The Cry of the Mountain

The Cry of the Mountain

I woke up and I was giddy with excitement and euphoria. I knew what it was I wanted to do! But then I looked at how difficult it would be to begin, I saw the mountain towering above me, and as I gazed toward its lofty summit, I knew that it would be impossible to reach it. "Madness!" I thought, "Utter madness to even think I could do it." I started to turn away and as soon as did, I began to feel a sense of relief wash over me as the mountain slowly faded from my sight, and with it, my dream, like the leaves of autumn, falling slowly around my feet to be lost, and reborn in another time and another life.

In that moment of turning, through the waves of relief that washed over me, I sensed something else. I caught the sound of faint cries carried on the wind. I paused to listen because my instinct told me that someone was in great distress, someone was out there, floundering and lost, and if I could do it, then I was going to help them. The cries were coming from behind me, from the very place on which I had just turned my back. I felt a compulsion to keep going, to ignore this cry for help, but I could not. I had to turn around and to see what I could do.

The act of turning would not come and I stood, frozen in space and time, as the last cry echoed and died away around me. I knew that if I did turn, towering high above me and bearing witness to my cowardice, would be the mountain that I knew not how to climb. I was caught in hesitation between that which scared me and the cries for help, and the compulsion to keep going, with my back at the mountain, and to ignore everything and to pretend it had never happened, that I had not heard the voice.  The cry came again only this time, although it was fainter, I could discern its urgency and dire need.  

I cannot explain why I did what I did.  I've looked back upon this moment in the times since and I am still unable to say what happened.  I recall taking a step away from the mountain only to stumble at taking a second.  It felt as though the entire universe was watching me at that very moment, I could feel the weight of its gravity pushing down with such crushing force, piercing my soul with its gaze.  For an instant I stopped.  There had been no further cry for help and perhaps it was this that gave me pause.  All I know is that pause I did and it felt like the universe held its breath in unison. I moved again, only it was not to take a step forwards as I had been expecting, it was to turn myself about, to look upon the lofty peak of that impenetrable mountain once more.  

I waited and listened for the cry, my eyes searched the trees, scanned the lower levels of the mountain, looking for anything that would give me a clue as to the location of the helpless victim. I saw no one, I heard no one.  I walked forward a few paces altering the angle at which I was looking into the trees, hoping that perhaps I would see some colour that would indicate an item of clothing.  Nothing.  I stepped forward a little more, scanning the mountain ridges, looking at the gullys, fixing my eyes on the trees. Still there was no one.  I decided that I would give it up, that I had perhaps heard the cries of an eagle or some other bird of prey on the wind, on the hunt.  I looked once more time and then I saw it.

There, in among the darkness of the trees was an opening I had not seen before.  Could it be the way through?  I tried my best to guess the direction it would take through the forest and I lifted my eyes up to scan the lower slopes of the mountain. There!  Could it be?  It was almost too good to be true.  What looked like a trail, barely visible, wound its way up the mountainside for some distance before disappearing.  I could not have seen it from where I had been standing before.  It only became clear once I had taken a few steps toward the mountain.  

I began to walk forwards.  I do not recall being aware of this until suddenly, looming up before me stood the trunks of the ancient and mighty trees in the forest.  Now I stopped once more, not in hesitation but so I could remember this moment.  I turned and looked back from whence I had come and I saw that already I had travelled some distance along the path.  Perhaps it would become harder now.  I tightened my pack, took a deep breath and plunged forwards into the forest, into the unknown, taking one step then another along the path.  

It was then I heard the laughter all around, coming from everywhere all at once and I knew that the laughter was from the same person who had cries out in distress before.  I smiled and then I too laughed and I laughed with great and profound joy.  There had never been anyone else.  The cries, just as with the laughter had come from within myself.  My heart had spoken, my heart had known the suffering that would have occurred had I walked away from the mountain, and it had known that my dream would have been lost, perhaps forever.  Now, it was full of joy because at long last we were together making the journey, our journey.  We were on the path towards our dreams.  Perhaps we would never reach the top of the mountain.  Perhaps the trail would stop part way up.  But at least now I was going to find out.  I would discover all there was and I might find out more than I could ever have realised.  This was an adventure.  Together, my heart and I, we were on the path.  We were on our true path, and now the possibilities were endless.

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What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

That's the question that has come to my mind over the last few days.  What have I gotten myself into?  Now I think about it, and I was thinking about it on my walk over here to the cafe, perhaps the question is not so much what, but rather why?  Why have I gotten myself into this situation?  I guess before we could begin to answer the question, it is necessary to define the subject matter.

It's Sunday 29 December.  This means that I am now less than two weeks away from my embarkation on my next adventure.  Thirteen days more and I will once again leave England after yet another short stay, a stay that is either too long or too short - I can never quite decide which - and I'll head off to New Zealand to begin my cycle tour adventure.  In less than three weeks, I should be on the road, spinning those pedals that turn the cranks that turn the wheels, that will speed me along the roads.  Exciting isn't it?  A dream realised.  Surely this is the epitome of what life is all about.  Throwing oneself into the unknown and the challenge of never being sure of what each day will bring.  It does not matter how many times I have done this now, each time the departure date approaches, and for some reason that tick to thirteen days seems to be the event trigger more than any other, I begin to grow concerned, I start to fret about what it is that I am doing, and why I am going to do it.

I believe it is the same for everyone.  No matter what they will tell you, no matter how gung-ho and cock sure they appear to be, I have little doubt that underneath there lies a swirling, tumultuous flow of worry, a constant and raging stream of concerns, that are held in check only by the dam of outer calmness.  Columbus, Cook, Scott, Shackleton, Earhart, Hilary, Armstrong (of the Neil variety), Yeager, Baumgartner and any one else you may wish to include in such exulted company, I can guarantee that although they may have appeared to be the perfect picture of composed, mill pond surface calmness, below that exterior lurked the questions, the fears, the doubts, and the constant nagging of why am I doing this and what have I gotten myself into?

It's only natural.  I know that.  I also know that it is going to be okay.  My own adventure is nothing compared to some, but it is my own adventure, my own decision to step outside of my comfort zone, to go off in exploration and in search, to confront my fears, to extend myself, to find out who I am, to know what mettle lurks under my flesh.  No matter how seemingly small and insignificant your own adventure may appear to some, to the person at the centre of that story, it is the greatest undertaking in the history of humanity.  Imagine for a moment a person who suffers from acute agoraphobia.  To this person, even opening the front door of their house can seem the most daunting decision to take, let alone stepping across the threshold and leaving the secure confines of their home.

Road To Nowhere by Talking Heads has just begun to play on the sound system of cafe.  Is it coincidence that I happen to love this song?  Doesn't road to nowhere sum up my journey, all of our journeys?  We're walking our paths, thinking that we are headed some place special, striving to get to a certain point, mulling over decisions that we believe to be of the utmost importance, but in reality, we're all headed to exactly the same place, no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try.  That may lead you to ask, well then, why bother at all?  And the answer to that my friend is that it is the journey that is the making, it is the space between two places and the manner in which we cross that space that counts.  It is that crossing between points that generates experiences and memories and those are the very things that define us, that change us, that allow us to discover who we are, who we were truly meant to be.  It is the crossing of this distance, no matter how great, no matter how small, that reveals our inner truth and shows us the true path.

Oddly enough, the thought generated by that song has answered the questions hasn't it?  What did I get myself into and why have I gotten myself into it?  Answer: because if I do not, then I will never know my answer.  If I do not, I will never grow my soul.  If I do not, I will never experience the magic that is created when a person goes off in search of adventure and daring.  If I do not, I will reach the end of my days and I will wonder what could have been.  If I do not, I will be left with a regret, knowing full well that I had the means necessary to achieve my dreams and I chose an early death instead.  And why would anyone chose an early death when there is so much life out there, within your grasp, when all you have to do is to stretch out an arm, reach out with your finger tips and grab a hold?  I choose to grasp onto life.  I choose to see the miracles and the magic of a life lived.  And just as Renton said at the end of Trainspotting, "Choose life." Amen Renton, amen.

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The Deepest Desire

The old man bade me stop.  With the aid of his staff, on which he leaned heavily, he shuffled a few steps further forward and I felt the pain that must have been in those old arthritic bones.  With a swiftness of speed that defied his age, he whirled around to face me.  At that moment, everything shifted and became blurred.  I felt a sense of dizziness and I wanted to reach out to steady myself, but there was nothing to which I could hold.  I staggered, ready to fall.  "Stand up straight and look at me!", the old man spoke with such commanding authority that I was compelled to look, even though I wanted to drop to the ground on my knees.

I stared at the old man in wonder.  His robes were the same, yet his face was changed.  Gone were the deep lines that had been etched and carved into his leathery skin, the combined effects of wind, rain and sun, over countless passing of the seasons.  His eyes, that had been almost blind with milkiness, shone clear and bright, and there was a light that burned in them now, the like of which I had never seen.

I could not help but to stand transfixed, lost in the depths of those eyes, unable to look away.  The light seemed to burn into me, a dazzling blue electricity that reached into my soul.  I followed that light and together we plunged into the depths of my being.  It felt like falling into an endless abyss where time held no meaning.  At the moment that I thought we could fall no further, I found the words that I had long been seeking.  There they were, at the very root of my own soul, entwined in the fibre of my being, the words that my heart recognised and knew as its own.  Here at last was the answer to that which I had sought for too long.

"This is your truth, for the heart reveals the wisdom of eternity past and eternity future", it was the voice of the old man.  "It is not enough to feel the truth of them, it is necessary to speak the words out loud, to make these words your own."

I tore my eyes away from the old man and I looked up at the sky.  I felt the warmth of the sun, that giver of life and energy, and I spoke the words that had shaped my entire life and existence, the words of the deepest desire of my heart and my soul.

"To know love."

It was that simple.  Those three words encompassed everything and explained my entire life.  I could see it all plainly, my life history stretching backwards to the moment of my birth.  As I looked back in time, one thing was abundantly clear to me: throughout my entire life, I had been involved in a constant fight for love.  The love of my parents, the love of another heart, and perhaps most importantly, the love of myself.  I could see something else as well, I could see that I had been afraid of achieving my deepest desire out of the fear that it would never meet with my expectations.

All of this happened in an instant.  Even as the word love hung in the air, I turned back towards the old man, but the old man was no longer there.  Where a moment before he had stood leaning on his staff, a mighty tree now grew.  I stared in bewilderment.  I felt dazed and overwhelmed with emotion.  Perhaps it only occurred in my imagination, but as I stared at that tree, at its deep, furrowed, protective bark, I am certain that I saw the tree smile.

Walking back down the mountainside to return to the village, I knew that I would no longer be afraid.  From this day on, I would confront my desire and I would no longer run from it.  With courage as my companion, we would look love in the eyes and together, we would let ourselves fall into its warm embrace.

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Why You Must Dare To Escape Your Comfort Zone

Lately, I have found myself at a fork in the road.  In truth, I've been here for some time, staring blankly down each path that lies before me, attempting to figure out which is the right one, agonising over which option is most suitable, and utterly unable to decide which is the path that I should take.  Yet, no matter how hard I stared, trying in vain to see through the darkness that obscures each of these futures, I have been unable to fathom the direction in which I need to go.  For some time, I have reasoned with myself that it has been because I was unsure, seeing equal merit in each one, knowing that they all held the promise of the future.  That was until today, when a sudden moment of clarity and insight dawned upon me.  The reason I have not moved forward from the place where I am is because of one reason only: I am afraid.

You see, my life has become far too comfortable.  Take now, this moment for example.  It's 6:04am, I'm sitting up in bed, daylight from an already risen sun streaming in through the window, I'm listening to the early morning calls of the exotic birds drifting in from outside, I've got a cup of freshly brewed Costa Rican coffee sitting on the bedside table next to me, my laptop sits on my lap as I type this blog post, and in another browser tab, I'm following the early football kick-off in the Premier League on the BBC sport website from back in England.  Later on, around 9am, I'll take a leisurely bike ride the mile or so down to work, where I'll spend most of the day sitting down at the hotel, chatting, surfing the web, maybe take a swim in the pool or ocean, and generally not do very much, since it's low season here, and there are not many guests around.  This is not exactly a taxing life.  Sure, when work gets busy, it can be full-on, long, physically and mentally demanding and tiring days, but the balance of that is the couple of hours or more I get to spend under the ocean, in my absolute element.  This is perhaps the life of which I always dreamed.

And that is the problem right there.  It is the life that I have always wanted.  I attained my dream, so I should be happy, because that is what I tell everyone else, that the path to true happiness lies in seeking out and attaining your dreams.  Am I now advocating that everything I spoke of before, that everything in which I have believed and gambled on, was nothing other than a falsehood, one of life's lies?  I have been happy.  Very happy. I still am.  I have no need to change where I am or what I am doing.  Diving under the ocean here, with a tank of air strapped to my back, my only means of survival, gives me the utmost pleasure.  Simply stated: I love it.  The vast array of life, from the smallest nudibranch to the graceful ease of a manta ray, the seasonal changes, the unpredictability of the ocean conditions, the chance to see some of the most incredible sights, these are the reasons why I love it.  My dream has been fulfilled.  It's time for a new one.

I have learned that I cannot stay still.  At first, I believed that the cause of my constant need for change was a lack of commitment to any one thing.  I tended to view this in a negative way, as if there was something wrong with me, that I had a phobia of commitment.  What I came to realise was that my heart has been ever urging me on, never letting me settle, driving me forward in search of each new adventure.  My heart is a wild beast and it is hard to tame.  And like all wild beasts, I believe that their rightful place is being free, to wander wherever their will takes them.  There are many things that I want to achieve in this life, many places that I wish to visit, many things that I wish to experience.  I have always known it.  As a young boy, I had a strong urge for adventure, that urge exists in my heart still.  I have to grow and learn, my heart demands it of me.  My whole life has been a series of progressions, of learning experiences, academically as well as psychologically.  I have to continue to do this, until my heart tells me it is time to stop, that at long last, we have found our home.

This is why I find myself at the fork in my path.  I have been looking for something new.  To step away from the path that I am on, to change my direction once more.  But I have felt a great reluctance to change.  At first, I firmly believed it was because none of my options were the right ones for me.  Good options, but not quite right.  Being heartstrong means that I have to feel it in my heart, or I am just nor there.  I could feel none of my options in my heart, and so I knew that I needed to wait a little longer and the right choice would present itself to me at the right moment.  And it did.  I wrote of my moment of epiphany last week in my post, Knowing The Path.  Yet, even after experiencing this moment, there was something that held me back and that confused me.  After the euphoria of my epiphany came some moments of doubt.  Was this truly right for me?

I began to think that the answer was no.  That the choice to go and travel again was not my true path.  Almost, I began to believe this to be my truth, that is, until I had to make the jump across the border to Nicaragua this past week, to renew by tourist visa for Costa Rica.  In the process of travelling on public buses, of watching life unfold before me, of seeing exotic places, of being in some place different, of needing to push myself to know which bus to take and when, walking across the no mans land between neighbouring countries.  All of these things fired up my desire for travel.  Just a moment ago, as I was typing an earlier paragraph, a picture came floating into my mind of a far off distant shore, and in that moment, my heart leapt with a great sense of joy.  I know that it is what I wish to do.

Even though I feel the truth of it in my heart, I am afraid.  You see, I like my life, I like being in Costa Rica, I like having the chance of meeting with a manta ray or a huge school of devil rays.  I like my fully furnished apartment which contains everything that I need.  I like my landlord and next door neighbour, with his super cute, little two year old daughter and his crazy dog called Manny.  I like that I can go into the grocery store and be greeted by the people that work there, because they know me.  I like that I can cycle down the road and see people who wave at me, cars that hoot to acknowledge me, as I wave back.  I like that I can pop down to the bakery, just one minute away and buy freshly baked bread for my lunch.  I understand how life works around here and I like that.  I feel safe and I feel secure in this existence.  I could stay and perhaps I would be content.  Perhaps I might be.  Why risk change and a voyage into the unknown?

I believe that it is this fear of change that prevents many people from achieving their true dreams.  As humans, we enjoy comfort and security.  After achieving the necessities of life - air, water, food, shelter - security and comfort are next.  After all, we have it drilled into us from our earliest days that we must work hard, so we can take out a mortgage to buy a house, so that we can save for our retirement, save for our medical insurance, we must surround ourselves with the trappings of modern life, with possessions that add to our sense of security and comfort.  Unfortunately, the truth is, that we are never as secure as we might believe.  No one is immortal.  No one is immune to illness, disease, or accidents.  No matter how secure you believe your job to be, it is not.  No employee is indispensable.  When a company needs to cut back in order to maintain solvency and profitability, it will do so ruthlessly, without mercy, and the axe can fall on anyone.  I've seen it happen, I've seen first hand how technological advancements affected the workplace.  I was an instigator of those changes, I had a role in affecting the lives of others in a negative way.  It always left a sour taste in my mouth.     

We cling on to all that we have attained because it provides us with a sense of security.  It is the attainment of that security that causes us to sacrifice the dreams of our heart, to forsake the true path in life, the one that would provide us with the greatest sense of happiness and joy.  In this, I am no different.  I too feel the pull of that voice that urges security.  It is a deeply rooted, primeval urge to create security in your life.  But there is a stronger voice that beats inside of me.  The voice of my heart.

My heart rules me.  Its voice is so strong to me, that I cannot avoid its urges.  I must forsake my comfortable life if I wish to follow its call.  My fear of change almost paralysed me.  It almost held me tightly in its grip, telling me that here, in the life I lead now, I am happy and that I possess all that I need.  My heart never ceased its constant reassurances.  My heart knew that it needed to wait only for the right time, when I stood in a moment of silence, to act, and it did.  These other paths that I might take, perhaps I will come back to them on a different day.  Perhaps then, they will be the right paths for me, paths that my heart urges me to pursue.  Until that day, I must follow my heart along our present course.  And that is a course that leads me away from my comfort and security and into the unknown.

If I do not risk change, then I will never grow.  Life is a learning process, I see it as the process of evolving the soul.  Change allows us to learn and to grow.  Taking yourself outside of your comfort zone demonstrates just how much you are capable of, how much we are all capable of, and that always comes as a surprise, it is so much more than you can possibly imagine.  If I stay here on this path, I might be happy, I might enjoy my comfort and security, but I know there will come a time when I will have missed my opportunity of discovery, of growth and of learning.  And rather than the fear of losing my comfort and security, that is my greatest fear in this life.  That is why I must continue to live the life that I do, until the moment when I finally discover my home in another soul.  Perhaps finally then, I will be able to rest.  But I don't think so.  Perhaps I can sum it all up best with the words of Lord Alfred Tennyson:-

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

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Knowing The Path

Today, I experienced a moment of epiphany.  These moments never quite occur to you where you might believe.  My moment did not come as I stared out across the vast expanse of the ocean, nor did it arrive as I gazed up to the stars of the heavens, there were no snow-capped mountains in view, no deep lush jungle stretching off into the distance, there was no tumbling cascade of a waterfall.  Instead, it came to me as I stood in my kitchen and I poured out my ritual after dinner coffee.  So, just what was this moment of deep realisation about my life, that refused to contain itself, and that rushed at me, before I was able to add the milk to my cup?

There will always come moments when the light shines forth from within.  These times occur when we are most deeply connected with our hearts, when we are in synchronised rhythm, heart and soul as one.  I've experienced moments of epiphany before and I've written about them previously - standing in the middle of a square in Budapest, sitting on the wall at the waterfront in Wellington.  They never come when we expect them, they arrive unbidden, a moment when it feels as though lightning has struck you, or someone has turned on a light in a darkened room.  I know these moments because when they dawn on me, I cannot stop myself from smiling with a deep sense of pleasure and joy, I want to laugh, to shout and to sing out loud.  This can only come from the knowledge that the thought that is now in your head, originated in your heart, that the thought is the very essence of who you are, who you are meant to be.  That thought is you.

For many years of my life, I was in denial of who I was, who I was born to be.  I was not myself.  I was an imposter, or rather, the imposter was me.  I acted out the life of another person because that is what I thought I should do.  I was a good actor because I fooled many people, I fooled myself.  I could not admit to myself the very thing that it was that I wanted the most in life.  Why?  Simply because I was afraid of what it would mean to me, I was frightened of the consequences.  I lived a life where on the surface at least, I appeared to be happy, but underneath, I never truly was.  My true self was buried deeply within me, covered over, so that it was carefully hidden away, lest it should escape.

I could not have been more wrong.  The journey of my life, the story of my life, is essentially one of discovery.  It seems to me that life had a plan and it was not going to let me go quietly away.  Through so many seemingly random events, meetings and happenings, life found me, it caught me in its grip and it would not let me go.  Life reached through to my inner being, it touched my heart, and it rekindled my desires and my passions.  No, not rekindled, since it implies that once there was a fire and I do not recall there ever being a fire in my soul before life took hold.  But once it did, I was like a piece of driftwood, caught up in the current of a river and unable to reach the shore.  I had to go wherever the water of life took me.  Everything that happened to me, the good and the bad, became necessary parts of my journey, shaping me, helping me to learn, to grow, and to evolve my soul.  This river brought me to a place in my life where I was finally ready to admit to myself who I really was, and to become the man I had been born to be. 

Since this time, I have lived my life as deliberately as possible.  As Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden; or, Life In The Woods, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life..."  I have made decisions to do those things that I wished to do, no matter how ridiculous or foolish they might seem.  My journey has taken me around the world, I have been a backpacker, a dive master, a full time student, a project administrator, a charity street funds collector, and a diving instructor.  I have lived for a time in Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Costa Rica.  I have visited and had short stays in many countries in between.  I have experienced things I never dreamed were possible.  And I have met many wonderful people.  All of this was possible because of one thing: I dared to try.

Back to now.  Nearly eight years since my true journey began, I have found myself wondering what I should do next.  I know full well that I cannot do what I do forever, that the physical nature of the work will take its toll on my body.  I have been giving thought to the need for a retirement plan and a pension, that I will need healthcare in the coming years, that really and truly, I have had a lot of fun and that perhaps finally, it is time to stop and to go and do something far more sensible.  With that in my mind, I have begun to think seriously about becoming a school teacher.  It is something that I believe I would be good at, since I love passing on my knowledge and helping others to learn and to grow.  I have even been complimented on my patience, care and teaching skills.  It seems to be a good fit, a way of returning to normality, of a secure future with a steady income.  But something just hasn't felt right.  As much as I believe I would make a good teacher, the thought of it has not fired me with enthusiasm, the way that I fire up when I talk of scuba diving, the ocean, care for the environment, or travel.  I have been puzzling over why not, when teaching would appear to make so much sense?

This evening, as I stood at my kitchen counter, coffee slowly filling my cup, my moment of epiphany arrived.  In that moment, I knew the path of my life and I knew why teaching is not right for me at this time.  More than this though, this thought that came to me hit me hard, and I smiled because here at last was the truth.  Life is short.  Our time on this planet is but a fleeting moment in which to make our mark and to leave behind our legacy.  There are things that I want in my life: a wife, children, dogs, cats, a family.  Right now, I do not have them.  Why do I want to return to the lifestyle I had before, where I was conforming to what society expected of me, when it went against my true self?  I know that it will make me unhappy.  It will slowly but surely tear my soul apart and it will destroy me.  All that I have learned will be lost, forgotten, and things will be just as they once were, before I began.  I cannot let that happen.  I will not let that happen.

There will come a time when I must forsake this particular part of my journey.  This I know to be true.  That time will come when I have need to take care of something more than myself, when my purpose in life shifts to the provision and care of others - my wife and my children.  Until that time, I am going to go on doing what I have been doing.  I am going to see the world, to travel, to enjoy new experiences, meet new people.  I am going to continue to take a chance on life because I do not know when my last day will come.  I am going to have an adventure.

Thinking of this makes me happy.  Knowing why I have struggled over the last months to understand my direction in life brings me great comfort.  I am still going in the right direction.  Life it seems, is not yet done with me, nor I with it.  The road less travelled beckons to me still.  My heart is singing right now, it is joyful, hopeful and it is ready to go on again.  One day, my heart will be joined by another and when it is, we will journey together, we will make our adventures to share with our children.  And at the moment that she enters my life, those two hearts that have beaten for so long in separate rhythms, will beat to the same tune.  There will always be two hearts, but from that moment on, there will be only one soul.

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Beginning Is Everything

It is February 1999 and I'm sitting beside a campfire with a colleague from the local office, we're in a game reserve, a couple of hours drive outside of Johannesburg, South Africa.  It's my first visit to South Africa, I've been here only a few days, and I barely know Sergio, yet here I am, knowing that there is something important, something significant about this weekend.  Perhaps that is only the excitement I feel of embarking upon this little adventure, the kind of adventure of which I had only ever dared to dream.  Perhaps it is the calming affect of the flames and the twinkling lights of the sky above me, but as our conversation turns to matters of life, despite our knowing each other only for a very short time, I feel completely at ease.  A moment arrives and Sergio asks me what it is that I really would like to do with my life, what are my dreams?

As I sit there, staring into the flames, my mind becomes blank.  There is nothing, only a vast emptiness, static through the radio.  I shuffle uncomfortably in my seat, knowing that I should be able to say something, to be able to elucidate a response, but I cannot.  "I don't know", I mutter it, feeling a sense of embarrassment that I cannot articulate any deep seated passions in life, that I don't have any clear vision of my future.  Sergio surprised me then.  Most other people would probably drop the topic, let it go and move on to a subject in which we could both actively engage, but he did not.  Instead, he said something that I was not expecting.  "Yes, you do", he said.

Three simple, one syllable words, that were to change my life forever.  Sergio continued to explain to me that I did know what it was that I wanted, only I had locked it away deeply inside.  "Everyone has something that they wish to do, something that they wish to be", he told me, "Everyone has a true purpose".  Try as I might, that evening, I was unable to find it inside of me.  I knew there were elements of things I enjoyed but these were incoherent, they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that I saw no way of slotting together.  I had always loved the outdoors and nature.  Each winter I longed for the onset of spring, knowing that this was to usher in the months of summer, and summer meant I could spend time at the beach and in the sea.  I loved to feast my eyes on mountains, rivers, valleys, hills, trees, flowers, grass, wild animals and birds, all of nature, but these alone were not anything that I could do, they were not a plan for the future, they did not constitute a life that I could lead.  Although I had told Sergio that I did not know, I did know somewhere deep inside, that it had something to do with all of these elements, but I feared that to say as much, meant that I would look a little foolish in front of a colleague, and so I remained silent and kept this to myself.

From this time on, I began to give thought to what it was that I really wanted to do in my life.  These thoughts would come and go, and it would take several more years, many different people, many different places, and a single book, before I was to make my own discovery.  But the seed had been truly planted and from this moment on, I had begun to awaken to the possibilities, I was becoming open to life.  I knew back then that there was a desire inside of me to do something different with my life, something that had greater meaning for me.  How then, was I ever going to unlock it and give it the wings that it needed to fly free, if I could not articulate it for myself?  And if I could not articulate it, how was I ever going to be able to bring it to fruition?

I think this is true for many of us.  We have a very clear idea of what it is that we do not want to do in life and we find it easy to say what those things are.  However, when it comes to saying what it is that we do want, we find it incredibly difficult to describe what that is.  I have asked others the same question that Sergio asked me that evening, and I have received similar responses.  People tell me that they do not know what it is that they want, that they know they want to make a change in their life, but they cannot say for sure what that change involves, only that they feel the need to make it.  I hear their words and they echo back through time to my own past.  Having experienced and learned all that I have during my own journey, I know that somewhere deep inside, every single one of us has our own particular answer.  That answer is the truth for your life, it is your one true path.  Discovering it, will allow you to unlock the light that lives inside of you.  So, why is it easier to say what we do not want, but not so easy to describe to someone that which we do want?

I believe that it is primarily out of a sense of fear.  Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of losing your comfort and security, fear of what people will say, fear of what comes after, fear of failure.  There is one other fear: the fear that if you are able to visualise clearly what it is that you want to do, then you no longer have an excuse for not doing it, and if that were to happen, you would live with a constant sense of regret.  All of the time that I could not articulate my own vision and dream, I could not make a start, since there was nothing that I could grasp and work on.  It was like trying to hold on to mist.  In not being able to say what my dream was, I gave myself the ultimate excuse for not beginning, for not doing it.  I know that I used to look at other people, all of whom seemed to have such a clear vision for their lives, and I would feel a sense of inadequacy.  I know that there was a part of me that felt that I was not worthy of achieving my dreams, that I was undeserving of finding my truth, and because of this, I did not believe that I was worthy of making a start.

How did I overcome all these fears?  I simply began.  I think I always knew that I would begin, I waited only for the right moment and the right set of circumstances.  In truth, I didn't just wait, I actively looked for them, I wanted them to come to me, I wanted an excuse to quit my old life and begin the new.  And they did come to me.  When they did, I seized upon them and I made it happen.  I took my first step towards changing my life from the one that I had, to the one that I wanted.  I took that step without really knowing what awaited me down the path.  I took that first step full of fear and trepidation for what lay ahead.  I walked into the unknown and the moment that I did, it was no longer the unknown, it was no longer the fearsome darkness, instead, it became my life.

Even though I began my journey, I still had no true idea of what it was that I was going to do, where it was going to lead me.  I think that was the point though.  My own dream started out as a need for travel, travel that was unhindered by time or any other commitments.  What I did was to give myself the opportunity to make discoveries about life and about myself.  Along the way, I found what it was that I had been seeking, I found the thing that I had never been able to articulate to anyone before.  I discovered the world under the ocean, and from that moment on, my life changed and I began to become the real me, the person I had always born to be.  If I had not begun, I could never have made this discovery.  I would never know it and everything that has happened since would not exist.  Isn't that an interesting thought?

So, you may be sitting there, saying to yourself that I was lucky, that I had good fortune and yes, this is true.  But that would never have come my way if I had not begun, if I had not taken a chance on life.  You may be sitting there telling yourself that you still do not know what it is that you want, that you cannot visualise your own dream.  To you I say this: Open your heart.  That is where the answer lies.  No matter how ridiculous your idea may seem to you, nor how impractical, foolish or silly, if it comes from your heart, then it is your own truth.  It is what you must do.  If you feel afraid to start, consider how you are going to feel knowing that out there is your dream just waiting for you to find it.  I will leave this post with just one word of advice for you: begin.  You see, beginning really is everything.

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Endings and New Beginnings

Last night, I finished reading A Memory Of Light, the final installment in the Wheel Of Time series by Robert Jordan.  I began reading this fourteen book series way back in 1993, and for the last twenty years, it has been part of my life, accompanying me on my journey, through the changes I made in my life, and as I took a chance and discovered my true path.  As I approached the final few chapters of the final climatic volume, I was filled with a mix of emotions. I was happy that finally, I was going to discover how the story would end, and at the same time, I had another deeper feeling, one that came as a surprise. 

It began as I passed the half way point of the book.  There were now more pages that I had read, than there were remaining, and I knew that the end was approaching.  At this pivotal moment, a feeling began to grow within me.  At first it was easy to ignore, but with each proceeding evening, as I lay in bed reading, it grew stronger.  Eventually, as I faced the final few chapters, I had an overwhelming feeling that I did not want to actually finish the book.  Why was that?  Surely, I wished to know how everything worked out at the end?  Didn't I want to have the ending revealed and to know how each of the vast array of characters, and each of the many different story threads, would resolve themselves?  Yes I did, but at the same time, I did not.  This contradiction may seem like an odd set of emotions to occur, but actually, despite the absurdity of it, it made perfect sense to me.

You see, reading that last sentence and closing the book would finally end something that had been part of my life for so many years.  I had grown comfortable and familiar with having these books to read, with always waiting for the next installment to be published (time between each successive publication grew), with re-immersing myself into an alternative world that I had grown to know and love, with its myriad of characters that had personalities and behaviours that were so familiar to me, these people that seemed like old friends, and I never quite knew if the series would reach its conclusion, since Robert Jordan unfortunately died in 2007 before he had completed writing the final books.  To turn the final page would mean an end to all of this for me.  It would be a bitter sweet moment.  One that would bring me great joy and satisfaction and at the same time, it would bring with it a sadness and loss.  So, I began to think about endings and what they mean.

The end.  It's over.  Finished.  No more.  One moment you have it, you are immersed in it, your senses and emotions are connected to it, you're holding on to it, it's part of you, you are part of it.  And then suddenly you're not.  It's gone.  Blank.  Darkness.  Emptiness.  Sadness and loss.  Wishing you could go back again, to relive some of those times when you held it, when it held you.  But you cannot.  It feels as though a part of you is gone and only a hole remains.  You feel incomplete, no longer whole, as a piece of you is now missing.  And you fear what comes next, because it is unknown, it is going to be different.

Often, an ending seems negative.  That is because of the sense of loss that we feel and the feeling of emptiness that remains.  The endings that are particularly difficult are those that are forced upon us and those that involve the end of something that we have grown accustomed to having in our life.  Graduating from college, leaving home for the first time, leaving a long-term employment, the break up of a relationship, the death of a loved one.  Each of these marks a significant life event.  Each one represents an ending.  Equally as important though, is that each one represents something else.  A beginning.

An end is an important step along the path.  Each of us must face and deal with many endings on our journey, if we are to continue to seek out the light and obtain our dreams.  Without an ending, there can be no new beginnings.  With no end, there can be no new opportunity to learn and to grow, to discover new emotions, new places, new people, new experiences, and there can be no opportunity to evolve our soul.  Endings are a necessary part of the journey.

It is natural not to want an ending to something that you enjoy and love.  With the end, comes the unknown and with the unknown, comes fear.  Many people resist change simply because they are afraid of the unknown.  They prefer to stay in situations that they understand and can deal with, even though those situations maybe harmful, hurtful, negative and detrimental to their life.  Fear is a deeply paralysing emotion.   Through fear of the unknown comes a resistance to end, and because there is no ending for this person, there can be nothing new, there can be no evolution of the soul.

I see the end as simply the beginning.  It is the cycle of life in which we all exist.  Many beginnings, many endings.  Many endings, many beginnings.  It is how it has always been and it is how it always will be.  There is a saying that as one door closes, so another door opens.  The meaning is clear, an end is necessary in order to create some space in your life for something new.  Each time an end occurs, so too does a new beginning.  Each ending brings you a new opportunity.  It is actually a positive occurrence in life.  Even if at the time you cannot view it as such because the pain, resentment and bitterness of your loss is hard to bear, eventually, with hindsight, it will be possible to view it as such.

We need endings in our lives.  In life, everything eventually ends, so I guess we should get used to that notion.  Don't fear the end, instead, look forward to a new beginning, to a new opportunity that can be taken, to evolving your soul through growth.  Each new beginning leads you further along your path, brings you closer to the discovery of your dream.  I finished reading my book and as I closed it, I thanked Robert Jordan for keeping me company over all of these years, and I knew that now, I had created a little space for something new to come into my life.       

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This post is dedicated to the memory of Marge.  It was Marge who lent me her copy of The Wheel Of Time all those years ago and started me on that particular journey.  It was Marge who saw within me a caring heart and who was the first person to acknowledge that to me.  Thank you for the beginning, and thank you for the end.  I'll see you again one day my friend.

The Fight of Fear and Hope

"We have lost."

It was a bitter statement to hear.  Worse, there was truth in those words.  No matter how Jaeke looked upon their predicament, he knew that he would need a miracle if he was to safe this day.  This day.  Everything had led them to this one single day, when all would be decided.  Not even a day would decide.  Jaeke knew that in the battle, it was a single moment that decided it.  A moment when time itself seized to exist and a lightning fast decision was needed.  No, not a decision.  An instinct.  Everything in the battle happened by instinct, everything happened as the heart willed it.  The head knew the forms to make, it instructed the arms to move this way and that, the legs to move forward and back.  But it was the heart that led the dance.  Every true soldier knew that.  Surrender yourself to your heart and walk forward into the battle.

Now the battle was lost.  This battle, the battle that marked the climax of all things.  Jaeke had never meant for it to happen in this way, but some how, everything had conspired to make it so.  Life was like that it seemed.  You could try to keep it at bay, try to push it back, to take one thing at a time, but when life decided, everything came at once.  The dam was broken, the waters rushed and surged forth, the torrent that changed all things, and nothing could stand in its wake.

Jaeke looked up at Daughtry.  He was a good man, a strong man.  Both of them had fought together in this fight as brothers.  In truth, they were brothers.  They had shared drink, food, women and blood.  They had shared the fight.  They had watched friends fall by the wayside.  They had shared pain and doubt.  Didn't that make them brothers?  Didn't that make them more than brothers?  Perhaps we do not share the same mother and father, but I would die for that man, thought Jaeke as he saw the tiredness that was etched around the eyes of his friend.  Would this really be the end?  Right here, in this godforsaken hell in which they had found themselves.

Jaeke stood up and placed an arm around his old companion.  He wanted to reassure him, to give him some of his own strength, well, what little of his own strength remained.  He would spare some for this man.  Share one last thing with him at least.  Jaeke looked about him.  He saw the darkness of the ever oppressive clouds, those clouds that pushed down on a man, as if they willed him into submission.  He saw blackened skies, as the dark tendrils of smoke that rose up from the fires of the battlefield fed the bleakness above.  He saw fallen soldiers, mutilated bodies of men, of dogs, and of horses all alike.  He saw a barren, lifeless, scorched earth, that had once been full of trees that reached for the skies, endless fields of grass, and flowers that had bloomed in the springtime warmth and sun.  How long ago was that now?  Yes, he decided, it was all lost.  And worse, he felt the whisper of despair, "We have lost."  His hand, with fingers wrapped around the hilt of his blade, wanted to loosen its grip, to drop his sword, to give up the fight.  There was nothing that could be done now.  There was only darkness, there was only the deep abyss.  It would be so easy to step into the nothingness and end all of the suffering.

Jaeke looked across the battle field one last time.  The sight of it threatened to overwhelm him in grief.  He raised his eyes to the skies, he wanted to shout "Why?" and then it happened.  For a brief moment, the darkness parted, the smoke rolled back, the clouds split and there, in that tiny gap, there was light.  And what a glorious light it was!  In the beat of a heart, it was gone.  But it had been enough.  Jaeke now knew the answer.

"Daughtry, my old friend.  We have not lost.  There is and there always will be hope.  And to that we must cling.  The light will always exist, and if the light exists, then so too does love, because love is the light and the light is love.  If you can still draw a breath, then there is hope my friend!  This may be our final moment together, we may never leave this field, but I'll tell you this: we shall go out fighting like we have never fought before and we shall make fear pay a heavy price for denying us our dreams!"

Together, they rejoined the battle.  Together, they raised their swords and that day, they slew down the enemy.  In a time that would come later, a song would be sung for the heroes of this battle.  But it was not this day.  This was the day, when the light of hope vanquished the darkness of fear.  And so it has been ever since.

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The Fear of Achieving Your Most Sacred Dream

It is said that fear is the greatest barrier between having a dream and achieving that dream.  There can be no doubt that fear is an extremely paralysing condition.  Fear of failure prevents many of us from reaching out and grasping our dreams, even when all we need do is to stretch out a hand and take the very thing that we have longed desired.  In my own life, there are dreams that I harbour, deep rooted dreams that I long to achieve, and yet I do not.  Why? Like so many others, I too am scared of achieving that which I desire the very most.

What makes this an even more bizarre situation for myself, is that I am fully cognisant of this fact.  I am very self aware, I know how I think and I understand fully how, and why I act in the ways that I do.  I guess a lot of that comes from having lived alone for many years and in having spent a lot of time in my own company.  I'm not sure how healthy that is exactly, and it is not something that I ever really wished for myself, yet, it is the set of circumstances that I have been given, and because of them, I have been able to self reflect, to meditate and to come to a deeper understanding of myself.  Without that time of reflection and meditation, I would not be where I am today, nor would I be the person that I have become.  I am grateful for the path that I have been given and for the opportunity of coming to know my true self.

It has become increasingly apparent to me that I am scared of achieving my deepest held dreams in life.  Those dreams are of finding love and companionship with a partner, becoming a husband and a father, raising a family, and of having my own dog.  With the exception of the dog, which I see as an integral part of the family set up, these things are the very essence of what it means to be a human and the very reasons for which I exist.  Every thing else is superfluous.  Every thing else is like the frame around a masterpiece of a painting.

So, if I know this and understand it, why do I do nothing about it?  What is it that makes me so scared to achieve that which I most desire?  Fear.  It is the fear that the reality will never live up to the picture of the dream that I have created in my mind.  This fear makes me reluctant to commit myself to any one, to any place, to any thing.  I move my life around from one place to another, staying only for a short time, knowing that I am already planning to leave, even before I arrive. In staying only for the short-term, I make it almost impossible to meet any one special, to form strong relationships and friendships.  I don't commit to any one.  And I also create the perfect excuse for not realising my dream. 

How can I possibly find any one special with which to spend my life, if I move location and job every year or so?  It is just not possible.  I tell myself that I move because I like the challenge, I enjoy the adventure, and that I thrive on walking into the unknown.  There is some truth in that.  I do love to travel and to push the boundaries of my own knowledge and to challenge myself.  But what if I only enjoy the travel so much because it means that I never have to commit to my other dreams?

There is another reason why I do not find the right person with which to settle down and start a family.  I purposely sabotage any chance that I have by picking the wrong kind of people.  I only recently discovered this truth late last year, as my last relationship broke up.  I was able to look back on my life and see that each of the women I have selected as potential partners, were in fact completely wrong for me.  Each of them was flawed, a little broken, and I thought the way to love was to fix them, to help them along the road.  And in fixing them, I thought that they would love me all the more.  This was and is a completely false concept and one that I now see as completely wrong.  You cannot mend anyone.  Only they can mend themselves.  No amount of effort can make someone love you.  Love has to grow naturally between two people who are equally matched, who share the same values and goals in life.  I can now see that by selecting women who were wrong for me, I was preventing myself from ever being able to achieve my dreams, and at the same time, I was giving myself the perfect excuse for not doing so.

I know that I am scared of achieving my most longed for dreams.  Possessing that knowledge can only help me to break through the barrier that I have created.  Perhaps it has been necessary for me to travel this path, so that I could learn these lessons and see for myself the error of my ways.  Whatever the reason, it matters not.  All that really matters is that I have arrived at a place, at a time, where I know what needs to be done.  I must overcome my fears, I must take a deep breath, and I must walk tall along the path to the discovery and the attainment of my dream.  After all, dreams are created to be achieved.  Dreams are of no use if they stay a dream and do not transcend into the realm of reality.  A dream is just a dream, but for some of us, a dream can be reality itself.  And I want to be counted as one with those people.

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We Are Born To Be Butterflies

A friend of mine recently posted some pictures of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.  Over the course of a few days, she posted a series of photographs, as the caterpillar transformed itself into something quite remarkably different, and emerged as a beautiful butterfly.  A simple miracle of life?  Yes, but it is also a perfect metaphor for our own lives.

For some creatures, their destiny is mapped out for them and their purpose in life is clear.  A caterpillar must become a butterfly.  It has to evolve and change, because it is programmed to do so.  Life wrote its story, life determined that this would be the way of things.  There is nothing to stop it.  Even if it could, the caterpillar is powerless to stay as a caterpillar, it has to change, it has to become something else, something more than it was.  No amount of effort can prevent it from becoming that which it was always destined to be from its birth.  The life story of a caterpillar perfectly illustrates two very important truths of life.  First, that inside of each of us there resides a great beauty waiting to be revealed and second, that each of us has one true destiny to fulfil.

My own soul and my own heart, spent many years as a closely guarded secret.  I kept them hidden from the world at large, too afraid to show my true self, too scared of what other people would say about me, or think of me.  I hid my true soul from my family and my friends.  I struggled with my weight from a young age and this had a massive impact on how I viewed myself.  In short, I viewed myself as ugly.  Ugly on the outside, ugly on the inside.  And I viewed myself in that way for many years.  That opinion of myself took a hold of me, it buried in roots deep in heart, it corrupted the way I thought of myself, it poisoned me against myself, and rather than step out and be all that I could be, I hid myself away.  I was embarrassed to be me.   A flower needs the sun and without it, will slowly wilt and die.  I denied myself sunlight and my heart and my soul began to wilt and fade.  Slowly, imperceptibly, I was killing myself.

There is one thing that holds true for life on this amazing planet.  Life is never beaten.  Life always finds a way.  In the arid, scorching, desolate sands of the desert, life exists.  In the deepest, darkest, abyss of the ocean, life thrives.  In the cold, desolate, bleak, freezing, whiteness of the poles, life finds a way to hold on.  Once created, life is a force that will keep on trying to survive, no matter the odds, no matter the conditions, no matter the adversities.  So it is with our hearts.  Our hearts are our life force.  All the time that your heart continues to beat, you have life coursing through your veins.  That life cannot be denied.  It cannot be halted.  It cannot be contained.  Life rescued me.  Or rather, I saw a break in the clouds and the emergence of a ray of golden light, and I saw that I had a chance to be more than I was, to go in discovery of my true self, to unleash the power and the beauty that resided in me.  And at the same time, I was given a chance to find my own true destiny.

Through a combination of events and circumstances, I freed myself from the shackles that had bound me.  I began to walk on my true path, I began to believe in myself.  The doubts and the fears about who I was subsided and were replaced by hope and confidence.  The more time I spent walking my own path, the stronger my convictions grew about who I was, who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do.  I did not need anything from my past to define me.  Everything that I needed to be me already existed within me.  I had always known that my heart was sensitive.  I had felt it all of my life.  I had always known that I was very much in tune with my emotions and felt joy, loss, elation, and sadness keenly.  Now, walking my path, I listened to my heart, I heard its voice and I heeded its call.  I began to let my true self emerge, I began to understand that I had no reason to be afraid of who I was.  I finally understood that it is not how we look on the outside that defines the person that we are, it is through our actions, our words, our thoughts and our hearts that we are defined.  It is what resides on the inside, that truly reveals our beauty as a person.

I see these two things as intrinsically linked in my life. I was not able to began to reveal my true self, until I began to walk my true path.  One led to the other.  Perhaps it was that at some point I showed my true self first, and though doing so, I discovered my path.  Yes, now that I have had that thought, I can feel the truth of it.  There was a person to whom I lowered my guard, to whom I showed my true self, my true spirit and in me, that person saw the struggle that I had to be free, and they offered me the hand of friendship and of fellowship.  They helped me to see the way ahead could only be my own way, my own destiny, my one true path.

I learned to stop hating who I thought I was and instead, to love who I am.  I learned to accept myself and to forgive myself, and this is an act of love - perhaps the greatest act of love.  Love reveals our inner being and beauty.  Love reveals our destiny.  I now walk the path of love.  It is love that unlocks the door to life and to the discovery of the light that resides within.  Through loving your own heart, you are able to truly set it free and to become everything that you were born to be.  Through love, I reveal my true self.  Through love, I walk my true path.

If you hear the voice of your heart and do not heed its call, then you will be destined to live out your life, just as a caterpillar does.  You'll know and you'll understand that you have a calling, a destiny that needs to be fulfilled, yet you will deny it to yourself.  In so doing, you will also deny yourself the opportunity to reveal your true self, that self that is your inner beauty.  If you do heed the call of your heart and begin to walk your one true path, then you will transform yourself into a butterfly.  You'll reveal your true self as a thing of beauty, you won't be afraid to show your fragility, since this is the very thing that defines what you are and allows you to be all that you need to be.  Through revealing your true beauty and fragility, you will show your strength and with an unfettered heart, you will flex your wings and fly free on the breeze.

Each of us is born a caterpillar.  Only those that walk their one true path will reveal the simple truth of life.  That we are born to be butterflies.

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Facing The Fear, The Doubt And The Darkness

In life, there will always come moments of fear, of doubt and when the darkness must be faced.  To progress on the journey of life and to continue to evolve the spirit that lies within each of us, it is necessary to face the fear and the doubt, and the darkness that lies beyond, and it is necessary to overcome them.  If fear is never confronted, if doubts are never dispelled, and if through the darkness, the light never comes, then it is not possible to progress on the spiritual journey.  That journey along the path will cease and the evolution of the spirit will falter.  Do not be fooled into thinking that the path will vanish, for that same path will continue to exist, only the scenery will remain forever the same.  Those same trees that surround the place that has been reached, will continue to stand tall and firm, those same trees will be seen day, after day, after day.  But unlike the person that falters in the face of fear and doubt, the trees will continue to grow, since they have their own destiny and follow their own one true path, and because they show no fear in reaching for the sun.  There can be no growth in the heart and the soul of the person who stands still on their path.  To find the light, it is necessary to pass through the darkness.  There is no growth for those that do not overcome their fears and doubts.  For that person, only a life of fear, regret and spiritual stagnation awaits.

There will always be moments in life, when fear comes upon us.  It can strike at any time and it will often strike without warning.  One moment, it is possible to feel emboldened, ready to take on the world and yet in the next breath, cowardice strikes and with it, the urge to run away and hide from that which awaits.  Fear comes in many guises and it is often impossible to recognise it before it has its arms tightly wrapped around you, as it clutches you in its stifling embrace.  Make no mistake, fear can take the very breath from you.  Fear can make it so hard to breath that you feel you are going to faint,  and indeed, some people do.  Fear can stop all rational thought, making it impossible to think clearly, to make the correct judgements, and to take the necessary actions.  Fear feeds on itself.  It takes only a single, seemingly insignificant moment to plant the seed of fear in the mind, but as soon as that seed is planted, it will immediately take hold.  Shoots will spring forth, gripping ever more tightly, and the seed of fear, that small thing, has quickly grown into an out of control monster that cripples, that drains all strength and courage, and that prevents movement.

Fear lives in the head.  Courage resides in the heart.  The two are age old adversaries that have made battle since the first sentient beings took their first breaths on this planet.  The courage of the heart has no equal, it can vanquish the fear of the mind, but only if it is released and allowed to reach its full potential.  There is no amount of fear that courage cannot defeat.  If fear feeds on fear, then on what does courage feed?  It's my belief that courage has no need to feed, since courage is found in the heart.  I think of courage as a bottomless well, an endless abyss from which a never ending source of courage can be drawn.  Fear will always attempt to block the route to courage.  Fear will try to stifle the heart.  It will take its hands and attempt to strangle the very life out of it.  Fear must stop courage at all costs for it knows that if courage takes hold, fear is utterly lost.  This is the purpose of fear in life and this is the path on which fear walks.  There is only one thing that fear itself fears.  And that one thing is courage.

Passing through fear is a necessary step, if the journey of life and the spiritual evolution of the soul are to be continued.  If the step is not taken and fear is not confronted and defeated, then the particular lesson that life is attempting to teach will not be learned.  If the lesson is not learned, there will be a part of the journey that will never be experienced.  This part of the journey will forever remain a mystery and the fear associated with this experience will stay forever in the mind.  They will become inseparable.  Each time the same situation is encountered, that same fear will rise and plague the mind.  Paralysis will occur again and again, until such a time that the fear is finally overcome and vanquished.

The best way to illustrate this, is by providing an example of fear from my own life and to illustrate how, because I did not defeat my fear in the very beginning, that same fear has affected me time and again, and has been a continual bane in my life.  It happened when I was eleven years old.  Back then, I had a good group of friends that I spent time with after school and on weekends, I was focused and motivated at school, and I enjoyed my life very much.  From everything that I can remember about this period of my life, nothing daunted me.  But one Friday evening, everything changed.  My friends and I attended a local disco for under fourteen year olds, held at the local sports centre.  It was our first foray into the world of music, dancing and girls.  At first, everything was great.  We danced together as a group, we made silly jokes with one another and we made up silly dances to make each other laugh.  We were excited and excitable.  At some point, one of my friends noticed some of the girls from our school that shared the sames classes as us.  We started to talk about dancing with them.  One of them, who I'll call Natalie Jones, had been the object of my infatuation for a long time.  She was at the time, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen - pretty, slim, long golden blonde hair that fell off her shoulders and hung down her back and she took ballet classes.  At the age of eleven, if someone had asked me to define perfection, I would have replied without hesitation, "Natalie Jones".  And now, there she stood, just across the room, on the other side of the dance floor.  All I had to do, was to walk over and ask her for a dance.  One of the most simple things in life and yet, for me, at that moment, an impossible mountain to climb.  I could not do it.  I could not find the words in my mind to talk with her.  I didn't have a clue what I would say.  Fear seized me and held me in its vice like grip.  I had this one moment to shake it off, to reach down and seize my courage and to act, but I faltered and I was lost.  Instead of my first foray into the heady delights of dancing with girls, I feigned a sickness, left and went home.  I was defeated utterly by my fear.

And because of what happened at that disco, at the age of eleven, unable to confront and defeat my fear, that same thing has happened to me over and over again throughout my life.  Even now, if I am at a bar or club and I see an attractive girl, I become paralysed by fear and unable to do anything about it.  That same fear that caught me all those years ago, will not let go of me.  It continues to hold me.  There have been a few occasions when I have beaten it, but those few times I was heavily laden under the influence of alcohol or some other mind-altering substance.  This is my Achilles' heel.  This is the personal battle of my life.  Something so simple for so many has become the most daunting thing that I can ever face.  And all because I was unable to confront and defeat my fear when it first occurred, all of those years ago.

One person's fear cannot be compared with another.  What is feared is personal.  What is feared was conjured in the mind by a unique set of circumstances.  Why do some people fear heights and others not?  Why do some people jump out of airplanes and others quiver at the very thought?  In my life I have scuba dived with tiger sharks, bull sharks, great white sharks and many others; I have thrown myself off of a bridge attached to a bungee cord; I have given a talk to a room of eight hundred people; I have lived alone overseas in a country where I knew no one and could not speak the language; I took myself to the other side of the world to attend university; I looked upon my mother as she lay in her hospital bed, so frail and so weak, and it was difficult to recognise the woman that she had once been, before the cancer took hold of her body; I quit my career, sold up everything and completely changed my life; and I reveal deeply personal thoughts in my writing, in the hope that it may inspire others.  In all these things, I have felt fear and I have overcome that fear.  But what are my own fears, compared to those of someone facing a life-threatening illness?  They pale into insignificance.  Our fears are our own.  They are our own personal battles.  Perhaps the greatest battles that we ever face in life.  And as such, they are ours to overcome and they are ours to defeat.

The worst kind of fear is fear of the unknown.  If the object of our fear cannot be visualised, then how are we able to fight it?  We do not know what it is that we are fighting against, so we cannot choose the most suitable weapon and if we cannot see our enemy, then we do not know when or where to strike at it.  The most frightening horror movies are always those where the protagonist remains unseen, allowing the audience to build an image for themselves, to build the fear of the unknown.  Fear of the unknown is a primary reason that so many people do not discover their one true path in life.  Even if a person knows and understands what gives them passion in life, it is fear that prevents them from reaching out and taking it.  It is the not knowing what lies beyond today, it is the moving away from all that you know, from all that is comfortable and that gives security, that creates a fear so deep, that it seems that it cannot be overcome.  But it can.  Fear can always be defeated, even the unknown can be defeated.  The sword of courage is yours to wield.

Fear has a friend and an ally.  That friend is called doubt.  The two walk hand in hand.  Fear creates doubt.  Doubt leads to fear.  Fear leads to doubt.  Doubt creates fear.  The two are inseparable, creating a never ending cycle that constantly feeds upon itself.  There is only one way to break that cycle: by eliminating the fear and taking a step forward along the path.  By passing through the fear, the doubt is immediately dispelled.  One cannot live without the other.  Strike one and the other will fall.  When you strike, strike hard and deliver a fatal blow.  If not, the foes will quickly rise again, only this time, they will be stronger and better prepared.

In many ways, doubt is worse than fear, since doubt creeps up insipidly and unnoticed.  It begins to grow slowly, imperceptibly, gradually altering the way in which you view or think of a situation.  When doubt has grown large enough, it reaches out to its friend, fear.  It is at this point, that they begin to lead you away from the path, to prevent you from taking the next step.  Fear and doubt will work hard to prevent your spiritual evolution.  Often, they will make you think that what you dream of, the what lies in your heart, that what gives you passion and purpose in life, is foolish.  They will convince you that it is better to stay where you are, to not risk all that you have gained on the throw of the dice called love.  It is they who will tell you that you are not deserving of such a life, that only the special, the chosen few, the lucky, are worthy of such gifts from the universe.  They are wrong.  There are no words that can be written that can prove this.  No amount of reading words on a page can create that belief within the soul.  The words can inspire, they can excite, they can embolden, but the only way to know for sure is to find the courage from within and to defeat those demons we call fear and doubt.

When the unknown fear is faced, what lies beyond is a void of infinite darkness.  There is no way to see through or around it.  It is like trying to see to the other side of the universe, like trying to see around a mountain.  It is impossible.  But it is not necessary to see through the darkness.  That which is unknown is the treasure waiting to be discovered.  Where would the excitement and surprise of life be, if every answer was known, if it was possible to see every outcome and eventuality?  The darkness is actually a friend.  The darkness needs to be embraced.  If all of the answers were already known, if the direction, route and destination of the path were visible, what then?  Life would become extremely boring and the very thing that gives life its meaning would be lost.  I do not want to read the script of my life, I want to write that script!  I am the author, I am the lead actor and I am the director.  This is the play of my life and it will be the play that I want it to be!  Courage will shine a light through the darkness.  Courage will show the way.  No amount of darkness can stand before the light of courage.  Just as the sun rises to dispel the dark of the night, so to does courage dispel the darkness of the unknown.  With each step taken along the path, the darkness is broken, with each step, the light begins to grow, because with each step, it is you who transforms that darkness into the light.  That power lies inside each and every one of us.

What I find interesting is that when an infant is first born, it knows no sense of fear, because there is no sense of fear.  There is nothing that can stop it, nothing that can hold it back.  Everything is unknown and into that unknown the infant ventures without hesitation.  When an infant first tries to walk, it inevitably falls.  It understands that falling is a necessary part of the learning process.  It knows no fear and so it gets up and it tries again, and again, until it one day it has learned to walk.  Then, at some point, it develops its conscious self and in that moment, it also develops its sense of fear.  So, fear is a learned behaviour and as such, it needs to be unlearned if we are to truly become all that of which we are capable.  And of what you are capable, there is no limit.

Never let fear hold you back from becoming your true self.  Never let doubt cloud your mind.  Never look into the darkness and fail to see the light that shines there as a beacon to guide you on your journey.   You have the courage.  Do not doubt that.  If you know where to look, you can find it.  And when you find the courage, take a breath, take another step, and walk on.  Glory and love await those that walk their one true path.

There is one last thing I want to write on the subject of fear.  My grandfather served as a captain in the army during World War II and was involved in the landings at Normandy.  I recently managed to obtain copies of the memoirs he had written on various aspects of his life.  One of these memoirs dealt with his time in the army and of that fateful day of June 6th, 1944, the day that is now known simply as, D-Day.  He wrote about his experience on that fateful day and he described the terror that all of the men in his landing craft felt, as they crossed the English Channel and headed towards the coast of France.  It is completely impossible to imagine the courage it took to exit that landing craft and to move up the beach during that day in June.  All the men faced a fear so daunting, it beggars belief.  All of the men that day faced a journey into the unknown.  At the moment when they needed to act, at the moment when it was needed the most, they found the courage to take just one more step.  That day, there were thousands of people who faced their fears, who faced their doubts, who faced the unknown and who stared into the dark abyss.  That day, courage gained a new meaning.  That day, fears were overcome.  And for that, no amount of gratitude will ever be enough.  Thank you Pop.  If you are able to read this, then please know that you inspired me and that even if I did not know you as well as I would have liked, I loved you no less.

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