My Story

I was bored. I was manager of a liquor store for nine years in a small town and this was my life, 13 hours a day for 6 days a week I entered the domain of bottles. I was in a small town, there were no further prospects. I was getting increasingly depressed. I have always been an extrovert person with a good sense of humour and always found the bright side of any situation I found myself in. So the depression didn’t show, not even to myself. But it was there.

In the middle of strolling around the store and thinking, what else is there to do? I decided something.

I was brought up as a Catholic boy, but rejected it by age fourteen. I am a Sagittarian son of a Sagittarian mother my freedom to make up my own mind on issues without authoritarian guidance was inevitable. I tried a few other established churches but found the same lack of conviction amongst the believers there. They all spoke confidently about Christ but it was plain that it was all learnt parrot-fashion and very few knew a spiritual experience. I even started my own Christian group, Salvage, which lasted about a month before I realised that here too, no one had the right idea. Not being able to find an answer and being distracted by the teen hormones and the emerging hippy culture (about a year or two behind the rest of the world – no instant communications yet) I gave up and considered myself an atheist. In the liquor store, then, at a low point, I decided that if there was something to it, I will look for the answers but they must be real, tangible results. A lot of good intelligent people believed in this, so there must be something to it and I felt by not even considering it I was being unfair.

I started immediately by trying to recall when I felt most moved spiritually. This was whenever I was in nature. I have always been affected by the energies in nature and it was always where I found a peace within myself. I pursued the thought that IF God created the world then nature is the system He put in place and our restructuring of the world was destroying His vision.

I then had the opportunity to do a sweat lodge. I was fascinated by the sophistication of the Native American never explored it fully. It was not the sweat that made the biggest impression on me, but the trance we did as part of the same exercise. It was here that I realised how the communication between the spirit world and myself worked. It was the method by which I would go into that altered state of mind and listen to that still voice that did not come from me. I was experiencing a communication with my intuition.

I had done a bit of trance work during my drama courses I attended as a student and so I was familiar with that mindspace but I had not consciously identified my intuition in that. I then continued, on my own, as you will understand in a moment, to explore this new found sense. Actually not new at all. I have always been aware of my ability to 'know' things and create futures, it was just not done so consciously.

I have always been a nudist, and after sharing my experience with others and leading them to their intuition was always a bit hit and miss until a friend also went naked and it worked wonderfully. I understood something I had to now understand intellectually so that it makes sense to me. I researched and found the following. Indulge me here, this is an important aspect so I'm going to ramble a bit.

The skin is a sense organ. The biggest organ of all on top of it. For the last few centuries (since the start of the Industrial revolution) we have become increasingly prudish about our physical presence. We have become ashamed of our bodies and protected them from the ravenous eyes of the world. The more we placed our faith in machinery for our survival the more our spirituality was sacrificed to accommodate this. We moved away from using our intuition, helped along by the prejudices of the church, which saw all that as witchcraft, and that prejudice is still alive and well in our society today. Still the more conservative we became in regard to our bodies, the more we lost touch with our intuition and hence our spiritual selves. (Which, incidentally, is why I could find nobody in the established religions who really had a spiritual experience.) All this covering up meant that the skin became stifled and unused.

Now, its my theory and it has proven itself as valid to me and the few who have dared share the experience with me.and it goes thus: The skin is the sense organ for the intuition as the eyes are the organ for sight. Intuition is not about learned knowledge it is about knowledge that is felt. When I first met my wife I 'knew' that she would be the one. This was not wishful thinking. I knew it. I also knew that it would not be a good marriage. Both turned out to be correct. Often when your intuition supplies a idea our rational mind turns it down even before it becomes a conscious thought. Much is lost by rational interference. Even now you are thinking that I am a nutcase because you are NEVER going to be caught dancing naked, but stop and think about it, ignore the fearful reaction you may have and much to your dismay you have a deep seated inkling that I may be right and even then your rational mind will dismiss it.

(In order to keep this as brief as possible I will leave it there but I will come back to it later.)

Inspired by this experience I decided to build my own sweatlodge in my yard. I dug it into the ground and about a foot down I hit one huge solid rock. I persevered and with only a pick and a spade broke enough rock to line our large garden and also to line the walls of the sweat lodge. Because of the rock it took months. It is then that I realised the power of intention and how to use it.

Your intent is the most powerful of all your talents or drives. Absolutely anything can be achieved through intent, but it must be done in the right spirit. For instance I discovered that I could do healing, This only worked when my intent was not to boost myself, but was completely altruistic. The same goes for intent in approaching any task, event, whatever. I never ask money to help people or guide and mentor them.

The third and most uncomfortable lesson to learn was the meaning of humility. Remember that only you can give yourself humility and others will give you humiliation. Humility, combined with intent is a powerful tool to make changes in the world around you. Everything was taken from me. I lost my marriage, my business that I was getting off the ground, and left town for the city with only a few clothes and precious things. I literally had nothing left.

Frightening as that might sound it was balanced by the knowledge that every change for the good means a sacrifice of things that are not good. I was able to clear out everything that was holding me back and fill my life with good things.

I am now able to to say that my learning process (after ten years of exploring) has reached a point where I can start giving that to others. Why are we driven to want everyone to know what we do? Firstly it is my knowing that we can create paradise as long as we all (or a critical mass at any rate) strive towards the same thing. And then what is life worth if you can't share freely the good stuff.

It is my intent to set about bringing people to know this. It is necessary for Gaia.

That is my story in its briefest possible form. My next post will describe how I am going to set about realisiing my dream.