a wondrous place. I played with my light being companions, mother Mary and the archangels and I lived in the early years in a world of the spirit. It was a sharp contrast to the pain and anxiety of daily life that I picked up sometimes in my parents, grandparents and family, though by most people’s standards they were happy people. I just didn’t understand the harshness of life and the anguish about everyday issues that seemed to radiate from them at times. I found it jarring. My natural space was peace.
I started kindergarten and in my first year had a lovely old nun who taught me that if I was still and listened to my heart I would be able to sit in it with Jesus. I did this meditation and I found a love that would overtake me, consume me and radiate from me. It was a place I would go to often in those early years. It was a place of refuge a place of love.
Over time at about 10 years old, I left this gentle world behind as most sensitives do and moved into living in the 3D world. For the most part I lived a happy, mostly carefree time with the neighborhood children and siblings, playing cricket and searching for tadpoles in the nearby creek. Life went on.
My family was catholic and I picked up many of their attitudes and beliefs when I was young, men worked and women stayed at home looking after the family, men were more important than woman, any problems were never discussed, swept under the carpet as it were. The worst thing you could do would be to hurt someone, even by telling the truth. Marriage was for life. Many ideas I would later have to let go of. There were good attitudes too of course, to give, to help others, to be kind. This is not to make my parents attitudes wrong, they just reflected the attitudes and beliefs of their time.
I was a fairly normal teenager, discovered boys, alcohol, music and parties. I was full of insecurity and still very shy. I traveled overseas in my early 20’s living and working in London for nearly 2 years, and enjoying Greece, turkey and most of Europe on a whirlwind trip. I loved travel.
On returning home I started working for a travel agent and was able to have many wonderful trips to exotic locations. My confidence in myself and my abilities was growing. Days of genuine happiness however were infrequent. I had forgotten my spiritual awareness and was totally absorbed in the pursuit of worldly happiness, glamour, money, success, parties and men.
I was given a book by a friend, ‘three magic words’ by US Anderson it was the first metaphysical book I was to read and it opened me to the awareness of worlds beyond my human limited thoughts and existence and the possibility that I was connected to universal mind and a part of it, I was part of god. It was a very interesting concept.
I fell in love at 26 and married a short time later after meeting an unusual man, and oxford scholar, philosopher, who was extremely bright. He had a photographic memory and thought outside the box. I found him fascinating.
Among other things he was interested in hypnosis and we explored past lives together, he would take friends back in hypnosis to past lives and I found it all exciting and it opened me to the possibility of dimensions beyond the here and now on earth.
By this stage I was working as Australian Manager for an American cruising company, travelling Australia regularly and meeting in New York head office when necessary.
My confidence in myself was stable based on what I had achieved and how I looked; I was young, bright and quite attractive.
On the night before our wedding I realized he had a serious problem with alcohol, (which I later blocked totally from my memory). I decided that I loved him whatever and I would not call the wedding off (I don’t think I could have faced what I believed was the shame of this anyway) and went ahead. We had a little more than 18 months of happy marriage when things started spiraling down. He was under enormous pressure with work and seemed to be suffering some sort of breakdown. He would sometimes explode in fits of anger directed at me, was depressed at times and I found myself walking on eggshells for much of the time.
We went through years not knowing what was wrong, he drank but most of our friends did too, we had many trips to the hospital till he was finally diagnosed as alcoholic. I was shocked, my mind had refused to see this as a possibility, I thought he had extreme mental problems. I found it incredible that my mind had totally blocked out the obvious truth of the situation. I had refused to accept consciously something that I knew was absolutely true.
I discovered then and for years later that I was someone who wanted to avoid pain at any cost, run from it whenever possible. It took years to come to the place where I could face pain, accept it and allow it to wash over me, only then could I take stock and move forward.
The nature of alcoholism is that the partner of the person with the problem becomes mentally and emotionally sick as well, any time I confronted him with a situation he would turn it around so it became my fault. It happened for so long that I was not sure what reality was. I had no confidence in myself or my judgement, no self-belief; I was like a boat without a rudder or oar, floating on a wild sea and being swept along by the currents of life.
I was no longer working at this stage; we had bought a large, beautiful house in the country which I was renovating. Not in a 9 to 5 job gave me the time and the space to spend on my healing. I would have been incapable of working in any case; I was an emotional and mental wreck.
THE JOURNEY TO HEALING BEGINS
My early recovery from these times was traumatic, I had always believed that I was a good person, that it was all his problem, that I always did the right thing by others but after exploring my role in his illness through Al Anon, (a place for healing for family members and friends of alcoholics), I slowly discovered by myself that I was controlling, manipulative, obsessive with absolutely no self-esteem or self-worth anymore. I was emotionally sick and exhausted. What a shock, I thought I was the whole one, the sane one. This was shattering to me, it shattered my ‘ego’ and left me bereft in what is often called, the dark night of the soul. A traumatic place that broke down all the barriers I had erected over the years, all the ego protections I had so carefully placed around me.
The ego self has to break down so the divine or true self can emerge.
This was not just a result of what had happened in my relationship, it was the cracking open of old insecurities, beliefs and concepts of myself and fears that had long existed within me.
I was like a newborn chick, frightened, shaky and vulnerable. I could barely get through the day. Through the teachings of Al anon I discovered that I had a right to be happy, regardless of what was happening around me. What a concept, I found this earth shattering. I dived into Al Anon with total dedication, following the 12 steps to recovery and later poured over every self-help book available.
I had a friend that was a TM teacher and gave me the basics of meditation, so I meditated daily which helped with the long road to recovery. I also studied all the conventional religions including Buddhism which resonated more with me than the others. In the end I rejected all religions. They all seemed to create chaos and judgement in the world, separating people instead of bringing them together.
I was questioning the teachings of the Catholic Church at school when I was in my early teens. The man made hierarchy, the dogma, the rules were all nonsense to me. I believed the original simple profound and loving teachings of the masters and prophets only. There was truth and love there. I also believed that no one could or should come between you and your Divinity which for me all of the churches were teaching. Their path to god was through them, their teachings and rituals.
I also questioned the concept of sin, many of these to me were man made creations or human beliefs, particularly in the Catholic Church, you could go to hell for eating meat on Friday or kissing a boy longer than 10 seconds in those days!
The
