have already spoken a little bit about guilt but it was rather a big issue for me. I thought of every possible single thing that I'd ever done in my life to harm others. In my worst moments I concluded, “I deserve this.” So I thought of all the bad things, all the wrong things – and there were lots – and this all came up in my mind, and if you take it on board you just feel worse and worse. And so I realised that the next step in overcoming hate and moving on through the process to a position where I could jettison the feelings of hate, was that I had to aim at forgiveness.
The ultimate aim, what might seem the unachievable aim, would be to forgive the person who had done this thing. I soon realised that if there was ever to be any forgiveness, the process ultimately had to start with me, myself. I went through all these other things that had been causing me guilt, all the things that I had done in my life to harm others. One by one I forgave myself and others, saying “Hey it's okay .... it's okay, it's just human.” I went through this forgiveness process with the help of books and with the help of the Insight course recommended by my army friend.
About this time I started to experience a new sort of thought coming into my mind during meditation. About a month after the girls were killed I was getting quite vivid pictures, really vivid pictures of them. Now I'm a person who doesn't visualise by seeing when my eyes are shut – like being able to see your dreams. Some people dream in colour, some people dream in black and white, some can easily visualise in meditation, they just shut their eyes and “see” pictures. Some people “hear” clearly and some “feel” a lot. I find that I am one who “feels” but I don't often “see” things clearly. But in this case I was “seeing” things, I was “seeing” Jenny, Kirsty and Lexie quite clearly, they were talking to me. This worried me and I went through the whole process of thinking I was going quite mad or something.
And then I could recognise their voices and they were saying things like, “Hey I'm all right, I'm all right I'm happy up here, I've done my tour of duty, I've finished with the earth, I'm a lot better off up here, I'm enjoying it you know.” This is the sort of thing that came through to me and then Lexie would come in to the meditation and say, “Oh come on Dad! Get off your butt and get into gear!” Lexie was quite a rebel and that's how she would speak to me. Or she would say things like, “Come on! Do it Dad!”
I was quite enjoying going to my meditative state and having “conversations” with the girls and thinking about them quite often. Through this process of talking with them I came to be a little bit at ease with “where they were” and “what they were doing” because I knew that they were “out there somewhere”. Just what “out there” meant was a little hard for me to really put my finger on. Maybe it was to do with some form of energy, yes energy, that appealed to my logical part – you know Newton's Laws and all that – energy is neither created nor destroyed (but it can change its form). Maybe it could all be my imagination as well. Whatever it was, and I still find it hard to put it into words today, it gave me a deep sense of spiritual insight. And whatever it was, it was a form of energy or a life force that was very powerful.
Worried by the whole concept of having such vivid visions I decided to write to the person in the United States who had originally founded the Insight Seminars. His name is John Roger and I posed a series of questions including whether it was possible that I was seeing the girls. His reply was, “Yes! Absolutely!” But then he challenged me with a profound concept.
He put it to me that while I was doing that sort of thing, while I was bringing them into my mind every day, I was actually hanging on to them. And by hanging on to them I was inhibiting their spiritual progress. Well that was like a real big stick, I mean there's no way in the world that I would turn around and inhibit anyone's progress. I didn't really understand what “progress” meant at that stage, but there was no way that I wanted to inhibit their progress. Right now I was really beginning to understand that this form of energy that's out there is their soul. I was beginning to understand that they are living on, and wherever the soul goes, or whatever it does, it needs to have the freedom to go.
I knew a little bit more now and so I decided to “let them go”. That was rather overwhelming for me because it meant that if I let them go, that meant not attracting them to me, not bringing them into my mind, not having conversations with them, not seeking them out. John Roger gave me a couple of clues to help. He said, “Let go and let God” and he also advised me to always send my love.
I was on the threshold of understanding these sorts of “spiritual” concepts. Deciding to follow John Roger's advice and “let go” the girls was an extremely traumatic time for me, and I shed many tears. It continued to be difficult for another couple of weeks and then all of a sudden I felt comfortable about it and it's been fine since then. Of course it doesn't mean I don't think of the girls and the good times we shared.
Now I just send my love and light any time that they come into my mind. I imagine my love being like a ray of light or a ray of energy or something like that. My love goes along that ray of energy and they get it somehow or another and it also gets back to me. How it happens I don't know. One thing I do know is that when you try to explain concepts such as these you pretty quickly get to the limits of what language can actually communicate.
I came to the realisation through this that if I was capable of sending my love to the girls then I had to be able to love myself before I could share it with others. It was the same compelling logic that applied to forgiveness. So right now the biggest change I had to make was to learn to love myself. If you try to love others but haven't got sufficient love for yourself then it's not real, true, love you are giving out. It might be a form of love, an honest attempt at love, but it will be limited. Think of it like a water tank with a tap at the bottom. The water in the tank is like the love in you. If the tank is only half full and the tap is turned on then the water, the love in the tank, will soon run out. If the water in the tank is brimming full or overflowing, then the tap can be turned on and the water be allowed to gush out lavishly. So it may be with human love. Loving yourself is that important! And what is loving yourself? Basically it's taking responsibility for yourself – for your own growth.
And what's the major obstacle? .... Oh ourselves, our mind, our subconscious mind. Our patterns – our belief patterns, the way we think, the way we've been brought up, that's the major obstacle and that's not easy to handle. Sometimes there are things that we've just got to let come up, let them work out and let them go.
Having accepted and practised all these things, the acceptance of myself, the forgiveness of myself and the love of myself, I could then turn to applying these concepts to others. Acceptance, love, forgiveness. I forgave others around me who have caused me anxiety in my life. That wasn't too hard, but then it got down to the guy who murdered the girls and his forgiveness. Not until I'd done all the other forgiving and loving could I even approach that subject because, deep down, it was still tied up with the revenge bit. So in the process of forgiving the person that's involved I must say that I have rationalised it to some extent and have turned it into a problem that may well be a little bit easier for me than others in a similar position. My rationalisation was that this person was mentally unbalanced, deranged, and as such, he's not really with us, he's got something else that's taken him over, he's like another energy. And so, eventually, I was able to forgive, forgive the man who took the lives of my daughters.
It has all been an amazing journey of self discovery. A journey in which I discovered the potential of the human mind and spirit to overcome great distress. I became aware of the existence of an entire portion of our world which had hardly been touched upon in my formal education and career experience. I became aware of my own inner strength, and by knowing about this, I became aware of the inner strength of others about me. Now I look for it and see it in others all the time.
The experience has changed my life, it has made it much fuller. The new discoveries I have made have not required me to cast out any of the old tools that I previously learnt about
