The Monster Called 'Can't': Battling Self-Doubt and Fear

Have you ever had the feeling that you weren’t quite ready…for life, that is? That you need more time to prepare before you take on the great thing that you feel would make all the difference, if only, I don’t know, you could do something different or better. It’s sort of like rolling all your fears of success, all your fears of failure and bundling them up with your, “I’m not good enough”, I”’m not strong enough”, in fact all you “I’m not enoughs” and giving them over to the monster called, “Can’t”, and accepting in return a pile of excuses that you can pick over and savour as your wish box gets fuller and fuller. Oh, wait on, sorry, that was me! But may you have it too, the tension between deep longing and belief in your personal ineffectiveness. I guess that today’s word would be “looser”. Yikes.

A Prank and a Professor: Lessons in Perseverance

For along time I struggled not to feel like a looser, it was my greatest fear and even thinking about it brought a rush of adrenaline, a dead feeling in my gut and a frantic search for a distraction, any distraction. In my first year of uni in Sydney, actually it was the first year of my second go at tertiary education, no,my third go, I had a number of false starts, I was the butt of a practical joke by my fellow students. They told me that the dean of the school wanted to see me. It’s like that gag where you give someone the phone number of the zoo and tell you that a Mr Lyon rang and left a message for you asking to call him back urgently. It a scam like the myriads of scam like we see on the internet today, the phishing (with a ‘ph’), trojan horses, malware, viruses etc, etc.

Anyway I discovered, gullibility and hapless naivety were a powerful combination that made me an easy target and created a good deal of frivolity. There’s a fine line between playing the fool and being a fool and I was prone to getting them mixed up. Anyway, these guys told me that the dean wanted to see me, which made sense given my abysmal academic record that year. So I go up to the professor’s office and make an appointment with his secretary. “What’s it about?” “I don’t know, he wants to see me.” I swear at the time nobody would have been able to convince me it was anything than above board. I had failed organic chemistry and something else that I can’t remember and in a spot of bother to put it mildly. That’s to say nothing of my chaotic personal life at the time. It didn’t occur to me that they might be connected. So I went in to see the professor, ironically by the name of Passmore and said, “I’m David Salomon” and braced myself. He looked at me blankly. I had already decided to not leave without some sort of solution to this mess that I was in. No matter what, I’d take it on the chin.

A Moment of Transformation: Finding Hope in Academic Struggles

Silence, then, “Why are you here?” “I don’t know.” More silence. “How can I help?” Now I was really confused. He got my file and had a look through my exam records. He was an astute man, his field was the philosophy of science and he could tell that something was amiss. Then it happened. He looked at me, I could feel his gaze as I stared down at my sweaty hands and he said, ”Just because you’ve failed a few subjects, doesn’t mean you’re persona non grata,” “What?” I parroted back, with all my skill in idiomatic Latin translation vacating me. He repeated himself, “Just because you’ve failed a couple of subjects doesn’t mean you’re persona non grata.” And as I looked up at him the black cloud I had carried around for the past seven years broke open. And I kid you not, the clouds parted and the sun shone through, you know that special sunlight that comes as rays through the clouds, poets refer to it as the grace of God. I felt buoyant as my heart kept into life. You see I knew that I was smart enough, I had won a university scholarship on merit. There was something else wrong with me that had nothing to do with my studies but I had no way of articulating and now it had lifted and I felt that the moment deserved a full orchestral score with a long camera shot of me receiving a full quotient of grace, permeating, saturating, drinking it in long thirsty draughts. I felt like dancing, and singing and telling everyone the good news, the fantastic news that there was a chance that I might be OK after all, because somebody saw me.

By the time I left the room the euphoria had passed. I just felt my load had been lightened. Though I continued to stumble my way through life for a long time the absolute blessing of that moment has never left me. Nothing had changed in my outer world but everything in my inner world was different.

Seeking a Blessed Childhood: Rediscovering Inner Potential

Years later, one of my teachers talked about how she had had a blessed childhood. It was curious to me because from the stories she told, yes, she had been fortunate in meeting many talented and gifted people growing up. Yes, she clearly had a close relationship with her father, but it was clear problematic. His humour was ruthless. Then a sense of disappointment came over me as I realised that I wanted to have had a blessed childhood too. That the antagonism I felt toward my father for not understanding me, that the love I felt from my mother didn’t come free with anticipation and expectation that I didn’t feel able to fulfil, that the alienation from my extended family that I had brought about to shield me from being judged and ridiculed, even though there was scant evidence that was true.

Then just like that black cloud lifting I realised that I too was a candidate for a blessed childhood, a blessed life in fact, yes, there was some cleaning up to do, but at its core I could have the kind of blessed childhood that would set me to fulfil my life purpose. And that would happen, not by reliving the past, but by a radical appreciation of the now.

Storytelling for Change Makers: Embracing Life's Energizing Moments

Storytelling for Change Makers is about amplifying the moments that carry life energy for us. It’s about accelerating our inner growth by rediscovering and reflecting on those primary moments and transforming our outlook by paying our unique gifts and talents forward centred in who we really are.

Tags: AcademicStruggles, BlessedChildhood, hero/heroines Journey, InnerGrowth, Inspiration, LifeJourney, OvercomingSelfDoubt, RediscoveringPotential, SelfBelief, StorytellingForChangeMakers, TransformationalMoments

Morning Routines and Creative Thinking

I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.

In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.

The Boarding School Experience

Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.

The Power of the Bell

Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.

On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.

A Midnight Adventure

So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”

On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.

That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.

We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.

The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.

Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.

Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.

In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.

Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.

But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”

That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.

I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.

In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.

Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.

Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.

On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.

So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”

On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.

That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.

We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.

The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.

Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.

Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.

In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.

Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.

But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”

That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.

I go to bed when I am tired, usually after nodding off on the couch for a while following a very predictable pattern. “That’s two,” Carol will say after the second yawn knowing that a few seconds after the third I’ll be away in dreamland. It irks me that I’m so transparent, and it’s indiscrete to point it out, but by that time I don’t care anymore. My attention is elsewhere and no longer concerned with protecting my self image to the outside world.

In the morning I get up when I wake up, usually between 4 and 5 am. There’s the waking thoughts to catch, generally the most interesting and insightful ones I’ll have all day. I like to get dressed in the dark. Putting a light on wrenches me out of the creative dreaming/waking state too quickly even though I’m fully present. Bringing those creative ideas across the sleep threshold is a delicate matter and requires some sensitivity. I’m surprised at how many times I forget to put my glasses on, just about every day in fact, because in the part light I can see just as well without my grasses as I can with. Once I put on the light I’m immediately half blind, not from the light but from my limited eyesight. The first job: find your glasses.

Just about the whole of my time at boarding school I was in a liminal state, the state between what just happened and what happen’s next. It began when I was about 13 or 14. I’m too embarrassed to say when the metaphoric lights actually came on. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pain of the teenage years as a reminder that it all meant something, somehow, didn’t it? You see, an older cousin and me hatched a plan at the tea table one evening. The school dining room seated all the boarders, just like the Harry Potter scenes, but without the magical food. Our fair was chicken fricassee and mashed potatoes, I can’t remember what else. The girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other with an invisible but impenetrable barrierdown the middle. How do I know that it was impenetrable? I’ll tell you: because in the five years I stayed there I didn’t see a single person cross it. Actually there were two people who did, the housemaster and housemistress. Their more intimate setting was a table for two on a raised dais on the mid line up on end of the room, as if on public display. If they spoke to each other it would immediately come to the interest of the assembled, since they so rarely did, and it often intrigued me what they had to say to each other. I mean, if they had free flowing conversation as a matter of course it would pass as normal and be of no interest at all. But people who sat with each other three times a day, every day and rarely spoke must really have something to say when they did. Such exchanges had all the air of an ordeal rather than a tete-a-tete.

Students on the other hand had no restrictions apart from the impenetrable barrier strictly preventing any discourse or romantic liaisons forming. And there was the bell. The bell was one of, if not the most powerful instrument I’ve witnessed in action. With the ringing of the bell a hush fell on the room for a full two minutes and turned everyone’s attention to their watch, traditionally a gift given at confirmation. A second bell in quick succession forbade voices till the end of the meal. It was a custom agreed upon by the entire student body. If you forgot yourself and asked to pass the chicken fricassee down after the bell, you’d get an elbow in the ribs and probably a kick under the table. There was nothing surer to bring on the double bell ring than some halfwit saying, “Pass the chicken please.” The room would collapse in derisive yet ebullient laughter at such a blatant display of individual absent mindedness, one of the cardinal sins for gangish teenagers.

On one occasion the bell went missing. When he realised the instrument was gone, the housemaster’s face turned scarlet with contained rage and powerlessness. The room sat silent, transfixed, anticipating what happens next. Whatever it would be, it promised to be a once in a lifetimer, the kind of story you would tell to your grandchildren or that scriptwriters put into movies. But the moment passed leaving us all a little uncomfortable, awash in our schadenfreude, though there were plenty of minor enmities between students and the housemaster that they would love to see levelled up, if only they didn’t have tobe the instigator. We suspected one of the senior boys or a number of them acting in joint congress. Only they had and escape hatch and parachute by virtue of seniority and timing. The school couldn’t run without them and their term was nearly up and they were pretty cocky. Turns out one of the cleaning staff forgot to replace it after the room had a thorough scrub down. We waited to hear if someone got fired, but we never did. Either way, it’s not the sort of thing you recover from quickly.

So, my cousin two years older than me was table monitor and I was sitting next to him with four others at the dining room table allocated to us. This was an ordered world where nothing was left to chance. He said, “I dare you to go with me up to the girl’s hostel after lights out.” “Sure I will,” says I, excited at the naughtiness and the opportunity to demonstrate that I could think for myself.”

On the night in question I was woken dearly from sleep. “Come on.” The moon was out as we crossed the main road a couple of hundred metres from our dorms and went round the back of the hostel. He decided to rescue a bra from the clothes line. I felt uneasy about it, not so much the taking, I had no doubt it would be returned promptly once it had provided evidence of our daring, but a bra. One could hardly look at such an item with any more than an averted glance, actually touching one… a step too far. Anyway I was a junior partner in the outfit so we went back to bed and I didn’t think of it again. There was no concern about getting found out since we’d made no secret of our intention. But that arguably harmless event breached a boundary that unleashed a tsunami of trouble, one whose waves and aftershock would reverberate for decades, I kid you not.

Unraveling a Life-Changing Event

That event and against all probability became the Axis Mundi, world centre, the connection between heaven and hell that governed my life for years to come. Storytellers talk about inciting incidents, contrivances of the universe to install a particular trajectory on which events unfold.

We got found out by the authorities by a peculiar happenstance. A classmate, of whom I wasn’t particularly fond, was sweet on my cousin also going to the same school and the same age as us. He was wooing for her affection. When after about three weeks and we had all forgotten about our midnight escapade, she rejected his overtures, he decided upon an unlikely retribution to call her good name and reputation into question by family association. He jabbed mercilessly with the whole deliciously sordid details of her cousin’s in flagrante delicto that is to say my role in the bra theft. At this intolerable attack, and in hot pursuit of her reputation she reported the incident to the housemistress, thence to the housemaster and up every step in the chain of command to the principal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discussed in the halls at synod by those who were disgusted by what the school and the church were coming to. Remember this was the 1960’s and the amalgamation of the two Lutheran churches hadn’t happened yet, though discussions had been taking place since, I don’t know, federation. It wasn’t just doctrinal matters at stake, though I couldn’t tell you what they were. What I do know is that the whole question as to whether women would continue to wear hats and gloves in church and would dancing be allowed at church socials was in question. These things would eventually be resolved but not without further division. There were, I think, two churches in Australia before amalgamation and after, four.

The upshot was that my cousin was suspended and sent home for a couple of weeks. From my point of view he was the lucky one. I was put on disciplinary probation for the term and confined to barracks for the next. Talk about misery guts! At the interrogation I bawled uncontrollably, knowing that my life was over. Why did you do it? He asked again and again. I had no answer, only more pathetic sobs. The same reason, I supposed as why anyone does anything. My parents were called in to have a talk. They were more surprised by the fuss than the cause. It even showed a bit of plucky courage. I think if I had been able to get over myself I would have even detected a little bit of pride. Unbeknown to me, dad had his own issues with the principle and the ultra conservative direction he was taking. But inside I was devastated, completely. From then on the principal would address me as young Arn, the leader of the insurrection, after my father.

A Tearful Injury and Lost Opportunity

Next holidays back on the farm, I slipped off the boom spray while dad and me were spraying weeds. Chemical farming was being trialed for the first time. Dad, out of earshot and unaware that I had fallen didn’t stop the tractor for some time. There were still a couple of rounds to do and by the time we got home for lunch, my knee had swollen to the size of a football. We had to interrupt the spraying which really needed to get done since we’d planned a driving holiday to my father’s youngest brother’s farm near the gem fields in central Queensland. Both families would go together and try our fortune for a couple of days.

Going to the doctors mean a trip to town, and waiting around and half the afternoon would be gone before the rest of the spraying could be done. The doctor said it was a typical footballer’s injury, a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. He would have done an x-ray up at the hospital but there was no-one there who could operate the machine. So he bandaged it up with the double bandages and cotton wool and sent me home with aspirin. It put a dampener on the trip to the gem fields. No luck there either.

A Painful Discovery

In due course the pain went away, of my knee that is, but I found I had lost the ability to lock it back. I got special permission, now that I was confined to barracks to ride my bike down to the hospital casualty department and find out what was wrong. A part of me felt triumphant in being able to game the system and leave the school grounds while technically still confined to barracks. So I got to have that x-ray taken. “Have you had an injury lately?” the doctor asked, bringing back an avalanche of unwanted memories. “You’ve had a broken leg,” he said, “It’s healed up but not quite in the right place.” We’ll take you into surgery, do some manipulation and you’ll have to have a full length paster cast for about three months.” “What about my bike?” I asked, remembering that it was leaning against the wall out the front of the hospital. “We’ll work something out,” he said.

Later, my cousin, a different one, came to pick up my bike and take it back to school. I was a bit concerned. The old style dynamo bicycle light made it hard to get up that last long hill. This is Toowoomba we’re talking about, built in an extinct volcanic crater. But it all worked out. It was winter time and my trousers fitted easily over the plaster cast and thereby able to keep my troubles concealed.

Questioning Authority and Finding One's Path

But what stuck with me all this time, and even then in that wounded state was something the school principal said to me in that interrogation and my sense of it was that he had stepped out of the role of interrogator and asked a question that he was grappling with himself. He leaned in, alcohol on breath and asked, “Why is it that you have to break a persons spirit to get them to do the right thing.”

That question was to me the blessing in this whole sorry saga. You see, dear reader, he asked it of me as if I would know the answer. And that seed took root in my churning and chaotic inner world, it was a question to be wrestled with and would eventually reveal that it was based completely on a false premise. I knew he was wrong, I knew it was wrong and I lost all respect for him in that moment. I would find my own way through that brokenness. There is something in us all at our core that knows the answer, though the freedom that it promised would be a long time coming.

Tags: hero/heroines Journey, LifeChangingEvent, TeenageMischief

In my teens and for a good while afterwards, I resisted any notion of having ‘mental health issues’. I certainly had issues, but to call them ‘mental’ ignores the herd of elephants in the room; my body, the world, people, authority and so on, ad infinitum. It feels a euphemistic and pointless avoidance. When confronted by such allegations, I retreated into the belief that my accusers’ judgement of me was simply because I was not like them, kind of like jealousy but not really. Come on, I knew that I was not like normal people and accepted it, much of the time, uncomfortably, but nonetheless. How I was not like them was more difficult to say. Yes, I wasn’t good at sport and no, I didn’t have friends though not for the want of trying. The biggest thing, I figured, was that my inner world didn’t match their’s.

My family was pious and devout, I think in a good way. We said grace before every meal and read devotions on bible stories twice a day. It bred into us a passive attitude towards God and an exclusive one towards the outside world. Our community was strong, based on high moral principles but, I’m afraid to say, with a deep underlying stain of shame, shame born of original sin.

Was the shame an intentional part of the doctrine? I have no idea. By intentional, I mean the inner tensions that cause you to break open. If so, I reasoned, it should have been its own remedy, self correcting, through the prescribed path of forgiveness. Now, half a century later I can say that all paths are paths. But this is now and that was then. “So why wasn’t it working for me?” I’d ask. Was it my personality, that of a naturally compulsive empiricist; some unkind, well meaning persons call it ‘naive’. Or perhaps it was the inherited trauma from parents who in their early years were preoccupied with casting off German parentage and mother tongue in regional wartime playgrounds. Or perhaps being so absorbed in my own concerns that I was incapable of consideration for others, a rebel with an unseen and unknown ‘whatever’. One could hardly say ‘cause’. Oh, yes, I know! A rebel against an unseen, unknown and unknowing self, trapped back by secrets, some good and not so good, and unspoken stories, again both positive and negative. The resultant struggle was completely reflexive, relentless and unresponsive, and pathologically lacking self awareness.

As I contemplate these memories I am taken back to boarding school, an experience that might have been altogether positive and healing. I wonder if my parents sent us three older kids there to complete an education that they weren’t able to. Fascinating though they were, chemical valency and quantum mechanics and the like, didn’t substitute for a solid spiritual breakthrough. God knows we’d done the prep. Some of the historical challenges and trials were held so tightly and so repressed, it was hard to believe they mattered any more. The shock, after many years and considerable expense that boarding school had been a hit and miss affair and had not paid off was devastating. You send away a child and get back a noncompliant and ill-equipped teenager, just like you were, knowing that if you let go of your white knuckle grip on your reality to accept a helping hand, you’d fall into the abyss. So it was for me. I was broke, not broken but completely left wanting.

The notion that at boarding school, I had a ‘personality defect’ seemed completely unfair given the incipient hostility of the outside world as I saw it, the world that was not me. I didn’t yet know there was a seperate inner and an outer world. Still don’t accept that distinction!

In grisly retrospect, those bible stories were out to lunch, God and the devil goofing off after the disappointment of the garden project and amusing themselves with their Job-ish wagers. God’s work was done and what was left could be outsourced to angels. The devil’s on the other hand is intermittent. He’s an independent contractor. Had they thought to include a user manual with the Bible it might have said, “Warning, using this cautionary tale as a rule book voids warranty. Do so at your peril!”

How is it, you may ask, that in this universe, God and the devil are besties. It’s simple, I reply. God’s favourite creation, and this will come as a shock to cats everywhere, is the human being. Dogs don’t care, they love you regardless. When God created Adam, he saw that it was good and was mighty pleased with himself. The Angels were cool too, though a step below humans in the hierarchy. Their commission is to support humans with an unseen hand, you’ve probably seen the pictures. The devil though, is a bit of a maverick, more like humans than other angels with a mind of his own. He took it upon himself to disregard God’s instructions convinced that service should be given to God alone and so refused to serve humans. To do so would be demeaning to him and to God. It’s a point of principle, and an important one. So he was cast into hell.

Now the popular idea of hell is a place where devil hangs out delivering devilish vengeance onto unbelievers. Not so, I protest. It is clear from the good book that this stasis in the popular mind is simply the result of a lack of imagination. Had it not been for the devil, we humans would be no better than the angels, confined to relentless bliss in the garden where nothing happens and no-one realises. The devil on the other hand had a plan to release humans from endless drudgery, blissful as it was, if one can be blissful without realising it.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of any of this in my teens, I was too obsessively compulsively waiting for God, who incidentally didn’t show. So I hung out with the devil ie, bucked convention, not because I liked him but just for the company, endlessly exploring the empirical nature of the good versus evil dichotomy in elaborate thought experiments and occasionally through experience. Ouch! When such experiments lead me into a diabolical life crisis some decades later, witnesses concluded I was possessed by the devil. Or else I was having a mental breakdown. Both were true, neither had a clue and all unhelpful, though I did accrue a lot of data!

I tried to fathom how neither Eve nor the devil were concerned with collateral damage in their decision to take a bite of the apple. God too for that matter, who is too high and mighty to actually turn up. Or could it be that God, Eve and the devil were in cahoots, concerned only with the kernel at the spiritual core, aware the shell that held it would drop away freely after a jolly good clout, and be recycled. It’s the almond that sprouts to make a new tree not the shell. Shells are yesterdays story. Come to think of it, apples and almonds make a delicious combination, to die for, as they say. I’m more like a walnut lacking the perspicacity of the almond.

So that just leaves the one question that I know you must be asking, “Where does that leave shame?” Put simply, the shame is the hell, I mean shell.

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1162499555289640961?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillipAdams_1/status/1162231425388597248?s=20

Story is so important because it provides not just the plot lines, something we are so very interested in as change makers it also provides the context. And it is the context that provides much of the energy not only for the structure but also a creative approach to the plot trajectories, if I can put it that way, for where and how and who and what needs to happen.

It is very easy to get caught in the stasis of believing the way things are are the way they are. Of course they are but also never what they seem, nor do they stay the same moment to moment. It’s more a matter of the movie or the poster. While a poster is designed to evoke a feeling response that goes to, “I gotta see that,” it does not reveal the plot line.

There is also another important aspect of mythic stories, be they person or collective myths and that is that myths are more movie like that poster frame. Plot and context, seed and earth, particle and wave, hammer and nail, surfer and wave, rain and umbrella, male and female (I’m talking archetype not gender), these things occur in couples. So with the storytelling for change makers, it is not enough to do something in an isolated way. Doing only makes a difference in the context of being. Out of being and doing emerges becoming.

We can never act alone. We need a group, a community even if it a community of two or three gathered together unified.

Be the change you want to see in the world acting through you sense of purpose based on your authentic self. Plot, trajectory and energy. Once we get stuck on how an outcome should look we can become impotent. Too big, Too hard, wrong direction. It is not the issue that needs to change but the purpose that needs to be fulfilled, and your unique role in contributing to that purpose. Getting stuck on the change makes everything become transaction rather than relational, and forces you to resort to raw power rather than the power of love and compassion.

For my parents it was about devotion to Jesus. That didn’t happen for me. There was too much either or as I was refreshing my personal creation myth based on the story of science, and a multitude of creation myths from many cultures. Now I can find Jesus in my inner world, along with Buddha, Loa Tsu, the Dreaming ancestors, and many others.

If the change you want to make is through your business or organisation, then the process is the same. Make your change through something (Relational) rather than to something (Transactional)

Being Belonging Becoming

Tags: hero/heroines Journey

“ Not under my roof…” said my father, voice arching up with the frustration of many years.

“Wait on, dad. Wait on.” I interrupted in a tone as even as I could muster.

“It’s not my intention to offend you. It’s OK. We’ll make our own arrangements.”

And in that short moment I slipped from under a shadow that had dogged me my whole life.

Some of my earliest memories were of of vain attempts to have my father’s approval. This time felt different. Our struggle, was the same as those that inspired that great stories throughout history, the son’s ordeal of meeting the Father.

The more one struggles to win the father’s approval the worse it gets. Accidents become mistakes, mistakes misdeeds, misdeeds catastrophes. I gradually came to think that the grand purpose of my life was to be a cautionary tale for others. The triumph of overcoming the need for my father’s approval was immediately set upon by the feeling of loss. In that moment I knew I would never have the relationship I craved. I would be my own man.

The issue at the moment was on that most wayward children of fundamentalist Christian parents face at some time. My father followed the good book and was not an angry man. He was loved and respected by the community and for good reason. But to me he was a harsh disciplinarian especially in the privacy of the family. Not for want of emotional control but on principle, for his own eternal salvation and that of his family. What other people did was their business. But in his home, there would be no exceptions.

Tags: hero/heroines Journey

Background

Navigating Insurmountable Obstacles

I think most people have experienced a time in their lives when they feel like they’re trapped in a bad movie. Have you? It’s like facing a brick wall, with nowhere to go. But if you are able to take a step back, rise above it all or even distance yourself form the scene, a way out that wasn’t obvious before may come into view. Therefore it’s really powerful to practice shifting you point of view, like being both the main character and the author in a story you are writing.

I was about 9 or 10 years old when the epic film, “Lawrence of Arabia” was released in Australia. It coincided with a visit to see relatives living in Brisbane. My uncle suggested were should all go to the movies, it would be a treat for us country folk. Dad wasn’t interested and mum really just wanted to spend time with her eldest sister. But my uncle was really keen. He had served in a transport battalion during the war and this film was one not to be missed. So he took my big sister and me and hiskids about our age to go to and see it.

We sat wondering in darkness as a long musical prelude played. I was overawed, right out of my comfort zone but the action soon got under way, a grand epic of old testament proportions and just as brutal. It would remain one of my favourite movies of all time. I think it left us all disorientated and I clearly remember my uncle describing to mum and dad how the projectionist got the reels of film mixed up and couldn’t find the first reel in time so played music while he organised. Thenin his haste started with the iron reel, so we got to see Lawrence’s death and funeral first, then went back to tell the story of his life.

I knew there was no mistake but didn’t have anything to say about the movie. I wouldn’t know where to start. The locations, the characters, the story arc, I had never experienced anything as grand not even in my imagination. What stayed with me was the scene following the perilous camel treck across the Nefud Desert in which Lawrence, against all advice from those who know better went back to rescue someone who had fallen asleep with exhaustion and was now stranded without water his death certain. After the rescue a fight breaks out between feuding tribes and a man is shot and killed. Unless the murderer is brought to justice there will be an uproar and the entire campaign fail. But the crime demands a life for a life yet if the executioner is from the feuding tribe old wounds would be opened. Therefore Lawrence carries out the execution himself, executing the very person he rescued.

Sherif Ali is resigned, the death is written:

T.E.Lawrence:

Nothing is written.

Sherif Ali:

Truly, for some men nothing is written unless THEY write it themselves.

In the course of our personal, professional, business and organisational lives we face irreconcilable challenges and forced to rewrite our story or succumb to the inevitable.

Joseph Campbell’s insight that all great stories, whether they be cultural Myths or biographies conform to a deeper pattern that alert us to greater freedom that is available to us. But theability to author our own stories past impossible challenges must be earned and it is through a “The Hero’s /Heroine’s Journey” we discover a pathway to a freer, wiser way of living.

Therefore having a sound navigation system stops you from getting lost on the way. But the Hero’s Journey is both a mirror and a window that enables us to reflect on our deepest passions and desires as well as providing us a perspective that can reorient us in our life’s journey.

I find mapping my current circumstances relative to a personal or professional challenge onto the hero’s journey points to the form of what to do next. That in itself is encouraging and opens maybe an escape hatch or even a double barrage door to an alternate trajectory for the story. Knowing that this current road is one of trials also implied that this too shall pass. At another time the realisation of receiving a boon calls for celebration to fortify oneself for the onward journey. At another time it may be the awareness that I am refusing my intuition that may have the key to unlock a mystery.

Fractals and stories

Numbers can be convincing just as much as we are moved by stories. It is a cultural preference. Other cultures prioritise relationships over transactions. What is most important to you, making friends or making deals. I’ve oversimplified here to make a point, and that is that we have a preference that can be confusing if we try to do both simultaneously. But ultimately we make meaning using stories. Numbers need context, that is to say backstory, to have meaning. Furthermore the meaning we make of numbers vary as the stories about them change. In this way I believe stories are primary and being able to write our own stories is extremely powerful way to direct our lives. Whether consciously or unconsciously this is what we do anyway. The polls may predict which political party gains office but it is their narrative the determines if they do or not. Ultimately they are two sides of the same coin.

Stories contain patterns. In its simplest form, let’s say you hear some crying out, “Help!” You can’t get much shorter than that. Just one word. But when we hear that we process it as a story by making various interpretations and assumptions based on that one word. We will infer direction, perhaps the age and sex of the caller. We will also make a judgement on urgency and intensity.

We recognise stories as having a beginning, midle and end and with that comes a sense of satisfaction for the listener and the story teller. Some stories are multi layered and have stories within stories. Often they have repeating patterns either within the story arc or within the story layers, stories within stories. This introduces the second idea, that stories have a fractal quality, the stories within the stories may follow a similar parttern to the larger story, they are self similar on multiple levels.

The purpose of some stories is to repeat a pre-existing pattern, the purpose of other stories is to ‘change the narrative’, and there are many devices through which this takes place. There are ways of drawing the audience into a story, for instance by setting up a story and then not completing it, or by creating an emotional alignment and then avoiding distractions that would break the spell so cast. But most of all “the Hero/Heroine’s journey” illuminates the mostly unconscious workings a story telling and listening and provides not only a predictive tool for how the story might unfold, because this is one of the essential things about stories, our imagination becomes aroused when we catch a wiff of a story and we will provide our own elements for missing parts of the story based on our own experience and then eagerly anticipate being found correct in our assumptions or that there was something altogether different going on.

We are hard wired for story and when there is inadequate data on what is happening in a storied situation we encounter our inclination is to fill in the blanks based on what we already know from other situations encountered previously. It is an emotionally charged instinct for our very survival.

Coming of Consciousness

Becoming self aware

Gaining experience is really just having a story for some phenomena many of which arise incrementally over a long period of time. There are times when our incremental learning is interrupted and we learn something not by gradual accumulation but by an ordeal that changes the way we think about things. What was true before is never so again. There are new factors (data) that have to be taken into consideration that change everything. In short we are in some way not longer who we once were. Sometimes we grapple with finding the new stories that make sense of a new situation so alien is our current circumstance to our previous reality. We find it valuable to have help to map out where we are going either by finding a mentor who has experienced something like this already or we go within and find our own answers, or both. When this happens, and it happens to a greater or lesser degree for all of us, we know we are on a hero or heroine’s journey. Some look to old traditions for answers, others to progressive ideas some do both. Whichever way you choose, you find yourself writing your own story, with a new ending and sometimes it is useful to rewrite some past stories to better fit and provide the foundation for a new trajectory. With current understandings of stories, neuro plasticity and mindfulness we have more power to write our own story than ever before.

Tags: hero/heroines Journey, storytelling

I was resentful for a long time of my father’s propensity to harsh disciplinarianism. It was the was things were done generally and I think stemmed from the anger that arose ion those charged with the responsibility of maintaining good order when they found themselves without control. In order to regain control and respect, a harshness, and sometimes brutality and violence was resorted to generating a n atmosphere of fear and anxiety and sometimes terror.

I want to work with a number of incidents from my first years at school, a small county one-teacher school of about 30 pupils. There was violence there were one would have expected find love and compassion, and us being infants simply put up with things because there wasnot other choice.

The great evil that was perpetrated there was to use corporal punishment for failing to meet learning expectations, being caned for not having learnt spelling words. I recall in the second year of school not knowing spelling and having to stand up on the form. There were big long desks that seated maybe 6 children and a long form to match. If you you didn’t know your spelling you would be told to stand on the forms and hold out your hand for “six of the best”. For me every bit of that school was steeped in violence and terror. We were farm kids and our parents had by and large been raised under a similar rule. The violence felt indiscriminate. It mande me angry and powerless. I recall one of the word abuses was when chub had trouble with something or he may have been a bit cheeky the teach lost control and started laying into him with the cane. Chub fell to the floor and curled up to protect himself while the teacher beat hime with the cane. We felt both the distress of seeing our friend so abused and at the same time feared for our own safety. What went on was literally unbelievable, and when we tried to raise the alarm were simply not believed, that such an atrocity should be happening. I tried to protect myself with illness. Every morning I would be sick and not wan to go to school. The mothers would take turns to car pool. I remember on morning after the holidays that I could not be prised out of the car such was my fear, I don’t know what such consistent resistance to go ing to school didn’t raise concern. I guess it was because our parents had met with similar school experiences.

But I was a precocious learner. What strikes me most on reflection that there was no instruction on how to learn just an expectation that you would meet the grade. Learn was mostly by rote and memory not an understanding of the material being learnt. Most of the learning exercises felt pointless to me. I remember one craft exercise that I thought was going to be fun. It was simple enough. We had an exercise book with a square with geometrical shapes drawn inside. We were given some squares of glossy coloured paper which we had to cut to size and paste in the shapes.

I though this was going to be easy and felt relieved that it didn’t involve a memory exercise that could bring down punishment for being incorrect. To my horror I soon discovered that there was no method to cut the coloured paper to shape. The paper was too thick to trace through and there were no tools available. I decided to put the paper as close as possible to the shapes and draw the shape on the underside with a pencil. Imagine my alarm when I cut out the shapes and found them wildly inaccurate. You were not permitted a second chance. My world cam crashing down in an instant expecting to caned.

The thing is I loved learning and do to this day but found the tools to learn missing. There seemed to me to be a huge gap between knowing and not knowing with no crossing. After two years of this brutal regime it ended. The country school was closed and we were bussed to Milmerran to the central school. But my basic wariness of teachers had been set and became a potent force in my life and thereafter avoided school learning ensuing it for independent learning undercover. I became fiercely antiauthoritarian but nevertheless scarred, shamed at my lack of perfection and caring a kind of survivor guilt. But I loved learning and was curious about the world. It was inevitable that sooner or later I would have major issues with the authoritarian nature of the Lutheran church and the huge disconnect between the message of the gospel, that of compassion and loving kindness and emphasised the ideas of sin borne of shame and unworthiness.

Over the years I watched as my friends, boys of my own age scrummed to mental illness and in some cases suicide.

As I reflect in order to redeem those memories, that love of learning and a respect for custom it seems impassable. I know that the attitudes generated by those experiences left me wounded and unable to be the person I wanted to be. I became an unhappy child and a social misfit, defensive and craving protection. The time comes now to honouring the suffering of that child knowing that these traumatic experiences were within the context of a dogmatic order that was intolerant of straying from the official line. I was unable settle down to earn a good living but continue to battle my demons.

In this process of writing I have focused mainly on those areas were I felt shame and guilt and much less on traumas that I experienced. I considered my suffering less than others and only have to remember those kids that literally shit themselves with terror from abuse and consider myself fortunate to survive. In comparison tho the horrors we hear on the news we seem to be in a protected par of the world. But when I think of it now That safe secure community that he’d its secrets tight is broken open, like a boil that has been lanced and can now heal. But for real healing there must be restitution, restoration that now at this late stage only I can provide for myself. For this writing is not simply to revealhorrible stories of the past but to apply a remedy for others who my find themselves in this position while reform is carried out by a new generation.

When I think about it, that community had to crumble and disappear, for as much as there were romantic notions about growing up on country there desperately need to be an injection of vitality of regeneration that religion was not providing. I think straight away of the rainbow serpent and hoe that principle was not present. And it is that principle that I call upon now to heal and make whole. A spiritual force above and beyond biological and humanistic reasoning. The God that had been captured and constrained within that little country community had lost power. God had been strangled to death by dogma. God in the heavens too had been relegated it seems to me to a private sector of space time, fragmented and neutered. And for all the talk of an all powerful god it was human vigilantes and henchmen that maintain control where one might have expected freedom and these enclaves need to need lanced also.

This is the sense in which the desert lawmen say that the great stories and body of knowledge they contain are the first owners of this country. The people do not own the stories but belong to the stories and the stories belong to or rise up out of country. And to find healing and regeneration we need to reconnect with the source of all that is. Now I realise that this was the same idea that gave rise to ideas about god and dogma was a rationalisation that tried to understand it. But it no longer fits any more than my cut pieces of craft paper to the image. The method used for sizing them up is in adequate to the task. The meetings come as a result of a flawed perception of how learning works and an over zealous craving for safety thought to come from conforming to the conservative order.

Therefore we turn to the process of storytelling and restore those past experiences into a greater context now that the boil is lanced and the guilty secrets broken. I held my parents and all those entrusted with the care of children accountable for their ignorance. At the same time I know by my own experience that you can never know enough to solve these problems. It can only be done through community renewal and that means that the old communities must be demolished rather than idealised so that fresh life force can re-enter and renew. Sacrifice is necessary. Sacrifice of the adherence to safe views. Courage is needed and a degree of cheekiness and humour.

And what of all those who adhere to the old ways. We must not be impatient. We must not resort to killing fields to quicken regeneration in an effort to capture the new god under whose name a new rule is enforced and the old evils perpetrated. God also must be allowed to evolve, for the god we see reflected in creation id ever changing as our ability to perceive.

I think of returning to Adelaide across the Kookatha plains, the Autumn showers in the golden afternoon sunlight, rainbows and sun showers earnestly restoring country exhausted by labour. I feel myself in loving embrace, a state of grace breaks out in oncoming starlight. And the lone bell of silence peels in the vastness of the night, peace falls upon our troubled soul. Finds rest.

Men with chutzpah Gods agents of becoming, but never forget to grow god.

Crossing Kookatha plains,

Autumn showers late golden sun

Replenish country and my soul

With loving embrace of starlit grace

Vast bell of silence peels against black night

Rest for tomorrow comes anew

It doesn’t have to be good poetry only true.

Tags: farm life, hero/heroines Journey

Remembering Easter

The Darling Downs grain growing country lies between two weather systems. Winter rain is fairly predictable and in many seasons spectacular electrical storms bring good summer rain as well.

Sometimes heavy falls come around Easter too. Before the Condamine River was “improved” its flow ambled along contentedly with nary a hint of urgency, kept in check by fallen logs tree stumps and gentle bends, its far flung destination weeks away in the Great Australian Bight. When rains persisted water level rose, flooding the river flats, rehydrating and regenerating the deep alluvial soils. On our farm, water backed up through the Canal creek system into Dog Trap Creek and the black soil plains became a shallow sea for frogs and wading birds. It’s one of the most compelling phenomena one experiences living on the Condamine. It forced a reprieve from the endless hours of tractor work for a couple of weeks before efforts were reinvigorated to reclaim order as Bathurst Burr, Stramonium and other weeds germinated.

Change was in the air for our little country church of perhaps 60 souls. Amalgamation with the progressive Lutheran Synod had been cautiously discussed for decades. Many on our side were skeptical. Both branches struggled to get enough pastors to serve the German farming diaspora of small congregations scattered across the country side. Each pastor had a flock divided into three or four parishes that he administered to in turn. It was beyond his powers to attend to each parish every week. Sometimes a retired paster would ‘fill in’. One of our favourites from the fire and brimstone variety caught the early rail motor from Toowoomba and walked the remaining ten miles to preach and exhort the congregation to give generously to the boarding school in Toowoomba. We did.

Before my time, parishes had pooled their resources to buy him an automobile, the caveat being that it had to have a strong enough engine to drive everywhere in third gear. He had never mastered the gear change. However, the initiative proved unsuccessful. Weather was against it. There was no vehicle on the market that could accomodate both sandy roads in the dry and greasy black clay roads during the wet in third gear.Lay preachers with printed sermons were elected and stepped in to conduct ‘reading’ services. There was no other choice. But attendances suffered from shortened liturgies, which us kids found a blessing, since in the absence of an ordained servant of the word sacramental rites could not be accomplished.

Easter was as big a time for adults as Christmas was for children. Uncles, Aunties and cousins would come for a farm-stay. Mum felt the isolation of a famers wife and loved family get togethers. Eider downs would be laid out on the floors for the kids as adults spilled into the bedrooms. I had thirteen families of sixty-five first cousins, and the house was jammed to capacity many holidays, except when it was their turn to put us up in Kumbia, Brisbane or Harvey Bay. Sometimes we’d all rent a house at the beach either Caloundra or Coolum. Best of all was family camp in the Bunya mountains.

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One Easter it was our turn, and Dad been impressed on my siblings and me that we should be on our best behaviour in front of our guests. “Best behaviour” was never really spelt out. We were God fearing, obedient children on the whole. The plaque on the wall a reminder: “Christ is the head of this house, an unseen guest at every meal and a silent listener at every conversation.” We were pretty clear on the hierarchy from there down. But the fact that it had been thought necessary to remind us created an air of tension. Such occasions often didn’t end well since our fear of misstep made us timid and unsociable and given the chance overanxious to please. I, being the eldest, lead the way.

If asked what bad behaviour was I could tell you; swearing, showing off, asserting yourself, being cheeky, leaving a mess after yourself. Then there was the ill defined, “being bad”. It was really had to be a matter of trial and error. On the whole we were pretty good and happy but we didn’t operate well under pressure. Nevertheless the popular child rearing practices of expectation, warning, scolding and punishment would all pass without anyone being any the wiser. We came to understand that life surprised you with challengers for which you would be responsible. In social situations you are responsible for everyone’s reputation not just your own. Experience is a good teacher.

Lutherans are people of faith. Having faith is the key that unlocks God’s Grace. You’ve all seen it, the rays of light that shines down between the clouds on summer afternoons. And by grace we are saved through Jesus’ blood. Having faith meant that you were able to read and interpret the Bible correctly and thereby have faith. It is through faith we are saved by the blood of the Lamb. I already knew a lot but still very confused. It only I knew the questions to ask.

We were well versed with Bible readings and devotions twice daily, yet doctrinal certainty was elusive and contentious and occupied a lot of the adults free time. I’m not saying people weren’t certain, they just didn’t always agree.

From a young age I had a very active religious imagination. I grew up in a mythic world of heaven and hell with earth here as proxy. But I had mixed feelings, the idea of heaven was poorly sold, an eternity of singing praise. Frankly, I felt better where I was, the world was really good. Hell on the other hand was easy to imagine. Years later I would discover I was a mis-matcher, learning doing and eliminating the things that don’t fit by trial and error. It’s not a very efficient strategy in religious or social life and to my chagrin I found trying to not do the wrong thing was fraught. Eternity is a long time so best sort things out before we get there.

My parents aspirations were for their eldest son (me) to become a pastor and serve the congregations so in need. To visit the poor and comfort the sick and provide guidance and support to the less fortunate. Not everyone had the certainty and assurance that our little community enjoyed. We were truly blessed. And we were. In early years I though it was a good idea too, until one day I climbed up on the sofa in the lounge room, imitating the preachers I had so often seen in the pulpit, only to be shocked to find I had nothing to say.

Our rellies had come up from Brisbane early, arriving in plenty time for a late Easter Sunday church.There had been a lot of rain all up the catchment so they came around the long way over Grasstree Creek just in case the lower bridge over the North Branch of the Condamine was flooded. There was a lot of speculation about whether it would be or not, but no one had been to have a look.

Mum had a little custom for the occasions we we had to hang around waiting until it was time for church. She signalled that we were in in-between time by not having us dress in our Sunday best too early. Instead we would put on shorts and a clean white singlet. Boys being boys we would only get good clothes dirty, and we couldn’t play normally because then we would need another bath.

While the women and big girls are doing the prep for after church, Dad, the Uncles and cousins are wondering what to do. Some farm entertainment is required for our visitors. That presented an immediate challenge since regular farm stuff was forbidden during this ‘singlet time’. My father said to me, “Look after your cousins, will you and David, don’t go near the river.” Now all I heard was “River.” He might as well have said, “David do you know if the flood waters have gone over the bridge yet. It sure would be interesting to find out but don’t even think about it.”

It was about then that I though of going for a walk, not near the river but maybe in that direction. So off we went like ducks in a row, oblivious to the mud puddles and Sunday dresses of the girl cousins who didn’t know about the singlet protocol, and had left their homes dressed for church. Being girls they probably didn’t need to know about it either.

What does near the river mean anyway? Does it mean out of sight, or ear shot or the more likely don’t touch. Not that it mattered because we were not going to go near the river anyway. Yet somehow I found myself leading my little flock, with all the confidence of a farm bred six year old towards the Condamine bridge. It would be ages before we were anywhere “near” it anyway.

As we drew closer I though probably it meant not past the grid at the top of the approaches. Yet when we got that far, it seemed more likely that it meant don’t paddle in the water. I already knew how to inspect the waterline to see if the level was rising or falling. So I went for a look and perhaps all would become clear. My little flock were getting restless and wanted to go back but by now weren’t sure of the way. There might be wild bulls and other scary things too. They were from town after all.

When I discovered that water level still rising it suddenly occurred to me that I was probably too near the river. In a panic I wondered if the presence of the cousins who were now waiting for me up at the grid would alleviate or exacerbate my predicament. After all they hadn’t gone near the river, had they.

Running back home I discovered that when your feet are cold and muddy you can step on bindi-eyes and they don’t even hurt. It’s even fun.

As we approached the house we met a search party coming towards us. Someone quite unnecessarily remarked, “Boy, are you in trouble!” It made me curious how punishment worked in other families.

Within a minute our motley little mud spattered flock was gathered on the lawn by the house. Dad arrived from somewhere. I had no idea where he had been. In front of the assemblage of uncles and cousins, Dad with exasperation demanded, “David, where have you been, it’s time for church.” I looked down at my pink toe tips peeping out from mud covered legs. My ears burned with embarrassment, self conscious under the eyes of the uncles. Thankfully the mothers were inside doing their hair up. They had been dying to try the new hair drier that one of the teenage girl cousins had brought along. They intended to do themselves up at the last minute demonstrating they were across the latest fashions. It was as sort of mini hot air, reverse vacuum cleaner with a hose and plastic bag you tie on your head. It must be a city thing.

“ Did you take these kids to the river?”

I was shocked by a question so completely without nuance and honestly think my reply was not so much a lie as a plee for more time to prosecute my case.

“No…”

There are moments in life when in the blink of an eye your destiny is realised and all chance of redemption is forfeit.

“Well actually,” began an older cousin who knew from experience that a lie was a lie, and intuitively reached for his lifeline, said, “he did.”

The girls were sent inside to the horrors of “What have you done to your clothes? You’ve nothing else to wear!” and roughly tugged to the now overflowing bathroom. They should not have to witness what was about to happen.

A child’s behaviour is a yard stick by which his parents are measured. His father, ultimately responsible for his child’s training and direction is on public display and in a case such as this provides an inexhaustible case study for disciplining children. I pictured being sent inside to retrieve the leather strap or perhaps a bare-handed walloping.

I had placed my father in an intolerable position; he was called upon to urgently administer stern discipline in a perfect storm; the kids are a mess, your late for church, you are under close scrutiny by your brothers in law and your eldest son has lied, been defiant and left you exposed. Incorrigible!

“ Get inside and clean yourself up. Stay in your room.” Now I was confused. This was new. The strap I understood, it was administered swiftly and you could just as quickly return to living on the edge. I found disgrace and banishment the harshest punishment of all.

My relationship with Dad would never recover. Mostly we were respectful to each other, nothing more. We were simply at odds. He was admired even revered in our small community. He was a stalwart, a temperate man, dependable, reliable.He answers were clear and certain.

I, though it would take many years to discover had a kind of naive curiosity that abhorred predictability. In school holidays it fell to me to drive the tractor round after round yearning to see beneath the endlessness of it all.

I loved my dad, and told him so. His reply didn’t satisfy, correct though it was. It wasn’t his words I wanted to hear, I hopelessly craved the emotional connection between father and his eldest son, but not like crucifixion and stuff. And banishment reminded me of the Israelite priest putting the sins of the people on a poor goat then sent out into the wilderness.

Self imposed banishment would in time become a reminder of irreconcilable disappointment. Our clashes would become more intense and less frequent.

Twice we briefly broke through to each other, the first time during a heart to heart when my first marriage disintegrated. He when he told me how he was unable to take on the role of brass band leader for the men of the congregation, he simply didn’t have the confidence.

The second time was as he lay in hospital, broken in the car accident in which our beloved wife and mother died. He surfaced out of his delirium and asked, “Was I too harsh on you?” Shocked by the unaccustomed candour I said, “what did you say?” When he replied I was no longer afraid of him, “Dad, it’s Okay. We do the best we can.”

From time to time I would revisit this memory and reexamine it with the unflattering lens I had become accustomed to, that of the misunderstood country yokel. For many years I had taken refuge in self pity believing I was powerless to do otherwise. The view of this world as a vale of tears was deeply rooted.It was a kind of negative fractal that crystallised on relationships with authority as it wrought havoc on my personal and professional relationships as I became ever more reactive and defensive.

I knew I was in trouble. I went searching for answers both in science and religion. Years later I experimented with different religions.For a time I was for a time a eucharistic minister in a the local Catholic church. The priest was one of the earliest to be jailed for pedophilia. I was briefly a member of a lay Anglican order based in Kent in the whose founder was caught up in a scandal for being in a same sex relationship with one of the other founders. At around the same time I visited a Yoga Ashram. There the director was later convicted of sexually abusing the teenage girls of members under the guise of spiritual practice.

As I sunk deeper and deeper into desperation and that utter conviction that I was irreparably broken, hopelessly trodding a rocky path to nowhere. Nevertheless there was always something of value to be gained in each of these encounters. Even though their overall trajectory revealed an unpalatable truth they led to new alternatives.

Fast forward to about 25 years. I came upon the recordings of Jean Houston’s three or for day seminar on Pazival and the search for the Holy Grail. By this time I discovered that my relationships with wise women teachers were positive experiences. Through the cassette tapes I met with Jean’s treatment of Pazival, a country bumpkin, unskilled in the ways of the world and unaware of himself. I found his casual attitude to tradition appealing and his naive curiosity familiar.It would be a significant turning point and life line.

Later I attended many ofJean’s seminars and began to reconstructed my world view, my relation to it and my own, shall we say, operating system. Amongst a wash of nourishing ideas and psychodramatic exercises she declared what I thought to be an improvable claim. She said, “I am fortunate to have had a blessed childhood.”

But this time I had heard her tell a series of childhood stories and knew them well. They were revelatory and inspirational but in my mind to claim them as blessed was either a misrepresentation or delusional. Yet in the wallow of heavily disguised self pity the idea struck me, of how fortunate one would be if you were one of the lucky few, unlike me, to have had a blessed childhood. I didn’t reject Jean’s claim outright but was in a state of unbelief. My attitude shifted from “o mea miserum!” to “what about me?” Parzifal’s awareness of his unschooled and unskilled experience combined with his naive curiosity left him in a perpetual state of me too to any new or broadening experience. I found some of that in myself too. “Me too.” I want to have had a have had a blessed childhood too so I set about finding out how to acquire one. From what I had learn about neuro-plasticity it was all a matter of brain rewiring. There was no in function between a brain that had resulted from a blessed childhood and one that behaved as if it had. I would be more than content with the second. How to go about it.

I had heard that studies of memory had discovered that we don’t actually remember an event as a fixed entity but rather our memories drift over time and we recall the contents of a memory as it was at the last time we thought about it. Eureka! I would rewrite, as if in the draft of a movie script, as many debilitating memories I could find. The tools I would use were those I had read about in Neuro-Linguistic Programming many years before, but had been too frightened to use.

Tags: farm life, hero/heroines Journey, nostalgia

Trick or Treat?

Halloween is upon us and all manner of costumes, witches, skulls, skeletons, ghouls and vampires are in demand again. Of course this is a northern hemisphere festival, invented in Ireland and popularised in America and is exactly out of phase with the seasons in Australia. In the north it is Fall, leaves are dropping as the sap stream of plants is retreating into the earth for the winter. So it is a little bit curious that here in Australia we celebrate, all souls and the undead, at precisely the time that the life force and vitality of the natural world is gathering to a crescendo. But regardless of being in sync with the seasons or not, there is a clear impulse to have a time for honouring the cycles of life, of creation and destruction.

It got me thinking about young children inventing and fantasising about monsters and ghosts in their games, so much so that they will frighten themselves with just their imagination. It turns out that the brain has the same reaction to imagination as it does to real events. Neuro Linguistic Programming uses this phenomenon in a great many situations.

Pumpkin Power

I remember an occasion from childhood, I must have been 4 of 5 and my brother 2 or 3. He really wanted to go and have a look at some baby chicks that had arrived that day in the post. He wanted someone to go with him but no one was so inclined, He was simply told, "You know where they are, just go down the hall and turn the corner and they are right there by the laundry tubs." But no matter how much coaxing, he wouldn't go on his own.

In those days in the latish 50's we didn't have mains power, there wasn't yet a telephone service, I don't think we yet had a radio. We did though have power for lighting from an ex army generator connected to a diesel engine that powered it and the bore water pump. The 32 volt system was much more convenient than the hurricane lamps that neighbours used but it still cast a dim shadowy light that played tricks on the imagination. Naturally, we had a wood stove for cooking and water heating and a substantial wood box, with a hatch that opened to the outside of the house kept a plentiful supply of dry firewood at hand. It just so happened that it was also a good little nook for storing pumpkins through the winter.

When we finally got to the bottom of why my brother wouldn't go to see the chicks on his own it was because he was frightened to go past the pumpkins. Now I have no idea where that came from other than his own fanciful notions because we didn't celebrate Halloween or pumpkins in any way.

The Creator/ Destroyer

The idea of life and death, creation and destruction, the undead and wandering souls is alluring to young and old alike. The realisation that we don't remember were we came from makes us curious not only about that but also about the end of life. I think it is one of the big themes we suppress for most of the year in order to get on with a normal life, and having a special time especially devoted to it compensates.

There are other times when this motif becomes important, at transitional times in our lives especially. The hero journey places this phase directly after the Belly of the Whale and the Road of Trials. Emphasis is not so much on the wandering souls as recognising the great cycles associated with the Mother Goddess. It is an inner conflict that needs to be integrated, for not only is the mother or Earth Goddess the source of all nourishment, affection and protection to the infant, She also incorporates the destroyer and the grand recycler from which none are immune.

Harnessing the power for Transformation

So as you light the Jack-o'lantern either figuratively or literally, remember it has magical power in being able to identify malevolent spirits, and once identified they lose their power, in this halloween, think about what you are letting go of, releasing to the compost as it were, that will provide the raw materials, and the nutrients for your next stage of growth. Relate it to a project, a stage of life, anywhere you desire progress and be inspired by the energy, the wisdom and the knowledge of those that came before.

Subscribe to the mailing list for more information on empowering your life and projects using the Hero's Journey. Read more about stages of the Hero's Journey in Threshold Crossing and Belly of the Whale.

Tags: davidsalomon, farm life, hero/heroines Journey

There's hardly a circumstance in life where the Hero's Journey does offer a larger perspective. It is a device which reflects our inner and outer aspects of our life and a powerful way of becoming aware of the meta levels of our experience. The last post discussed the first stages of the journey, the call, gathering allies and magical helpers.

Having heeded the call, gathered allies together and with magical help at the ready, the hero / heroine sets out on their adventure. At the threshold of adventure they meet a guardian. In myths it is often fearsome or monstrous creature, symbolic of the fears that would have us avoid the unknown. Cerberus the three headed dog, springs to mind, but it comes in many forms, for example in the Matrix, it is symbolised in choosing between the red pill and the blue pill. Getting past the threshold guardian in a matter of wit and cunning more than outright strength.

The threshold tests the hero / heroine's desire and preparedness for the adventure. Without the right attitude and determination they are unlikely to reach their destination safely. Preparation is everything and meeting the threshold guardian in a fit state is like the flight check before taking off. If something is detected amiss, the flight is delayed for having set out there is no turning back.

There may come a time when the energy for change becomes so great that adventure becomes imperative. Nothing less will be sufficient. In the movies, a threshold guardian is often external but it can be internal also. In adventure sports, for instance, the threshold refers to the commitment, courage and confidence required to be able to take action. Stepping of the end of the high diving board, out of the plane to parachute, illustrate the point from which there is no turning back. It also has its internal equivalent.

This idea of threshold guardian is well known to folk practice. It is demonstrated beautifully in Chinatowns all over the world where the entrance is watched over by statutes of mythic creatures. Malign spirits that would create havoc are denied entry by the threshold guardians, not to test readiness to embark on a dangerous journey but to protect a sanctuary as it were. Same function, different purpose. Guardians on the threshold to adventure can see in to the heart of each individual that passes and assesses them on their own merits. It is irrelevant who your allies are and what magical helpers you ay have. It is you and you alone that is tested at the threshold because you are venturing on a journey that no one can do for you. It is an expression of your own creativity and the outcome will be to make you more authentically yourself. Usually the threshold is an entrance to alone waypath of crossing. Once experienced your world will never be the same again.

In crossing the threshold the hero / heroine cresses into what Campbell calls 'The World of Amplified Being'. Here everything is fresh and alive, like a holiday in a part of the world never experienced before. It can be a state of heightened creativity, an awakened state, falling in love, being in the flow, experiencing oneself as part of everything. What often follows can come as a shock. Campbell calls it, 'The Belly of the Whale', the subject of the next post.

The image is from the Labyrinth at Urrbrae House in Adelaide, South Australia. The threshold crossing can be seen as the stairs leading down to the entrance.

Tags: davidsalomon, hero/heroines Journey, threshold crossing