I was doing the right thing and I was
supported by Spirit. One dream stood out.
There is something heavy on my back. My guardian mother comes to me and starts to pull
something off my back. It is like a heavy black cloud she is pulling out, and as she does it, I
become very contorted and repulsively deformed. She gets the thing off me and plops it into
a glass jar. I return to my normal shape and she says to me „You won‟t be needing this
anymore. You will need all your energy in South Africa.‟
After a week of farewell parties, the final night arrived. I had friends and colleagues around
and we spent the evening chatting and drinking some beers. Donna was at the farewell
party, and when all the guests left, she stayed with me. I was caught up in the euphoria of
leaving, and I was selfishly focused on getting all my things ready for the trip in the

morning. We finally slept around 2am, needing to awake around 4:30 am to get up and
travel to the airport before the early morning flight.
I awoke seconds before my alarm went off. I felt awake yet exhausted; my body needed
sleep yet my mind had not switched off from the night before. Donna awoke and it was the
last time we ever woke up next to each other. I looked at her with her perfect honey smooth
body naked next to me, thinking how I was going to miss her. She leaned over and climbed
on top of me, pulled me inside her, and made love to me, smiling with half formed tears in
her eyes. Our love making was short; we had to get up and get a cab. Writing this now, I
remember the finality as I pulled out of her for the last time and pleasure abruptly ended.
We got dressed, called a cab, stumbled outside, and headed for the airport. She lay next to
me on the back seat of the cab wearing a pink t-shirt and bravely smiling, supportive to the
end. I think I was in shock. I still felt everything was all right and I can‟t remember the
feelings I was having; I must have been numb. I didn‟t look out the window of the cab at
the first grey light of dawn. I just held her in the back seat, tired, awake, confused,
thoughtless. The ride was surreal, strangely empty, very blurred.
We arrived at the airport, where I fetched a trolley to carry my baggage, and headed to the
check-in desk. I had too much weight in my suitcases, so the ground crew wouldn‟t let me
check my baggage in so I had to open my bags on the floor of the airport and unpack some
of my most treasured items and give them to Donna. The rest of my luggage was on a ship
somewhere and would take six weeks to arrive in South Africa. I had my essentials with me,
and some of them had to stay in Kaohsiung. I didn‟t know what to leave; everything I had in
my bags was precious. The situation seemed cold and heartless. I didn‟t want to be on the
floor of an airport unpacking my bags and leaving the items I loved behind. Donna was a
fantastic help; she found a box and offered to send me the items by airmail. Finally I
offloaded enough stuff to check my bags in, then Donna and I walked to a nearby coffee
shop to wait until boarding time, and ordered coffee and sandwiches for breakfast.
Looking at her, that‟s when we started crying. There was no dramatic wailing or anything
like that. Just that awful feeling in the chest that a great loss is occurring and love is ending
and something horrible that is not wanted is happening. Both of us sat there with red wet
dripping eyes. There wasn‟t much to say as sadness blasted us with its thundering voice. I
drank my coffee and didn‟t taste a thing. Donna looked at me smiling and crying. In my

mind I thought the crying was hopeless. It wasn‟t going to bring anything back or end the
dreadful scene in this movie we had created. I kept looking at my watch. I wanted to run
away from this, I wanted to be away from this lingering drawn out affair of saying goodbye,
I wanted to be free from my sadness and just get this damn thing, this aching farewell,
over. There is something about inevitability, something that renders every other emotion of
anger and denial and resistance null and void, something that causes the soul to surrender
the fight. Finally I decided to enter the boarding area. We walked together to the passport
gates. I said goodbye to her while she stood there, tears streaming uncontrollably down her
face. I made a choice to let myself cry, matching her tear for tear. „To the hell what anyone
else thinks if they see this,‟ I thought, „fuck them!‟
The line „It‟s better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all‟ was running through
my mind, a pathetic attempt at self consolation. To hell with clichés. I felt as though my
chest was going to implode, I felt as though everything had been sucked out of the space
between my ribs and I was crying out of emptiness, and that maybe by some miracle the
tears would run down my cheeks and into my mouth and down into my chest and I would
get filled up again. I got emptier. I could see by her face her tears were emptying her too. I
hugged her and walked away, walking through passport control and checked into no-mans
land. I turned around and saw her across the hall, her big smile warped into an erratic
grimace as she choked back the desperation of her sadness. I waved amidst the blur of
airport announcements and tears and emptiness and glaring lights and air-conditioner
draughts. God, how I loved her. She watched me and I watched her as I walked around a
corner. I imagined her walking out the airport leaning against a wall, crying, then putting on
a brave face and heading into the world, armed with her pink T-shirt and determination. I
was sorry I had ever known her because then none of this tragic parting would have
happened. I hate saying goodbyes, but that‟s the price we pay for our dreams.
I called her with the last remaining credit on my cellphone. She couldn‟t speak she was
crying so hard. „Good luck,‟ she said, „I love you.‟
I boarded the plane and sat in my chair. The journey home was unremarkable apart from
two things. Waves of sadness would begin in my chest and rise up through my throat into
my face and nose and leave my body as tears falling onto my seatbelt. I made no effort to
wipe my face. I just looked down and let them fall, each drop a momentary tombstone to
the death of happiness. Maybe every hour or half hour, waves would rise and sweep through

me, and my ritual of release would continue. The other unusual thing that happened was
when a tall Indian man wearing a turban, and with eyes that pierced the air, walked down
the aisle. He looked at me and walked towards me, and then bent down and looked into my
eyes, about 20 cm away. As he bent forward, I could smell the rich odour of incense that
hung in the air around him. He had a Buddha like smile and a gentleness in his movements,
and I felt as sense of welcoming as he entered into my space. He smiled, and in that smile,
in his eyes that creased gently at their corners, he gave me love and silence.
„God is with you, young man,‟ he said. He withdrew and walked off, leaving the beautiful
shadow of peace hanging in the air. My sadness and fear seemed okay now. I closed my
eyes. His eyes and the eyes of my meditation teacher in South Africa were the same. They
had both sliced the air with love and clarity. I finally fell asleep.
Meeting the right people
October 16 2005, 5:30 am. I arrived at Johannesburg International Airport tired,

apprehensive, and not knowing what to expect. I had risked everything on faith for some
crazy dream of starting a business of transformation, and I was going to get picked up at
the airport by a woman who thought I was God and fantasized about a dream life with me.
My good old Mom had always warned me not to gamble, and maybe she had been right. I
went through customs and the airport and there was Lillian, beautiful, except for her
unusually large ears that would have given a baby baboon a run for its money. Its amazing
what you notice first about people; sometimes it‟s their eyes, or their hair, or a large hairy
mole on their chin. With Lillian, it was her ears. At school, which was often a breeding
ground of cruelty, I had a classmate called Milton Ray. Milton‟s ears were at right angles to
his head and we called him Radar, and he hated that nickname. Perfection is so hard to find
in anyone; I suspect God plays a wonderful joke on humanity by giving each and every one
of us some deeply laughable quality. Mine were my buck teeth as a kid, and thankfully I
escaped the joke after I got braces. Still, the day Kevin Brown called me ugly and told me to
put my teeth back in my mouth when I was 11 years old stung me, scarring me for lifetimes.
Lillian got those huge ears. She wore blue jeans and a white blouse, with long curly brown
hair and had a naughty smile on her face. I don‟t think I was what she imagined. I could see
the surprise on her face when I walked towards her and I received a tentative peck on the
cheek.

The plan was for me to stay at her house on arrival. She had a beautiful house in an up-
market Johannesburg suburb, with dogs and koi fish, a garden, those wooden floors, and a
5 year old daughter, on the surface all nice and rosy. Yet, something was rotten, something
was wrong. I didn‟t feel totally welcomed. There was an undercurrent of poison in the house
which I couldn‟t identify. I shouldn‟t have been so stupid. Lillian had written a dream to me
a few weeks ago.
Lillian‟s dream. I am in a house with a garden, and my child is outside. I go out and see a
young man who I like. He is near my child, and as I walk towards them, a scorpion runs out
from under my clothes and jumps at the man, stinging him.
I was in a vulnerable position and didn‟t have any other friends in the city, and looking back,
I gave my power to Lillian, because I trusted her. I always trusted people, I guess I always
wanted to believe the best in human nature and didn‟t want to live a cynical existence. I was
planning to meet people in Johannesburg and make contacts and try to get into personal
growth circles, yet for now, I was with Lillian. We hadn‟t discussed rental for the spare room
in her house I was staying in, and after a short while, she asked for a rent about five times
the going rate for a room in the area. She felt I was sharing her house and I should pay half
the houses operating costs, including the cost of two servants, utilities and mortgage
payments. This was outrageous! I felt I had been invited to stay in a spare room until I
could get myself on my feet in the new city, and I was being extorted and used. I didn‟t
argue with her when she asked for such a high rental. Her audacity stunned me like a
hornet‟s sting and I wanted time to go and think about what had happened.
I was given a powerful lesson for me, one that would be repeated again and again, and one
that I would notice within myself, and also in the relationships of people around me. The
lesson was simply „Where was my power?‟ When I was feeling weak or disempowered, other
people would sense it and strike. I would fall into a victim mode, and they would be the
victimizer. If they were in a position of weakness, I would find myself (often unconsciously)
wanting to take advantage of them, either by subtly putting them down with language, or by
other means. Human nature is like that; if we are not grounded in our authentic power,
sometimes we make ourselves feel powerful by taking advantage of weakness in the world
around us by harmfully abusing or hurting that which is weak, and through that cowardly
action, we falsely view ourselves as strong. Likewise, we also find reasons to justify our deep

felt sense of disempowerment. These two polarities, of gaining power through controlling
the world, or by allowing oneself to be controlled by the world, need to be overcome in the
movement towards maturity. Perhaps it‟s just a human trait of opportunism, where if we
are deeply concerned for our survival and well being and we do not yet trust God enough to
provide, then we strike when we can to get what we can to ensure our survival. It‟s the
same situation as a bully on a school playground. He takes what he can because his strength
is defined by the weakness of the others. The bullied eventually have no choice but to find a
higher power inside of themselves and to stand up against oppression, even though it
physically hurts, or else they will always be taken advantage of. However, if they are not
careful, then they easily turn into oppressors, and it quickly becomes clear that as humans,
we are both sides of every coin.
I knew I had to get away from Lillian. Her home wasn‟t good for me and I needed
somewhere healthy and supportive to stay. I prayed and asked God to lead me. Good things
too happened through Lillian. Through her, I met Jeanine, who held courses in personal
growth and coaching training. Jeanine was in her mid forties, with blonde hair and big
breasts and sparking blue eyes and a rasping laugh from years of smoking cigarettes‟ I
signed up to do some of Jeanine‟s courses to get my foot into coaching, and while I was
riding with Jeanine in her car, she said to me „Do you know anyone who is looking for a
place to stay?‟
My radar screen flashed.

„Where and how much?‟ I asked.
„At my house,‟ she answered, „and the price is low. I want someone to stay in the house with
me for security reasons.‟
We spoke a little about her house and the rent and the conditions. I couldn‟t believe my
luck. It seemed exactly what I needed and thank God I was away from Lillian. It was very
affordable for my budget, and I would be in a house where I could have access to a mentor
and good training, and someone who was already involved in what I wanted to be doing.
God seemed to be smiling on me. I told Jeanine I wanted to move in with her. The first
piece was in place and life seemed to be supporting me.
I had a place to stay. I also wanted to meet people who were interested in the same
transformational practices and psychological models that I was. I figured that we would

naturally be interested in each other, and then we could collaborate and do some work
together. Through Lillian, I met Lawrence, who had been an executive and was now a
successful executive coach, and who was interested in the same fields I was. I met up with
Lawrence for the first time on a sunny afternoon at a coffee shop, and we had an
exhilarating three hour conversation. I wanted to work with him, but first I had to do some
training courses to formalize some of my skills and to get on the same page as him. I had
another piece of good luck that week. I was searching for a car, and I had always dreamed
of driving an old Mercedes Benz in good condition. There was a Mercedes garage just up the
road, about 1 minute walk, from Jeanine‟s house, and they had exactly the car I was looking
for, at exactly the right price. I bought a 21 year old white 230E in lovely condition, which
was another dream coming true. Driving that car, I felt as though I was a king sitting on his
throne, a flashback to my childhood of sitting in my fathers Mercedes. I felt set; I had a car I
had always wanted, a good place to stay, a potential partner, access to training and
development, and it seemed as though fortune did favor the brave, and everything was
going to finally go my way. Putting all my eggs in one basket had paid off (or so I thought).
Things had fallen into place quite nicely in Johannesburg, and now that I had some stability,
I could do some other things that were important. I hadn‟t seen my mother for a couple of
years, and I so the next step was to travel to Durban and spend a few weeks with her,
catching up on all that had happened. I bought an air ticket to Durban and a few days later
flew down to the coast. It was wonderful to arrive again in the city where I grew up. The air
was humid, the days were sticky, and the city was green from the abundant tropical
vegetation growing everywhere. I didn‟t do much those few weeks, taking a well deserved
vacation. I spent time with Mom, catching up on events since we had last seen each other. I
ate home cooked food again, slept in, went to the beaches to swim in the warm Indian
Ocean, did some exercise and spent a few hours each day studying and reading. There were
two meetings that happened on the trip; one was to give me the strength to bear a God
given difficulty, and the other was to create difficulty. I am convinced that sometimes God
set me up so I could learn certain lessons and grow. I would be lured into a situation that
seemed rosy and wonderful on the surface, and once I had taken the bait and hooked
myself, I‟d be faced with a difficulty I hadn‟t anticipated that would force me to learn some
difficult, but essential lessons. If the set-up hadn‟t looked so good, I would never have

committed myself and gone down those roads. I guess the Good Lord is a masterful
fisherman!
The first meeting happened at the church my mother attended. Mom had recently changed
churches from her traditional conservative fear of God Methodist church, where they had
been trying to get out the dead wood for many years but hadn‟t quite figured out how to do
it, to a more vibrant, charismatic revival church. This was a big change for her, as she was
always a reserved, introverted woman, and leaving the church community that she had been
a part of for twenty years must have been a gut wrenching decision. I was curious about the
church, and why it was growing and so popular, so I decided to go with her to try and
understand what was happening. I was skeptical; the last thing I wanted was to be asked if
Jesus was my Lord and Savior and I would either have to lie, saying what they wanted to
hear, or risk being harassed as someone tried to perform their missionary duty and bring me
back into the flock. I was trying to figure out how to be Christ; I didn‟t really want to be a
Christian. We drove together to the church in Moms little white car, and I entered a large
hall with hundreds of friendly, smiling beautiful human beings. I was struck by the level of
acceptance that I encountered in the conversations. Here, people just seemed nice and
friendly, and no one tried to convert me or asked me for donations. Seemingly out of the
blue, Mom said „Maybe you can go and talk to my friend Mike. He is also interested in
dreams like you are.‟
It was unusual for Mom to say that, as she just wasn‟t into dream psychology. „Who is Mike?‟
I asked.
„Oh, he is a good friend‟, she said. My curiosity piqued, I asked her to point out Mike to me,
and I approached him. Mike looked about 50 years old, slightly built, and he had silver white
hair and a gentle smile. I stood up and walked across the hall towards him.
„Excuse me,‟ I said, „I am Bruce, Carol‟s son. She said that you are interested in dreams. I
am too. I have been studying them and trying to understand them for a few years.‟
„Nice to meet you,‟ he said, „are you the young man from Taiwan?‟ I was stunned. How did
he know I was from Taiwan? Maybe Mom had told him.
„I am,‟ I said, „but how do you know?‟
„They told me.‟

„Who told you?‟

„The angels. In the dream.‟
„This is very interesting,‟ I thought to myself. „He‟s probably a nutter. Psychics aren‟t allowed
in churches like this; they think anything paranormal is the work of the devil. Still, how does
he know I just arrived from Taiwan?‟
„Can you tell me your dream?‟ I asked.
„Sure,‟ he said, „I dreamt that you were on an airplane coming back from Taiwan. The trip
has been long and difficult, and after you got off the airplane, you went to a beautiful river.
You stepped into the river and I saw you floating easily down the middle of the river,
surrounded by light and beauty and love. There were angels in the dream, and they wanted
you to know that your difficulty is almost finished, and soon you will have a beautiful life in
Spirit, which is waiting just ahead for you.‟
„How do you know that it was me?‟ I asked, still not really sure about all this. I was going to
ask if the beautiful life included women and money, but decided to hold back on my shallow
materialism. What was that story? It‟s harder for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven
that for a camel to pass though the eye of a needle?
„Oh, I know‟, he said, „its one of my gifts. I went through an awakening process just like you,
and this is one of the gifts I have. Christ gives me dreams which I use to guide others. Christ
also wants you to know that you are still under the power of the occult, and all that will
change soon.‟
I chatted to Mike a little more. I found out that in his mid thirties, he had left his corporate
career in South Africa, and had gone traveling. He had explored meditation and lived in
youth hostels abroad for a few years. He had also gone through an awakening process of
about a year and a half, which included body tremors, depression, shakes and convulsions,
and a change in the way that he saw the world. I didn‟t know what he meant by the occult;
I felt I was doing fine and that there was no way the Devil had me and I didn‟t have to
escape from anyone or anything‟s control. Little did I know that my biggest escape, my
biggest freedom, would be to escape the illusion that somehow I, and not Spirit, was in
control.

The following day, running errands around town, I bumped into eight people from the
church service. Meeting one or two would have been interesting coincidence, yet meeting
eight throughout the day was a little surprising and just seemed deeply against the odds of
chance possibility. I saw one at the bus stop. Another three in the shopping center. Another
at the pharmacy. Two more at the beach. And then, the one from the bus stop again in the
afternoon. There were Christians everywhere, seemingly overrunning the city. I felt as
though God was speaking to me, and was telling me that something significant was
happening. Jesus had me in his sights and was letting me know it. I couldn‟t run and I
couldn‟t hide. It was just that day that I saw so many Christians; I never bumped into
another person from the church for the next two weeks that I was in town. That night, I had
two dreams.
I am on a bridge, and I am halfway between heaven and earth. I will be on the other side
soon.
I am on the shore and I look out to sea. There is a giant tidal wave about five hundred
meters high racing towards the shore. I know I am finished. I run behind some rocks to
some buildings and run up to the higher levels. The buildings are dwarfed by the size of the
incoming wave. There is no way I can escape. I know I will die. I am terrified.
I awoke during the night with extraordinary surges of energy through my body. The energy
would build almost orgasmically between my pelvis and my head, and then it would explode
up my spine into my head, sending me into convulsions. It was terrifying and radically
overpowered me and I thought I was having a fit. I didn‟t know if I was floating or standing
or flying or lying down. There were three or four surges, and each one jolted my body
severely, snapping my head back and causing my jaw to shake uncontrollably. When they
finished, I just lay in bed, almost unable to think, wondering „What the hell was that?‟
The following day, about mid-morning, an intense pressure started in my head, so strong
that I could hardly think or focus, making me feel stupidly stoned. What the hell was going
on? Spirit was beginning to strip me and my transformation was taken out of my hands. I
would also learn that „soon‟ in angelic terms can be a very long time in human terms.

The other meeting happened the following Saturday. I was sitting in the living room with my
mother, vacantly looking out at the window at the sky with nothing particular on my mind.
The weather was blustery and cloudy and humid, and the wind was blowing from the North
East. In Durban, a North Easterly wind is usually not good for surfing as it chops up the sea
and brings stinging jellyfish and man-o-wars into the surf zone, so I didn‟t usually go to the
beach on such days. However, I had a thought that it may be nice to walk along the beach
front with my mom, and so I suggested that we do that together. Mom agreed, and so we
headed off.
The beach front was empty, as the weather was not very pleasant. There were only a few
people down there, and I enjoyed walking with Mom along the paved beachfront path,
watching the choppy waves breaking on the shore. As we walked, I noticed another couple
walking towards us from the opposite direction. As we drew near, I recognized the man as
the brother of someone I had once loved very dearly.
„Hi Gary, its good to see you,‟ I said, „What a surprise!‟

„Hi Bruce, what are you doing here? I thought you were living abroad?‟
„I just came back, and I am living in Johannesburg doing personal coaching. What are you
doing?‟
„I run a division of a large insurance company. I am just down for the weekend to see my
daughter. Why don‟t you come and speak to me about some business when you are in
Johannesburg again?‟
This was too good to be true. I felt blessed, and felt sure that I would get work through
Gary. The odds of meeting him that day on the beach in Durban seemed extremely small,
and I felt that the hand of God had been working to enable us to meet. I said goodbye to
Gary and continued the walk with Mom. That was wonderful. I had a high profile business
contact with an established connection, and an almost certain guarantee of getting work.
A few days later I headed back to Johannesburg. Life seemed good. I was well rested, I was
being awakened by the Gods, I had a great place to stay, I had a car I had always wanted, I
had a highly promising business contact, and I had a good partner. The guardian angel had
plucked the Spirit off my back in my dreams. The Indian man on the airplane had given me

a sign. Mike had encouraging prophecy for me. I had one more piece of good luck. My father
had an insurance policy from years before his death which had been forgotten about. The
insurance company had been going through their books and had found the policy, and as a
result a small sum of money was due to each of the children. It wasn‟t much, but it was an
unexpected piece of good luck, and covered the cost of the old car I had bought. I felt that
things couldn‟t have been set up better, and that Grace was supporting this path.
Absolute Failure
Giving power away
On the surface, I had all the resources in the world that I thought I needed, yet I had a lot
to learn in the ways of personal power. I was unaware that I was going to be my own worst
enemy, and I was unable to see how I was going to severely limit myself, manifesting
dependency instead of independency. As one well known line goes, “We have met the
enemy, and he is us!” I had been searching for mentors and for teachers, and I had found
Jeanine and Lawrence. My days were happily spent learning about coaching techniques and
talking to Jeanine and Lawrence, who I viewed as being successful and having a wealth of
wisdom. I felt safe with them around, and I felt as though good things were going to
happen with them in my life. The truth was, that I was secretly counting on them to make
things happen for me and I thought I needed them to reach my goals. They seemed to like
me, and I figured it wouldn‟t be long before work started to come in. I also felt I had a lot to
offer from my years of self study and transformational practice while living abroad, and that
I could be of benefit to them. My problem was that I was a head full of theory and of ideas,
and I still had to do some living to make that theory a personal wisdom.
I didn‟t really know how to go about starting a coaching business. I did lots of reading, I set
up a web-site, I get accreditations, I made business cards and I went around networking. I
felt I had deviated away from spirituality into the ego realms, yet I felt it was a necessary
diversion if I was to earn a living in Johannesburg. The ego realms were wonderfully
tempting, and promised fulfillment if one could only manipulate the world exactly how one

wanted it. One of the coaching techniques we used included mapping out what you wanted
in life. My dreams of happiness included
 a house by a beach with white sand where I could go surfing each day
 A beautiful loving sexy wife who was into meditation
 A certain income level
 A glass roof in my bedroom to look at the stars at night
 More clients than I could handle.
 Time to travel to meet famous wisdom teachers.
 Closer relations with my family.
My dreams were deeply self-centered, and I figured that if I had all the above, I would be
happy. I wanted abundance and the good life, yet I wanted it for myself. It seemed like a bit
of a drag I had to include adding value to others as part of the formula for success. I wanted
to help others because it would help me, not because there was a sense of heartfelt care
and a desire for service. I wanted to care and I wanted to serve, yet I seemed locked into a
self-centered focus towards life. I really wanted abundance because I felt I had been living
in scarcity and fighting scarcity for so long, and I just wanted a break from all that. I
thought I would be happy when I had all those things in my life, and coaching was about
„having the power and getting what I wanted‟. How wrong! Sprit has power, not the
separate individual. My dreams were a power trip. I wanted to feel good and feel safe and
have all the nice things I desired. I was lost in the fantasy that my dreams had the power to
give me that. I was lost in the fantasy that happiness was to be achieved. My dreams held
the security that I craved. I craved security, and freedom meant security from discomfort,
not liberation. Freedom to my ego meant bondage to power, but I hadn‟t yet seen that. I
confused freedom with bondage to a world fitting my little idea of perfection, and staying
that way. All things, however, are impermanent and will go away or die at some point, and
tying to find a stable refuge for oneself in the world is a doomed effort. I hadn‟t yet realized
these truths.
Every day I would wake up in the morning, make myself a cup of coffee, and then focus on
my affirmations and my goals, visualizing the blue sea and imagining myself in the arms of
my dream lover while breathing in the rich smell of fresh coffee. I began to identify intensely

with those dreams of reality, for wasn‟t that what I was supposed to be doing? Wasn‟t I
supposed to stay focused on what I wanted and make these dreams come true? I began to
create suffering again for myself; I was suffering because I thought happiness was to be
found in the future, and I didn‟t yet have the confidence in Spirit to deeply relax and find it
right here, right now. I was suffering because I didn‟t want what I had right here, right now.
I was afraid of Jeanine. She was a big strong woman who wore flamboyant clothes and had
a temper that could flare up. She kept dogs and a parrot, and had African servants in the
house and loved to shout across the house for them to come to her. She held personal
growth courses and spiritual weekend retreats which were well attended, and I just assumed
that I should toe the line with her, as she had wisdom and I didn‟t. She did know a lot about
working with people, yet that was no reason for me to give her my blind authority. I tried to
understand her and learn from her, yet she didn‟t make any significant effort to understand
my practices and what I was trying to do. Several times I tried to speak to her about what I
had done and what I had studied, and I would be met with responses such as „You are too
much in your head,‟ or „You have to learn to feel more,‟ or „How can you say any way is
better than another way?‟
Reflecting on that, she was right about some things. I had to learn to trust my feelings, as
well as my mind. I had to learn to go deep inside myself and explore my feelings, finding out
what lay hidden behind them. I discovered that understanding myself was not always a
rational, thought out process. Yet, I gave up my power and denied my truth because I
thought I needed her. I felt I needed to stay in her house. I felt I needed her guidance and
wisdom, instead of learning to trust my own intuition and follow my heart. At times I felt put
down by her, yet I tolerated it because I was too afraid of conflict, and too afraid that if I
stood up to her and stood my ground, then the relationship would end and she would kick
my out of her house and I would be homeless. Unconsciously, I gave her my power, and
gave up responsibility for myself.
I also unwittingly gave Lawrence my power. I was looking for a mentor; I wasn‟t ready to
have a partner, and even though I acted independent, I didn‟t feel independent. I wanted
someone to give me the answers and to show me the way. I sat many days with Lawrence,

drinking coffee, eating sandwiches, chatting about meditation, and brainstorming ideas. I
felt safe and supported with him. I didn‟t notice how I was acting like a child and turning
him into a wise father, giving myself to him in exchange for protection and correct answers.
I put on a front of independence and assurance, yet inside, I was feeling lost and confused.
I had lesser anxiety too. The afflictions of a soul seeking to awaken seem endless, and I
guess I had most of them. I was afraid of making God angry, I was afraid of not being good
enough for God. I was afraid of the rapture, terrified that God would come the night that I
hadn‟t said my prayers, and having sinned everyday (because apparently it was impossible
not to sin), I was bound to be condemned to hell. I prayed to get myself out of trouble, as a
type of celestial pension plan, and not because I loved God. I don‟t think I loved anything
growing up, except tennis and endless games of cricket with my cousin Paul, who always
won. My memories of church were older ladies with grey hair and polite smiles, disapproving
as us sweaty kids chased each other at tea time playing endless games of tag. There were
always rules at church, right, wrong, this is right, that is wrong, blah blah blah. It was
impossible not to be a sinner, no matter how good you were, and there were enough, often
contradictory rules to turn anyone into a confused wreck. I don‟t know how many times the
preacher told us Satan had attacked him and how he had resisted out of moral fortitude.
Homosexuality was wrong and that was the reason Sodom and Gomorrah had been
destroyed. I remember once the preacher talking about „getting the dead wood out, and the
living vines in‟. Fat load of good that sermon did; nothing changed and everyone still smiled
politely at each other with as much radiance as a dead flower. I came out of years of
Sunday School neurotic about God, filled with ideas of sin. My questioning nature had been
squashed, and I used to ask my mother if all the people in China who had never heard of
Jesus were automatically condemned to hell. She could never answer that question and I
could never accept the answer that everybody except us Christians (and the Catholics didn‟t
count because they worshipped the Pope) were going to hell just because they had been
born in the wrong place. I wasn‟t supposed to ask anything that the reverend never had a
satisfactory answer too, and I was supposed to believe everything that I was told, for he
was the voice of God. I went to play with the reverends son once. His face was bleeding and
he had a black eye. The reverend had lost his temper and whacked him and left him in
stunned sullen silence; I guess that was the day Satan got the upper hand and the voice of
God was silenced. Or was that violence just the angry voice of God lashing out at sin? Was
God going to lose his temper with me?

I was addicted to prayers of insincerity and petition, prayers of obligation without heart. My
understanding of God was bittersweet. I was taught at Sunday School that Jesus loved us,
yet I was also taught I was going to hell if I didn‟t believe. How could a loving God send
innocent little children to hell? I was told about love but I didn‟t feel love. I felt swimming
and hot dogs and cricket and the sea, but I didn‟t feel the love of Jesus as a child. God,
though, was the ultimate authority, to be bowed down to and to be revered, basically
something to be bloody scared of in my tender eyes in case I burnt in hell for ever.
Apparently, God knew everything I did, God allowed everything to happen, God had the
power to intervene in the form of miracles if he ever so desired.
I was in a fix. If God was omnipotent, then I couldn‟t get away with jack shit. How was I
going to get the all knowing mighty one on my side, considering that by default I was a
sinner? I wanted God‟s blessing for the way forward, yet I was also stuck with my neurosis,
I wanted an authority figure to give me permission to go forward. I wanted an authority
figure to empower me and open the way forward, to write on my wall, to give me more
signs. What would it mean to make my own decisions? What if God didn‟t agree with me?
This was difficult; how did I know if Spirit was communicating with me, or if it was my
neurotic conditioning playing itself out?
I wrestled with this issue? How did I know if I was receiving guidance, or was I imagining
higher wisdom and getting lost in my neurotic voices? I hungered for spiritual authority. I
wished for God to send someone to rescue me, to send me the winning lottery ticket so that
I could retire in comfort and spend my days writing in my journal, meeting wisdom teachers
and one day repeating their words and being a wisdom teacher myself. My prayers to God
were ones of helplessness. „Help me, oh Lord!‟ They were prayers of a weak servant without
any personal strength, prayers of a desperate citizen who had lost his power, asking the
master for Grace but not deeply feeling he deserved anything or had the power to achieve
anything.
I was obsessed with power and was projecting it onto the world, yet didn‟t seem to be able
to own the projection and stop manifesting my disempowered state. By obsessed, I don‟t
mean that I lay awake thinking about power and control and how to get it. The obsession
was deep inside my unconscious and was playing itself out in the network of relationships

that I was involved in. Somewhere along growing up in Durban, with my family, I had been
taught that I was not allowed power. In the traditional church I went to, I existed at the
mercy of Spirit, and I was meant to be thankful for that mercy. I am thankful, yet today, I
realize that Spirit wants me to have banquets of fullness, not meager pickings that keep me
in a starving state. I am called to own my authority, to own my creative power. Just look at
the world, its exploding in richness and form and creativity; why shouldn‟t I explode in my
richness and my creativity? In my family, in my school, in my church, I was taught to be
disempowered.
I was living out that lack of power again, I was living out a cycle that I hated and had
reared its ugly head, a cycle that had played the game with drugs, Irene, God, money, sex,
all those desires of the world in which I had lost myself or let control me. I gave my
memories of God my power. I gave Lawrence my power. I gave Jeanine my power. I gave
my dreams my power. I gave my money my power. I gave my power to God to give me the
go-ahead. I felt like I needed it all to be okay, and okay was a word that meant the world fit
how I wanted it and I was temporarily free from fear and suffering, free from longing and
aversion. I was locked in to Jeanine and Lawrence and my dreams, convinced that they held
the security I craved. I started to hold on tighter and tighter. I prayed more feverishly, and
focused more on my dreams, on the relationships, on my finances, as they held the key to
my security and happiness. I was pursuing power in my world, yet, I was fighting a shadowy
enemy. I was fighting a part of my soul that had been thrown out of my being and was
being shone into my world around me, I was fighting my power as I had somewhere learned
to be very deeply afraid of my power, afraid of asserting myself, of afraid of daring to
contradict my God, my teachers, my parents, as that assertion may have got me kicked out
of school, or church, or out of my home, where I may have ended up dying on the street,
alone. What I most desired was what I was most afraid of. This was a horrible Catch 22.
In my own small way, I have to ask myself that same question. What if I had pursued
creating good things, instead of pursuing power? The question doesn‟t really matter,
because I was locked into the game of trying to find my power that had been thrown into
the world. Until I saw the game, until I saw the projection, I had no choice, and the fight
would have continued until I had seen the reflection in the mirror. As men through the ages
so eloquently put it, „I was caught by the balls.‟

What matters is that I pursued my truth. What mattered is that I woke up and started to see
how I was giving away my power, and that I needed to begin to reclaim it. Spirit is a perfect
mirror for what we are. If we just let ourselves go and be ourselves and open up to the
world, then Spirit will give us feedback. Spirit loves to give us reality checks, and to see
reality, we have to face it head on. To change, we have to understand what we are first.
You can‟t be something that you are not. Real change is a deep inner shift, not some outer
attempt at changing behavior, which is nothing less than painting over cracks and
pretending the wall is strong. I was deeply disempowered, and I needed to see that I was
disempowered before I could begin to change things. I was terrified of being disempowered
and weak, and didn‟t want to face my truth, that inside, I had a hidden commitment to
staying weak as I was even more terrified of being strong. I had to see how I gave the
world my power before I could make some changes. I had to see how I was weak before I
could become strong, and I had to accept that weakness. I had to stop pretending that I
was strong already. The weaker I became, the more I put on a façade of strength, and the
more afraid I was to let go, and slowly my situation got worse and worse.
Missed opportunities
April 2006. It was a beautiful autumn day in Johannesburg, and I was having a filter coffee
and standing outside by the swimming pool, playing catch with Gabriel, the golden retriever.
A short term teaching contract I had at a local school had finished, and I wasn‟t finding any
real coaching work. The flowers in the garden and the leaves on the trees were beautiful,
yet I was unable to relax into the peace of nature as I was more concerned about how to
make money.
My thoughts drifted back to a few weeks before. I had insured my car against theft, and the
insurance company had sent an inspector around to check the car. I can‟t remember his
name, maybe Peter. Peter was middle aged and calm and serene, with a humorous spark in
his eye and a gentle manner. Standing in the outside garage area with glasses of cold water,
we started to talk, and he told me he was a committed Christian. He was curious and
interested in what I was doing, and open and accepting with my answers. I told him about

the energetic changes that were happening in my body, about the prophecy that I had
received at my mother‟s church, and about my path. Peter listened and suggested that I go
and see a Christian nun who lived nearby and had been through a similar process. She ran a
discussion group at a local church on Thursdays. He gave me the address, and left soon
after. I felt I had been sent another messenger from God and was being guided on a path of
spiritual support and unfolding. The funny thing is, I never went to that group in the church
on Thursdays. I drove past the church on its quiet little tree-lined street almost every day. I
thought about going in and was deeply curious to go in, yet negative thoughts about
Christianity played in my head. „What will they know about this process? Christians are not
accepting and open people. I know better!‟ I still don‟t understand why I never went in
there. I needed help at the time and was too proud to accept. I figured that things would
work out just fine inside me, and I hadn‟t quite learned to follow the signs and use the
guidance that Spirit was giving to me. As I write this, I think back to the years of my life that
I have wasted with repetitive thoughts, where I have wanted to do something or change
something, and I have known I wanted to do that, yet I didn‟t. If its one thing in life I can
confidently say that I have mastered, then its procrastination; I should get an honorary
degree in the subject! Reflecting, my inaction was driven so much by my lack of personal
power, by my deep seated beliefs that I was not allowed to create the reality I wanted to
create.
As I was playing with the dog by the pool, thinking again about the church and that I really
ought to go and have a look inside one Thursday, I started to think about Cape Town again.
I wanted to move there and have a house near the beach, and many of my good friends
were living there. My heart ached for the city, the splendid mountain and the exquisite white
sand beaches ringing the peninsula and for the friends whom I loved. My phone started
ringing. I answered and it was my friend Mark S. from Cape Town. Mark doesn‟t phone very
often, so it was a real surprise to hear his voice. Mark S. wanted to know when I was
coming back to Cape Town. I replied that I didn‟t know. I told him I had established valuable
relationships in Johannesburg which could help me with my career, and I wasn‟t prepared to
give that up just yet. About ten minutes later, Trevor from Cape Town called. He also
wanted to know when I was moving back. „This is strange‟, I thought to myself, „two phone
calls in 15 minutes about the same thing.‟

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Helen. She wanted to know when I was
returning to Cape Town. Once again, I told the story that I was committed in Johannesburg.
I was amazed, as Helen didn‟t call me very often. I felt intuitively very close to Helen, and
wondered why she had called. Ten minutes later, Maria called. She said she missed me and
wanted to know when I was going to return. Like a stuck record, I repeated my story, „I
would love to return back, but I have put in all this time and effort to get this far. I am not
ready to give up my plans. I want to keep going with this journey I am on here. If I
persevere, then I will get a breakthrough soon.‟
I made another cup of coffee. I had an impulse to pack my few belongings in my car and
drive down on the weekend, make the move to the city, and stay with Trevor. It was the
end of the month so I would have to pay rent again. I had lots of friends and a network in
Cape Town. My heart said go. I felt Spirit was shouting to me, calling me to give up my
plans and my control, and to head to Cape Town. Four of my best friends had just called
and asked me to come back to Cape Town, and it had to be more than just chance. I
wanted to go. I was exhilarated and buoyed by the thought of leaving Johannesburg. Yet,
my doubting mind kicked in. „Your car is old. What if it doesn‟t make the trip? You have
spent all this time building connections. Keep trying; you can make this work here. What are
you going to? You are trusting fate.‟
I sat with my feet in the pool water, caught between caution and the heart, between fear
and desire. Fear, control and the rational mind kept me in Johannesburg. My heart and soul
called me to Cape Town. Four of my friends had called in an hour, and they rarely called! I
didn‟t leave Johannesburg that weekend. I played it safe and stayed attached to my plan. I
felt an intangible sadness and disappointment, and I knew that I had lost a moment in time.
I don‟t know what would have happened if I had got in my old Mercedes and driven to Cape
Town. I felt Spirit called me and because I wasn‟t in control, I had been too afraid to follow.
Instead, I listened to my fear.
About two weeks later, I was offered a math teaching job for the rest of the year at the
school where I had taught art. It would have paid a stable salary and kept me going
financially. I went for a walk in the park to think about it. I walked under the trees that were
shedding their leaves, and leant against a giant oak tree that grew next to a small path. I
decided not to accept the job. The salary was enough to live on, but not much more. I felt

that I would not have time to develop my (hopefully more lucrative) coaching career, and I
wanted to focus on my goals. I didn‟t want to have to deal with kids again every day. I
heard a powerful clear voice in my head, similar to the voice which had told me to write a
book and that had told me I was on the right path in Kaohsiung, say „You have just been
offered a job. Why do you want to create another one?‟ I spoke back to the voice, saying
„Can you explain that?‟ The voice was silent, and didn‟t speak again. That night, I had a
dream.
I am looking for money and can‟t find it. My money is falling like water out of my wallet. I
start to pray to God, asking him to help me as I am afraid that it will run out. A voice says
“you have just been given a job.”
I awoke and didn‟t accept the teaching job, even though the voice had spoken to me twice.
My father had always told me that I didn‟t like to listen, and here again I wasn‟t listening
and was stubbornly doing things my way. I wanted things my way, and was holding onto my
idea of how things should turn out. I really wanted to surrender to the unpredictable ways of
my soul, yet I also didn‟t know if I was being crazy by giving everything up. I was terrified to
relax and surrender control and the ways that I wanted things to be, and stuck with my fear,
I couldn‟t make a clear choice. The honest truth was, I didn‟t want to be in Johannesburg; I
thought I had to be there to make things work. Everything I had been told about success
was to stick to a plan and push on through difficulty until you succeed. However, I hadn‟t
yet learned that to succeed at life‟s challenges, your heart needs to be in the challenge, not
the ego and not the mind. Perhaps more importantly, your dreams and goals must not
conflict with your deeper unconscious beliefs and shadow. If you are not aware of your
shadow and cannot see it, it will trip you. You also need to adjust as the terrain changes, to
learn to surrender the outcome all the while taking actions towards your goals. And, how did
I know if the dreams and voices in my head were my neurotic imagination, or really a call
from Spirit? I lacked a faith that life, that God would support me, and I was afraid to make
any more mistakes.
Holding on

May 15 2006. I had since met up with Gary and submitted a proposal from Lawrence and
myself for coaching and transformational work with his company. Gary was the CEO and
major shareholder of a division of a major insurance company which he had started, and he
had verbally guaranteed me some work. The complete proposal was for around 50 000US
dollars of work over six months, and I was expecting a considerable amount of the proposal
to be accepted.
I felt that my decision to stay in Johannesburg was going to pay off. It seemed that my
gamble to refuse the teaching job and to refuse the call to Cape Town were working out.
Gary was the breakthrough client that I needed, and if we were successful with the project,
then it would open many doors into the corporate world of South Africa. Besides the opening
of career doors, the income would alleviate my growing cash flow crisis, providing a
welcome injection into my shrinking bank account.
The days passed by. I worked out at the gym, I focused on meditation practice and I
attended coaching practice groups. I often climbed into my comfortable old Mercedes and
drove to a nearby shopping mall, where I would order a latte and sit with my journal and my
books and the smell of fresh ground coffee, both studying and watching the beautiful girls
buying expensive designer outfits from the branded clothing stores. I was waiting for Gary. I
didn‟t want to push him for a commitment to start work, yet I was eager and anxious for
him to call me. I trusted him and I trusted his word. He was the key that I needed to create
movement again in my life. I felt as though I was water in a dam and he was the dam wall,
and all he had to do was provide an opening and I could start to flow again. I wanted to be
available to work for him. I didn‟t want to look for other work as I wanted to be able to
commit my resources to my first major client. I had all my eggs in one basket, and that
basket was going to solve all my problems, or so I thought.
The days turned into weeks, and I had no word from Gary. I was getting worried and
concerned, and increasingly anxious about my fate. My fears of scarcity and lack and were
rising to the surface, and they made me hold on even tighter to the idea that the contract
with Gary would solve all my problems. I was continuing to give my power to the world, and
was stuck, waiting and inactive. I was caught in a Catch 22 situation, where I wanted
control, yet to have control, I needed power, but I had projected my power onto people and

situations around me. Talk about a screw up!! I had not yet mastered the art of having an
intention all the while being unattached to how that intention would unfold, or trusting that
it would work out while continually taking actions towards creating the result I wanted. It‟s
easy to believe in God or in Spirit when things are going well in life and to expound spiritual
ideas. In situations when life is good, Spiritual beliefs can become a delusional ego trip.
However, when it comes down to the real deal that you are not in control and your methods
of worldly security, such as money or relationship or health are failing you, then you start to
know if your faith is real or not.
I see life as an experiment. The only way you know if your truth is really truth, is if you take
a risk and your truth holds. You have to test out your truths. Take risks with certainty, and
either you will succeed or you will fail. If you fail, then at least you know that something
which you fundamentally held to be true is false, and now you can see the world a little
more clearly. If you believe that God will support you, well, try it out! Surrender and let go.
However, real surrender is an immense act of courage as you give yourself over to the
unknown, and for most people, myself included, we don‟t like to trust what we can‟t know,
and we need quite a powerful force to break our reliance on our limited little selves. We
need something to shatter our illusion that we are in control, and that is not always a pretty
process to watch.
My grand experiment in starting a coaching business was doing a great job of raising ample
amounts of doubt and worry in me. I did not have faith that I would be supported by life
itself and Spirit. I couldn‟t see my shadow correctly. I desperately wanted faith, yet I wanted
to have faith so I could control God. I wanted to have faith so God would do what I wanted
and give me what I wanted and protect me from pain and give me pleasure. Fundamentally
I didn‟t trust life, yet I desperately wanted to, and I couldn‟t break the impasse. I started to
go for long walks in the nearby park, where I prayed to God to guide me. I asked for
guidance and deliverance from the unwelcome worry and anxiety that flooded my thoughts
with the debris of anticipated failure. I spent hours walking along the paths through the
forest and next to the wetland, desperately trying to work off this unpleasant energy that
forecast impending doom. I said my affirmations over and over
 My coaching career is successful.

 I surrender to the power of Spirit in my life. I offer myself a servant to Love. I am

not limited by circumstance. I dream new possibility. I have the courage and the
rescources to commit to action, and the will to succeed.
It didn‟t quite strike me that these two affirmations were in conflict. To my egoic and self-
concerned mind, coaching and transformation was an act of love. My highest allegiance was
still to the realization of my dreams, in the way that I wanted them to be. My motives were
impure. One part of me was yearning for the peace and the surrender that Spirit offered.
Another part of me was desperately grappling for the security that money and worldly
success would offer. I was pulled in two directions and wanted both Spirit and success;
actually, I wanted Spirit to give me success so I could feel okay.
I was a lot like a monkey caught in a monkey trap. A monkey trap is a jar in which some
food has been placed, and the jar has a narrow neck, so the monkey can put its hand down
the neck of the jar and grab the food. However, when the monkey closes its fist around the
food, its hand becomes too big to withdraw from the jar, and so it‟s caught. The monkey
wants its freedom, yet can‟t have its freedom as long as it‟s holding onto food. That‟s the
situation I was in; I wanted my freedom in Spirit, yet was holding onto food in the form of
Gary and money and success. Those words about the camel and heaven come back again.
It‟s harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle. As long as I was inwardly holding on to what I wanted and placing my security in
the attainment of my dreams, I could not relax and find my peace in Spirit. Thinking further,
I needed my power, my personal sense of power, which I still had not found. I needed to
find my blocks to power, to find what stopped me acting and what kept me waiting on the
world.
After a couple of weeks, I called Gary‟s secretary and set up a meeting to see him. The
secretary said that Gary would see me at his house, which I found a little strange. A couple
of days later, wondering what was going on, I drove across to Gary‟s house, through the
security gates bordering his garden and up the driveway. I was surprised to see him in a t-
shirt and shorts and riding his quadbike.
„Hey Bruce,‟ he said, „it „s good to see you.‟

„You too,‟ I replied, „are you on vacation?‟

„No,‟ he said, „I am on early retirement. I received an unexpected takeover offer for the
business which was too good to refuse, so I accepted and sold it. As part of the deal I had
to give up my position in the company. It all happened in the last couple of weeks. I am
sorry that I never called you about your contract, however, I am sure that you understand.‟
„Yeah,‟ I numbly replied, „that‟s great. You must be happy to be free for a while.‟
My heart was racing. I was swearing inside. I couldn‟t believe my luck; I wasn‟t going to get
any work through Gary because he had sold his god dammed fucking business. I had maybe
six weeks of money left, which didn‟t seem to be enough time to find new clients, submit
proposals, get them accepted, and so on. This was incredulous. My perfect, guaranteed
client had fallen through, just when I needed him the most. My thoughts went back to the
sequence of events that lead to this: meeting Gary on the beach in Durban, setting up
meetings, getting to know him, submitting proposals, getting agreements for work. It had all
seemed so perfect, and now, at the moment when it mattered most, the most unexpected
and unlikely twist of fate had screwed me. I imagined that this must be how brides who are
left standing at the alter must feel. I felt as though a cruel cosmic joke and been played, and
the joke was all on me. Some great hand had set me up and lead me to a point of no-
return, I had taken a leap of misguided faith, and now there was absolutely nothing to land
on. „What the hell, God!‟ I shouted inside my thoughts. God was a giant mirror shining my
disempowerment straight at me, as clearly and brutally as could be imagined. The world had
failed me, and my power had gone down with the sinking ship. My worst fear seemed to be
coming true. I had committed myself with everything I had, and now it hadn‟t worked and I
was about to run out of money. I felt absolutely screwed. What the hell now!
Faith Crises
I told Lawrence about Gary. Lawrence was also not getting much work in, which was
unusual for him as he was very successful and well known in what he was doing. His work
flow had dried up and he was also feeling frustrated. Personally, I was terrified that I was
somehow to blame for the lack of work, as I was doing a fantastic job of manifesting

scarcity. I felt my survival was at risk, and I didn‟t have any creative solutions to generate
money, besides theft or counterfeiting bills. It was too late to drive to Cape Town, as I
probably wouldn‟t even be able to afford the gas to complete the 1600 km trip. It was a cold
mid-winters morning, so I put on my sweater and went for another walk to the park,
frantically desperate and feeling crushed by life. Yes, the monsters were real and nightmares
did come true. The shadows in my bedroom had turned into bears and at the grand old age
of 33 I was a terrified little kid getting swallowed by life. In my world, I was powerless. I
hadn‟t seen the mirror; I hadn‟t seen the projection. Along the way, I fell into my usual
neurotic head trip, pleading to God to get me out of this mess I had got myself into. I was
still holding on tightly to my ideas of security and well being that I needed money and
opportunity and I needed someone else to give it to me.
I was in a pickle. No money. No clients. Aside from the money and clients dilemma, I was
also dealing with continued energetic shifts in my body. There were always, almost 24 hours
a day, muscles twitching somewhere within me as energy channels opened up. I had
vibrations in different parts of my arms and legs and torso. I was having many dreams,
often with death and truckloads of people dying, and after every night of carnage in my
dreams, I awoke feeling tired and jittery and shaken up. The pressure in the front of my
head never ceased, and I often felt stoned and disconnected from what was going on. That
would have been great free high if I was still smoking pot, but now I needed normality, not
some errant spiritual awakening that had veered out of control like car that had lost its
steering wheel. Energy continued to periodically erupt up my spine towards my head,
slamming me back into uncontrollable convulsions. The only thing that really helped with the
energetic problems was yoga and weights. And now, I was also feeling the stress of being
broke and unemployed, facing multiple crises in all fronts. Nothing like a good challenge, is
there? Well, a challenge is nice, but I had bitten off far more than I could chew and I could
even close my mouth.
I walked in the park feeling the cold crisp air on my skin. I looked at some homeless people
in the park wearing threadbare clothes, sitting around a fire they had built to deal with the
winter chill. I didn‟t think it would be long before I would be joining them, as my future also
seemed stark and bleak. I remember the sound of the winter wind rushing through bare
trees and the trembling of my shivering. I didn‟t know where to turn. Something inside me
was proud and strong, or at least I thought I was proud and strong. I thought that I needed

to care for and provide for myself, and that if I didn‟t, then no one would help me. I had
flashbacks to a sunburnt and homeless beggar on the streets of Durban, who had come to
me at the beach one day begging for some loose change, and he just kept on saying, „Life is
tough. Life is tough.‟ I could see his depressed and red vacant eyes and threadbare soiled
tracksuit pants once again in my mind, as if he was right before me, and I could hear his
rasping voice „Life is tough. Life is a battle.‟ What had happened to him? Did he too once
have dreams and those dreams had failed, and now he was left, alone and without hope,
defeated by God alone know what, chewed up by life and spat out to slowly roast to death
in the blistering African summers?
I felt deeply alone and vulnerable and afraid. I could only see scarcity and desperation,
failure and despondency around me. I didn‟t feel capable of holding down a regular job;
some days I had to sleep 14 hours as my body adjusted to the energetic and psychological
changes that were happening. There was no way I was stable enough to wake up in the
mornings at 6:00 am every day and vibrantly head off to work with my running shoes on
ready to attack the day, let alone cope with the challenges and stress of learning a new job.
What I needed was a vacation somewhere and some qualified help, yet I had to deal with
the demands of my pressing situation.
I felt there was nothing to hold onto in the world, and I was adrift, cut loose, with no way of
coming home. I had been abandoned my God. I was abandoned by family. There was no
one to help me. I had reached for a dream and that dream had been a nothing but a mirage
of water in the desert for a panicked and thirsty traveler. My life was going to be spent,
alone and desperate. I silently shouted a prayer of desperation. „Where are you, Lord?
Where the fuck are you?‟ I thought maybe I shouldn‟t be swearing at God, but if any, this
was the time to vent. I had trusted and I had been let down. Fuck.
I don‟t know how many hours I walked around that park, silently praying and cursing and
seeking deliverance, my mind whirlpooling in a downward spiral. I could handle been
heartbroken; the poet in me liked to wallow in the painful luxury of unrequited love and
write verses of longing and despair. Yet, having no worldly security again and being stripped
of all my possessions was too much to bear. I hated being that small child again, weak,
disempowered and vulnerable. My strength had been financial security, and money gave me
decision making power. Without money, I was impotent, a 21 st century eunuch. I was in

crisis and turmoil, and felt agonizingly separate from family, from friends and from God. I
felt that if I turned to someone for help, then that wouldn‟t solve the problem, as I would
still need a way to find money. I thought that if I asked friends or family for help, then they
would reject me. I knew I could turn to my mother, but I didn‟t wish to burden her with my
troubles and my failure. Thoughts of suicide drifted through my mind. „Maybe I should end
this now. What‟s the point? Life really is a bitch. If I ended this now, none of this bullshit
would be here.‟
I drifted around in my circles of depression and desperation, and finally headed back to the
house when dusk fell and it became too cold to stay outside, not quite ready for suicide just
yet. Maybe tomorrow though. The winter cold matched my frozen and rigid heart. I was
scared, petrified actually. This wasn‟t some irrational fear that I was dealing with in my
dreams and shaking at night to, or some imagined paranoia about things that could go
wrong. This was real life in its catastrophic glory; I was broke again and in a financial
nightmare. I walked quickly home as the cold was rapidly getting worse, scared to go home,
scared to stay out, scared to do anything, desperate to survive. I heard the familiar beep of
my cell phone in my pocket as a text message arrived. Dipping my hand into my pocket, I
pulled the phone out and noticed that the message was from an unknown sender. Curious, I
opened the message and read stunning words of emancipation.
„For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand, and says to you, do not
fear; I will help you‟ (Isaiah 41.13)
I read it and read it and read it, repeatedly, the words cracking through my despair. The
message was sent from an unusually long cell phone number. I tried to reply „Who are you?
Who sent this message?‟ I received an „invalid number‟ response. I stared at the lines again.
„For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand, and says to you, do not
fear; I will help you‟.
There and then, I wept. It would not be the last time I would cry due to the intervention of
Grace in my life, yet it was the first. I wept from relief. It wasn‟t a dramatic breakdown. I
didn‟t lie on the floor wailing hoping for an attendant. I would love there to be a dramatic
intensity to the tears because secretly I have always been fascinated by the unending drama
of human experience. The tears were few; rain drops in a desert that dried almost as soon

as they hit the sand, leaving damp floral patterns vanishing in moments in the heat and red
sunburnt eyes still in need of crying. The message penetrated the core of my fear, and my
fear was bled through my weeping. Perhaps they were tears of gratitude. I felt God had
heard, and I was not alone. I never found out where that message came from. I never
received another like it, or another from that strange number.
A couple of days later, I had two dreams in one night.
I am in a church service. I am called to the front of the church. The minister walks towards
me. A light comes down and enters him. He places his hands on my head and the light is
transferred into me. He tells me I have been initiated and I am welcomed into the disciples.
I am climbing a building that is being constructed. I climb to the top of the building, and my
attention is drawn to the sky. A giant winged horse flies out the sun towards me. As the
horse gets near, it changes into a large crow, which lands in front of me. The crow stand
6‟4”, which is my height. The crow stares at me directly in the eye, its eyes are centimeters
from mine. I am worried it will peck my eyes out, yet I am mesmerized by its powerful and
compelling gaze. After a short while, it flies back towards the sun.
The next day, my mother called. We chatted for a while, and she told me she had attended
a beautiful church service the day before.
„Why was the service so special?‟ I asked.
„Well, yesterday was the day of the Pentecost, which was the day that the Holy Spirit
descended into the disciples. I wish you could have been at the service. Did you go to
church yesterday?‟
„No. I haven‟t been to church for a long time.‟
After the conversation, I couldn‟t help thinking about the dreams. I really had no idea that
the previous day, June 4 2006, had been the day of the Pentecost. The link was a little
spooky.
Breaking Patterns

End of June 2006. I was sitting in a coffee shop again, slowly sipping my latte in the late
afternoon winter sun. I had got a little bit of work that had come in, but not enough to cover
my monthly costs. The coffee was good, and the sandwich was delicious, yet it did nothing
to help my financial and work situation. After the events a few weeks before, when I had
received the text message and had the dreams of anointing, I had felt more at peace with
life and less desperate. Yet, I still had to do something. I couldn‟t sit around waiting for
manna to fall from heaven, and I wanted to create some flow and abundance in my life. I
had been racking my brains about my situation. I thought about Lawrence, and how his
work flow had dried up. I thought of my aunt, with whom I was spending Monday evenings,
and she was having financial difficulty. Jeanine too was having cash flow problems. It
seemed like everyone and everything around me was experiencing financial stress. I
wondered if I had anything to do with this unwanted mess. Was I somehow a co-
conspirator, albeit it an unconscious and unwilling one, in manifesting scarcity around me?
The thought scared me. I didn‟t want to be the cause of my own deprivation. I was sick of
new age fundamentalists spinning out worn mantras, such as „You gotto think abundance‟ or
believing that there was something deeply wrong with me if I wasn‟t surrounded by an
excess of love and wealth and happiness and beauty. I thought abundance. I did my
mantras. I visualized, yet it didn‟t work. I felt a silent terror at the thought of scarcity and
lack; I didn‟t feel full or overflowing. I felt scared and powerless. What if I was the source of
my misery?
I decided to go and donate some money to open up my energy flow and see what
happened. I had received an email from one of the temples where I used to go and
meditate in Thailand, and they were collecting money to build an additional meditation
room, so I made a decision to give 10% of my pitiful income that month to the temple. I
stood up, paid for my coffee and walked across the parking area towards the bank. I was
attacked by a swarm of hostile thoughts that made me want to lock up my wallet and run
for cover. „What about your rent? You don‟t even have enough for yourself. How can you
give? Why don‟t you wait until you have a regular income, and then you can start to donate.‟
Me me fucking me me! I was tired of my thoughts of self-preservation, I was tired of always
being so obsessed with myself, yet I was also consumed by these thoughts. I had made a

decision though. I kept on walking, determined to donate money, and get this over. I
entered the bank, walked towards the service desk, and made the transaction.
Walking out again into the light, I felt surprisingly light and refreshed. The colors seemed a
little brighter and my step lighter. I noticed a familiar face ahead. I looked a little closer and
noticed it was a friend of mine, Francine. „What are you doing here?‟ I asked. Francine lived
in Cape Town. „I am up for business‟ she replied. „By the way, I will be coming up regularly
from now on. I have been thinking that I would like you to be my coach. Can you do that?‟
This was great news! My coaching fees were about 100USD an hour, and I needed the
money. I naturally agreed. Was there a link between donating money and the chance
encounter that lead to some work? I don‟t know. I strolled back to my car, feeling open and
relaxed, and giving silent prayers of thanks to God. It dawned on me that an hour before. I
had been feeling desperate and deprived. The feelings of scarcity caused me to see a world
devoid of possibility. Now, I was feeling open, relaxed and full, and I was seeing a world of
possibility and abundance. It was the same world out there, yet my inner world had
changed. The obvious truth shone shouted out at me; how I saw the world depended, to a
large degree, on how I was feeling inside. The world was not pre-given; I played a large
part in how I perceived the world. I saw the world as I was, not how it really was. If I felt
playful, I saw the world as a playground. If I felt weak or disempowered, I saw the world as
a scary place. If I felt positive and radiant, I saw the world as a place of abundant
possibility. My feelings dictated what I focused on, and by changing that focus, I could
change my experience of this world around me.
That night, a dream. There is a child who is alone and terrified. His face has been smashed
in, his throat torn out, and he is bleeding profusely. I am horrified at his suffering and
desperately want to help him with his injuries. I rush to help him but have no idea what to
do.
I awoke under the warm covers of my bed, not wishing to get out into the freezing subzero
cold of the morning. I lay thinking of the dream; what did that child mean? „Here we go
again,‟ I thought to myself, „more shadow work. This really is a pain in the ass. Doesn‟t it
ever end?‟ There seemed to be no immediately obvious connection to the wounded child, so
I closed my eyes, and looking into the darkness behind my eyelids, my thoughts turned to

my situation. I started to have a sense that something deep inside me was responsible for
my stuck situation. I knew from past experience that if something deep inside me changed,
then my world often changed around me. It just didn‟t seem to be a viable solution running
off to donate to temples every afternoon and hoping to bump into clients on the way out. I
had donated money several times before and there didn‟t seem to be any reliable connection
between donating and instantly responsive cash flow. I needed something to break this lock;
I needed something to break me.
I met up with Lawrence a couple of days later. We sat in one of our favorite afternoon café‟s
on Johannesburg, complaining about the severity of the winter, and how it just seemed
impossible to get warm. I sat bundled in three sweaters, a snow hat and gloves. Yet, in spite
of the cold weather, it was nice to sit outside and enjoy the sense of space around us.
„There is a personal growth workshop coming soon,‟ said Lawrence, „It‟s about group
shadow work and process work. It‟s experimental so it will be really cheap.‟
I was extremely interested, I needed something to break the impasse. The work was based
on an author I respected, and I was very eager to be a part of it. I had a sense that this
may be the breakthrough that I needed. I could just afford the attendance fee, so I signed
up to join. The funny thing is, the day after I signed up, my aunt asked if I could house sit a
house near by. I would get paid for house sitting, as well as get food. The house sitting fee
covered my tuition for the personal growth course.
I didn‟t know what to expect in the course. On the day it began, I drove through the tree
lined streets listening to Bob Marley playing Redemption Song on the sound system,
repetitively thinking how I really loved that old Mercedes; it was 22 years old, and purred
like a well fed tiger. I followed the directions through early morning rush hour traffic, and
arrived at a small cottage surrounded by big old trees and luscious garden. It was winter,
yet there was an abundance of greenery in the well watered grounds. Walking inside the
cottage to the sweet and inviting smell of ground coffee and fresh baked muffins, I found a
room with eight or nine other participants. After a double cup of coffee to get the neurons
firing, we were given a basic introduction to the rules of the process work. The group would
make decisions to do things together, all opinions would be honored, and if the group was
unable to make a decision, then a skilled facilitator would take us into conflict resolution.
There was a suggested agenda to follow for the next few days, yet if the group decided,

then the agenda could be changed. The theory was that if someone in the group was unable
to commit to a decision, then that person would be have some inner conflict with the
decision, and then there would an opportunity to resolve the conflict and a chance for inner
growth.
The process work began. We made decisions together from everything from when to break
for tea, how long to break for, and what to talk about next. There seemed to be endless
deliberating and discussing, with even the most minor details being important. The first day
was uneventful, and I went home wondering where all this was going. It seemed as though
it was a waste of time to deliberate to such a detail on how long we should all sit in the
garden looking at the trees for.
The second day, the process was uneventful until lunch time. A problem arose just before
lunch, which to my mind, seemed extraordinarily trivial. Some of the group members wanted
to take a short lunch break of half an hour, as we were not completing the tasks assigned in
enough time. Others wanted to take an hour so there would be time for cigarettes and
coffee after lunch. Personally, I didn‟t care how long we took; I just wanted to go to lunch
as I was hungry and I hadn‟t eaten breakfast. I was getting irritated and figured that by the
time the group made a decision, lunch would be cold and there wouldn‟t be any time to even
stand up to leave the room to go to lunch. Faithful to the process, all the various opinions
about lunch had to be heard, and finally the group members started to get upset with one
another‟s trivialities and an impasse was reached. The facilitator skillfully stepped into the
developing inferno, called the lunch break, and suggested that the group go into conflict
resolution after a 45 minute lunch break. This was going to be exciting; I couldn‟t wait to go
into conflict. When I was a child and used to read my fathers World War Two magazines, I
dreamed of being a fighter. I dreamt of shooting people and fighting the enemy and
bringing them down, yet the closest thing I got to real warfare was my years of playing
rugby at school. There were so many issues about fighting in society, that being able to
finally give another human being a piece of my mind without having to shoot them or hit
them was something I deeply wanted to do. It seemed like the fun part of the course. What
was it going to be like to give that dude with the funny mustache hell?
We resumed after lunch, and the facilitator, a women with flaming red hair, introduced the
rules of conflict. We agreed upon safety rules, including what to do if feeling violent. I was

going to suggest we all dressed the part and wore riot gear, but I kept my mouth shut.
Conflict resolution followed a simple process of finding your anger, getting in touch with it,
expressing it verbally without reservation, and then, once the anger started to dissipate,
attempting to hold the perspective that you were angry against. I felt as though it was time
for the whistle to blow at the beginning of a rugby match. I was eager to assault the
opposition, for this was the first time I had been given license to vent all my frustrations and
I wasn‟t gonna hold back.
I thought of the child in my dream, and thought how disempowered he must have felt at
being so badly hurt while being so small. I started to feel angry at adults and strong people
who hurt weak and defenseless individuals. I could see flashbacks of being afraid of my
father, of being caned by teachers at school for minor transgression of the rules, of going to
church and always being subservient to the minister, not allowed to question his words. I
started to feel the rules of society that stopped me from complimenting beautiful women,
and the taboos against sex and love that corrupted like a cancer in sterile and righteous
communities. I was tired of being held down, tired of being suppressed, and tired of being
hurt because some idiot thought he was better and stronger than me. I realized I was angry
against God. This made me stop in my tracks, as how could I be angry against someone
who was supposedly omnipotent and perfect, where I was just a little ignorant human
being? Yet, I realized I was angry; I had prayed so many times and hadn‟t perceived any
response, I had called for Jesus with all my heart and he hadn‟t answered, I had been
trained to be humble and subservient in the eyes of the Lord, and that had stopped me from
rising up in life and achieving what I wanted. I was angry against God, and today I was
going to let Him know it.
I thought that immediately shouting out against the Good Lord may be just a little too much,
so I started to vent against authority figures, such as teachers at school who had caned the
children for minor offenses. I was angry for having being kept down, and it was all the
worlds fault that I was disempowered. No more would I surrender. No more would I lie
down in the face of a world that sought to rip out my voice. No more would I be silent and
hold my suffering as my culture had taught me to. No longer would I hide under ideals of
humility of surrender. No more would I say „Ok, you are right and I am wrong, accepting
blame for failures not always of my own, accepting my guilt and avoiding conflict.

My thoughts went back to assembly at high school, when I sat almost anonymous in a
crowd of 1000 white boys all dressed in green blazers and grey pants. The headmaster, a
thin wiry man who prowled the corridors with a cane hunting for students who should have
been in the classrooms, lambasted the school for a window that had been broken and no
one had owned up. He threatened to keep the whole school in for a week if the culprit
wasn‟t found, and his stare straffed the sitting assembly like a night search lamp on a prison
yard. I felt he was staring straight at me, and I felt guilty. I had done nothing, yet I felt
terrified and guilty, and I thought he was going to blame me for something I hadn‟t done. I
had thought about standing up and, like a martyr, accepting the blame and saving the
school, allowing my pink butt to get caned so the others could go free. No more would I
innocently accept the wrath and punishment of another.
I saw the other participants in the conflict resolution as that evil headmaster, as the minister
in the church, as my loving family with good intentions, as my alcoholic relatives, as the girls
I could not kiss because I might be accused of rape. I saw them as holding my power, as
stamping all over me and keeping me chained to pole in submission, hurting myself every
time I tried to strain forward against my constraints. I let them know that I would not accept
their guilt anymore. I didn‟t uncontrollably scream in a fit of rage, convulsing and shaking
and exploding. It was a powerful, clear, precise delivery of anger into the bowels and the
eyes of all those unassailable beings who had sat encapsulated in their ivory towers,
condemning me under the banners of their sick one sided righteousness.
„Enough! Do you know how you held me back? DO you know how you made me suffer?
What gave you the right to control me? No more. This is over.‟
I enjoyed the anger. Perhaps for the first time in my life, anger hadn‟t been subdued,
judged, repressed or rationalized away. I could feel the power and strength of anger rising
through my system, and the beauty in its full expression. I relished the fight against my
imagined oppressors, and I exulted in finally, finally, recognizing my disempowerment and
standing up to rage against the forces that had held me down, to rage against the forces
that had caused the light to die. I felt strength; I felt alive, I felt reborn. I felt as though I
had grown three feet and put on 40 pounds of muscle, and nothing, nothing, nothing could
hurt me. It was my day; a venomous demon that had been hidden inside me for decades

under the walls of pacifism had been released and was spitting fire and flame, and I enjoyed
the revolution. I more than enjoyed it. I bloody loved it.
The anger, like a wave, receded, and there was nothing more I felt needed to be said. I
became quiet, and calm. In the final step in the conflict resolution I took the side of the
people who had held me down, and imagined being them, I imagined being the oppressive
authority figures and trying to find why they did what they did to avoid pain and to find
happiness, I imagined seeing the world through their eyes, as fully as I could. That was the
key, to be that which I hated and viewed as vile in the world, to be that which I resisted to
the core of my soul, to be that which was shining back at me from a world I had painted in
the colors of evil. The beauty of this movement was the birth it gave to a deep compassion
for their world, forgiveness, and a miraculous release of the inner fight.
I drove home that day with a splitting headache. I was finding it difficult to focus and to
think about anything; something deep and been shifted inside me. I still felt willing to fight;
I imagined that if anyone transgressed me again, I would fight them to the death. I was
ready for road rage, ready to jump out of my car and assault any wrongdoers on the road,
and heaven help anyone who tried to pull a trip on me. I was no longer afraid of being hurt.
I wasn‟t afraid of the fight, and imagined myself, fighting to the death, no mattering if I died
or not. All that mattered was the willingness to fight, the willingness to stand up to and take
it to anyone who dared infringe on my freedom, on my humanity. I just knew that I would
not let the world walk all over me again. Come hell or high water, I was going to stand up
for myself, because that‟s what my spirit called me to do. I arrived home, parked the car,
and walked inside the home. Jeanine was sitting by the evening fire as I walked in. Actually,
I didn‟t just walk in. I strode into the room; I marched into the room as though I was an
army victorious. She looked at me.
„What have you done?‟ she asked, „you seem different. You seem to be radiating energy.‟
I noticed I felt full and overflowing.
„I found part of my power,‟ I replied. „I stood up to my bullies and I survived. I don‟t take
shit from anyone anymore.‟ Jeanine just smiled and looked at me. I went and lay down,
headache throbbing, muscles hungry for action, my body trying to put everything together. I
lay in silence, my mind naturally reflecting on how I had given my power away. I gave my
power away when I read too much as an excuse for action. I gave my power away when I
used other peoples words as my own wisdom. I gave my power away to drugs and alcohol. I

found many excuses not to stand up for myself. I gave my power away to Lawrence and to
Jeanine. No more. No more. I couldn‟t see it at the time, but there would still be many levels
of unconscious disempowerment that had to be dealt with. I had just scraped the surface. I
simply knew one thing. I was going to fight for my truth, find my truth, and live my truth. I
was going to find my voice, repair the throat that had been ripped out of me as a child, and
connect it to my heart and to my wisdom. No more would I lie down for the world to kick me
like a dog.
Thinking hurt; I finally lay in silence for hours until I fell asleep.
Following heart
July 2006. I was just beginning to come to terms with how I had given away my power to
the world, and how I had been creating results that reinforced that fundamental sense of
disempowerment. On a cold blustery mid-winters afternoon, I met up with a good friend of
mine, who was both a medical doctor and a Jungian analyst. My lower back was vibrating
with unreleased energy and I had tingling sensations and uncomfortable pressure in my
head. The energetic sensations had been going on for six months and the novelty had long
since worn off. Even though I had too much energy within me, I paradoxically seemed
perpetually fatigued at the same time.
We sat in a shopping mall watching a rainbow river of South Africans walk past as they did
their shopping. What a change from the apartheid white South Africa I had grown up in,
where black or non-white people had not been allowed into white areas except with a
special work permit. When I went to the shops as a child, I had seen white people. When I
went to church or to school or the movies, all I saw was white people. I had seen a few
black people working as domestic help or as gardeners, and I had no way then to
understand that most of South Africa was rural and black. When I had been a child, I had
grown up in a white utopia, with nice schools, good roads, safe streets and beaches that
were exclusively white. Even the benches by the beaches had had signs that said „Whites
only‟ or, in the Afrikaner language, „Net Blanke‟. Now, 12 years after the fall of apartheid and
the election of the first black government, I watched people of all different colors swirling
ahead of me, drifting through the hallways and corridors in an explosion of hair styles,

fashion sense and different languages. Things had changed in South Africa, and the heart
land was experiencing a painful, stuttering rebirth as the repression of Apartheid was
removed.
I felt myself reflected in what was happening in the society around me. My repressions were
being lifted and the parts of myself that had been disowned and controlled for such a long
time, were beginning to painfully emerge and needed to find their place in my world; they
needed their healing and integration and were struggling to find themselves in the arena of
freedom. I was sharing my story with my friend, and she told me that, in her work, she
helped people do two things. She helped people find their power, and she helped people
find their love. I was curious. The theme of power has been dominant in my life the last few
months.
„What do you mean, find your power and find your love?‟ I asked.
She sat back in her chair and sipped some more of her green tea.
„Power first. Many people feel their power as being dependant on their world. They try and
protect themselves through controlling the world. They try and feel good and avoid pain by
controlling people, by controlling money, by controlling themselves, by trying to become who
they think they should be. Their world is the world of form. It‟s the things they can see and
touch and feel, like rocks and people and thoughts and feelings. The world is their security
and they are afraid of giving up that security. In return, they prostitute themselves to the
world. They give the world their power, they sell themselves to the things around them, and
then they get locked in a power struggle to control the world to keep making themselves
feel good. Every time you feel the compulsion that the world should be different to what it
is, and you want to try and change it to make yourself feel okay, then you are locked into a
power struggle. Your security needs to be in your deepest being, in Spirit as your core, and
your deepest being is always okay, no matter what happens around you. Most people are
unable to recognize their center, however. Some people feed off the world to stay powerful,
holding the power of others to maintain their superiority and self esteem. You see this is in
tyrants, in dictators, in controlling bosses, in dominating parents, often expressed in subtle
ways, such as verbal put down, criticism and rejection.

Others have been taught that they are not worthy of power or strong enough to have real
power. They may have been hurt by power figures and thus try and reject power as a bad
thing within their world, and so they stay weak and disempowered. They stay weak by
projecting their power into the world, or onto God, always unconsciously afraid of power and
feeling as though they do not deserve it. They may be deeply afraid of power, and are afraid
that if they do gain power, then they will be a bad person, a horrible person, and they will
cause pain and suffering in the world. Or, they are afraid that if they do express their power,
it will bring them pain and suffering, perhaps rejection and condemnation or even death, as
they may have learnt that self expression is a dangerous thing.
You have to reclaim your power back from the world. You first have to recognize where you
give power away or try and take it from the world and fight to hold onto it. You have to
accept power exists, and that it is healthy to desire it, own it and express it. You have to
know that what you see in the other is inside yourself, and that you need to reclaim what
you see. If you see weakness in others and react to it, you need to come to terms with your
own weakness. If you see power in others and are drawn to their strength, you need to find
your own inner strength and ability for action. The power that you see in others is within
you, and the weakness you see in others is within you. You have to find a power within you
that is greater than the world you see, and will always support you no matter how weak you
may become. You have to find your power in Spirit. That‟s an immense journey, an
astounding adventure to the core of your soul; there are no guarantees and great courage is
needed. To find your power in Spirit, your deepest fears may first have to come into
awareness, and have to be faced with a strength based in Spirit, and then fear is
transformed and liberated through the grace of that surrendered awareness. The strength
based in the Spirit which shines in your core is the real source of you power. You gotto learn
to unconditionally trust that, no matter what. ‟
As she spoke, my thoughts drifted back to the events of the last few months, and the
awakening process that was gathering momentum within me. To be honest, I really didn‟t
like this idea of my deepest fears becoming true and secretly would rather my fantasies of
hedonism materialized. Maybe in a past life I really was a Roman and I really did have
orgies! Part of me wished I could remain a child and everything would be taken care of and I
could just have fun. All that stuff about the fears coming true was something I rather hoped
to avoid, to put it mildy. One of my biggest sources of projected power was money; money

was my security. My savings had been stripped away from me, and I was being unwillingly
forced to confront the powerlessness of what it meant to have no money. I had experienced
the suffering and the terror of losing what I thought I needed, and now my only solution
was to face that fear and trust God, to surrender to God. It was more painful to hold on to
my fear and argue with reality, than to just let go. I figured I‟d rather be just broke than be
both scared and broke. The freedom is in letting go, yet letting go is terrifying; to let go, you
have to trust the unknown.
First, I had to learn to trust God, to trust the unknowable loving power, and that was a huge
step for me. Trust in God, trust in the benevolent love of something far greater and more
powerful that separate little me, needed to be the source of my power. I thought of all the
books I had read. Knowledge, and the ability to control and reproduce knowledge, had
become my strength, my power. The knowledge in those books wasn‟t my authentic inner
power, just like my money (or lack of it) wasn‟t my inner authentic power. My thoughts
drifted back to something Jeanine had told me. When I had first moved in with her, she had
gone to see a psychic, and her psychic told her that a young man was in her life who had
lots of theories but little experience. I had discounted those words at the time, thinking I
had a world of experience under my belt, yet now the truth of that statement was kicking
me like a drunk mule. I had to learn to translate all my theories into practical wisdom; I had
to give up the reliance on all that information I could recite, and learn to find my own
wisdom based on my own learning, which would become my truth, my power, my certainty.
And from that wisdom, I would have to learn to act and create the results I wanted in the
world. My friend continued with what she was saying.
„Then love. Love is not a romantic fixation to a soul mate, although that is one form of it.
Talking about love is difficult, as true love is without an opposite, and true love exists
without an object of desire. Love powers all pain and suffering; true love shines through the
eyes of every living being. True love is your deepest being, it‟s your guide, it‟s your higher
self, intelligent far beyond the ways of your mind. Love exists in the heart, and first, the
heart has to painfully open so you can feel that love. For many, the love is blocked, and
because they cannot feel their own love, they desperately search for their love in the world.
They search for love in relationships, in success, in status, in fame, in recognition, because
they are blinded to their own love, and they feel pain when they feel that search for love is
frustrated. Just like power, true love is to be found in the deepest recess of your being, in

God, in Spirit that is not separate from you, but so close, so near, so obvious, so simple, that
you do not recognize what you are. Your body is the temple of God, and that‟s where you
need awaken to the God that has always lived within you, eternally, patiently waiting for you
to remember.
You have to find the voice of your love, and that means opening to your hearts desire. Your
heart‟s desire is not the minds desire, and when the mind takes control and the heart gets
pushed away, then that‟s when the trouble starts. Attachment to the mind, and the need for
power, control and knowledge have to be recognized and then released through the grace of
awareness. When you start to feel the heart, the heart will lead the way, which is not the
way of the mind. The heart will call you to trust its voice, and will lead you into action and
engagement with the world, and that action, that engagement, born of love, will lead you to
your dreams and to your happiness. You have to learn to follow your heart. You will make
some mistakes along the way and get it wrong, and that‟s going to hurt, but you have to try
anyway. Connection to the heart is how your spiritual wealth manifests in this world.‟
I knew what I had to do. I wanted to know, to live, that love born from Spirit, and to live a
life empowered by that love. I wanted her words to be mine. I had to follow my heart, and I
had to learn to trust my heart to lead the way. My words came back to me. „Life is an
experiment. The only way you know if truth is truth, is if you risk everything and it holds.
Take risks with certainty, and either you will succeed or fail. If not, God will rescue you. If
God doesn‟t rescue you, you are dead; you have to die sometime anyway.‟ Also, as another
friend likes to put it, „You can‟t screw this up. Your core is Spirit, and Spirit is eternal and
indestructible.‟ I liked that. I liked it that fundamentally, no matter how hashed it may
appear, I couldn‟t get it wrong. Still, I wasn‟t planning to screw it up any more than I had to.
I wanted more than anything in the world to be happy, to experience love and to fulfill my
highest destiny. I had always felt Eros pulsing through my blood and I had always felt it was
my birthright to have love and know love and feel God and not just raise my hands to Spirit
in church, but to be embraced and unified in Sprit, to have Spirit reaching its hands back
into me and dissolving me in the embrace of humanity and divinity. And from that embrace,
I wished to be a vessel that shone that creative love, that giving light, out into the world. I
had always felt the call, even though no one else I knew felt it, heard it, or understood what
I was speaking about. Even though I was faced with a world that stood deaf to my heart, I

was not deaf to the shout of Eros and I would never lie down and wait to die in the numbing
comforts of my routines. I had one life and I wanted to live. I wanted to live a life of fullness
and exuberance. I was sick and tired of frustration and disappointment, and exhausted from
trying to find the answers from books, other people and I was tired of bowing down to
others because I thought they had what I thought I needed. I had to connect to my own
truth, no matter what. Even though I had spent many years traveling already, this was just
one more step in the journey that I needed to take.
I drove home wondering how I was going to follow my heart. I arrived home, went to my
computer and opened my email, and there was an email from my good friend Brian, who
was in Taipei, Taiwan.
„Dear Bruce,
The company I am working at wants someone with teaching experience in Asia and good
people skills to come and work here. You will be working with me. Are you interested? We
need someone immediately.‟
I started at the computer screen for a few minutes. I had sworn not to go back to exile in
Taiwan, yet here was an opportunity to travel again, to have a regular income, to see my
friends, and to get to follow my heart. If my theory about following my heart was correct,
then it would not matter if I left South Africa, because my heart would lead me back there
again in the future if that‟s where my real love was. I didn‟t think much about the decision.
At the age of 34 years, I decided to head out into the wilderness again. I started making
plans that afternoon. Three weeks later, I was climbing on an airplane to Taipei, Taiwan,
and flying across the Indian Ocean at 30 000 feet in a Boeing 747, this time locked out of
the cockpit.
Awakening
Helplessness
I was immediately thrown into difficulty, which I had not predicted. My financial situation got
worse and worse. I had reneged on a deal with Trevor to sell my old Mercedes to him, and
had chosen to sell it to another buyer for a better deal. I had broken the trust of one of my

good friends, and now my trust was being broken back. I was counting on the sale of my
car, which was supposed to be completed a day or two after I left South Africa. A few days
later, when I was in Taiwan, it turned out that the buyer of the car didn‟t honor his part of
the deal, and I was left without a chunk of cash that I urgently needed to pay off my credit
card and some other debts, and without any money to carry me over in Taiwan. A friend of
a friend finally bought the car for a bargain price, which was about half of what I had been
asking for.
I had absolutely no money in Taiwan. I was staying in a youth hostel, in a room with 12
other people, including my good friend Brian, who was also deeply committed to meditation
and transformational practice. Brian had been with me in Kaohsiung and we were close
friends, and in many ways was going through a similar journey to me. Brian was an angel of
mercy and lent me some money to survive and get by on. I felt further away from my
dreams that I had ever been in my life. Once again, I was on the other side of the world. I
was without a home and possessions. I had failed on my dream of creating a business based
on inner transformation and personal growth, and didn‟t even seem to be managing my own
inner change, let alone be of any use to anyone else. To add insult to injury, the bunk below
me was occupied by a different traveler almost every night. I didn‟t know if my roommates
would be from Japan, Korea, The United States, England, India, Pakistan, South Africa,
Australia, New Zealand, Canada or outer Mongolia, I didn‟t know if they would be clean or
dirty, I didn‟t know if they would sleep quietly or snore like steam trains. Each night I felt I
came back to my prison cell, to my room without personal space shared by twelve other
inmates.
On the other hand, there were some amazing people living in Taipei Hostel. There was
Aaron, who had worked on Wall Street in New York City, was around my age, and had been
living a life of simplicity in the dorm room for about three years. Lord alone knows what he
did for women, because there was no privacy in that room. There was Charlotte, an
outrageously intelligent British woman who wrote exquisite poetry, was convinced she had
every disease under the sun, and whose life had been one of relentless misery. Sleeping in
the bed behind me was Nick, a British man, around 37, who was studying kung-fu, and used
to hold his underpants up to the light every morning then sniff them to see if they were
clean enough to wear for another day. Nick hadn‟t cleaned his bunk for months, and he slept
on a pile of receipts and papers with notes written on them. In the back corner was Andy,

another Brit who was engaged to get married to a Thai woman and who stayed up every
Friday and Saturday night and drank at least 12 hours straight. Afflicted with insomnia was
Alex, a white gay male from Zambia with a booming voice. There was Harold, a diminutive
ex-executive from Argentina who had lost his job under the changing Argentinean economy,
and was forced to come to Taiwan to teach to earn some money to support his family.
Basketball loving Bob Dylan singing Jason, the son of a wealthy prominent psychiatrist in the
United States, was in rebellion from his family, and was trying to write a book about Taipei
Hostel. Landy, the Philippine domestic worker, who was saving money for her sons
education and loved to get drunk on Sundays and smoke Cherry flavored cigarettes. Klaus,
the German engineer who worked for Mercedes Benz, taught tai-chi, was wealthy, yet lived
in a world of scarcity where every penny counted. Gus, another engineer who was studying
Chinese and suffered from manic depression. Those were the long term residents, all
outrageously intelligent, together making a fun bunch. Others were transient and came for a
day or a few days or a week at the most.
I wouldn‟t have chosen to stay in Taipei hostel if I could have avoided it, yet it gave me a
fascinating glimpse of a slice of life not often seen. Most of the travelers were educated yet
flawed, intelligent yet outcasts and misfits, searching, wandering, laughing, drinking,
fucking. My way had failed and had bought me to this extraordinary, stinking, beautiful
melting pot of humanity. Most of the people were not in real control of their lives, and
everyone was, in some level, helpless against a world that had beat them, and they were
trying to figure out what to do and how to cope.
I was in survival mode. I had started at my new job, which was not what it had been made
out to be, and was not going well; the company was not making money, and they required
someone who was outgoing and sociable, more like an MTV host than a calm looking South
African. The energy in my head was often thick and heavy, as though a polluted fog had
settled within, and sometimes I could barely hold a conversation. I was confused and
disorientated much of the time, and was having difficulty at work. My manager could see
this and was deeply unimpressed as half the time I had a stoned and vacant look on my
face. My only solution was to drink large amounts of tinned coffee, which kicked my nervous
system hard enough that I could be briefly functional. I wasn‟t in control of my energetic
states. I wasn‟t in control of my job. I wasn‟t in control of my finances. I wasn‟t in control of

my living environment. I was deeply and fundamentally disempowered. But then, one thing I
learned is that things have to be broken before they can be rebuilt.
Second Chance
I was in a crisis and could see no way forward. Life sucked; this was not how it should have
been and not what I had planned. Perhaps I should have stayed in my new car 8 years ago,
settled down with a girl with great nipples and lived a comfortable life having kids, avoiding
adventure, risk, enlightenment and just died a slow slow death, numbing myself towards
retirement with whiskey in the evening. I returned back to the hostel one evening after
work and sat down on the old red sofa in the communal living room, generally exasperated
by life. An African man came and sat down next to me. He looked around 35 or so, and had
a beaming white smile that shone like the sunrise against his teak colored skin. I dutifully
smiled at him and turned my attention back to the pain of the evening news. He seemed
intent on talking to me. „Excuse me‟ he said, „do know any local restaurants nearby? I have
just arrived and would like to get something quick and cheap to eat.‟
„Sure‟, I replied, „there is a restaurant two minutes walk away.‟ I was feeling a little hungry
and the atrocities on the news were just not feeding me, so I suggested, „If you like, we
could go together. I am feeling kind of peckish.‟ He smiled that beaming sunrise smile, and I
was once again struck how Africans often had just the whitest teeth in the world.
We caught the elevator down and walked along the busy street to the restaurant. As we
walked, we drifted into conversation. I wasn‟t really in a talkative mood, and so I figured I
would ask him some questions and get him talking. I asked him where he was from, and
what he was doing in Taiwan. He replied,
„I was born in the Congo, where I grew up on a village and went to school run by Christian
nuns. I left the Congo due to political violence when I was around 19, and through a long
journey, finally made my way to Switzerland where I was accepted as a refugee. I was given
food and an allowance and a bursary to study at a Swiss University. I finally completed a
Masters Degree in Political Science, and I want to return to the Congo one day to be
involved in politics in the country. My girlfriend is a Swiss Doctor, and we are here for a

medical conference in Taipei. Most important to me is God. I have a calling to do God‟s

work, and I want to take that work into politics in the Congo.‟
„Oh my God‟, I thought, not even laughing at my inner blasphemy, „not another
fundamentalist who wants to go and save the world. They just seem to create more trouble
and division wherever they go.‟
„That‟s really interesting‟, I said, „why don‟t you tell me about your faith.‟ This was going to
be fun. I loved debating with the righteous because it was easy to make them angry. I
smugly waited for the sermon of the mount to be delivered, and about what I would say
when he asked me if I was saved. He surprised me. Gently, graciously, he responded.
„There is so much fighting. God doesn‟t fight. Most fighting in God‟s name is for man‟s
purposes. I grew up seeing people fight in the name of God, in the name of Jesus, in the
name of Allah, in the name of their ancestors. I saw people get their heads chopped off in
the name of God. I have seen children blown up with hand grenades in the name of God.
Something with that was deeply wrong. We are all Children of God, all of us. It doesn‟t
matter where we come from; we are all the children of the Creator and somewhere, we
have lost love and we lost tolerance, we have fallen out the Garden of Eden. Christ had the
message of Love. What did he mean by that? He meant to love, not as something to be
done in the future, but as something to be done right now, as an action to bring acceptance
and embrace and welcoming to all that arises. He asked us to bear loving witness to the
difficulty around us, and to the difficulty that is within us.
Most important, we have to learn to bring love to our conflict, and accept our anger, our
hatred, our jealousy. We have to learn to accept ourselves in all our messiness, and not
always run from our discomfort and try to control the world to spare us from pain. The man
or woman who kills in Gods name desires the light, like all humans, desires fullness and
wholeness and freedom. Love shines through that person, yet they do not see that it is their
inner conflict they cannot face, and that is where they need to first bring their light. Even if
they destroyed their enemies, their conflict would not end. I have heard that it was
Nietzsche who said that „in times of peace the warring man rages against himself‟, and the
Buddha who said „it is easier to conquer 1000 armies than to conquer oneself.‟ If we cannot
bring love and understand to our inner conflict, we will continue to create conflict in our
world, our relationships, our marriages, among our tribes as we cast our conflict outward,

seeking to preserve our flawed idea of our own righteousness, to afraid to bear with courage
our pain yet unable to see the mirror of our reflection shining back at us from the world. To
bring love to our difficulty and our world, all we have to do is look at ourselves without
turning away, and without a desire to change anything. We have to keep looking until peace
arises from the action of looking. Our first step is to find our peace, and then we can start to
change the world. The message is that the heart of God is within you, within everyone, and
the nature of that Heart is peace, is love, is healing. Let the eyes of that heart stare
unflinching into your pain, into your darkness, and into the eyes of those that hurt around
you. That‟s the message I want to take to Africa. All we have to do is allow the Light of God,
our innermost light, the light from which we have never been separate but which has
become veiled, to illuminate the darkness through the act of bearing witness to our
suffering. The conflict is in Man, not in God, not in the world. Jesus saves. He saves when
we allow Him to touch our smarting wounds with his Love, with his Presence, and healing
begins, the fracture is healed.
Perhaps we could look carefully at the death of Christ on the cross. He took suffering upon
himself, the suffering cast on him by his people, his society, his past, and bore it with love,
and that action, the willingness to bear his suffering, freed him, freed us, into eternity. He
died to his suffering and was released into heaven. We too can let our pain die inside us,
and cease trying to hold onto it, for when we do, we will find freedom. That death will hurt,
it will be felt as a difficult death of part of yourself. Yet, through bearing witness to your
suffering, asking God to relieve you of it, and paradoxically dying to yourself as you
surrender to your pain, you will find your freedom and your light, and you will know God.”
What was I hearing? I looked at this beaming African out of place on a street full of Chinese
people quoting quite the threesome of Jesus and Nietzsche and the Buddha. This was not
the usual message of intolerance that I was used to, the usual rant of blame against the
devil or a promise of prosperity if only I would donate some money. This was not the stale
pretense of impractical idealism that had sickened me so many times in church pews and
bible studies and new-age tree hugging. This was a message of love and tolerance and a
willingness to befriend suffering as a way to transform it, and he sounded more like a
Buddhist than a Christian. I sat there spellbound as this beaming charismatic African
embodied his message, daring to hope again, knowing that I was hearing the truth of the
heart of a good man, not the self-aggrandizement of a bloated mind. He stood there, back

dropped by steaming noodles cooking in boiling water, peacefully smiling. His faith seemed
profound and real, and I was drawn to talk to him more. Stepping out of my now not-so-
smug ivory tower, I started to speak.
„I have lost Grace. My suffering is real and it hurts. I have been forgotten by God. I had a
dream that I followed, and it included awakening people and doing good works. I risked
everything for that I and I lost it. I failed. I find myself in a foreign land again without
anything, with severe headaches, alone and isolated, and in difficulty.‟
I proceeded to open up to this stranger. How ironic that I, a white South African, raised in
apartheid, raised ready to fight the black communists, or in Afrikaans, „die swart gevaar‟
(the black danger), taught to be afraid of black men and look down on them because they
were stupid, was bearing his soul to a black man from the Congo with his toothpaste smile
on the streets of Taipei. Who would have ever guessed that my former enemy was now an
agent of my salvation? He stood there, patiently (probably hungrily too because we hadn‟t
eaten), listening to my journey, to my story, bearing witness to my alienation, my searching,
my failures, my stupidity and my dreams. My pride melted away; for so long I had been
afraid to bear witness to myself, to the truth of my inner world, and here, this loving black
stranger held me in the acceptance of his presence. This wasn‟t a piece of dead paper I was
writing on; this was another breathing feeling human being who was sharing his love with
me, and finally, finally, I was allowing myself to open. I ended with my disillusionment. I
ended telling him how life sucked and what was the point of risking a dream for God when it
all came to failure? I had blown my chances, was screwed, and had no where to go.
„Lets go inside and sit down‟ he said. „I really could use something to eat now.‟ We walked
inside the little restaurant with its cheap plastic tables, ordered some food, and sat down. I
morosely slapped chili sauce on my sesame noodles. He smiled, seemingly unconcerned
about my self-pity, and started to talk again.
„Don‟t worry. Relax. God always give second chances. All you have to do is drop your ideas
of control, turn to God and ask him. When I left the Congo, I had no idea what was going to

happen. God opened up the road before me and gave me another chance. God is not
limited. Man‟s thinking is limited, and if you try and understand God through your thinking,
you will not be able to understand God. God is far greater and magnificent and capable than
your thinking minds ability to understand. You can‟t know God with your thinking mind; your
thinking is one of Gods creations, and the creation cannot hold the creator. Your thinking is
usually just a limited snapshot of your history. God wishes to help you; it‟s you who block
him as you unknowingly hold onto your fixed ideas about life, about what is possible and
what is necessary. You feel that block to God as a feeling of separation, as despair, as
suffering, as an inner tension, and if you would just notice it and trust, your grip will
naturally ease and you will relax back into the fullness of God. If you turn to God and ask
him, and if you are prepared to notice and relinquish your ideas about how life should be,
God will willingly, lovingly, graciously and freely give you another chance. Just turn to him,
and he is always there waiting. He has always been waiting for you; it‟s you who have
turned away as you have fixated on your self-centered dreams and ideas.
If you fail, and you fight the failure, then what has happened? You are dictating to God how
the world, how your little world, should be. We fail when we try and take control, or we fail
when God has learning waiting for us. Give your failure to God. Surrender. God has done
you a great favor and has accorded you a tremendous act of Grace by giving your failure.
God has shown you the roots of your suffering and raised them into awareness, as you
suffer when you think the world, including your inner world of feelings and impulses and
thoughts, should be different to what it is, and you hold onto your claim that it should be
different. The roots of your suffering are your fixated desires to take control and have the
world your way, instead of surrendered to Gods way. Its easy to say let go, yet it‟s tough
when you can‟t see how you are holding on and you feel resistance. Yet, you only suffer
because you, in your self-centered prideful righteousness, think it, think you, should be
different, and you have tied up your sense of feeling good in your ideas about how the world
should be. This is suffering. This is separation from God. Bring awareness to your suffering,
to the often untrue stories you tell yourself, and pray to God to bless you and guide you and
give you another chance. There is always a second chance.‟
I listened, struck, humbled and filled with hope again. I needed to hear that message that
day. I needed to hear that it was not the end. I had been swimming in the darkness of
despair, lost in the sewers of my failure, and this man, this gracious man, had pulled my

head above the water and reminded me of a benevolent caring God and he had reminded
me of my humanity. I felt as though I hadn‟t drunk for days and someone had finally given
me water, after I had already become convinced of my impending death. Thank God! The
relief was overwhelming. I didn‟t say much more. I silently thanked God for bringing me this
messenger, and for shining a light to remind me that there were other possibilities in life
that I could not see, and all I had to do was let go, trust life and trust God to open doors for
me. I was locked so deeply into my way of seeing the world, that God had to send a light to
remind me that He existed. My light, paradoxically, was black!
I thanked him for his message. I may have had tears of gratitude in my eyes, most likely
pretended that my eyes were burning from the chili in the noodles. We finished our meals,
and making small talk, strolled back to Taipei hostel. I no longer felt alone and abandoned,
and his was a message that I would return to many times over the coming months as I was
repeatedly plunged into darkness as Spirit purified me
Mei
Well, God gave me another shot at love, and then ripped it away again. Spirit was
extraordinarily masterful at bringing my attachments into awareness then tearing them out
of my grasping hands, and the dream of romantic love was one of my deepest longings. It
was hell, all this letting go of the things I loved. Letting go of my fears was simpler as I
wanted to be free of my demons, yet letting go of my dreams of happiness was perhaps the
most brutal torture. I wanted to hold on to what I loved, I pretended to advocate
unattached liberation but I practiced bondage. I guess a tough love was needed, and looking
back, thank God I was forced to let go, because letting go is true freedom, even though it
hurts like hell at the time. Many times I felt as though I was just a pawn in a sick game, and
Spirit was having heartfelt amusing fun with me like a cat slowly killing a bird desperate for
its freedom. Writing this I fall in love with her again and start to wish that she would walk
through the door and be there, her smile fresh as the scent of lavender on crisp cool
mornings. She is gone now, and I have learned to be okay with the illusion of my longing. I
always have been a hapless romantic, born to love and seek for beauty and light, always felt
Eros shouting through me hankering for unity and wholeness, and I have always searched
for a feminine face of that love to make me whole and give me happiness. With Mei, this

was the best the dream ever got. It was a dream that momentarily came true, a single
flower on a concrete sidewalk, a dream that broke free of the secrecy and guilt of the
marriage smashing lust I had with Maria, a dream without the unrequited longing and
suffering I felt with Helen, a dream that came without the tragic emotional drama of Donna.
I met Mei mid September 2006, on an early Friday evening in Taipei. I had not been working
that day, and had spent the day riding the underground, and walking around the shopping
centers, looking at books and watching that constant flow of slim, slender attractive woman
with long straight black hair, flowers of essential beauty eddying through the city malls. I
sat down outside a Starbucks, pulled out my journal, and started writing random thoughts in
my journal, daydreaming. I always loved daydreaming, that rare space of freedom where
petty concerns of the day are dropped, and the mind blooms with possibility. From that
garden of creation, tinged with pleasure, ideas and images begin to „think me‟. The thoughts
and images arise without effort, and I become a guest in the movie theater of my mind,
noticing them with a sense of unimposing curiosity, letting them take me on their journey.
My daydream that day was love. I love women who hold a sense of grace and sexuality, I
love intelligence, care, empathy, I love women that are poetic, live life, travel. That day, I
dreamt a dream; there would be no shortage of conversation; there would be the elements
of an authentic friendship, and there would be an ease, a completion in each others
presence. I believed in romance, I believed in immediate attraction, in that moment your
soul recognizes itself in the other, and you are mesmerized by the reflection.
I stood up and walked away from the Starbucks, heading back to the hostel in which I was
staying. I past the department stores full of shops with designer labels, Gucci, Chanel, Louis
Vitton. On the way, I saw Allen, a vegan fellow resident in the hostel, heading towards me
wearing his straw sandals, accompanied by an attractive young Asian woman. The chances
of meeting anybody I knew on the street in Taipei are slim, so I took special notice. I asked
Allen what he was doing, and where they were going. I could sense that they were on some
type of date, or rather, that Allen was interested in the young woman. I remember her
clearly; shoulder length wavy black hair, naughty Buddha eyes, and a smile where her two
front teeth softly bit her lower lip as if she was slightly shy of her happiness. She, however,
did not seem so interested in him, and started to talk to me. Usually, I would have been

sensitive to the situation, leaving the two of them together and not intruding. That day,
though, I decided to act differently, and I asked if I could join them. They said yes, and off
we went.
The young girl, Mei, had perfect English as she was a Stanford graduate, and immediately
started to ask me questions on Buddhism, the nature of attachment, suffering and
detachment, all ideas that I was interested in due to my years of meditative practice. We
walked towards an organic food store, where Allen, being a strictly fundamentalist Vegan,
excitedly droned on about the benefits of organic oats. Mei, however, kept me engaged in
conversation about esoteric spiritual subjects, which, on reflection, I answered from the
depths of my delusion.
I loved her immediately. She radiated care, empathy, and a curious intelligence that I had
rarely encountered before. She had the beauty I desired, and appeared to have the heart
that I wanted. I had no idea yet she liked me too, and I tried to answer her questions as
truthfully and clearly as possible. Finally, when we left after a long conversation, I gave her
my contact card, saying I would love to meet up with her again. I didn‟t think she would get
hold of me, and so, a day later when I received an email from her, I was pleasantly
surprised. We arranged to meet that Sunday night, and soon we were kissing each other in
the back corner of a coffee shop behind some aged Chinese men playing cards and
Mahjong. Mei was leaving Taipei in a couple of weeks to go back to the USA, so I knew
from the start that our relationship would be brief, and perhaps that allowed us to abandon
ourselves so completely to love in the short time we were graced with each others presence.
Our dates were beautiful. One night I sat on the city train, traveling to the station where we
would meet. I wanted us to love, even though I was acutely aware that she would leave
soon. I wanted this movie to end differently, the hero and heroine laughing and loving to the
very end of every minute together in defiance of the inevitable sadness. Every human love,
no matter how long or short, carries with it the unavoidable certainty of death, and it‟s a
tremendous human paradoxes to live a life of meaning in a world that is temporary and will
unavoidably bring pain. The train rumbled on, and I sat silently, watching my thoughts,
getting out of the way of myself. I started to think about what I wanted for the night. I
wanted love, magic, mystery and beauty. I wanted to walk in the gold filled nights that
poets spent their lonely time writing about. I wanted fantasy, and romance, and having no

idea how that would be achieved, in a busy park in a crowded, concrete international city, I
relaxed, letting go.
Mei was waiting for me as I got off the train, and I walked straight towards her beautiful
smile. I again loved her smile, how it managed to dance effortlessly in the light of her face.
The waiting, the time apart, was over for a little while, and I could again find my wholeness
in her presence. I sardonically smiled at my attachment to her, noticing how my moods
swung dependently on her being. We embraced, we laughed, and we were complete again.
We got some coffee, then headed over to a nearby park, sat down, and started to talk. Time
flew and we did not notice the darkness falling. I adored kissing her, I could kiss her into
eternity, never getting bored. My appreciation of some of the truths of existence, that
everything is impermanent, and I could never find a home for myself in any experience,
were forgotten, and in my ignorant sensual egoic majesty, I thought that God would be
happy permanently confined within the jails of this lovely experience.
We strolled, hand in hand, across the park to a bench in front of a concrete area. Mei and I
continued to kiss and talk. Waves of ecstasy rose within me, and I disappeared, immersed,
forgotten, and waking up a few minutes later, wondering where I had been. Soft music filled
the air, and lost in the haze of sensual delight, I thought perhaps my brain was creating
symphonies in its exulted radiant state. I thumped back to reality as I noticed a couple of
violin players, practicing in the park. So much for me being an awakening Mozart! A white
rabbit hopped on the grass in front of us. A butter yellow half moon watched us from the
sky. Mei had her hands down the inside of my pants, and in the kaleidoscope of music and
the vast sky and sexual desire and her lips and the rabbit signaling Wonderland, in the
rolling surges of pleasure that kept on stealing me, I found heaven again. In my openness,
in my expansion and my love, I relaxed into heaven.
We started seeing each other almost every day, and a week later, we met up at a busy
Starbucks in downtown Taipei. We were looking to find a quiet, peaceful place where we
could sit and talk and catch up on the last few day‟s events, and instead we found the
Starbucks to be a place of noise and havoc. After a quick coffee, we headed off to a nearby
bar, where we ordered strong cocktails, and sat down in the back of the bar on a couch.

Conversation between us shone; when you are falling in love with somebody, time is
irrelevant and every word is sunlight. Our couch was shielded from the main bar by a table,
so other patrons were unable to see our laps, waist, hips and legs. Before long, our casual
hand holding had moved to lap touching, and from our laps, inwards towards our upper
inner thighs. We were easily aroused, and our touching became more explicit, and overt,
beginning to violate the standards of the bar. Mei left for the bathroom, and returning
shortly after with a slightly pained look of frustration on her face tingeing her angelic smile,
mentioned, with gasping exasperation, her wetness.
We decided it was time to go, so we left the bar, and headed for the nearby underground
station. On boarding the train, Mei leaned over to me, and whispered „take me somewhere‟.
I knew what she meant, she meant she wanted to sleep with me. I knew a suitable hotel,
the Rainbow Hotel in the Ximen district, and we headed off in its direction, arriving ten
minutes later. I asked her what would make the evening safe for her, and she responded
that she, at any time, had the right to stop if she wanted to. I promised to respect her, and
she trusted me. I felt honored by her trust and her belief, honored by her surrender. The
moment was simple. We both desired each other, and nothing was going to stop us. It was
simple, just how love (or lust) should be. I had experienced far too much suffering in the
past from unrequited desire, far too many complications, and here, tonight under the neon
lights of the Rainbow hotel, desire was unchained. We checked into the hotel, pretending to
be American tourists just passing through, and headed up to our room, not talking, not
touching in the elevator, perhaps slightly shocked by the upcoming inevitability of the night,
slightly afraid.
Countless novels have been written on lovers. For every lover, the experience of new love is
immaculate, a book that has never before been written. We went to the bathroom
separately, then lay on the clean cool white sheets of the hotel bed. She climbed on top of
me, and started kissing, her feminine radiance washing into me, submerging me with waves
of bliss. We were willingly caught in lust and a timeless dance; I had no sense of the night
passing. We had turned the lights off in the room, yet could still see each other clearly from
the glow of the outside city. We took off our clothes with measured slowness; the
excitement of seeing the other naked showing clearly in my erection and her wetness. We
touched, and I climbed on top of her, penetrating her, fucking her, loving her, and she
pulled me in, fucking me, loving me. I was fully present, yet another part of me rested in the

detached observer, watching, unmoved, still, the witness of the night. I sat back, and she
sat up, sitting cross legged around me, my legs over the edge of the bed. I pulled her tight
to my chest, penetrating her deeply, pulling her vagina hard into my abdomen as I
continued to fuck her and love her, watching her eyes close, her breath grow harder, as she
lost herself in the rising waves towards her orgasm. Her body jerked and convulsed as she
edged closer to coming, until in shudders of pain and pleasure, she went rigid against my
body, unable to move in locked, pained, ecstatic embrace. Slowly she leaned back and
disentangled herself from my erection, and lay down on her stomach.
I was still erect and excited, and wanted her more, wanted to continue fucking and loving
her, wanted to continue looking at her beautiful, brown, naked body. I looked down at her
lying there in her post orgasmic 21 year old perfection, spread her legs from behind, climbed
up on her and penetrated her again. She was still sensitive from the orgasm, yet allowed me
to stay inside her. I moved back and forth, pulling her up onto her knees and placing my
hand around the front of her abdomen, touching her clitoris and bringing her back to
orgasm. She stiffened and moaned; I exulted in the sight of looking at her from behind,
watching myself entering and exiting her perfect caramel beauty in graphic detail. She came
again, and I stopped inside her, halting time, holding onto the moment, recording the sights
and sounds and feelings of the room, knowing that, for a brief flash in this strange life that I
have been living, I had found completion in the world, and that if I could record this moment
in as much detail as possible, it would be available for me to relive whenever I wanted,
retained as a photograph embedded in my soul. I withdraw, kissed her spine, and lay on my
back. She sat up, and turning to look at me with her curious, gentle, crazy eyes, kissed me
then kissed my erection. I watched her moving up and down, her breasts hanging forward
weighted down by her exquisite nipples, and felt my excitement growing again. I had been
holding back, retreating from the cliff of orgasm again and again throughout the night, and
now I wanted release. I lay back, and felt, feeling the tension building and building and
noticing how I wanted to explode, how my mind was racing itself towards singularity. My
body twitched and shivered; I loved being out of control, I loved being in the hands and
mind and soul of another, at the mercy of the love of this annexing creature. My body
contracted uncontrollably, and I fucked her mouth with as much deliberation and intention
as possible. She held me down, held onto me, and swallowed every drop of life giving sperm
that I released, then leaned forwards, dropping her sweaty, wet lips onto my face, and
kissed me. I luxuriated in the warmth of her salty kiss and softness of her embrace, and she

asked me, with that wry smile, if it was okay to kiss me after swallowing. I laughed and
kissed her back.
We lay naked, holding, kissing, together one, without saying much, for a while, just like
exhausted satisfied lovers all around the world. We got up, silently and lovingly got dressed,
and headed downstairs to check out of the hotel. We glanced at the clerk; speech was
difficult due to the smiles that beamed off our faces. We went outside, glowing and basking
in the goodness, angels from heaven radiantly visiting this challenging earth. We hailed a
cab, and sitting inside, she said to me, „My leg is twitching‟. She described her twitching
muscle, and how it was fluttering in her leg. I sat, dumbfounded. We reached my stop
shortly later, and I got out the cab. She called the next day, and started to tell me about
energy releases she had been having in her body, warm flushes and muscle twitches. She
had also had a dream.
„I am in my house and I hear a tremendous wind approaching outside. I rush forward to

close the windows, but the wind smashes the windows open and bursts into my room. I am
terrified by its power.‟
I was partly horrified, partly intrigued. I had been experiencing a spiritual awakening the last
year, and she was the first woman I had slept with in that time. In its beginning stages, my
awakening had also had some dreams of powerful winds, accompanied by muscle twitches
and energetic releases. Apparently, the same phenomena can be awakened in another
through sexual contact with someone in whom it is awakened, and considering that we had
had extraordinary sex, and she had swallowed my sperm which was charged with the life
force, I was not unduly surprised. I had no idea if it would be permanent, or if the
awakening would subside. That night was the second last time I would ever see Mei. Still
lost in my romantic fantasy, I wrote poetry for her, called „Offering‟.
„An offering.
This is what I wish for these lines to be,
an offering.
My mind, my heart, drifts
to stars in the sky,
stars I cannot see beyond the

rainbow lights of the city.

Yet,
I know the stars are there,
offering to the night sky
the beginnings of light;
the breaking of the infinite darkness.
I know the stars burn bright,

offering to poets visions of far off love,
offering to mystics the still Voice of God,
to dreamers,
the unmet landscapes of distant horizons,
and to the bereaved,
the emptiness of dead, unreachable light.
A blonde foreigner
walks out an alley,
conspicuous in the black headed Chinese sea.
She stops, turns,
and, for a moment, I take the sight of her
into my being, holding her secretly in my mind.
She doesn‟t know she has given herself to a stranger,
Doesn‟t know, for a moment,
for a few unrecoverable seconds,
she has been the centre of my dream.
I am thankful to her,
thankful I can take from her,
receive her offering,
yet leave her untouched,
just like the stars after they have been possessed by the lovers.
The stars shine relentlessly in the sky,

reflecting the seeds of my wish.
I wish to stand, unrelenting,

hands outstretched,
in my offering.
My spirit desires,
that from these full dripping cupped open palms,
tired souls could drink,
and laughing souls could stare, struck by the love of their reflections.
I would like to remain full,
Thankful that others can receive my offering while
I remain, limitless, overflowing.
To stay limitless and overflowing,

I have to be drinking from my Source.
My Love, my God,
Has to burn within me,
My surrender fuelling the flames.
I am not always full.

I do not always offer.
Sometimes, I am incomplete, and
hunger, search, hunt for a
source of light, or gracious smile.
I ache for somebody else‟s cupped and overflowing hands
from which to drink,
in which to fill myself for a little while,
blinding the craving.
Some days, beauty is lost,
love is absent,
and I have forgotten the cold vacant stars.
Still,
I know the Simple Dream.
I know the Dream is to turn,
repeatedly with faith,
repeatedly away from despair,

up again towards the redemption of the Eternal Voice.
My offering is a reminder of this Simple Dream,

untainted, held cradled within these lines,
to call you;
calling you toward your rightful home of
beauty, love, sacredness and wonder.
An offering of light in the blue night darkness.
A calling star on which to set your course.
Perhaps,
you could feed from these silent uncomplaining words once,
twice,
or three thousand times.
It‟s up to you.
The dream cannot be emptied.
The light can never lose itself in the hungry darkness.
One week later, I said goodbye to Mei. Our love was something beautiful, and I wished to
end our time together with a celebration of light, not desperation and sadness driven by our
sense of loss. We kissed and played and stayed happy. All things change, all experiences are
impermanent. The day raced to its inevitable end, and it became time to go. We walked,
hugging and laughing to the taxi rank, and I let go of her. She turned around, radiant in her
white cotton shirt, smiled, laughed and jumped into a waiting taxi. It was the last I ever saw
of her. I walked to another taxi, stunned, glowing, sad.
After we said goodbye, reality started to kick in. I had spoken about non-attachment, about
appreciating the moment for what it was and not trying to hold onto it, about dying and
letting go so I could open fresh to the next experience. It was fine to talk about all those
ideals when I was in the presence of Mei or when I knew I could see her again, yet when
she left, I was unprepared for the reverberation within my mind and heart.

After one more email, did not stay in contact with me, despite several emails from me to
her. I don‟t know what the results of our encounter are, if any. I don‟t know what happened
from the great winds in her dream. This is my diary from that time.
Diary Entry: Somewhere in September.
It‟s been two weeks since I last spoke to her. She left Ohio, USA, for San Fransisco,
and I had left Taipei for Kaohsiung, Taiwan. She had sent me the following email that
morning, just as she was getting ready to leave. She had called the email „Pre-San Francisco
melody‟
“Hi Bruce,
how's your day going? Its 6:30 a.m. here, and I‟m still packing; this is one of my
least favorite activities in the world. I‟d rather be dragging an Eskimo through cold
wind and snow by sled. I haven't decided whether or not to bring my violin, yet; my
brother's friend Kurt came by yesterday to help me with last minute errands, and I
gave him a short violin lesson, which reminded me of how much I love the
instrument.
I spoke with a few of my friends who are living in San Francisco, yesterday. I
virtually had to force myself to remain interested; how they live their lives is now
inconceivable to me--filled with society gossip, ostentatious displays of wealth,
general falseness, etc...
But on to more positive things. A neighbor came by yesterday with a huge bag of
pears from his pear tree. They were soft and sweet and grainy. It was so beautiful
to receive.
Are you getting mentally/physically prepared for Kaoshiung?
I'm listening to Joanna Newsome right now. She just sang, 'your skin is something i
stir into my tea."

Your skin is something I stir into my tea,

Bre”
It‟s worried me, that I haven‟t heard anything since. She went, she disappeared, and I have
been left, wondering about her, wanting her. She did leave me with a book, „The Brothers
Karamazof‟, by Dostoefsky, a book exploring the redemption of the human soul through
suffering. Bittersweet, that love was my suffering, and love was to be my redemption. That‟s
just the way things are sometimes, as we are left with missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle
that will never be found. We don‟t always know all the answers to the questions that we
ask, and we are born to suffer. Being human is rife with incompletion. We are born to
experience things that we do not want, and we suffer when things we do not like are
present. And we experience suffering when the things we want are not there. I had a dream
the following night.
I am in a room. I hear screaming coming from the next room. Terrified, I hold up a Christian
cross for protection, pray for Christ to protect me and go and look. I see a powerful black
demon, the size and shape of a black bear, holding a beautiful young girl down and raping
her like an animal. The demon uses brute force to satisfy itself as she screams.
I awoke from the dream in the early hours of the morning, petrified, dripping in sweat, too
afraid to move in the smothering darkness, wheezing silent prayers. Slowly I started to
breathe and regain my composure; I realized that there wasn‟t any demon in the room and I
had been in a horrific dream. I knew from my dreamwork that most disturbing dream figures
are parts of my shadow, parts of myself misunderstood and labeled as demonic,
Immediately, and against every instinct, I tried to find the demon within myself, owning the
darkness, bringing the shadow into light of my soul. What were the qualities of the demon?
They were control and force and self-gratification, they were my control, force and self-
gratification. How did the world look from behind the demon‟s eyes? I wanted to control and
have Mei; a part of me desired to possess her so I could feel good, regardless of how she
felt. My ideal of unattachment was a horrific lie to myself. I was terrified of what it would
mean to control and possess someone; I had always advocated freedom and free choice,
and was very cautious about inserting my will and my demands on anyone else. I was
terrified of my own desire for control and possession and I had to face my truth. I was afraid
of power, perhaps my ideals of unattachment were an umbrella for my deep seated sense of

disempowerment. I had the qualities of control and dominance within me, and to avoid
feeling pain, I wanted to hold on to what I loved, even if it hurt the object of my love.
It‟s incredible what happens when I am attached to something, and when I can‟t have it.
The obsession called love, the infatuation to be whole, must be one of the strongest drivers
of a man‟s madness in this world, and the irony never escapes me, that the free beauty and
expansive blissful joy of lover so often rests on the dark egoic underbelly of obsession and
control, anger and hatred. What a remarkable world this is, that until liberation is found, it‟s
impossible to know the darkness without knowing the light, or to know the light without
somehow cradling the embryonic seeds of the hidden darkness within the recesses of being.
Is there any escape from this duality, from this play of opposites? So often I have reached in
my striving, or fallen towards my longing, and ended up snagging myself, tripping myself in
the tangled roots of the shadows of my soul that are strengthened as I try and grasp onto
the light. That was my story when Mei left. Unable to find timeless fullness in my lovers
arms, and unable even to keep the pipe dream of love alive through talking to her on the
telephone, the light and joy which I had tasted had been stripped away, leaving my exposed
underbelly of obsession and control. My delight was gone, and I suffered in her absence.
My desire for brute control was a difficult lesson and it was important to name and own my
shadow. Just recognizing that I had those qualities within me, seemed to lesson the
obsession with losing her. Still, I missed her deeply and it hurt; there was salt in my wounds.
A poem by Rumi came to mind.
“The human being is a guest house; every morning there is a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness.
Welcome and entertain them all, even if they are a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house, and empty the furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably; he may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice; meet them at the door laughing, and
invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, for each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

So today, as I share this story, I am thinking about suffering, and desire, and attachment,
and freedom. I am a little different, to most people, I think. I refuse to bow down to fear
and to pain, I refuse to hold back on the pursuit of my light just because it may fucking hurt,
and like the poet, I am learning to welcome in all the guests. If you notice how many people
spend their time, arranging their lives, and pursuing their goals, you will notice that their
habitual orientation is to avoid pain and suffering, and to find pleasure. There are an infinite
number of ways that people can dance between pleasure and pain, each individual on this
earth bringing remarkable creativity to their lives in this fascinating ritual. We move to find
things that pleasure us, and satisfy us, we plan into our futures preparing to defend
ourselves from sickness and discomfort (or at least have enough money to buy drugs to
numb ourselves), and we are never satisfied for more than a short while. As soon as we get
what we want, the ceaseless cycle of samsara, of grasping towards pleasure and contracting
against pain, of getting and gaining and spending and getting starts again, and we spend
our lives, hamster like, running inside the same old wheel, again and again, never able to
rest as we search for comfort, forever running in our wheel of suffering, the wheel never
coming to an end.
End of diary Entry.
Big Mind
October 2006. Mei was still an ever-present ghost in my thoughts, and the Holy Spirit
continued to weave its path of purification, relentlessly increasing the energy within my
body. As more energy came into my system from Spirit, it hit internal blockages, gradually
working through them and requiring me to surrender associated fears. This was not
something I imagined or was easy to do; it was a felt, ceaseless, difficult process. I was still

working as a conversation host at an English school, where I was expected to be chatty and
vibrant. However, the pain inside my head was inexorable, and it felt as though my skull was
too small to contain the relentless pressure. I continued to drink a lot of coffee as without
the caffeine I felt stoned and thick headed and was crippled with sloth-like responses. One
Thursday, I was feeling particularly bad with the pressure just grinding me down again. The
pressure, headaches and tension had continued unbroken for weeks, I had slept with it and
woken up with it and life had become an exhausting endurance test, a trial demanding
stamina and perseverance as I headed towards an unknown fate. There seemed to be
nothing that could be done to alleviate it, nothing to break this impasse of being forced to
contain more than I could hold.
I went to my class that Thursday, and started the class with a few students. It was a
tantalizingly seductive autumn day, and, most unusually, the students suggested that we
take advantage of the fine weather and go out and get a coffee in a sidewalk plaza at the
base of the building. Not wishing to risk the wrath of my manager, I told them that we had
to stay in the class. They repeated their request, and I insisted on staying, even though I
wanted to get out of the school and into the fresh air. A few minutes later, my manager
came in to do a surprise class observation. This was just the worst timing; due to the
extreme head pressure, I was functioning in slow motion, a machine with flat batteries, and
I gave a shockingly bad class. The manager summoned me to her office after I finished, and
with cold beadlike rodent eyes, told me I wasn‟t suitable for the job, and I had to leave. I
should have trusted the flow and gone for coffee with the students! Again, I was screwed,
down a pit I couldn‟t climb out. I had only been at the job for six weeks, was living at the
hostel, was still in financial trouble, and losing this job was the worst thing I needed. I
prayed harder than I had prayed before that night, desperate for some help. I had just lost
Mei. I had lost my job. I was in a foreign country. I had no money. To top it all off, my inner
world was a mess and energetically I was all over the place.
I easily fell into regret. I wished I hadn‟t gone on this forsaken adventure; I wished I had
never left my home town and instead had just stayed and graduated and got a job and lived
behind a white picket fence, living a life of numbing security and grey hairs at the age of 25.
This trip of enlightenment to the East, this trip of freedom, this trip of living by the heart and
following my intuition had lead me into an unforgiving minefield of danger and difficulty as I
journeyed further into the wilderness of my soul. Any book that says following your heart is

the way to go should come with a serious warning, that following your heart is often first the
way to go into deep trouble. According to the black preacher I had met at the hostel and
who had teased me with an afternoon of hope, Jesus was supposed to be giving me second
chances, and here He was taking away any bloody chances I had.
Luck, or grace, however, went my way, and maybe the angels were watching out for me.
Divine speculation is a bottomless hole, yet sometimes the hand of Grace is the only scent
that hangs in the air. I called my friend Wallace who worked at my old school teaching
English in Kaohsiung, and told him of my predicament. Fortunately, one of the teachers at
the school was leaving for a month vacation in November, and if I wanted, I could come
down and work in his place, and that may help me to get back into the organization. That
was the best option I had to get out of the stewpot I was simmering in. I accepted the offer
and left on the High Speed Rail for Kaohsiung a few days later, ready to start work in two
weeks time.
The month of November was fairly uneventful. I had some head pressure and tremors in my
body, but nothing too severe. The intensity of the awakening process seemed to have
subsided somewhat and I was once again functional. I wasn‟t optimum, but I could at least
put together a few coherent sentences and teach what was required. Aside from the
comforting routine of teaching, I continued to do a lot of swimming and regular exercise. My
one month stint came to an end at the end of November, and by that time, I had been
offered work back in Taipei with the same English school, and had enough money to live for
another two months. I had a six week break from December into January before work again,
just enough time for Spirit to really get stuck in and burn through me. The timing of the
process was incredible. Time and again in the coming two and a half years, the energy
would increase in intensity whenever I had a few days or a week break, and I came to dread
time off. Yet, judging from the perfect timing, I was becoming increasingly convinced that
behind the seemingly disconnected surfaces of the world I perceived, there was a
remarkable unified intelligence orchestrating everything and holding everything together.
A few days after I finished my November job, it was full moon. I was reminded of a message
I had had from a psychic in South Africa, that my energy cycles would be connected to the
moon, and ever since, my energetic process would peak to unpleasant levels with the

peaking lunar cycle, and I would begin to feel uncomfortably stoned and high. This cycle
was no different; the energy and the tension increased, slowly becoming ever more tiring
and hard to bear as the moon grew fuller. „Here we go again‟, I thought. Thankfully I wasn‟t
working and could allow myself to be a wreck. I thought back to all the parties I had
attended in the past, and how many times I had felt screwed up from the drugs. This
process reminded me of a long long drug hangover, full of pain and confusion, for which I
had had plenty of (the wrong kind of) training! I had a dream.
„I am trading in my old computer for a new one. The new one has a much more powerful
operating chip, and the new computer is much smaller.‟
I dreaded the computer dream. I had had it before and it always signaled a time of horrible
confusion. Something fundamental in the way that information was processed in my brain
was changing.
My dream frequency intensified. I regularly slept ten hours a night, and often again in the
afternoons. I had many dreams of fires burning across mountain ranges and rivers,
dramatically consuming whole countries, bringing death and destruction. I would wake up in
the night drenched in sweat, exhausted, my body sometimes burning hot, sometimes
freezing. I had extreme physical sensations. One night, I awoke with my chest violently
thumping. I was literally thrown a foot up and down off my bed, as if someone had their
hands on my torso and was ferociously shaking me. My heart felt as though it were a steel
ball smashing against the front and back of my rib cage trying to escape. There were
extraordinary moments of graciousness that lay scattered like diamonds among the
difficulty. I lay with my attention on my heart, and drifted into a state of meditation. An
image arose of an exquisite heart shaped gold-white ring in a background of blue black
velvet. The picture was astounding in its delicacy and the aura of beauty it emanated, and I
rested basked in an immaculate subtle radiance for hours, enjoying the afterglow. The
following morning seemed strangely beautiful, as though a weightless perfume was hanging
in the air leaving just the finest scent of the divine scattered over the tables and the food
and the streets. The beauty was short lived in comparison to the difficulty, a single ray of
sunlight daringly slicing bruised clouds.

Day after day, hour after hour, I was plunged into repeated states of despair, frustration and
futility. My dreams showed endless construction, recurring maintenance and desperate
searching for motor vehicles, and many images of death, sometimes visions of truckloads of
trains carrying thousands of dead bodies. I committed to doing exercise training most days,
even though every fiber in my body wanted to curl up and die. Day after day I put on my
running shorts or my swimming costume, and ground through my one hour exercise
program. I sensed the tiredness wasn‟t always muscular, but it was difficult to tell the
difference as my entire being seemed exhausted to the soul, and I felt that having a strong
body and stamina was critical to surviving what was happening. I had to keep working with
the changes that were occurring. I would go deeper and deeper into the feeling of anxiety
and terror, and faced many dark days of suicidal thoughts, of painful alienation and
loneliness, repeatedly praying to God and surrendering. I held within me the self-image of
an explorer, and adventurer, going to distant lands from which he didn‟t know if there was
any return, and guessed that adventures wouldn‟t be any fun if the outcome was certain. I
wrote and wrote in my journals and my computer, letting out my thoughts, trying to
understand what was happening, many times reaching deep into my past, into my
childhood. Memories from the past, of surfing, sport, family, playing with the dogs, seeing
my father angry, laughing with girls, surfaced, each one holding a key to my soul. I was
waiting for this to pass, yet there seemed like no other side.
After about three weeks of grinding my way through each day, I was stuck in a loop of
terror for my future. I didn‟t know how much deeper into my suffering I could go or how
much longer I could bear this. What was going to happen to me? What would become of
me? Every dream was futile, every action was futile. I felt desperate to do something.
Anything, writing a book, getting a new job, leaving Taiwan, anything to get out of this cycle
of feeling useless and incapable and facing a hopeless future. I just refused to accept a life
of failure. The trembling and shaking in my body continued. The headaches were relentless.
I pushed through round after round of exercise, bringing awareness again and again to my
state. I passed out almost every afternoon. I had finally grasped that meditation was simply
paying attention to my inner and outer experience, and I was paying attention to the pain. I
had two dreams.

„There are black storm clouds on the horizon. The sky is almost black. I am way out in the
fields trying to go somewhere. I am desperately looking for shelter but there is no where to
hide, and too far to make it back home. The storm is hideous.‟
„I am looking at my body. I have four legs, four arms, two sets of genitals, double of
everything. The bodies are trying to merge, and I don‟t know how to move all these
different appendages. I feel very disturbed by my abnormality.‟
Things got worse the next day. I slept sixteen hours. The despair was oppressive; I think I
was too exhausted to make the effort to commit suicide. Finally, I sat in the living room of
Wallace‟s apartment with a big jug of water next to me, and pulled out a facilitated process
called Big Mind by an American Zen Teacher, Genpo Roshi, designed to introduce the
student to the true nature of the Self. I had done the process twice before and I had been
one of the 1% of participants for which it didn‟t seem to work. In the process, Roshi helps
you recognize different parts of the ego-mind, and after first identifying with them, they
could then be let go, creating space in which the enlightened mind could then be
recognized. Due to my recent experiences, I was becoming far too intimately acquainted
with all my neurotic mind states. The spiritual process in the last few months had forcefully
bought many of the repressed and alienated parts of myself into my awareness, and I had
had no choice but to painfully confront each and every one of them with unflinching
awareness before they could be released. Awakening had been a giant lottery ticket, and the
grand prize was an unpleasant tour of my depths, like being unwillingly shoved onto the
scene of a horror movie that had become real. I was desperate for something to break this
impasse and anxious to go forward; several weeks of brutal depression and suicidal
thoughts, confusion and exhaustion had taken the wind out of my sails. I was going to give
this process on the DVD all I had, even though I was rebelling against doing any further
inner work.
I sat on the sofa and followed the process, shifting my position and talking along as
instructed, imagining I was in a room sitting on a chair with the other thirty participants.
When the teacher led the process into the enlightened mind, something astonishing
happened. My mind became confused, unable to process what was happening within its
known limitations of boundaries and conditions. I felt this as an inner twisting, an inner
attempt to make sense of what was going on. My limited egoic mind, my mind of memories,

boundaries and certainty, my mind of time and space, could not grasp the unlimited nature
of the true Self, the conditioned ego could not grasp the unconditioned and the unknowable.
I felt my mind trying to grapple this, trying to make sense and order and take control. My
thoughts flashed back to the dream I had had one night after being with Donna, and I
realized I had experienced this before, I had experienced trying to hold something bigger
than my current boundaries would allow, and to experience that freedom, my current
boundaries had to be destroyed.
I am on a beach. The sand is gold. The blue sea stretches before me, flat to the horizon.
The sky has a few clouds, but is golden red, the color of sunset. The sky and the sea meet
at the horizon. They are coming together. The land and the sea are coming together; the
land and the sky seem to merge. I cannot hold all this. There is something that holds all this,
that is bigger than all this. But to say there is something would be to say that there is
something other. There is no other. I am in it. It is an experience. Infinite. But to say infinite
would be to say not finite. All is contained. It contains me. No thought is big enough to know
it, no emotion wide enough to hold it. I know it though. It holds the sky. It holds the land
and the sea. I know my limitedness. I feel my insignificance. It is bigger than could ever be
imagined. I stand on the horizon. To know it would be to explode. I am afraid. Perhaps I am
not ready.
I finally recognized what I had experienced in that dream; I had been shown Truth, yet
hadn‟t recognized the importance of the experience and I had been too afraid to take what
had been offered. This time, sitting in this room on a sofa in Taiwan, I couldn‟t resist any
longer and I recognized the immensity of what I was experiencing. I felt an inner wrenching
sensation as the thinking mind tried to do the impossible, as if my brain were a wet rag and
the ends were being twisted in opposing directions to squeeze the water out. Something
shifted, and I was released.
It‟s not possible to describe the first hammering recognition of the enlightened mind in
words. Words are inherently limited and arise within our awareness, yet they are the only
thing I have with which to describe what happened. I can only describe my response. I sat
there, stunned and in shock, as if I had been in a tremendous accident and had no way to
cope. Every thought was irrelevant. The me I knew could not hold this, and the me I knew

was gone. I had everything I ever needed, and I could never be lacking or empty or be
anything but free. I felt a vast sense of freedom, an unlimited spaciousness, and whatever
feeling or sensation or thought was arising, was allowed to come and go, to be liberated,
within that spaciousness. There was nothing specific to experience, rather, no experience,
good or bad, could not be held and contained and released. I wept and laughed and was
shattered and was full. The immensity of this realization stunned me into tears, and I sat,
just sat, on the sofa, not moving, not having a clue what to do now. There was no
instruction manual for the newly enlightened, no set of printed guidelines on what to do
next. I was radically on my own, in uncharterable space. Nothing was outside of me.
Nothing was separate, and everything that I had ever longed for was finally within me.
Every search had been in vain as there was nothing that I didn‟t have already and there had
been nowhere to go and the true I, my true Self, had always been there, to close to
recognize, to simple to believe, to profound to fathom, to wonderful to accommodate. The
terror of being separate and incomplete was gone, and finally, I was whole. There was
nowhere to go and nowhere to turn. I sat there like a fish frozen with its mouth open. It was
too much; I was exhausted. I went and lay down and passed out.
I awoke a few hours later, around 7 pm, fatigued to the bone. I managed to get up and eat
something. I tried some reading but the tiredness was too much. I went to sleep around 9
pm. I was woken at 3 am with a dream.
I have been racing to finish a journey to another town. The last stretch of the journey is an
exhausting steep climb up a hill, which I almost don‟t have the strength to make. On top of
the hill I meet an average looking woman, whom I feel I have known for many years and
has the comfortable familiarity of an old friend. We get married and enter the town together.
Something had completed, unity with a part of my being that had always been there had
been reached. I slept again and awoke a few hours later. I felt complete and balanced,
although still tired. I went for a walk outside to a nearby park, took my shoes off and walked
on the damp grass of the field. I walked for at least an hour, just feeling the ground, sensing
the wind, touching rocks, watching the clouds retired in the sky. I was at ease, at peace,
finally. I breathed and breathed sighs of relief, gasping, yawning repeatedly, trying to get
oxygen into my exhausted nervous system. I just felt; there was little to think, little to do
but to rest in relief. I walked to a café and sat down at the wooden table under the shade of

some old trees with white flowers, and ordered some green tea. The beauty of creation
shone. I stared at the light and the flowers and the people and drank my tea, and started to
weep soft tears. I was home. I was finally home; after years of searching, years of
desperate hungering for a place where I could be embedded in wholeness, here I was,
sitting under the trees in a foreign land, dog-tired, alone, listening to a language I could
barely understand, and for the first time, ironically as far away from my original home as I
could imagine, I was home. Home was not somewhere, or someplace. Home was my soul,
and I had finally arrived. What was needed now was to make home a permanent place, to
integrate this realization.
Natural Goodness
I spent a blessed Christmas that year in 2006 with friends. My first real taste of
enlightenment had come on 22 December, and my strength was returning day by day. By
Christmas, I was feeling joyful and relaxed. My friend George had prepared some roast
chickens and hams and vegetables and we were going to have a traditional Christmas dinner
feast. I was feeling grateful that the transformation had happened before Christmas, and
that I could be in a joyous spirit, feeling connected to the Christmas theme of new birth, of
new beginnings, of the entry of a new consciousness into the earth, into my body. On
Christmas morning, I rode the bus to George‟s house, sitting on the chair as the old Chinese
bus vibrated and rumbled along, violently spewing clouds of diesel smoke behind it. I wasn‟t
thinking too much, just looking out the window, when Grace descended.
It was there and then I felt Loved for the first time. I had been searching for love for so
many years, and had lost love or been frustrated in love so many times. I remember when I
had been in love and obsessed with Helen, I had perversely enjoyed the suffering, I had
enjoyed the fact that I felt so intensely that I knew I was burning with the life force. It
hadn‟t mattered if I was feeling pleasure or pain; what had mattered was that I was feeling
and I was on the edge, and I had known I was alive because I had felt. In spite of my
history of pain attached to love, in spite of the fact that my experience of human love was

always spattered with the mud of torment, I had always hungered and reached for it,
starved for love. I had to keep believing it and reaching for it; there was no choice, because
the only other choice was to become cold and brittle and slowly die. The funny thing was,
that the more I reached for it, the more it eluded me. I chose to reach for it despite my
times past, and I committed to keep on reaching for love until I finally got it, never letting
the call of Eros and Agape be silenced in my soul. That had always been my search and
everything else, achievement, money, fashion, travel, or my self centered achievements,
were just a desperate grasping for love and the approval of myself and others. I don‟t think I
had had ever really felt worthy of love. I had always been taught to be grateful, as if
somehow I didn‟t deserve it. I was never just ok. Never. I had been taught to be a sinner,
born into sin, unable to escape sin, impure. Finally, today, the conditions of love were
dropped and I was worthy.
The bus shook its own little earthquakes as it headed towards George‟s house. For the first
time, I felt Loved without condition, and it was what I had always secretly and unknowingly
ached for. This wasn‟t someone telling me that this was how things were, some new age
prophet spewing out ideology that „love is all there is‟. I realized this, I realized that I had
always, always been loved and had been bathed in divine love, a love hidden by the thinnest
of veils. I had always been supported, nurtured and given life by Love, and Love had always
called for me, patiently waiting for me to stop searching and to turn back, relaxing into what
had always been there. Another search was over. This was Love without another, Love
without an opposite, Love without an object. I was Love and Love was me and Love was
everywhere. This was a love that renewed, a love that gave life, a love that was the source
and the home of all things. Most important, I knew, without doubt, I was a beloved child of
God. I, a prodigal son, a bright young graduate who had wandered in a foreign land drinking
and womanizing and seeking God through pleasure, was accepted with all my foibles, my
infidelity, my moles, my hedonism, my blackheads and skew bottom teeth, my weakness for
fast food and my tendencies towards hypocrisy, and I could accept that I was accepted
home. My eyes misted with gratitude and I wept.
I looked out the window at the shifting experience before me. I saw people struggling,
beautiful women, old men, trashcans, skin diseased dogs, glinting skyscrapers. I saw my
distorted reflection obesely staring back at me from the bus driver‟s mirror. I saw modeling
billboards with men with ripped six packs in Calvin Klein clothing. God had made all this, and

it was all good. Sewn into the fabric of everything was a natural goodness, our natural
birthright, and behind the shadows of suffering, paradoxically, a light always shone and
powered and loved the world, loved me, a light that had called me home.
It was a blessed day. The dinner at George‟s was splendid, the wine adding an extra shine
to the presence of Grace. The light shimmered, the softest golden dust seemed to illuminate
the air and I could not tell if I was beautiful or the world was beautiful, and no matter how
or where I looked or felt this dust, there was no edge to it, there was no boundary, it was
simply all pervasive, soft, soft, radiant, sparkling love without another, simply revealing itself
in the absence of searching. Throughout the day I repeatedly felt the presence of love upon
me, and throughout the day I softly wept and gave thanks, blaming my red eyes on the
alcohol. We laughed a lot, and things were simple and good.
Unconditional Self Responsibility
Mid January 2007. I sat staring out the window of the High Speed Train as it cleaved its way
through the air back to Taipei, where I was returning to take up work that had been offered.
Who was not enlightened? Who was not loved? What was going to happen next?
I didn‟t yet have enough money for an apartment, so I figured I would stay in Taipei Hostel
for a few months until I was financially stable. The hostel was near the school, cheap, had
all the amenities that I needed, and would do for now. I rode the elevator up to the Hostel,
and on arrival, looked at the international soup of travelers sitting in the lounge. Home
sweet home, as they say! I checked my luggage into my locker, and headed to my bunk
bed, which I again shared in a room with twelve other people.
The moon was starting to wax and I was beginning to feel that horrible pressure in my head
as the spiritual energy tried to move through my body and encountered inner blockages.
The pressure was accompanied by the familiar tension in my shoulders, which slowly started
to increase in its grinding, exhausting, relentless intensity. I inwardly groaned, as this
tedious process could go on for weeks until the inner blockages were resolved, unseen fears
about life were faced, and healing occurred. I would have liked to have been able to
consciously control the process, but the blocks were unconscious, and the source of the

block had to come into conscious awareness before being resolved. All the while, my
muscles would clamp up with a force equal or greater to the new energy flow, and the inner
fight would slowly exhaust me. I was committed to drive my way through this process. I had
committed to stay positive and focused, which was maybe a mistake, as my inner being was
being reconfigured and perhaps a gentler approach of relaxation and surrender would have
been better. Still, there was no manual that came with the awakening process, no „Idiots
Guide to Awakening‟, and I was trying to figure this thing out as it ran its course.
The inner tension followed a pattern that was going to become unwelcomingly familiar in the
coming year and a half. My first enlightenment experience, of moving through difficult and
exhausting times of depression and doubt and panic under immense inner pressure,
surrendering from fatigue, and then experiencing relief and liberation in the enlightened
mind as the fear came into awareness and blocks were cleared, would happen relentlessly
and repeatedly for the next two years. Each cycle, I became increasingly worried and
concerned about life. I become increasingly frustrated with people and things around me. In
the hostel, I would become frustrated with the garlic chewing Greeks, the smoking
Japanese, the temperature of the room, the smelling stinky feet of the British, and the
coarse impoliteness of the Chinese. The hostel was a simmering nexus of so many types of
people that anyone staying there was presented with a wide range of undesirable human
qualities every day. There was no escaping, and all the residents became fodder for every
type of projection I may have had.
I had no control of anything. I couldn‟t tell the other residents to clean up or change their
behavior, although lord alone knows some of them needed to hear it. Barring crimes like
stealing and running naked into the girl‟s room, anything went, ands foul body odor seemed
to be the order of the day. The only space I had control over was my bed and the tiny
curtain that I pulled in front of it. The only thing I had control over was myself, and even
that was in serious doubt as the inner journey unfolded. Thankfully I knew how to work with
my shadow and how to recognize projections and own them. Time and again, I explored my
boundaries of resistance and avoidance and frustration to the roots of my fear, as I found
within myself and owned the good and bad qualities of the people around me. I became that
stinky Brit, the loud drinking American, the chain smoking Japanese man. I was the
hypochondriac fat woman wearing a t-shirt with no bra underneath. I was the god-forsaken
face of humanity. I gave up control and worked exhaustively with my inner world, finding

balance again and again, writing, exploring my past, breathing air into the hidden and
unwanted parts of my soul. Looking back, I am profoundly grateful for that hostel. Being
stuck with a wide range of people I didn‟t like for six months, armed with an understanding
of shadow work, with no real privacy, holds the potential for explosive growth. I highly
recommend it. I highly recommend going into bizarrre environments that are challenging,
and staying there for a while, and just looking in the mirror. That‟s how I really got to know
myself. I owned absolutely everything arising within my experience and I took responsibility
for my reactions, because it was my reactions to the world and the boundaries that I
created, and often not the world itself, that caused suffering. Suffering can be defined as
resistance plus pain, so eliminate resistance to what is happening, and much of your
suffering is eliminated. The key is to see and feel the world as a mirror, and become the
reflection. I am That. Unconditional self-responsibility. It started to make a man out of me.
Meanwhile, as my energy centers were opening up I was firing like a loose cannon. One of
the first areas to open was my sexuality. After a week of tension many of my beliefs about
sexuality came into awareness, and I felt a buzzing and shifting in my lower abdomen. I
went to a club, and all I saw was sexual energy, as though I was looking through glasses
that were made of sexual lenses. I saw the masculine and the feminine moving, dancing,
attracting and flowing with each other, the energy moving, flowing, between the men and
the women, some people radiating it out, others keeping it in. I could literally see this, I
could see a hidden world I hadn‟t seen before, and most of the patrons were unconscious
players in this beautiful dance. Strange things happened. Women at the hostel gathered
around me like bees around honey. Several times, they came to me and asked to climb into
bed with me. It was a selfish dream come true, women throwing themselves at me,
sometimes pleading me to take them. I had found my Mojo, I became a predator, a hunter.
I went out to bars and clubs and women hit on me. I could feel those who were sexually
interested; just standing near them, my lower abdomen would start buzzing and tingling,
and I knew how they felt. This was not lust or getting an erection, it was a sensing of who
was feeling sexual, and I could act on that with confidence. In coffee shops, in
supermarkets, at school, women were drawn to me and spoke to me. My sexuality was
stripped to its bare essentials. Gone were the ideas about intimacy, about commitment,
about sharing and caring. My conservative upbringing and its loaded judgments were cast

out the righteous stained glass windows, and I was left with the raw truth of what it means
to hunt and fuck. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed immersion in the purity of sexuality, I enjoyed my
masculinity. I felt connected to men of old, to cavemen, to animals, to uncivilized man.
There was a beauty in raw fucking; there was a beauty that shone. Not a love, but a pristine
beauty of liberation as I dove deeply into orgasmic freedom and honored the unconditioned
drive for creation of new life. I wrote a short book at the time, called 21 st Century Hunter,
about my exploits. I was honorable; I didn‟t lie or force of manipulate anyone, I used
protection, and all my partners were willing and seemed to enjoy it. I wrote that book
sitting on my bed in that room with twelve other beds. That was when I took ultimate
responsibility, I stopped complaining about my environment (and there was a hell of a lot to
complain about), I owned the mirror, and I chose to do something, I wrote a book about my
journey as a liberated 21st century cave man. If you wait till conditions are perfect, nothing
ever happens. Responsibility means you stop complaining, and you do something with what
you have got. You stop blaming the world and you take some action. In my worst
circumstance with no money and privacy and surrounded by strangers and noise and no
desk, I did something I had always wanted to do. I became a loving beast of a man and had
loads of unconditioned sex and I wrote a book. Some of the women were remarkable. There
was Cat Woman, who lived in a small apartment with six cats and who howled when she
came. There was a Japanese Buddhist, receptive and passive. A Canadian dentist, strong
and masculine and built like a bear to survive the winter. An American model swearing that
she was really a good girl and saying she never did this, yet repeatedly asking me to fuck
her more. It was funny and it didn‟t matter. For the first time, I was truly sexually free, and
the world was my playground. I had abandoned my ideas that I needed to be rich, or look a
certain way, or drive a fast car. The woman I dated didn‟t seem to mind that I lived in a
hostel; some of them were rich and beautiful. They just wanted to have sex with me.
The intensity of those couple of weeks were not sustainable. I was high and wild and the
world was a place of sensual bliss and laughter. The high began to wear off. The sexual
drive began to get integrated into my being, and I started to return to normal, I started to
wish for sex as a part of a higher love. As the high wore off, the head pressure started again
and the gradual, monotonous, rock scraping tension came back to my back and shoulders.
Life was a rollercoaster ride. I hated going back down and wished I could stay high. It felt
like one extended drug addiction; I would hit euphoria and then came the comedown, and I

would push through the gritty terrain to the next high. Only difference was, Spirit was the
drug.
Tonglen
June 2007. I turned 35 that month, apparently the year that defines the end of youth and
the beginning of middle age. Great, I was middle aged, still homeless, traveling and without
a career, and my innards getting ripped apart by God. Time waits for no one. It was six
months since my first enlightened recognition and experience of being loved by creation,
and this process of tension, depression, unblocking and euphoric highs seemed never
ending, and as each wave of healing passed, it was seldom less than a day before another
block got hit and a new round started to build. I had a particular dream that repeated itself
many times through the transformation process.
”A snake, a deadly poisonous viper, appears. I try to club it to death but I can‟t kill it, and it
attacks me and bites me. It‟s a horrid thing. I am rushed to the hospital.”
I hated those vicious snake dreams as they always heralded a painful descent back into my
inner hell. I knew though that the healing and transformation was important, and I would
visualize my dreams upon waking imagining that I was allowing the snake to bite me; at
least I could be a willing participant in the process.
I would be plunged into states of despair and powerlessness. I would have flashbacks of odd
memories from the past. My deepest primal fears and anxieties began to surface, the fear
of being alone, of being abandoned, of being hurt or injured, or being rejected and
ashamed. As the difficult feelings emerged, I had to keep going into them, I had to stop
turning away from myself and open to my inner experience, without condition, with love.
The moment of turning away, of rejecting an inner experience, no matter how unpleasant it
may seem, is the birth of suffering, and it was suffering that I was committed to ending. I
had to make friends with myself being my most terrified and most afraid, and somehow not
turn away from that horror, for lying on the other side of the darkest moments lay freedom.

I felt a ferocious urge to contract and to turn away from the darkness, yet I had to stop that
instinctive movement and keep turning into the storm, facing it without turning away,
finding that each storm is misunderstood light.
Finally I started to use my pain and suffering and fear and doubt to connect to humanity. It
wasn‟t just my fear, it was mankind‟s fear. It wasn‟t just my despair, it was mankind‟s
despair. I connected to a Tibetan Buddhist practice called Tonglen, where the pain of
another is invited into my heart, felt to be real, released and a wave of infinite love is sent
back to the imagined other. An outline of the process is in the appendix.
I found this practice tremendously powerful. It gave me the strength to feel, without turning
away from, my own suffering. It helped me to give love to myself and to find love within
me. It connected me to humanity. I would usually use my own pain or issues as a
connection to all people who had the same issue. The practice began to slowly dissolve the
barriers between myself and others, exchanging myself for the others, causing me to
become others, dissolving the sense of separation that is the root cause of sin and suffering.
Spiritual practice became about unconditional opening, about relaxing the boundaries that
exist within, and as the boundaries were dropped, greater and greater freedom arose.
When I went to work, I looked at the beggars and cripples sitting on the sidewalks asking
for money, or lying hung over with bloated faces from alcoholism. I had a fear of being like
that, a fear of being homeless and destitute, of failing and being controlled by my
addictions. I had always felt deeply uncomfortable being faced with the homeless. My dread
of that fate would make me turn away from them or ignore them as their presence
magnified my deep inner scarcity, or else I would give them some money driven by guilt or a
desire to alleviate my own discomfort. I had always been conflicted about giving; I wanted
to give, I wanted to help yet I was also chained by my inner tension of not having enough
for myself. No longer would I turn away from them. No longer would I turn away, as turning
away from them was nothing less that turning away from myself. I was learning that turning
away was suffering, and I was committed to ending suffering, to ending the inner recoil of
resistance that gives birth to suffering. I let whatever fears and discomfort be there as I
walked past, just staying present, not judging, not condemning.

I had searched for Love so many times. There had been Mei and Donna and Maria. I had felt
the Love of Spirit as a presence, as a light that had always patiently waited hidden, waiting
for me to turn towards it. Here, on the streets of Taipei and in the practice of Tonglen, I
strengthened my connection to the presence within me. When I visualized myself, in all my
difficulty, loneliness, craving and separation, I breathed in my hurt and breathed out love
from my heart towards my image. Even though I didn‟t always feel I it, I began to live my
fullness, I began to live my unconditional heart of compassion, holding myself in supportive
embrace, being the wholeness and the fullness that I had always desired, growing in
strength, letting go of my need for the world. Spirit, Love, was categorically within me, and
my assurance in that was growing. I wept many times for my difficulty, and I wept equally
for the homeless and the outcasts in their dirty clothes who I walked past every day. I was
grateful, grateful that I could awaken, grateful that I was being blessed with the beginning
realizations of those deep human drives to be whole and know love and be free. I saw such
hopelessness in the situations of the destitute and the homeless; if they were ever to
struggle to find their happiness, there would be immense negative conditioning to be
overcome, vast healing to endure. My heart extended to all other people on our planet
sharing this human experience. Even if their lives were happy and meaningful, if they ever
wanted to realize absolute freedom, then they would also have an immense struggle to find
their liberation as they sought to break the inner bonds of pain and pleasure that held them.
I breathed in my fear, and breathed out Love. The walls I held around myself, insulating
myself from the world, were dissolving. I breathed in their fear, and breathed out Love. I
was no longer afraid to be afraid; I could hold fear, I could hold pain and suffering, and I
could begin, breath by breath, to transform it. My healing was deep and my fear not always
rational or able to be understood; it was often just cold blinding terror. Still, I had faith and
confidence in a power, in a love far greater than me, and I was living that power. The
homeless became my brothers, my sisters, the mirrors to my broken soul, my soul
indifferent clothes, and I was grateful to them.
Discipline and Faith

January 2008. A fire of transformation had been ignited within me that could not be put out.
I was ill-prepared for what happening, and for the perserverance and strength it was
demanding from me. My grandiose sense of self-efficacy had served me well to get myself
into this grueling transformative mess, and once inside, I had no choice but to go forward
through the darkness, seeking for the lights on the other side.
I wanted to turn back many times, and as each difficult wave of purification moved through
me, my enlightened realization and my inner home became a memory as I was thrown back
into new fears and terrors. I must have been through 15 or 16 continuous and grueling
waves of healing by this point and I was tired of it. I wanted to forget this journey of
enlightenment, to give up this heavenly boxing match between fear and love I was trapped
in, and return to safety. I wanted a return to the womb, to my profession, to the mountains
of South Africa, to happily smoking pot and watching movies and playing pool without a care
in the world. There was no way I could erase the memory of the last eight years though. I
knew my early life had been a dream, and if I thought carefully, I had been dissatisfied with
that dream. I had had drug and alcohol problems. No girlfriends had stuck around, and the
ones I had loved, hadn‟t loved me. I had yearned for divine success. I had yearned to
explore the world and to explore God. I had hungered to adventure into the unknown and
hungered find my light. I had wanted to be a hero and an adventurer, and that‟s what I had
got. I had got a challenge all right, and now I was stuck with the damn thing.
I could only go forwards. There was no off switch I could hit that would turn off the spiritual
fire. Waves of energy connected to the lunar cycles continued to rise within me. I awoke
with tension, I worked with tension, and I slept with tension. Sometimes I wanted nothing
but to avoid everything, and I drank on the weekends to escape the grind and get some
temporary relief. Vodka and RedBull and turned me into a hungry prowling wolf in the early
morning bars. I had no idea how much was hidden in my unconscious, and each time I
thought the dark nights were finished until Spirit nailed me again, slamming me back into
my dungeons.
The process took tremendous work, and I was called to write and write, about my mom, my
dad, my sisters, my past, my friends. I was called to relentlessly, again and again, overcome
instinctive avoidance and confront and befriend my shadow. As the healing unfolded, parts

of my being were set free. I learnt that there is so much within us that desires the light;
every fiber, every cell, every memory in our bodies desires light and love and union with the
divine, yet our conditioning, our upbringing and development, has taught us to be unloved
fractions of our potential, and we need, with the grace and healing hand of God, to set
ourselves free. We need to desire unqualified freedom for this to occur, we need to desire
health. I wrote about the tortured parts of my being that were set free into the light, as one
of the keys to my liberation was bringing my captive and forgotten past back into the light of
consciousness, to be healthily understood with adult awareness. A news article about an
Austrian man who intentionally kept his daughter in a cellar for 22 years made headlines and
inspired this poem. I realized in this healing process that I as an individual am no different. I
have locked away parts of myself, causing relentless pain, except I did this unintentionally as
a result of much my childhood conditioning. These parts cry for freedom, yet even though
their cries for freedom were felt as inward suffering, my being still, for reasons of safety and
reasons of stability, resisted change and healing. Overcoming the natural resistance to
change required a force greater than the force of resistance, and for that I was blessed with
the kundalini. My captives were being released and I was being opened into the light.
Big sky sunset, all golden.

I am exhausted from turning away.
Exhausted.
From turning away from myself.
Oh, if you were watching from the outside,

You would think I was normal.
A 35 year old man, foreign looking, yet to have his 2.6 children,
Riding a train,
Writing who knows what in his book.
You could not see how I have always been turning away.
It‟s not your fault, you see.
You could not see, how, walking to work,
Eating, sleeping, stuttering, love making,
I have turned away and barricaded myself in.

If, by magic,
You could travel through the air across the room,
And slit open the back of my skull
And climb into the middle of my brain, watching my thoughts
(being caressed by my feelings)
You would begin to be haunted and repulsed by
My silent, subtle
Self inflicted Brutality.
News flash!
“An Austrian man keeps his daughter captive in a cellar for 22 years, rapes her repeatedly,
and has seven children through her.”
The world is rightfully horrified.

We justly scream outrage at this sick sick man.
Yet, you are not horrified at me,
Hovering silently inside my head that you so secretly split open.
Watching me?
(Did you know that you can hover within yourself too?)
You are not horrified,

When you see how long I have pushed myself away
And held myself down.
Everytime I thrust to reach a goal to save myself,
Everytime I pushed to be something I was not,
Everytime I strove to get something and have something and satisfy myself through my
desire,
Everytime I thought I had to be better or different or something I was not,
I silently fought myself.
I silently, relentlessly, pushed myself down,
Keeping my unwanted self captive in my tortured darkness
Crushing my soul,
giving birth to slow madness upon slow madness.

Love.
Love has penetrated.
Love has awakened.
I got too sick; I needed healing.
A voice in my soul called out to Love,
And Love answered.
Silent, unwavering,
Love answered.
As you hover inside the slit in my skull,

you see.
I see.
You and I, one, not two,
We see together,
My violent oppression,
My inner savagery.
We are Love seeing.

We are Love, liberating,
ending this insanity.
A light shines into the darkness.
Torture cannot continue in the light.
The dark veil is lifted; the cellars opened
And painfully, screaming in delight, fearfully, ecstatically,
The captives (my disowned and dishonored selves that were impossible to kill)
Crawl into sunshine.
Like I said, the first few rounds of release were bearable. By the time I got to round 12, or
14, over two years in with barely a day‟s respite, I had lost count and I was also losing my
sense of humor about the process. I spent day after day in no man‟s land, praying for a
break which never seemed to come. I really had no idea how much of myself was hidden
away. I went into dark night after dark night, and each time, the despair seemed to get

worse. In the dark nights I was the ultimate victim, a man with no power, no hope and
abandoned by life, repeatedly dying to the self I once knew and the self which had served
me so long. The most difficult thing was that the process never ended, never ceased, never
relented and I could not hope for an end. My life was a commitment to slogging through
muddy soul terrain.
Dark night diary entry. May 2008.
“After all this. After this roller coaster journey through my little heavens and my little hells,
after this flight into the heart of Love, I am left stranded. I feel like a beached whale that
had lost its way and found itself distressed and flapping on the sand, abandoned by the sea
that supported it. I had another of those bastard snake bite dreams a few weeks ago,
setting off weeks of grinding tension.
Slowly my resolve weakens. I feel I have to make it through this process. I gotto get
through before I make any big life decisions. I pray every day, but the angels and Christ do
not answer. I am met with silence, with celestial deafness. I wonder why God does not
respond in a way that I can hear and understand. I am tired of making fucking excuses as to
why I don‟t hear the response of heaven. It‟s always been my fault I can‟t hear. It‟s always
been me who takes the blame, who takes the rap, and bears the guilt of failure. No more.
No more. I shouted at God on the street last night. I shouted at the empty silence, and I
demanded, pleaded, requested an answer. Why do you not respond? What is the use of
prayer if I cannot hear your answer?
Abandoned. I feel abandoned. I pray to my friend and my friend does not answer. What
friendship is this? I feel a morbid resignation that all has been in vain. God was, God is, a
fantasy, a dream that I fell in love with, and a dream that has failed. I am left with
alienation. Did I imagine my liberation, my love, my fullness, my radiance? I have given my
life to reach God. The relentless pulsing in my head continues as I write this. There is no
escape. None.
I see beggars on the street. A lot are amputees. The reality is, life gets hard, life can hurt,
life can fail. I am not excused that possibility. I don‟t know if I am capable of dealing with

that. Suicide is an option. I would commit suicide if it weren‟t for my family. Why do people
continue to live without purpose?
I reached my end last night. I reached it again this morning. Everything has failed. I don‟t
know. I can‟t see. God is absent. I want to end it.” End of entry.
And then, after being consumed by despair and really giving up and surrendering out of
sheer hopelessness, release would always happen. I was afraid to breathe in the stillness of
my peace, knowing that the shit would most likely start again in a few days. The darkness
was so convincing every time, and even though I had been through the process many times,
every time I went back in there it was as real as before. I couldn‟t rationally talk my way out
of it; I had to experience the fear and the failure and the futility before being freed from it.
I had to have faith in Spirit. I had to keep on pushing into the darkness. My discipline was to
train and work out and do yoga 6 days a week, most often alone. My workouts were my
release, and as I trained, I used practices that worked with my inner world of thoughts and
feelings, as well as the physical practices that worked my body. When I least felt like it, I
hauled myself to the gym and pushed through meaningless tension filled workouts. I
couldn‟t meditate or study; my brain couldn‟t handle any stimulation without my headache
intensifying. Years into the process, I was still pushing through. The rest of my life was on
hold. Time was ticking by. I was alone and there was no one to pat me on the back. I had
given up the need to be understood, because no one had any idea what I was going
through. That was a tough one; the need to talk to someone and to share with someone. I
had to be a light to myself that shone through the darkness; I couldn‟t depend on anyone
but myself to go through this. No one could do the journey for me. I had to face my demons
and my death wishes and go forwards.
I kept on pushing my limits. My self created challenges were physical; best times, higher
weights, better concentration. I knew that internally I was being pushed through thresholds
and limits as my old ways of making meaning of the world were broken down, and that I
could meet the process by going through other limits in my body. Funny thing is, that when
I was in the deepest despair and sometimes totally exhausted by the tension, I would drag
myself to the gym and push through the workout with as much awareness as possible. I

would make a decision to put energy into the workout and drive forward, and that often
broke the other blocks. When you are most exhausted, the one final effort is the one that
counts. It‟s the same principle as weights training; you push you muscles to failure and
breakdown, and that‟s when they rebuild stronger and better. Having a fit and strong body
probably saved me from a much deeper hell and gave me the stamina to go through this.
As I said, there was no one to pat me on the back or give me support. I had to give up the
need to be understood and that hurt because I craved brotherhood. But then, unconditional
freedom and strength in Spirit had to be just that, unconditional. It was often tremendously
lonely, away from family, my country, my profession, and in pain. I learned to love myself,
to give myself love when my world was barren. I learned that sometimes the next breathe
was all that mattered. There was no turning back. Paradise was long gone.
Clear Land
Thank God for my teaching job, as it provided me with the stability and salary I needed.
Many days I sat at work listening to students, simultaneously bearing witness to grinding
tension and flashbacks of childhood memories as I taught my classes. After work, I often
headed to the sauna at the gym, or returned to Taipei Hostel to share my room with new
strangers from around the world every night. In between the periods of tension and regular
dreams, over a period of about six weeks, I had some powerful dreams and visions. First
came blue lights.
I am in a hill. The hill is a radiant turquoise blue. I am walking on the hill and then walk off
it. I look in a mirror. My eyes are the same radiant turquoise blue. I can shine the blue light
into other people.
The dreams of blue lights continued through four nights. Most striking were my eyes that
always shone in the dreams. I remember a movie called Dune, when the people ate the
spice and their eyes turned an unmistakable radiant blue; my eyes in the dreams were a
similar color. I read that the blue lights were a symbol of the soul emerging into
consciousness. After the lights, I had a series of visionary dreams of elements dissolving into

each other. They were different from regular dreams they carried a weight, a gravity that
branded them onto my memory.
I am walking on the earth in the garden. The earth appears frozen with snow on the top.
The snow begins to melt and the earth becomes muddy, and my feet start to sink into the
soft mud. I start to run, afraid I will sink. I sink deeper and deeper. I seem to lack the
strength to walk through the mud. I realize that the earth is dissolving into water and soon
there will be no earth left. I start to swim across the garden trying to reach the house.
I am in an ocean. I swim down and notice cracks on the ocean floor. The floor opens and
there is bright orange molten lava beneath the sea. The sea floor is opening and water is
pouring into the fiery lava. The fires get stronger and stronger and the sea is disappearing
and I become thirsty as the water disappears. Soon there is just fire burning, nothing else.
Its night, and a single fire burns. The fire releases steam, as though someone has poured
water into it. The steam becomes a cloud of gas that starts to permeate out into the
darkness. As the fire goes out sputters and sends out sparks. It‟s a translucent white color,
noticeable. The gaseous cloud encapsulates everything.
I am watching a reddish candle burning and I keep thinking its going to go out any moment.
Shortly after, I came across a Buddhist description of the dissolutions of the senses which
occurs as consciousness lets go of the body. In some of the Buddhist schools, the physical
body is composed of the elements earth, water, fire and air, and as consciousness lets go of
being attached to the physical body and attains a greater identity with the soul, then certain
visionary markers appear to reflect the process. The earth element dissolves into water, then
the water element dissolves into fire, the fire dissolves into air, and the air dissolves into the
consciousness, in the life supporting „flame‟ of the heart. This was kind of interesting and
fun, dissolving away. I wondered what would happen when there was nothing left.
A few days later, I didn‟t fall asleep. I passed into the dream state with full awareness,
watching the images that were arising.

I am swimming in the ocean and a whale approaches me. It comes near and swallows me
and I find I am in darkness. There is not a sound, and no light so nothing to be seen. There
is only the dark, without any sense of time or space. There is no feeling, no fear, no
thoughts. The only thing I know for sure is that I am present. A clear voice emerges from
the darkness, yet in the darkness and all around. The voice says „I am.‟ (I don‟t know how
long I am in the darkness for. There were no reference points or events by which to
measure time or activity). From the darkness, the world starts to emerge again, and the
darkness gives birth to patterns, dreams and then waking consciousness.
My memories drifted to a verse in the bible, Exodus 3 vs. 14, „God said to Moses “I AM who I
AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: „I AM has sent me to you.‟ “ „ Some other
words by Ramana Maharshi, a self realized Indian sage, came to mind.
The world is illusory.

God alone is real.
God is the world.
„The world is illusory‟. The world, or rather, our sense of the world, is illusion. Our sense of
the world is not real. What does that mean? It means that whatever I can see or think or
feel or taste or smell is temporary, and will flitter into existence and out of existence, lacking
any independent existence and permanency of its own, so don‟t take it to be real or
substantial, and don‟t try and hold on to it. Any attempt to take the world as being
permanent, and trying to find a place for myself among those conditions, is doomed to
failure, is as real as trying to find a home in a shifting cloud. The irritating thing is that you
can‟t pretend the world is an illusion when it appears real to you, because doing so is a high
road to insanity. The illusion has to be chipped away at using meditative practices or from
continual surrender to God, until the realization that there is a deeper, more fundamental
reality, sets in. When the realization, through an experience of a more fundamental reality,
arrives, the world of forms and shapes is seen to be illusory in the light of a deeper truth.
„God alone is real‟. When the world falls away and all sense perceptions drop, God is left as
pure presence, without qualities, unqualifiable. God Is, God is the great „I am‟, my
innermost essence, my only condition, your innermost essence. God is the cognizing
awareness illuminating these words, the sight of trees in the garden, the sound of the cars

on the road, the time and space in which I live in this world. God is the mirror on which the
reflections dance.
„God is the world.‟ All that is in the world, all form, all experience, the wind in branches, the
storms in the sky, the disease in a ravaged body, the radiance of a praying worshipping
woman, all are God clothed in a different disguise, pure God potential momentarily dripping
into form and then returning back to God, yet never separate, never not God, not two, not
one. All experience is God cognizing Itself. I realized those words after the „I am‟ dream. I
felt the emptiness of the world. I increasingly felt the presence of God in all things, within
me and within all other experiences arising within my awareness, as the ground and nature
of all that is arising, and an increasing confidence in my presence, in my truest, most
innermost and untouchable pure nature, began to grow. I experienced God, my Self, radiant
as creation, radiant as pure presence coming into form and returning back to stillness. God
is both the mirror and the reflections.
I awoke early some mornings in perfect silence and stillness. For hours I lay in perfection,
immersed in a subtle perfect beauty from which no movement was necessary. There was
little thinking. I walked into the color filled world in harmony. I cried at the shining eyes of
children smiling out from advertising posters. Energy and vitality filled me and I started to
sleep less and less, and I again felt the natural goodness that exists woven as a spell into
the magic of creation. A new pride began to emerge, a pride that I hadn‟t had before. I felt
a sense of pride in wearing nice clothes, and having a clean haircut. I felt pride in tidying my
hostel bed. This was not a pride of showing off, or a pride based on the devaluation of
others. It was simply an attempt to honor and express the natural goodness that existed
within and without, to bring a slight touch of care and beauty, grace and style in this world
that would be lacking if I never did it. I noticed beautiful motor vehicles again, such as
BMWs, Ferraris and Mercedes Benzes. I appreciated the technology and care, the design and
development that went into producing these fantastic machines, feeling and seeing the
remarkable human drive to reach for greater beauty and complexity.
I had another powerful dream, one that left me feeling stunned when I awoke.

I am in a country area with undeveloped land, just green fields. I am alone and walking
around. I hear the thunderous sound of horses galloping in the sky. I turn to look upwards
and see a cloud descending towards the earth. The cloud lands on the earth, kicking up a
dust storm. The dust settles and I see a group of Samurai warriors, resplendent in full armor
and decorations, maybe about twenty of them. They are strong and powerful. They come to
me and give me a Samurai sword as a gift, then move away. The horses start to gallop
kicking up dust and they head back up into the sky as a cloud. I am left with the sword.
Time goes forward and the land has been developed. I have a house and a farm and a
family. The sword has enabled me to protect and to provide.
I feel blessed when I awake. I feel I have been given a wonderful gift, the sword of
discrimination and protection, the gift of being able to separate that which is true from that
which is false. Another dream.
I am walking along a beach. The beach is clean fine white sand and the sea is a clear light
blue. The beach stretches as far as I can see. The area is in its pristine natural state,
untouched, unpolluted, unseen by man. I find myself in a pure wilderness and feel
wonderfully happy and content. I walk for a timeless time, and then I notice I am in an
unspoilt area of Mozambique and a city is beginning to be constructed on the sand. It‟s a
pure land.
I had a beautiful day. I felt I had entered a pure land of existence, a place untouched and
unpolluted. Heaven had entered earth, and a new way of being, of a way of beauty and love
and freedom without condition, had entered the earth, had entered the earth through my
body. The dreams continued. It was nice that it was Mozambique; I had always wanted to
go there.
I am at home with my family. It‟s an ordinary and pleasant afternoon. I have a list of the
stages of enlightenment and levels of consciousness and the practices for each stage. I have
moved through the lower stages. Many of the names are complicated and sound wonderfully
technical, exotic and alluring, and carry with them associated experiences that seem
fabulous. I read the list going up through the higher stages. I am curious what the ultimate
will be. I get to number one on the list. No 1 reads „Enlightenment is biscuits. Nothing
special, just ordinariness.‟

Biscuits! Nothing special. Enlightenment is biscuits. I finally got it. The highest stage is
ordinary mind. It‟s as simple as eating biscuits in the afternoon. It‟s nothing special;
whatever arises is a non-event, yet enjoyable in the way that biscuits are. There is nothing
to do, and nothing more to see. My mind had been trying to capture, to repeat, to elevate,
my spiritual experiences, trying to make them into something special, yet, there was no
point, there was nothing special. This, just this, is how it is. This is God manifest. The
miracle is that it‟s here. And when the biscuits are gone, well, you don‟t worry about it. You
just do the next thing. I laughed. Spirit sure had a wicked sense of humor. I had been lead
on a cosmic game of hide and seek only to realize that the key was absolute unpretentious
ordinariness, and the game itself, the game of being separate from God, was an illusion. I
had been searching for God in extraordinary experiences, and that very search, for
something higher, better, more exhilarating, had prevented me from realizing the miracle of
God creating, being here, right here, right now. When the game is dropped by stopping
trying to play it, separation ends. Aint that tricky? Spirit, God, is right here, right now in the
simplest most mundane experiences, in the gardener pushing a wheel barrow down the
street, in the lukewarm coffee, in the humidity of a mid summers day, in my freshly brushed
sweet smelling teeth. In a world addicted to sensation and achievement and grandeur, the
highest achievement was to wake up to just this. All you have to do is deeply relax, and you
experience God. Nothing special, nowhere to go. Just the immediate simplicity of what was
being experienced, nothing more, nothing less. Enlightenment is biscuits.
I am on the pure white beach and go for a swim in the inviting water. I notice a black
shape and a fin. It‟s a shark. I start to swim frantically towards the shore to avoid getting
eaten.
This wasn‟t over yet. There was still some difficulty to be endured and I needed to come
down from heaven and die some more.

Final Death.
I was learning more and more about the process of waking up. It wasn‟t a smooth affair,
and after experience of a higher state, other pieces of dirt in the basement of my
subconscious would be dragged out. It often felt like one step forwards and two steps back.
I began to understand that this was necessary, and for the realizations to become
permanent acquisitions, for the shift to a way of being with all its qualities of ease, lightness,
openness and inner freedom to stick, a deep process of inner integration, a deep
psychological and physical transformation needed to be completed. Fortunately for me, the
Holy Spirit took control and did the work for me, and my main job was to bear witness to
what was happening within my inner world.
There were two critical stages, within that month, namely a type of death of self, and then a
heart opening. I started to feel very uncomfortable, worried and nervous. I felt confused and
disorientated. I felt tired and depressed. I went to work, day after day for a couple of weeks,
feeling panicked and shaken. Even though this must have happened 20 times by now, each
time I went back into confusion, it was as real as the first time. This time it seemed more
severe, as I wanted to exist in that pure land, to live in the original paradise, to exist in
freedom. I loved the idea of being awake, and I wanted to go back to the freedom and
exhilaration that I had experienced. I had experienced my true Self. I had felt Love. I knew
enlightenment was biscuits. I had gone to the pure land. My senses had dissolved, yet this
odyssey of transformation wasn‟t finished. Life started to hurt. Something inside me,
something critical, was becoming threatened, and an unconscious fight was being fought
that I could not see, only feel by the signs of resistance I was experiencing. I went to work,
and had little patience with my students. I was angry at the buses driving past too noisily.
The food was too expensive, and I had no time for my co workers. I was frustrated that I
was stuck in Taiwan. I had seen the possibility; now something deep within had to be
released. Finally, some dreams.
I am a little monkey, and I climb down into some caves below the ground. I go down and
down into the damp darkness, and see a pool at the bottom of the cave. Something large
and black is stirring in the water, and a see a voracious elephant emerge from the depths. It

charges toward me and wants to eat me. I panic and in fear, I frantically climb up the cave
walls back towards the surface. I am terrified.
I am on the side of a cliff. There is a platform on the side and I look down into a bottomless
ravine. The platform starts to tip and I fall towards the side. I try and hang on and scream
for help. I awake in a cold sweat.
I realized I had to surrender to the unknown. Surrender is an act of grace, falling back into
the embrace of unseen Spirit, trusting that life itself would support me, and that I could
radically give up control and give up trying to manipulate the known world. Everyone wants
freedom; few are willing to give up control. Let go. The freedom is in letting go. Freedom is
unconditioned, freedom is absolute. Freedom is initially terrifying, „What will happen to me?‟
I had to let go. I had to let the monster from my dream eat me, I had to let myself fall into
that abyss, not knowing what would occur, not being able to see on the other side, knowing
that I, as I knew myself, would die. The I that wanted to be enlightened, the I that wanted
to be free, that wanted to possess all these possibilities that are available to human beings,
had to die. That was a bummer; I felt like I was Moses after he had bought the Israelites to
the promised land, and now he was not allowed to go inside. The me, the false me that
wanted enlightenment was a disposable, non-recyclable part of the whole grand trip. Adios
amigo. I had to trust that through death lay a greater liberation, and that the real I would be
okay. I needed to surrender. I had no fight to give. I had to wave my white flag at my
enemy, knowing that the bastard would still obliterate me. Surrender was an interesting
thing. Surrender was not a bargain, where I gave up my position because I thought that I
would get something better. I couldn‟t bargain with God or with Spirit; there could be no
hidden motivations in surrender. I could only surrender once I had given my best fight, and
there was absolutely nothing else that I could do, and I was entirely in the hands of the
other, knowing that they could do as they wished. Literally, „let thy will be done‟. I could only
surrender when I was exhausted, when I reached this point, again, of absolute futility.
Surrender was not an act of my doing; surrender was an abject failure where I was too tired
to move, too tired to do anything, when the possibility of doing was stripped away from me.
In that stripping, in that being laid bare by forces beyond myself, in finally realizing I had no
say in the matter and all tantrums, pleas, double espressos and efforts were useless, in that

surrender the search for a way out ended, the search for anything ended, I gave up, and I
was opened to the miracle of grace.
I made a choice to accept my symbolic crucifixion. I literally had to accept my death, the
death of who I thought I was and always had been, and with that came tremendous horror
and pain. I went through my fear and pain and depression and terror, and relived my dream
states, letting the monster eat me, letting myself fall off the cliff, allowing myself to be
consumed, letting myself die and welcoming the end. Surrender is a death, and I had to
have pure faith that I would be reborn, yet I paradoxically couldn‟t even carry that faith with
me into the death. Everything had to go, every dream, every idea, every hope, and there
was the reality I would not come back and this was final; everything that I carried with me
had to be died to. Suffering ended when I stopped turning away from my fear, when I held
my panic in my being, and journeyed in, deeper, further, lower. Suffering ended when I
overcome my choking gasping breath, stopped recoiling from my pain, and turned inwards,
relaxing into the constricted darkness that paralyzed me with utter horror, letting the
darkness finally swallow me after I was too exhausted to resist any more. The weeks leading
up to the end of suffering were dark, and the light disappeared.
Surrender (a poem)
I write these words,

Wanting to share the weight of this change.
I don‟t know where to start;
Words are just shallow words,
(shapes on white page) and do not easily
hold the writhings of a healing soul.
Today, I am empty,
Empty of hope, empty of fight, empty of the
Effort of trying, pushing and hungering
for a place of being I can call home.

I don‟t know anymore; I don‟t know if anything has been worth it.
The moments of bliss and realization are drowned by the weight of the
struggle.
Yet,
It‟s just those breaths of fresh air that cause me
To swim up, again and again,
everseeking,
evergrasping
(Struggling up to the ocean surface,
Nauseous for air)
Towards the dream called God,
the dream called Home.
One day I will float on the surface, basking in the sun.
I curse being human.

I curse that I was stupid enough to try and awaken,
And to stumble and fall down this path, only,
Once again, to find myself entering a fog of
Confusion and abandonment.
The effort of writing these words tires me.

Yes, I have felt the divine love, and experienced miracles.
From this darkness, I see those were just fleeting cruel tantalizing decoys,
And instead,
It‟s another day of having to bear the burden of a tired body in resistance.
Its over.
I have lost and all my bridges are burnt.
All I can do is hang my head in failure, waiting for my execution.
May the infinite Spirit bless these words.
I had no energy to resist anything. Christ said „resist not evil.‟ What that meant to me was to
allow the inner arising of non-rational fear, doubt, worry, even fear of death and death itself,

to be within, in a state of acceptance, and then they lose their power. I went to bed
exhausted, and awoke at 3:00 am, dreaming masses of dreams that I could not remember.
There was one fragment of a dream I do remember. I had 30 Billion US Dollars. I had more
wealth than I could conceivably imagine. Nothing could ever buy what I had.
I awoke to ordinary mind again. The biscuits tasted wonderful. I had stopped seeking and
was again resting in the remarkable freedom of ordinary mind. Zen mind, ordinary mind,
enlightened mind, is just that, is the Tao (the highest truth). The effortless cognizance of the
present moment, before you tinker with it to fudge it into something else, is absolute and
ultimate truth. Enlightenment is biscuits. This is how it is. Knowing this to be my natural
state, I was free.
That day, my understanding of freedom deepened. Freedom was not living on a paradise
island surrounded by women, cocktails and perfect surf (although I wouldn‟t say no!)
Freedom was not driving a Ferrari at top speed down the German Autobahn. Freedom was a
radical inner release. Before, my attention had been controlled by my self obsession, by my
desire for attainment, by my desire to become something, by my desire to hold onto my
higher experiences, by my desire to stay peaceful and calm or in bliss, by my desire to get
things and my desire to preserve and protect Bruce, by nipples, surfboards, pension plans
and beer. That day, I could let my attention linger on the blue velvet wings of a flitting
butterfly. I could watch the traffic lights change. I could ponder on the hairy ear of the bus
driver. I could breathe out with the summer panting of a mangy street dog. I was free to
behold and touch whatever was arising, free from being pulled inwards by my self
obsessions, by my thoughts and my feelings. I was free. Anything became possible. No
longer was I a product to my conditioning, a slave to my past and my history and any new
moments of pleasure. The sense that I had to find myself in having, attaining and doing
things was gone, and I realized that the freedom is in letting go. I had let go of some primal
need to preserve myself in feeling or being a certain way. I could only let go when I trusted
my primordial awareness to bring me happiness. I could only let go when I trusted my
awareness, Spirit shining through me, more than I trusted myself or trusted the world, and
in that surrender, I found freedom. I could trust Spirit to liberate every fear, doubt and
worry, simply by allowing it to be there, and asking to be free. I could focus at will. I could
create, not be trapped by recreation. I was truly, unconditionally free. I started to laugh.

Love (the heart opens)
And then, love for others. I went to work for a few days, enjoying the space and freedom.
Time seemed to have disappeared with the ending of my inner resistance; 40 minute bus
journeys evaporated into seconds, intensive gym workouts were a pleasure, hours of classes
with students passed in the blink of an eye. I was still aware of time, I just seemed to have
given up resistance to whatever what was happening, and my experience became as
seamless as a 23 year old butt. Enlightenment is biscuits. This very moment is the highest
truth, and there was nothing I could do to stay in the present; the present was impossible to
avoid. Everything was enjoyable, and everything was meaningful; the breath in my nose,
the sound of doors opening and closing, the voices of people in coffee shops speaking
languages that I could only half understand. I found pleasure in cleaning the dishes,
brushing my teeth, paying for my meals, and watching the street sweepers at work after a
storm.
There was a problem, though. My experience was all about me, all about me experiencing
my freedom and the freshness of a world that had been grey for so long. I felt strangely
isolated in my experience. I felt alone and I wanted to share it. I wanted others to
experience their unity in the simplicity of being. I started to feel the pressure building in my
head again. Coming out of class in the evening, looking up at the sky, I had that stoned
feeling and burning tension in my shoulders. I noticed that the moon was almost full. „Oh
no,‟ I thought, „here we go again. More blockages have to be moved through. Back on the
rollercoaster! Fun fun fun!‟
The pressure built and built. I went home, unable to think or concentrate on anything. Lying
on my back, drifting into sleep, buzzing started in my lower back and powerful bursts of
energy burst up my spine into my head, sending me into spasms and convulsions, causing
my teeth to crack against each other. There were three of four bursts of tremendous power
which I could not control. Each burst rocked me to the core, and left me gasping for
breathe, stunned and shaken. Once they had passed, I went to the bathroom and looked in
the mirror. My eyes had gone an iridescent blue, and I felt euphorically high, yet also stoned
and speechless. That night, I had a short dream.

A child is having open heart surgery. His situation is critical and he needs many arteries and
valves replaced. I need to go and visit him in the hospital. I am worried about his survival.
I got up as usual for work the following morning and headed to the bus station. The world
shone; everyone was beautiful. I looked at old people with stooped over backs, and a man
with crutches and a leg deformed from polio. They burned with beauty, they radiated with a
perfection and I wanted to tell them that, I wanted to go and hug them and kiss their
cheeks and let them know how astoundingly beautiful they were, and if only they could
know that, then life would always be okay. I slept that night wrapped in prayers of
gratitude, and awoke the following day confused, forgetting things, and feeling scattered. All
meaning had gone again and nothing held possibility. Again I was plunged into the awful pit
of suicidal thoughts, confusion, exhaustion and needing lots of sleep. I felt desperate to
make life plans; I felt dread about my future. After a few gritty days which felt as though
they had been wrapped in sandpaper, I started to weep with unconditional love for all men
and women and all animals, I wept for my family, I wept for strangers I had seen on the
street, I wept for the lame, the sick and the rich and the beautiful. I stood at the subway
station watching people, strangers, waiting in lines, I stood watching the rain falling on the
windows sparkling in the night lights, and I stood at the station crying for the beauty of the
night, the beauty of people smiling and frowning, I cried for the magnifence hidden within
this ordinary scene manifesting before me, for the astonishing love that allowed God to hide,
to live in the garbage cans in the concrete city and in the rats that scampered in the
crevices. I wept for the history that had bought us here, I wept for the suffering that was
the light, hidden from the light.
I felt a little better the following day, but quickly returned to fantasies that my life needed
lots of money, new red sports cars, beautiful women and a double story house next to the
ocean. Was I insane? Was yesterdays dream just that, a dream that had had no substance?
Was life really a daily manic ride of despair and euphoria? My liberation and entry into the
pure land a week ago had seemed to obvious, so clear and now I was thrown back into this
hell hole of wanting and not having, or having and not wanting. Should I find a doctor and
get mood stabilizing drugs? Where the hell was Prozac and whiskey when I needed it? I
frantically wanted something to hold onto, something to grasp, something to escape right
here, right now. Enlightenment was biscuits, right? Wrong. There was something right here,
right now, hidden behind the bloody biscuits, that was scaring the hell out of me.

My heart ached. I had shooting pains in my chest, and loads of twitching in my arms and my
legs. Maybe I had a degenerative nervous disease or was having a heart attack; all the signs
were unwelcomingly there. I felt a bubbling sensation in my chest, as though water was
being poured or pumped through my ribs and up and through my heart. I missed my family
who were living on the other side of the world, and I felt my isolation as an acute pain with
frightening intensity. I cried to see them, my heart ached for my mom, my sisters, their
absence and their suffering. I had never used to feel isolated; I had enjoyed being
independent and self-sufficient, yet now, I felt my separation as years and years of pain and
aloneness, years of living a partial life, of living a fraction of my fullness. I wept for my loss,
and I wept for my family‟s loss. I was terrified. Somewhere inside the terror of my
alienation, inside the choking of my throat and the contraction of my chest, somewhere
inside the storms of desperation that were sweeping through me to urgently and
immeadiatly change all of my life and find someone in the world to love me, I stopped the
inner recoil from myself that is the birth of suffering, I dropped my control and my desperate
plans, and I turned again to face the inner tension. I had turned away, and now I was
turning back, powered by Love, just turning back. I turned and I breathed, and I went inside
the knot in my chest, with the only goal to befriend. That was the turning point, the
moment of Grace in which I surrendered to what is.
Dream. I meet my family. Dad is young again and fat and healthy and strong with a lot of
work. He is working on motorcycles. He is prosperous and tells me the family is going to
Mocambique for a vacation. He says he is going with Mom and Tracey (my sister). I find
Mom, and she has beautiful classic cars worth a lot. Then, I find Tracey and her husband
Steven, and they are all going to Mozambique for five weeks. They say I will need warm
clothes. I go back to Mom. Everyone has lots of food and supplies and is prosperous, and I
have no money. I think having no money will prevent me from going. I don't want to take
other peoples food. Yet, I really want to go. I decide to go with and to allow the family to
support me.
The dream was liberating. Finally, finally, in the Pure Land, symbolized by Mozambique,
there would be love with others, and in this Pure Land, I could reach out to my family, to the
world, to the light, and know that I would be received, not rejected and repelled like an
outcast beggar in my home. Finally I could be free from poverty, free from scarcity and lack,
and turn my oustretched hands back towards life and love, turn knowing that I would be

welcomed, knowing that I was loved. A fundamental fear of rejection and isolation had been
shattered by my inner fullness; a scarcity that had controlled my life had ended.
Opening.
I had been alone in that place of espionage for too long,
perfectly hiding the crippled ruin of a dry heart,
bravely burying my terror.
The Master Surgeon operated,
cutting, slicing without aneasthetic.
I felt every stroke of His blade in my chest,
I felt His every strike and every suture,
I was called to feel with Him as He touched my wounds,
taking me through my suffering.
Have I come to the root of my isolation?
Time will tell.
The journey inward kept getting deeper and darker.
Somewhere, light burned as faith,
Pulling me through the night.
I knew there was relief, somewhere, somewhere.
It was all darkness; I accepted that.

Nowhere to turn, surrendered to the night,
My heart found a diamond that cut the night, letting in the dawn.
I give thanks.
I can reach out and touch, and I can be touched. I sense that a huge part of our journey as
a human being is a journey towards love, towards the Divine Love, and then spreading that
love into ourselves, and into others. In my journey, I had first felt unconditionally loved that
blessed Christmas day at George‟s, shortly after I recognized the nature of my mind.
Knowing that I was deeply loved, and not needing to seek for it furthur, my heart could be
opened and I could begin to love others, love this world, love the Body of Christ, with my
fullness. I suspect we are called to become a source, we are called to become the light that
shines and called to ignite that light in others. We hunger for union, we hunger to end our
fractured separation and join with the world around, dissolving barriers, reaching out,
holding, knowing love, receiving divine love, then finally returning home when we find we
are the source of which we are seeking and can give that love to the world. The journey is
long yet the prize is everything. Love is the glue, love is the fabric that connects us, that
opens us, that pulls us into each other, melting, fusing, releasing us in union. Everything I
ever did, every project at completion, every attempt at love, at women, at beauty, at sex, at
drugs, every refusal to bow down to pain and history and experience and instead every
courageous attempt to reach for the heights of joy and union and beauty I desired, was a
search for Love, driven by Love, Eros seeking its soulmate only to eventually find its own
Soul.
I began to rest more in love, bathed in its qualities of velvet softness and held in its patient
nurturing caress. Divine Love is a mystery without an opposite, ever-present and
unwavering, never absent, never away. It is us who veil Love, yet the very search for Love
blocks Love. The very search for Love, the very movement away from the richness of the
present moment, is original sin, original separation. Love through its gentle touch is healing,
Love through its gossamer touch brings darkness into the light, restoring life. When my inner

darkness, is held in unconditional awareness, then that is Love being present, and when I
hold the darkness of others, that is Love shining. That acceptance, that non-resistance of
inner evil, brings movement, brings life. That freedom of awareness allows unfolding,
flowering, to grow from earth into beauty. Love is in itself curative, is in itself liberating, is
intelligent beyond comprehension. Love never turns away, it‟s us who have been turned
away because of an ignorant world, and us who can turn back if we refuse to accept heart
poverty. Love always forgives, if we turn to Love, it‟s always always there, waiting to receive
us, waiting to lead us again, waiting with arms open to forgive every sin and heal our soul,
to bring us back into the fold of light. If I reach for higher beauty and truth and goodness,
that is Love lifting me, Love pushing me, Love calling me home, Love reaching out to itself.
It‟s one love, shining through the world, shining through the heart, one love reaching out to
bring back that which has been scattered and forgotten.
There is a light that shines behind. What we see are just shadows of a deeper reality.
Several dreams followed.
I am with the Disciples of Christ, and Christ has died. We go to an island and walk to an
ancient tomb, on top of which is engraved a turtle. We enter the tomb, and notice our
shadows being thrown on the tomb wall. Others already in the tomb are mesmerized by
their shadows. I turn and stare at the sun. It‟s white, blinding and bright, and I am afraid
and want to turn away, yet I am also drawn to it.
I am with my enlightened teachers. We look at each other in the eyes, and a powerful
transmission occurs between us, causing us all to buckle and melt in bliss. The teachers are
bought to their knees and so am I as we all transmit. We all give thanks to each other.
The Love itself brings peace.
I go towards a large room. My feet are washed by someone holy, possibly Christ, before I
enter the room and there is water flowing over the floor. I go inside and there is a
magnificent presence, of enormous grace and goodness and power. Reverence is my only
response.

I am again with my Tibetan Master. We are in a room in a house together, and we watch
TV. I find out he also likes tennis and understands science, just like I do. There are beautiful
girls on TV; we both watch. I am pleasantly surprised at how open he is. There is rain
outside. A white dove flies down from the sky through the rain and lands by the window.
One of the masters servants opens the window and brings the dove to me, placing it on my
shoulder. I stroke the dove, and then it flies off.
A line from somewhere in the bible kept coming to me „the peace that surpasses
understanding‟. I entered the day, the week, the ongoing week, with a Peace sublime, a
Peace carried by the dove, immaculately soft and gentle. It‟s not a state of mind or a way of
thinking. It‟s not something that can be known. It‟s not the feeling of relaxation you may
have after coming back from vacation. As the line goes, it‟s beyond understanding. I pray
that all of you may get to experience this gift.
Being Human
As Shakespeare so wonderfully put it, „Much ado about nothing.‟ For maybe the 1000 th time,
I am sitting on a coffee shop with an overpriced premium coffee, getting my kicks on
caffeine and heartbeating a Sunday away. The usual plethora of pretty girls are around, and
I am particularly drawn to a girl in a green T-shirt that says „Hugs, not drugs.‟ I wonder if
coffee is a drug, and maybe I should jump across the room, take away her latte, and hug
her. Somehow I don‟t think that she is prepared to live the message on her t-shirt, so I will
stay just another email face in a coffee shop, anonymously typing into a computer.
What now? I had another wave of difficulty for two days last week. The wave was smaller
though, not a horrific tidal wave that swamped me for weeks like before, more like a
blustery afternoon in spring than a relentless storm in winter. Dreams and fantasies of
beauty and light and goodness came into my awareness and I fell into despair as they
turned into phantoms. Nothing to hold onto, nothing to look forward to; again! For a few
days, that was a tough one; no dream has the power to make me happy. The Buddha, in his
moments leading up to enlightenment, had to give up both his attachment to fear and his
attachment to love. Apparently facing the death of ones dreams, of existing without a happy
loving future, is one thing that terrifies the dying. Hopefully I can die well early so I can live

well. The fight stopped when I let myself be human despair, and opened, again relaxing as
despair. In the Beijing Olympics, I saw on the news today that Michael Phelps just
performed the amazing feat of winning 8 gold medals. That‟s special. Yet, miraculously, we
are both part of this process of evolution that has caused us to be human. Michael Phelps
and I are no different. Oh, I don‟t claim to be a swimmer or a world champion (except
perhaps in excelling at coffee shop fantasies). You, me, Michael Phelps, Osamo Bin Laden,
Mother Theresa, my mother, my dog, the rocks, all of us, are flashes in this vast process of
creative evolution, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly waking up to what we are, waking
up to our truth of who we are, waking up to the truth that we are untouchable Spirit
dreaming experiences and delighting in the dream. The truth is, „Much ado about nothing.‟
That is the secret that has propelled this book, the secret that has driven me to exhaust
myself chasing fantasies and dreams and attainments and women and drugs and projects of
enlightenment, only to realize that there is nowhere to go, and nowhere to land. I had
always been home, and I realized that when I stopped running. I realized I had always been
there, for tens, hundreds and thousands of years, using bodies to create experiences for me.
It‟s all about nothing, so stop trying to make it something! Like my good friend used to say,
„The nice thing about hitting your head on a wall is when you stop.‟
Maybe you will also Realize this one day, you may Realize something that has been staring
you in the face for as long as you can remember, staring at you before you were born,
before you parents were born. It may start to dawn on you, that God, that You, that Radical
Freedom, have been there for eternity, and it‟s God who illuminates your experience, my
experience, and is the same illumination that lights us both, us all, up. It may dawn on you
that you have been obsessed with your experience, with your shadows, mistakenly thinking
you are your experience, instead of the experiencer, the ground of Being, that which sees
and is not seen. Awareness, Gods presence, is primary, and experience secondary, yet God
is both the experiencer and the experience. It‟s as though everything is turned inside out,
and all experience, both outer and inner, arises within awareness. Inner and outer don‟t
seem to matter so much anymore, and separation disappears within the expansive freedom
that has always created, powered and dissolved All that Is. Awareness has this body, and
not the other way around. This realization is very simple, very obvious, nothing to write
home about, yet also profound. I felt a little like an idiot; how could I have not realized this

before? I am simply a perspective on a dream of Spirit, yet, all is Spirit, dreaming itself.
There is nothing to get, really. Nowhere to go and nowhere to land.
I have been pulled into CNN the last few days. Some people claim to have found the body of
an animal called Bigfoot. Who is there to see this? Finding Bigfoot is just another tantalizing
experience. Having a human body, I Am is here to witness all the sensation of maybe finding
a giant biped and maybe the discovery the whole thing is a hoax. If so, I will be there to
witness the hoax. What‟s the point of all this? The point is, that all experience is just
temporary dancing form, and as a human, this body is the vehicle through which form is
experienced, as handsomely or drunkenly as need be. This body exists so that Spirit, the real
I who I always have been, can have an experience, and this body exists so that Spirit can
create experiences. I am Spirit being human. I am a human being. So are you, so are all
humans, masks of Spirit.
We forget the remarkable fact that we are beloved disposable masks of Spirit, here for a
fancy dress show, to be discarded tomorrow so a new mask can be donned. We suffer
when we forget that, because when we forget, we become a neurotic and insane human
mind, lost in its ideas and always trying to make reality into something else, always running
from pain and trotting towards pleasure, trying to find permanence in the fleeting illusion of
form. That‟s insanity; insanity is a refusal to just be present and accept impermanence, to
just be here, insanity is what happens when a mind forgets who it really is and fights reality
and starts running and tries to turn reality into what 15 centimeters of grey brain matter
thinks it should be. My God!
So, there is much ado about nothing. There lies the greatest secret. When your confidence
in Spirit, in yourself, in the shining effortless awareness unseen awareness which you truly
are, finally outshines your confidence and belief in the world and all its dancing forms, you
stop making „ado‟, and finally you get it. You get that feeling fear is okay, and you let it be
there. You get that hoaxes are okay, and you see them. You get that amputees and
homeless people are okay and you stop recoiling from your experience of them and you stop
rushing out to up your insurance policy, afraid that that will be your fate. You get that doubt
is okay and you let it be there. You get that its okay to miss your girlfriend and you let that
be there. You stop trying to change your experience so you can avoid pain and find
pleasure, you stop trying to force yourself into a self-created ideal of what a human should

be and what a human should do and what a human should feel, and you let yourself be
there just as you are. The great thing is, that when you finally, after lifetimes, relax, and the
mind of past experiences and ideals is dropped, then you begin to express your natural
impulses healthily and naturally, creating the life you are naturally drawn to. Give me a
double of that!
Enlightenment, when you get it, is the easiest thing in the world, and there lies the rub. It‟s
too easy to believe, and there is absolutely no trick to it. There is nothing to get; you simply
rest. Sure, the irony of being is that it takes some doing to learn to be there as you have to
learn to unconditionally be ok with yourself, in all your blacks and blues and peacock
radiance and all your shit (and many people have a tough time making friends with
themselves), you have to burn through your fixations to your habits and your routines with
the flame of your awareness, and you have to stop avoiding the present thinking the arms of
happiness are found elsewhere. Every inner and outer effort of becoming something to save
your soul has first to be seeing as a failure, without exception. The mind is masterful at
pulling you in to its stories and its fantasies, its dreams and its terrors, and you can learn to
watch that, you can watch the antics of the mind and just let them be there. It takes no
effort to watch the mind; your awareness spontaneously recognizes whatever is arising,
effortlessly and freely. The doer inside you dies, and an acceptance of what it means to be a
human being arises. In that acceptance, in that death of doing, freedom is reclaimed. It‟s
not easy as you may have to go into dark nights of despair before you experience liberation
and rebirth, yet that‟s when the miracle happens. When you finally stop fighting with
yourself and with the world and let the you that you know die to your fear, and you start to
open with love (if you will only allow it), a great natural happiness sunrises in your world, a
sun you have always been searching for. And then, you are just what you spontaneously
are, singing your spontaneously bad songs and making spontaneous love and writing
spontaneous poems, and nothing could ever be healthier or more right.
That‟s the secret. Nothing to ado (sorry for barbarically hashing your words, Mr.
Shakespeare). The vast process of evolution operates within your form, and you are aware
of it. Movement happens freely within you. Thoughts happen freely, and they are all
liberated as they arise in your awareness, coming, going. A funny and miraculous thing
happens. The thoughts and feelings and impulses naturally drift you in a direction of greater
care, of greater love, of greater service and connection and joy, which is precisely what your

mind was searching for the entire time, and then you naturally start to act on those healthy
impulses, thoughts and feelings. Finally, you stop your desperate seeking, and you get to be
human. You get to be at ease, and you get to be happy. You stop being a mind, or a dream,
or a neurosis floating in a fantasy of angels and devils, and you end the insanity, getting to
be a human, in one of its 6 or 7 billion forms. You get to be Spirit having a unique and
miraculous experience, and you get to be spirit being there to witness the whole thing. You
get to be the dance itself, you get to be Michael Phelps and Osama bin Laden and the
window cleaner at the office down the road. Wow. Why do you want all this? Because you
are happier and having more fun than you could ever have imagined, and you have the
highest prize: unconditional peace. And when you realize you are the dance, and the dance
continues fantastically well without you?
Wow.
And then you get out there and live, fully, unreasonably, beautifully, joyfully. You continue
to make love again and again, and let love go again and again. I had a love affair recently,
free of the drama.
Unbound
She has left.

A startling radiant journey is on hold.
Lovers wait, separate, apart.
Something happened.
Colors.
Colors shone.
Colored sunlight shone in lovemaking.
Velvet red lips quivered against snow white skin,
aching, hungering
for the warmth and strength and force and immaculate gentleness of
love making,
making love,
made of love,

laughter.
Basking in our private sun,

waves rose and broke and retreated
back down the shores of our bodies.
Each time I surrendered to the undertow,
breathing my heart into her heart as she
sucked me in, down, under, down,
around, into her, back into her.
She is gone now.

She left on plane and flew far away.
Storms and thunder lashed the city yesterday.
Animals sheltered in corners with wide shocked eyes.
Windows rattled, trembling against the wind.
I was still among the storms.

I lay in bed at dawn and received the offered sky.
The sky turned to light and then rain and light again,
and I was still, unbound.
With her I am free.

Without her I am free.
I am unbound,
unbound in a love that knows no opposite,
unbound in a love that shines before, during and after,
that‟s always, always shone.
Oh, when I listened to the storms rumble across the sky,

how beautiful to know that I am no longer the thunder or lightning or
immaculate sunrise.
I am the sky, unbound by love,
empty, clear.

I used to fight to hold the sunsets,

Or hunger for the pale shade of purple at angelic dawns.
I used to fight for my chains of beauty,
tempestuously raging against the dying of the light,
forgetting I was the naked sky,
hating the night.
Wake up!
Awake!
Rise up from your slumber!
Drop your shackles; release your fight
She is gone for now.

The fight is already released.
Sunlight has faded and dusk has drawn her coat across the land.
I go lovingly into the night,
stunned by peace,
stunned by stillness.
Grace is with me.
Grace has always been with me,
asking me to remember that I am the sky,
unbound.
My hands rest opened,
receiving, receiving,
Again, again,
today, tomorrow.
Maybe my lover will return.

Maybe not.
Coming and going,
into stillness, out of stillness,
stillness remains, unbound, everpresent.

Several Months later
The journey seems like a dream. I am sitting back at home in Africa, and have a slight
sunburn, after spending the day swimming in the warm Indian Ocean, eating large
hamburgers and taking an afternoon nap. Fresh coffee and I are better friends than ever.
Life continues to have a joyful ease about it, and my confidence in Spirit continues to grow.
Its ironic, that after all the years of searching for my inner home, I am back in my outer
home in the place I grew up. The journey has bought me back to my outer and my inner
world. Swimming in the sea was wonderful. I used to love surfing and the ocean more than
anything in the world, and in my years in the cities, I used to crave and yearn for the ocean.
I used to dream I would find fulfillment living by the sea, watching the waves, letting my
mind melt into the empty horizon, as it did for years and years. It hurt, letting go of the
dream of the sea. Being back was beautiful, yet leaving the beach, I was only curious about
the next moment, and the sea no longer held me.
I pray with certainty for my desires, yet the desires are dreams that hold no promise of
fulfillment. Why pursue them, why chase empty dreams?
The world is illusory.

God alone is real.
God is the world.
It‟s simple. Chasing dreams is the dance of God, the movement and radiance of Spirit, one
of the painting hands of creation. Chasing dreams creates new experiences for God. Let
heaven flow into the earth, and let the dream be one of goodness, of rightfulness, of color
and union. Let the dream be one of the end of suffering, and the liberation of all sentient
beings into the ecstatic union of their true self, their original face.
Awake.
Following the stepping stones of my dream, allowing my hands to paint new images for God
to see, it‟s back to family, community, service, tennis, surfing and Indian curry. I am seeing

the city of my home town with fresh eyes, free of many of my masks of conditioning, free of
much of my history. As T.S Eliot put it,
„We shall never cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring, will be to
arrive where we started, and know that place as if for the first time. ‟
And so, at some point, following my dreams and my heart, awakening, this liberation stuff
had become extraordinary fun. Bring on the party; bring on the release, bring on heaven. Of
course, the entire ride has been tremendous scintillating fun, it‟s just even more fun now. All
the love, all the sex, all the drugs, power struggles, round the world adventures, the
absence of fame and the absence of fortune, the beauty and the bastards, heartache and
poetry. It‟s been rich, such a blast. I got no complaints. Can we do it again, Dad?
Ok, so I don‟t really want to do it all again. Looking back, it was all a great movie, (and
admittedly not so great when I thought it was real and I was lost in suffering), but I want
new movies now. Doing it again would be the hamster on the wheel trick, something I am
trying to avoid. I spent the last six years learning to get off that tricky little wheel of
Samsara, finding my center in God and finding my freedom. The next movie I want is
creating the life I wanted, what I was trying to do from the start, except this time, I am not
trapped in my self centered narcissism. I caught myself praying again the other day, praying
that God would guide me and open things up for me, and wondering if he (or she) would
respond. In shock, I stopped that prayer, I stopped the divine communication. I pulled out
of that prayer and saw it for the deepest hole that it was.
I laughed as I saw myself falling back into my spell of throwing away my power again and
doubting God. The more I prayed from a position of weakness, the weaker I got. When I
pray „if it be thy will, God‟, I am not acting with the certainty of my god given conviction,
and I stay weak. Spirit is real, and is within me, in the deepest core of my being, not two,
not separate from me, speaking from my heart. God is within everything, and God hears and
responds to my every call, and if God, in His wisdom, chooses to remain silent, then so be it.
My task is to know that I am supported and guided, loved and cared for; it‟s my birthright.
From that knowing, from that faith born from a long hard journey of searching for my light, I
can relax, and the peace that passes all understanding is within me. To listen, I simply have
to be deeply open. I don‟t have to plead for acknowledgment from God; I am acknowledged,

and I know that now with certainty. The journey has been to arrive at that awareness, at
that certainty, at the knowledge of that power born of that love and the freedom that lies in
letting go.
So, today I pray again, except I pray with power. I pray with certainty. Let this prayer be
true because it‟s my highest desire, my deepest wish, it‟s my will, and I know that it‟s heard.
I feel the strength for action within my belly. I hear my own prayer, and I, and my soul, one
together, respond with certainty. The key is not to get in the way of how God should
respond. I pray, then unconditionally relinquish the outcome of the prayer to Christ, and I
feel this inner relinquishment born of faith as a return to my inner home of surrender and
relaxation, peace and joy, as my freedom is in letting go.
So, I am awake. I am awake because I know who I AM. I am awake because I do not try
and find a home for myself in the illusion of my experience. I am awake with certainty that
God is within me, protects me, guides me, teaches me, is the source of my peace, and I am
blessed to rest within that center. I am awake because I am free from the fantasy that I am
in control. I am awake because my freedom is in God, not in the world. I am awake because
I am open to create a new future based on partnership with Christ. I speak with certainty,
and God responds with certainty. I know Christ is real. I know the Holy Spirit is real. I count
on them, and I am exploring a relationship with them. And, even if I turn away, if I
momentarily lose myself in seeking and wishing and projecting my fullness and freedom into
the fantasies of my imagination, they are always there for me. Isn‟t that beautiful? I know
my prayers are heard and answered, and I can live life fully and freely, reaching towards the
yearnings of the heart, with the confidence of that support. The words of Philippians 4, vs 4-
7 come to mind.
„Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be
evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, in
prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God,
which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.‟
And, if God in His wisdom decides to block me, it doesn‟t matter, as I have earned the
„peace of God, which transcends all understanding‟ within me, no matter what. Because of
that, I can finally live. It‟s my ground, my center, and more priceless than anything on this

planet. Once you are healed, then you can start to have some fun out there, and, with God
your partner, learn to create the life you desire. That‟s where I am, feeling healed, feeling
whole, and deeply grateful for the journey that has unfolded and the healing hand of Christ
that has lead the way.
If I tune in to my heart now, it says family, friends, community, love, learning and
contribution. And, as a cheeky afterthought, the following.
 Teaching enlightenment.
 Adding goodness, beauty love and peace to the world.
 Creating value by freeing trapped spirits.
 Surfing trips.
 A woman with fire in her heart.
 Thai food.
 Dogs and cats
 Sunsets by the beach.
 Relentless rounds of bad jokes.
 Long travels around the world.
 Reading Hemingway on my honeymoon.
 Some money.
Thinking back, I did what I did because that‟s what I was. Writing this, I tried to express my
humanity, my sin, my imperfection, and through it all, the miracle of Gods healing grace and
my redemption. If you seek God, he will find you and awaken you. To me, its why we have
these human bodies, it‟s to learn to meet God again, to come home, to realize that our
home is in something far greater and holy than our separate little bodies, and when Jesus
says to us „Who do you say I am?‟, you can respond, not from what you have heard or read
or from the expectations of your father or the girl you are trying to date, but you respond
from your wisdom and your experience, and you say, with conviction from the still loving
depths of your heart, „You are Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. You are the Lord, my God.‟

You need power to create what you love. Find your power through your love, and find your
love in God. Know that God responds to you, and will support you and guide you. Find these
things by seeking, without exception, with your whole heart and whole mind, by seeking first
the kingdom of God, and then all things will be added unto you.
Each day continues to miraculously unfold. Its time to stop writing now, yet the journey, the
miracle, radiantly, unexpectedly and spontaneously, continues.
Love and God Bless.

Bruce
Epilogue. Ramblings on Liberation.
I am going to put myself on the line here and discuss that which can‟t be discussed, as
whatever I say, it (enlightenment or liberation) is not that. With no hope in mind (ha), here I
go.
I had tremendous misconceptions about waking up. I think many people do; there is a
mystique about what it means and how special it is and how hard it is to attain. The reality
is that the seeking prevents you finding it. It‟s too simple to believe so you think there must
be a trick to it. There isn‟t; there is absolutely no trick, but the paradox is that you only get
there is no trick after trying every trick in the book. The only trick is to let whatever happens
be ok, including pain. If you can have the patience and understanding, courage and
perseverance to bear witness to your uncomfortable feelings, slowly they get burnt away
and worked through and an inner transformation happens, and then every so often, you get
a huge death and a massive inner shift occurs. God is so mischievous; he made
enlightenment so obvious that hardly anyone gets it. People mistake being awake for some
experience, but it‟s not. It‟s realizing that you are the experiencer, not the experience, you
are the background in which experience arises, and not the experience itself. That‟s the
trick. Good or bad, no matter what you experience, it‟s not the experience. Suffering

happens when we forget that we are the background space of awareness, and we confuse
ourselves with being things we can name and know, like feelings and thoughts, sensations
and emotions, our identities, like being a teacher or a parent, or our possessions.
Enlightenment is not what you think it is, its nothing more or less than biscuits. Here is a
partial list of misconceptions of enlightenment, built from some of the things that I heard
upon the way.
 It takes lifetimes to achieve.

 It is only for the select few.
 There is only one enlightened person living in the world, and he lives in a cave in the
Himalayas keeping the earth spinning.
 Enlightened people have light coming out their ears and know everything.
 Enlightened people never say that they are enlightened. To say so, would mean that
they are not enlightened.
 Enlightened people know how to fly Boeing 747‟s.
 You can‟t argue with an enlightened person.
 Enlightened people can jump four stories.
Of course, I am being sacrilegiously flippant here, and the idea is to throw all these notions
out the window. Throw them out and pee on them, because every notion, every idea, every
belief about enlightenment, is a chain around your neck. Enlightenment cannot be defined,
as doing so, would place limits on the unlimited. Even to say that its unlimited, is to compare
it to something which is limited, and so enlightenment is neither limited nor unlimited. It‟s
not this, and not that. Once you realize it‟s nothing you can know and is without qualities,
radically unqualifiable, and, exhausted by your search, you stop looking for it and you fall
through a gateless gate, then there you are. You have traveled a tremendous journey to end
up exactly where you always have been, finally realizing what has always been impossible to
avoid, which is that You are here having your experiences. That‟s why it‟s called Self
Realization, you simply realize who you truthfully are, which is the awareness that gives rise
to your experience, the awareness that existed before your body was created. You have
stopped confusing your identity with things that arise within your five senses or within your
thinking, and you have woken up from the dream. You don‟t have awareness; awareness
has you. You want to slap yourself for being so stupid for not getting it earlier. When you
get it, it‟s obvious. It‟s so simple and there is no trick to it. The problem is, the ego wants to

make enlightenment another achievement for itself. The ego, mesmerized by forms and
experiences, wants to turn enlightenment into an experience. That‟s called falling back into
the dream. You (your awareness) has an ego, the ego doesn‟t have awareness. The ego can
never grasp the enlightened mind because the enlightened mind holds the ego. Waking up is
not an egoic achievement but makes the ego toast; it simply shows the ego that it‟s a ghost
and is nothing short of a massive and often horrific egoic disillusionment. Why is this called
liberation or rebirth? When you get this, you are literally reborn, renewed. Finally there is
freedom, peace and ease, there is nothing to hold onto, because nothing holds any real
promise of fulfillment, and in the letting go, is freedom. With self realization, you are always
already full, and nothing can change that. With that certainty, you rest in yourself, rest in
being, rest in what is arising both within you and without you. In that attitude of rest, born
of unshakeable confidence in the permanency and vastness of your true self, experiences
arise. Arising, you notice them, and by letting them be there, without any grasping or
aversion, they naturally and spontaneously disappear, they are self liberated within your
awareness. As you let the difficult experiences come and go, without acting on them or
resisting them, slowly a purification of the soul happens, which is painful, yet cleansing.
Experiences come and go, and the seer remains. When grasping or aversion arises, that is
simply held in awareness until the contraction is released. When fear, doubt or worry arise,
you simply let them be there, as if holding them with open hands, and without forcing them
away or getting lost in them, you allow the grace of your awareness to dissolve them,
liberating you. You are then free to act, free to act spontaneously, free to express yourself
without resistance, free to express with love and freedom. Finally, you are relaxed, and free
to laugh without condition.
I became tired of letting the world dictate to me what enlightenment is. Part of my liberation
was freeing myself from all the ideas about what it is, how wonderful it is, how hard it is,
how simple it is, wada wada wada. I had deep attachments about the idea of enlightenment,
and that, funnily enough, was another source of suffering. There is absolutely no trick to
being awake. It‟s so simple; just notice what arises, and that noticing is effortless. Keep
doing that, keep noticing the impulse that its to be found elsewhere, in ashrams, in spiritual
teachers, in books like this, in chanting at yoga, and notice that the impulse pulls you away
from this moment, right here, right now, and surrender that impulse and relax. Do that long
enough and eventually you‟ll get it, and that‟s what meditation trains you to do. Finally,
something snaps and the search ends and you breath a very very long sigh of relief. Going

onto the internet you get hit by a smothering avalanche of ideas and egos and teachers and
opinions about spirituality. It‟s easy to get confused, and if you don‟t know your truth, well,
then it‟s easy to get lost. The root problem is your search, and the search prevents you
finding what is always there, watching the search. At some point, I had to become fiercely
rebellious to find my truth. I had to abandon everyone else‟s ideas and opinions, I had to
doubt everything thing I had ever heard. Awakening, or enlightenment, is awakening to the
truth of my being, to the reality of my light, to the Spirit that shines unbroken within me. Do
you get this?
The Tibetan Buddhists say that there are four faults that prevent people from recognizing
the nature of their mind (sometimes for lifetimes), and I have mentioned them at different
points in this book. Here they are again..
The four faults.
1. The nature of the mind is too close to be recognized. Just as we are unable to see
our own face, mind finds it difficult to look into its own nature.
2. It is too profound for us to fathom. We have no idea how deep it could be; if we did,
we would have already, to a certain extent, realized it.
3. It is too easy for us to believe. In reality, all we need do is simply rest in the naked,
pure awareness of the nature of the mind, which is always present.
4. It is too wonderful for us to accommodate. The sheer immensity of it is too vast to
fit into our narrow way of thinking. We just can‟t believe it. Nor can we possibly
imagine that enlightenment is the real nature of our minds.
Enlightenment is your truth. It‟s not someone else‟s truth, intravenously fed into you through
your culture, your books, your ideologies and your televisions. It‟s yours, yours, yours. How
can I shout that loud enough? It‟s your godblessed truth!! All you gotto know is truth, that
which is unchanging. How do you find truth in a world of impermanence, how do you find
that which cannot be found? Ha. Another conundrum, especially seeing as though your
thoughts and beliefs are part of the world. So how do you find it? Simply allow yourself to
relax, and notice what was within you five minutes ago, five years ago, five lifetimes ago. If
you really get that nothing is the same, you will relax, stop looking, and fall into the ground
of your own being, which has always been what is there, always looking out. Something

lights up your experiences; that‟s who you are, and its not bound by time and space, it
creates time and space.
The catch 22 is that the stories of enlightenment have to grasp you, inspire you, motivate
you enough to climb out of the womb or your comfortable habits and your magnificent little
self obsession, and, paradoxically, get you to grasp for the ungraspable, get you to reach for
the carrot of unconditional freedom and unreasonable bliss, like making a monkey thinking it
can hang from a laser beam. The stories have to plug into your soul, making you think that
enlightenment is a wonderful thing and worthy of having, and it will free you from suffering
and bring untold happiness, and bang, they‟ve gotto make you sprint out the starting blocks
and start pursuing the unpursueable. You have to attach firmly to all you have been told and
commit to practice, until the practice shatters you and you have to forget everything. (The
Divine has a remarkable sense of humor, playing cat and mouse with itself.) Does this mean
that all teachings are worthless? If you take the teachings to be truth and you get lost in
ideology and become a fire and brimstone Sunday night preacher trying to get others to
believe them, then yes, all teachings are worthless, including this book, or an inappropriate
fart at prayer time or a loud grating snore during meditation. Yet, if you let the teachings
point you in a direction where you are more open to find your truth, if they point you to
have the experience of liberation and awakening, then the teachings become an exquisite
flawless diamond with your name engraved on the front facet, reflecting the radiant loving
colors of your soul into your world.
So what if I were to attempt the impossible and define what is not definable? Enlightenment
is not what you think it is. How is that for a frustrating answer? In a world obsessed by
definitions, the mind demands answers, and whatever the mind is told, is not the answer.
This book is not the answer. Whatever you think it is, it‟s not that, it‟s a lie. That‟s
frightening; what use is something that can‟t be known? The ego, the mind, is terrified of
the unknown. One of the routes to self realization is called Self Inquiry. The technique is
simple. Notice your thinking, and say „I am not these thoughts. Who am I?‟ Notice your
feelings, and say „I am not these feelings. Who am I?‟ Notice the sounds around and say „I
am not these sounds. Who am I?‟ Notice your impulses and drives, and say „I am not these
impulses and drives. Who am I?‟ You can follow more detailed instructions that point out the
nature of the mind. You have feelings, and you can be aware of feelings. That which is
aware of the feelings is not the feelings. You are that which is aware of feelings. You have

thoughts, and you can be aware of thoughts. That which is aware of thoughts is not
thoughts. You are that which is aware of thoughts. You continue to do this for impulses,
sights, sounds, emotions, and anything else you may be aware of. The goal is to disidentify
with your experiences, and identify with your true being, the most innermost light within you
that cognizes any experience that arises.
Go and do this for a few years, for an hour or two a day, and whenever you can during the
day. You will notice a tendency to get lost in thinking or feeling or your plans or in getting
things and attaining things. You are not these. Whenever you notice you are lost, return and
say „Who am I?” with a fresh desire to understand. Each time you notice yourself lost in a
feeling or an experience and you shift out of it, you strengthen your base in the unseen
unheard Spirit, in Presence, and you weaken your attachment to the world, and slowly, you
wake up, until one day the center of gravity shifts and you remember, with confidence, who
you have always been. The awareness that knows you are lost is in itself liberating. You are
always free. You always have been. The monumental screw up is that you try and find
yourself in the world of form, in the world of your experiences of thinking, feeling, doing,
acting, when it‟s you who is looking. The one you are looking for is the one who is looking.
What you are doing is questioning your identity. Being human for most people is a massive
case of mistaken identity. You identify with your separate body and mind, with its dreams,
ideals and beliefs and opinions. You identify with a feeling of being separate from the world
around you, and you do everything you can to feel good and avoid pain and continue to be
separate. You get upset when the things that make you feel good and give you security are
threatened or lost. The reality is, that being separate is an illusion, yet it‟s an illusion we
strongly believe in until we wake up. As humans, we are in an awful bind. We intuit infinity,
freedom and impermanence yet we are stuck in this body that feels separate from
everything, and will grow old and feel pain and die. We project our intuitions of infinity onto
our dreams and hopes, our marriages, our careers, our health plans and our houses. Yet
there is a silent terror at the root of our being, born of the knowledge that all that is arises is
impermanent and will die, and that we will one day be gone as the annihilation of death
approaches. How the hell do you escape this seemingly impossible bind? Believe in the
afterlife? Build pyramids? Preserve yourself in liquid nitrogen? The fundamental way to end
the terror is to wake up, to undo your sense of being separate, to dis-identify from your
body and mind. By doing Self Inquiry, you slowly stop identifying with separate things, like

your body or your car or the firm breasts of your girlfriend of the number of awful wrinkles
under your eyes. You share your fundamental nature with the rocks, the trees, the clouds
and the beggars. Everything is made of the same stuff. Everything is made of Spirit. Did you
ever wonder about how the earth was once just a floating rock in space, and somehow the
rocks moved in a vast process to produce you, reading these words from behind your eyes?
The rocks themselves are alive, and reach up to God, becoming Picasso, Rodin and Adolph
Hitler along the way. How did rocks design skyscrapers? How did rocks rise up and commit
genocide? Random chance? Hell no. Eros, yes. Everything changes. You will change. Trying
to create permanence in your life is doomed to fail, because one day, you will die.
By slowly negating who you think you are, by slowly chipping away at thinking your are your
body, your thoughts, your feelings, your job, by slowly committing this beautiful illusory
suicide, your realize that you are nothing that can be seen, heard, felt, experienced or
known. There is an angel hidden behind the marble of your separate self, and you have to
chisel until you set it free. The process gets painful; the self as you know it is lead into death
and dark nights as attachments die, yet the darkest hour hides the dawn. Slowly who you
thought you are is hit repeatedly like a rock cutter hammering a rock, until the rock cracks,
shattering apart.
And then? You know what? You are still there. You breathe. You are alive. And you are
relaxed. The obsession that you had with your little separate self sense is broken, and you
find that you are happier now than you ever thought possible. Your sense of self kind of flips
out, and you are free. That‟s enlightenment. You relax into the ground of your own being,
and you are free of who you thought you were. Are you free? Yes? Do you suffer? No. Feel
pain? Yes. Can you fly jumbo jets? Probably very badly.
So what do you experience? Nothing. That‟s the irony. People think that something should
be experienced, maybe no thoughts or happiness or celestial bells and white lights.
Whatever can be experienced is not it, is not enlightenment, whatever can be experienced is
simply the radiance of your mind. Remember the practice? Not this, not this? Even the sense
of I you have, not this, not this. Even the thought that its here now, you have to let that
thought go. Not this, not this, without condition. You have to form absolutely no relationship
to what is arising. First you give up the world and find the one, and then, having found that

one that is your true self, you return to play and dance in the world with enlightened
awareness. Everyone is searching for something, but the very search prevents the finding,
as the search assumes that enlightenment is to be found somewhere other than right here,
right now. Finally, exhausted, the search is dropped, and what is left. Just you. Just naked
untouchable you who has always been there, watching the show, watching the world 5
minutes ago, 5 years ago, 50 years, 500 years before you were born. And what does resting
in the original you feel like? Just a sense of spaciousness, a lightness, a deep unconditional
okayness with whatever is arising. Sights, feelings, thoughts, impulses, sounds and
sensations arise, and you notice them, but they have no hold on you. You get to watch your
inner world with a type of intimate detachment. Because your inner world no longer controls
you, you can have more fun in more playing fields as fixed ideas about the world are
dropped. The message of the spiritual traditions is that if you can relax enough into your
authentic self and give up your obsession with being separate, you are happier and more
filled with love and ease than you ever thought possible. That‟s when the party starts!
Separation hurts. Separation gives rise to pain and suffering, fear and terror, and we
urgently seek to end that hurt to become whole. That‟s why you have such a strong drive to
find yourself in the dreams of the ego, in wealth, in love, in beauty, in banana milkshakes, in
eternal life with 55 virgins waiting for you. You console yourself that one day everything will
be okay. Somehow you think you will be complete when you achieve your goals and that
ghastly nail tearing sense of incompleteness is gone. You feel separation as being separate
from your dreams, and you fight to end that by making your dreams come true. Yet, the
solution is not reaching your dreams. If you get what you want, you may briefly relax and
experience happiness, yet it‟s just a matter of time, a few blinks of the eyelashes, until you
contract and identify with your mind again, with your ideas and thoughts and beliefs, and
any identification with your self contraction reignites the illusion of separation from the
whole, from God, from Spirit. Trying to be something, trying to become something,
reinforces the root cause of your pain. It simply makes the attachment stronger. And, if you
do reach your goals, then maybe you will momentarily relax again into an astounding
happiness, and you will think that it‟s your goal, the object of your desire, that made you
happy. By confusing your happiness as arising from something in the world, you further dig
your own grave. Your dream will fade, your wife will get wrinkles, you will get bored of sex
and perfect nipples (ok..maybe not!! Ha ) and then what? You will lose your happiness and
set off on more escapades, a mind searching for fullness and freedom, a mind aching to end

the sin of separation. The solution is simple. The solution is to stop fighting with reality.
Even reading this, you may wonder what I mean. That‟s also a search. Don‟t think that by
understanding these words you will wake up. The solution is to wake up; everything is as it
is, always. This doesn‟t mean that things don‟t change. Life dances, always. The dance is
always how it is, and if you try and make it something, then you have lost the dance.
Enlightenment is a relaxation allowing your inherent radiance to shine on out. You shift
from needing things to be happy, to being the source of happiness itself. The trick is you
have to give up everything to find everything. It means you have to give up the compulsion
that you will find permanency and happiness for yourself through achieving things and
having things. Letting go of the hold that those things have on you is not pleasant; it‟s often
dark, depressing and terrifying. Sure, you may be satisfied for a while, but then things will
change again. A fundamental truth is that everything changes, so don‟t be stupid and try
and hold on.
You confuse your happiness with belonging to those things, those cars, girlfriends,
achievements, adventure holidays, and in their absence, you feel a tension of unreleased
energy, and you name this tension suffering. If you can learn to relax yourself, to liberate
that tension of suffering through the grace of awareness born of confidence of your true
self, then your natural happiness starts to shine through unconditionally, and you start to
have more more fun than you ever imagined. That‟s your rebirth, your new life, and all you
really want to do is help other people get there too…
Enlightenment doesn‟t happen overnight though. After the radical insight that you are
nothing that arises, you still have to integrate that awareness into your being. The hidden
emotional attachments that are within your subconscious have to bubble into the light of
your awareness, and have to be transformed through the love of awareness. That‟s gonno
hurt, and will throw you back into painful periods of despair and separation, when you feel
very unenlightened. As your darkness, as your fear emerges into awareness and you get
closer to its root, you will feel like an animal trapped in a snare hearing the hunter
approaching, convinced of your upcoming misery and death. The process is unpleasant, yet
you have to bear your suffering. Even though I have said that one route to awakening is
simply „not this, not this‟, negating everything in your experience, you will still have to work

with and understand your psychology if you want to be healthy and know yourself correctly.
Psychological development is spiritual development, and so, working with your psychological
structure and the process of your development, owing your projections and seeing your
shadow, will free up tremendous energy to help in the awakening process and you make an
enlightened „cool guy‟, not an enlightened asshole. If you just negate your experience, you
may become an enlightened being okay with his neurosis!
Sometimes I wonder about the death of Christ on the cross. His body bore suffering thrust
upon him by others (by his culture, his upbringing, his family), and finally the part of him
that suffered died, releasing his spirit, or his soul, into union with divinity. We find
redemption, we find release, when we are prepared to journey through our suffering,
bearing it within us and allowing parts of ourselves to die.

12/4/2009 WWW - Freeintofull.com Bruce Oom

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Awake

A true story of humor, love, suffering and enlightenment

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Meeting the right people ...................................................................................... 128

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Perhaps I can say just one more thing to you.

It‟s possible for you too. If you want it.

Love and blessings

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Failure and recovery

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

grade, I was classified as an underachiever, and I had to keep a daily record of my

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

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Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

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Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Jesus never came.

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Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

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Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Do you know what she could do?

It was great for dinner conversation,

Do you know what she could do?

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and she never told me how.

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Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

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Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

The Good, the bad and the ugly.

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Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

I know my Angel of Fuckedness, My Bride of Desire,

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com

allow her into my pure clean retreat.

She will be back.

Copyright Bruce Oom 2009 www.freeintofull.com