What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from…..We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Elliot, Little Gidding, Part V
The light is quickly fading on this December afternoon. It is not even 3pm and my inclination is to reflect on endings; the end of this day’s daylight, the end of the week, the end of the month, and the end of the year we named twenty-twenty-three.
Here in the northern hemisphere, – the winter solstice having just occurred last week, – we also mark the beginning of the new cycle: The rebirth of light, the festive celebration of the birth of a new consciousness, in the person of the Divine Child. As I write, these factors play into an energy field beautifully infused with cello music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Camille Saint-Saëns, and the crackle of the freshly lit fire. No better setting for reflecting.
This is a year that has certainly not unfolded as I had hoped or expected. `Man proposes, God disposes´ is the phrase that comes to mind. This time twelve months ago I had many ideas as to how my life should have, and hopefully would have taken shape by the end of the year ahead. Life had other plans it seems.
Let me come to some of the more pleasing outcomes first. A blessing that rises steadily in my general estimation is good health. My physical health has been fully restored after a serious accident thirty months ago, which left me immobilised with several broken vertebrae and within a hair’s breadth of lasting damage. This is a great blessing, as are the generally high levels of physical fitness and stamina which I have regained.
On the mental fitness front, I have now been actively practicing the PQ (Positive Intelligence) Mental Fitness Programme on a daily basis for almost two straight years. In addition, I completed my 18 months of training as a PQ Mental Fitness Coach, gaining certification in July of this year. The support of my fellow coaches, peer group, and clients has been invaluable on this exciting adventure, and I am looking forward to more discovery, creativity, and growth in this arena in the new year. It is my conviction that this PQ Mental Fitness modality will establish itself as a core element of transformation coaching in the years to come.
In September, I celebrated twenty continuous years in recovery after having led a troubled early life of active alcoholism and drug addiction between the ages of sixteen and forty-two. When I embarked on this new chapter of life, it was difficult for me to imagine a life without alcohol and marijuana for a week, let alone decades.
The crucial turning point was my admitting, in 2003 – after those twenty-six years in the ring, – that I had been defeated by a foe that was far stronger than anything my will or ego could muster. That was both a frightening realisation and a great relief, followed quickly by a further new departure; I sought and asked for help.
This is not typical of my default programming, about which I have learned a lot in the intervening years. In fact, the process of recovery, achieving sobriety, and cultivating the art of living life on life’s terms has been, on one level, a de-programming of much of that default script inculcated and adopted in childhood, a script that initially saved the life of the little boy within, and later came back like a boomerang to all but cut me to shreds, with almost fatal consequences.
It is good to walk this path with others, who face similar challenges. It would not make any sense to try to go it alone, although isolation, – a characteristic of the old script, – often tries to lure me away from what has become `my tribe´, the Twelve Step Fellowship, which I cherish greatly.
It is sometimes necessary to counter my old wilfulness with newly learned habits, even if this goes against the grain of the ideology which etched itself in the early wiring of my brain. This may initially require great dedication and effort. It does get easier as we proceed. As Bill Wilson, a co-founder of AA put it: `We cannot think our way into a new way of acting; we can only act our way into a new way of thinking´. On the basis of new actions, the brain begins to reconfigure itself, to invent itself anew.
These, then, are the boons of life. Sobriety, health, fitness, and fellowship. Friendships, both within my family and beyond, are clearly in this top category also. They continue to deepen and become even more bounteous as time goes by.
In other areas of life, surprises awaited me. I had a clear vision of how my new coaching business should have unfolded after the initial 15 months and must confess that it has not manifested as envisaged. This has resulted in a renewal of the dedication to my calling as a Transformation Coach and, in terms of finding the appropriate form, a return to the drawing board. The greater than expected time and space available to me has been very welcome. I have been using them for more study, writing, and a deepening of my daily practice of living in recovery and emotional sobriety.
Around the time of my twentieth re-birthday (recovery anniversary), I seemed to hit an emotional and spiritual bump in the road. The words of John O’ Donohue’s beautiful poem `For One Who Is Exhausted´ come to mind:
When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the soul like an endless, increasing weight.
The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laboursome events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.
The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.
It is uncanny how accurately these words reflect my experience over the past few months. Perhaps it has to do with my current inner work of addressing childhood adversity, which has been intense this year. It is not work that I would want to skip, for all the tea in China, and it does come with the price tag of re-feeling the childhood pain from which I had been on the run for so many years.
The art is to feel the pain, to allow it to liberate itself from decades of suppression, providing it the expression and room it needs, to be transformed into the sacred wound of growth and healing. Much empathy and forgiveness (for self, others, and circumstances) are involved, as is the willingness to accept that scars will remain.
The key element in the success of this work, in some circles referred to as `re-parenting´, is allowing the pain to simply be, without causing additional suffering by feeding or wallowing in it, while providing the Inner Child the solace, support, allowing, acknowledgement, and affection that had not been forthcoming in sufficient measure from my original adult caretakers.
While attending to this work, old Saboteurs such as Victim, Pleaser, and Judge sense an opportunity to steer me back to the old, fear-based perspective, while the Sage Powers of Empathise, Explore, Navigate, Innovate, and Activate facilitate healing, propelled by the fuel of love. With daily Mental Fitness practice it is becoming easier to intercept the Saboteurs and cultivate the powers of the Sage state.
John´s poem continues:
You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.
At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
Yes, that resonates with me, bringing new insights. Pride raises its head and shouts: `No´!
A wise friend once told me that pride is how I want other people to see me. My default programming is that of a highly functional person, meeting life’s challenges with diligence, competence, good cheer, and mastery. That old part of me does not wish anyone to see me languishing in empty time, the desire that once drove me now relinquished. I do not even want to see my self in this state.
Yet the description is accurate; When I can desist from berating myself, telling myself to pull up my socks and get real, I learn to fully accept what is, and feel at times just as John describes, as if a great reckoning were afoot. I wonder why I have been placed on the substitutes’ bench for so long, these past months.
The answer is to be found in the remainder of John’s poem:
You have travelled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of colour
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells deep within slow time.
Recovery and healing must be an experiential process; mere theory is insufficient. Successful transformation is made up of 20% insights and 80% practice. By combining behavioural and body-oriented, hands-on therapies, daily Mental Fitness practice such as PQ, and the Twelve Step Programme (introduced initially by AA and since adapted by many fellowships to treat a broad array of addiction maladies and their underlying causes), I have hit upon a treatment approach that works well for me.
A life without recourse to acting out the substance addiction is made possible, whereupon the traumatic experiences of childhood can be addressed and resolved. A virtuous cycle begins, whereby further, more subtle forms of behavioural addiction patterns become apparent and can be addressed using the same Twelve Steps. Daily Mental Fitness practice facilitates the cultivation and expansion of the resources required to consciously manifest free will, to overcome the impulse control disorder, as it is commonly termed today.
The transformation of the trauma of childhood into sacred wounds implies a bond of duty to pass forward (to those now in need of them today) the tools of recovery, just as they were gifted to us.
This manifestation of the spiritual paradox: `In order to keep it, you’ve got to give it away´ is a powerful example of the inexhaustible on-going salubrious cycle of endings and beginnings, in the service of enhancing the human experience.
