Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
~ Van Morrison – Into the Mystic ~
Ever since I was a child growing up on the shores of rural Lake Ontario, I have always known there was something more… a great mystery that dwelt behind that which could be seen, heard, tasted, touched and smelled. And in those early years, it was always far more real to me than the outer physical world others seemed so deeply immersed in.
Somehow, I understood that everything was alive, everything was connected, and everything had its own unique story to share.
Sometimes when I sat with my back against a rock or tree, there would be images of things long forgotten – those who had walked the land before, Native American and European, and all that had taken place there. I saw things come and things pass away – and somehow it all made sense to me, even if I was only three or four years old at the time.
I came to understand that I dwelt in a world of mystery, miracles and magic – and within me was the absolute certainty that all things were possible – and dreams could come true.
Within this knowingness I found a place of boundless joy, wonder and innocence. It was as if I had been born into a great adventure… and I was to be the hero of my own journey.
It is a time that I often think back to as if it was the life of another. A little boy
I knew and loved who suddenly, and without warning, vanished, leaving as he went, a yawning chasm in my life.
Like many others, my contraction into the physical world of fear and pain came as a result of a series of childhood traumas that remain personal to me. In themselves they are unimportant. What is important though, is that these events set in train a series of self-sabotaging mind-sets and behaviours that took me ever deeper into a place of separation and disassociation… mainly from myself, but of course, others too.
I entered many dark nights of the soul where all sense of myself as an infinite being was slowly but surely consumed within the quicksand of anxiety, anger and unworthiness. My sense of mystic wonder steadily gave way to an insidious, creeping, corrosive fear. I lost all sense of feeling safe in the world and at times I questioned whether I wished to continue in physical existence – the emotional pain was so great.
The paradox in all of this was, the more I contracted into the shadowlands of my mind, the more life seemed to ask of me in terms of landing highly responsible executive roles where the welfare of individuals and organisations were increasingly placed in my hands.
I learned to be a highly functional dysfunctional person. I learned to be the proverbial ‘duck on the pond’ appearing to calmly glide across the surface, while the legs were frantically paddling beneath the water.
Of course, this was totally unsustainable – a train wreck waiting to happen – and I desperately needed to do something about it. I had to start taking responsibility for my life and begin my journey back to the truth of me… back into the Mystic from where I came… back into that which is the Matrix of all things.