My Story Parts I & II

My Story – Part I

“Light is easy to love. Show me your darkness”  R. Queen

Standing in Jayne’s office, I listened half-heartedly to her begging me to come along to The Journey workshop. Resistance turned to annoyance. Searching for a credible objection, I peered out the window through a horizontal gap in the slats and saw the words Brandon Block displayed in huge letters on a poster. Accustomed to reading signs from life, I startled, and then caught the cosmic joke and precision of the synchronicity! I told Jayne that something said I was meant to go.

Travel to the Brandon Bays workshop was itself a rather mythical quest, as sign after sign appeared en route: a total stranger gifting me a meaningful tarot card on the tube; a personal insignia spotted above a gate; and treasured winged beasts carved in stone at the entrance. My 27-year-old self gleefully embraced these early discoveries of the spiritual realm where everything felt imbued with the Mystery.

Once inside in plush conference surroundings, I listened intently as we learned about Brandon’s approach to accessing deep consciousness through body channels. Engaged and open, I delighted in the inputs and visualizations, but already dreaded the second day when we ourselves would practice the technique.

On day 2, I found myself powerfully drawn to a very young man. The sense was mutual and we paired up, as was life’s design. In a room of over 200 people it transpired that he was from France, a country I adore and whose language I speak fluently.

I practiced first, tuning in to discover the part of his body that might hold relevant information for releasing any unconscious blockage, which unattended might lead to more serious physical illness. The body intelligence guided us using inner visualization to a deep, damaged looking root in a large back tooth. We sat for a time, waiting to see what it would reveal. But something inside said Go deeper. Unsure whether to trust this knowing, I continued to wait, but the insistence and intensity grew, so I guided him to travel deeper down the root – where we were taken deep into the brain.

A dark, ominous-feeling cell cluster waited at the end of the long fibres and he began to sob uncontrollably. “What’s happening?” I asked. He was back in a traumatic memory from early childhood at the moment he had found the body of his older brother who committed suicide in their home. Without thought, I switched to his language. I heard his distraught child voice – unspoken words of grief, horror, despair, loneliness and regret. Helpful sentences formed in my mouth to be said, whilst all the time ‘I’ was watching, as if outside of the process. I understood that a greater intelligence was at work, attending to the tumour – administering healing with precision and ‘I’ was its willing instrument.

My Story – Part II

 “Yea though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death,

   I will fear no Evil.” (Psalm 23)

And then it was my turn. Still bewildered and in awe, I lay down hesitantly to begin the inner journey. So many years ago, it now feels like a distant dream.

I went down a staircase and was greeted at the doorway to the unconscious by the wise guide. He appeared as the film character Yoda and I burst into hysterical laughter, wondering whether to take any of this seriously. His incongruous apparition and my response masked the nature of what was to come.

Following the process, I came to a group of wise, loving supporters – some living, some dead. They all gathered in a circle. I noted my beloved maternal grandmother amongst them. Looking strangely solemn they asked if I was ready.

Ready for what?  

The wise guide led me to an enormous edifice: a gigantic tombstone the size of a tower. I stood in its long, dark shadow, which extinguished all light. He handed me a hammer-like tool and instructed me to smash the tombstone utterly and completely. I was to place each remnant into the blazing fire beside me, to be transformed by Divine flames.

I just stood there paralysed, barely breathing. Powerless. Staring up at the enormous monument to death. It possessed me with its implacable, indifference and its chill. I felt the presence of the murdered, and all the dead, and the vast industry of the Holocaust. My own visceral ambivalence to life was unmasked. Riven by resistance, terror, rage and guilt, I was fixed in its deathly gaze and unconscious bonds.

Words burst out of me: Who will remember them and keep their memory sacred?

I howled. I cursed. I fought, until eventually I had no fight left. Breaking up the edifice took the longest time. I was dimly aware that in the real world, four skilled hands had moved in to hold me by wrists and ankles, as tears drenched us.

When the flames had consumed every last remnant, Time and Space slowed down and stopped. Unearthly hands suspended me in the boundless empty and I noticed two vast wings unfurling from my shoulders. They went on into infinity in either direction. And there was a light, which poured through my body. Emanating. Words began pouring from my lips. Sweet words. Praising words. Blessings on the people in the room… outside in the streets… in the city… it spread ever outwards, until the blessings covered the whole earth. I stayed there for hours, though only minutes in the real world.

Back in normal awareness, I was very much my usual self again. I had no conception of the inner and outer work that lay ahead, only that everything had changed. That’s when the journey with unity and consciousness truly began. It is a forever work in progress!