The Story of the White Haired One

It is quite a long article as I'm knocking on a bit now so there's a lot of ground to cover and you might need some tissues as it get sad at several points but don't worry there is a happy ending.

Although born of English Parents I actually started off in a military Hospital deep in the heart of what used to be known as West Germany. My Father was was serving in the British Forces at the time at the height of the cold War.

Having absolutely no memory of those times my Mother informs me that I was a cheerful enough little chap quite ordinary in every way, just as well I think because if I had known I was living on the front line with millions of mega-tonnes of Russian nuclear weapons aimed at me I might well have been a been a bit stressed.

As I grew into a young adolescent I started to become aware of my environment which I later found out could be termed a Ghetto. It was a Council Estate in Southern England and my goodness was it rough. It was also around the age of thirteen that my Dad decided to move in with one of the neighbours and leave my Mother. Oh dear ! childhood over, as the oldest of four boys It was time for an advanced lesson in growing up, PRONTO!

I never really did the teenage thing with angst and attitude instead I went straight into the parental role of the Man of the House to support my Mum in her hour of need or at least that’s how I felt.

This was my experience, I became a Dad at 13 years old and I became a person who felt deeply responsible for everything and everybody in my world. no pressure ! This is when I developed a healthy temper and a habit of getting into fights very easily.

That set the scene for my Adult life taking on everyone’s troubles and woes and becoming the ultimate workhorse and my response to every problem I encountered was TRY HARDER ! WORK HARDER !

You can probably see where this story is going. I went into the construction industry from School as a Bricklayer and after several years of drinking my own body weight in Beer most days I settled down to get married and have a " normal life ". The plan I hatched was to be my own boss and build my own hugely successful building company and make tons of cash and live happily ever after, simples as a meerkat would say.

It was a good plan so I thought, but no one told me life doesn’t always go how you think it will.

My work ethic could never be faulted, 24-7 that was me, keep on working. That was the start of my unbalanced life.I could never get a grip of this relaxing lark it seemed such a waste of time with all this work to do.It became a recurring theme throughout my life that I would always take on to much.

I did however have a bit of success in my ventures, there I was at 26 years old with 3 Vans and 6 men working for me, just a matter of time before the cash rolls in and then bingo,feet up time. Wrong ! Just when I thought I'd cracked it my World crashed around my ears. At 27 it was all gone and I was broke. One year later a recession ripped through Britain decimating the building Industry. And at 28 I got a Job as a Linen store assistant in a large psychiatric Hospital. Or as I remember it I'D HIT ROCK BOTTOM.

No Status ! No Money ! No Future !

The good thing to come from this experience was that I started to question the Human existence. Was this all there was ? You work your butt off for 3 or 4 decades and the drop dead. I knew there must be more but what ?

It was in the early nineties that I started to dabble with meditation, eastern philosophy and general spiritual stuff.It was a wonderful time, learning and sensing a feeling of peace. But then enter stage right, the world of work and reward beckoned again. I was good at my job and due to this inflated sense of responsibility I was very conscientious so always over delivered.

Then the promotions started and I had a lovely decade when it all went my way and by the turn of the millennium I was top dog with 60 staff and a huge budget to control and surprise! surprise! no inner life whatsoever.

Only work.

Guess what ?

I left the Hospital unable to stomach the fate that had befallen me.

Here we go again No Status ! No Future ! I went back to the building industry and got turned over for 25k in a duff business deal so No Money! again either. I ended up back at the Hospital as a nursing assistant this time, a worthy job but in my over inflated sense of self I was back down the bottom of the heap. They call it the Human race and I felt like I was in last place.

You might want to get your hankies out at this point and blow your Nose It gets worse.

This time though things were a little more serious, this time I was in trouble. I was an old school alpha male who would rather die than show his weakness especially outside of my Family. Of course my lovely Wife knew things where bad and worried for me but pig headed Males are a very difficult species to cope with. I should know I was that Soldier.

To say I was lost was an understatement, I didn’t know what to do, I started to drink more than was good for me and I piled on the pounds with rubbish food and no inclination for excersize. The truth was I was spiralling into depression and despair and didn’t know what to do about it. This situation went on until the May of 2004, just after I rammed my motorbike into the side of a BMW. Told you it got worse didn’t I

Shortly after my crash there was a time of crisis, I remember it well, it was a beautiful Saturday morning and I was sitting on my Patio catching a few ray's of sunshine feeling utterly dreadful, totally miserable and depressed. My whole life seemed a great empty void with no future. It wasn’t really, but such was my level of conscious at that time to me it was tragic.

I would say that it wasn’t a suicidal thought but I suspect that this would be the set off point for many poor souls that eventually chosen this route. Having a friend who tried to take his own life several years previous I knew the devastation and hurt this causes to those around you and with my inflated sense of responsibility that had been my driving force my whole adult life knew I could never put them through such a dreadful experience.

So what was I to do I couldn’t check out, run away maybe, nope I couldn’t live with myself if I legged it. The pressure built up in my head to a point that I could hardly bare it. I went indoors and wandered from room to room yearning for some inspiration and answer to my problems. I found myself standing in front of my bookcase stacked to the gunnel’s mainly with Spiritual and motivational self help books.Most of which I had collected in the nineties when matters of the mind and spirit were of great importance to me.

It then dawned on me that I couldn’t remember the last time that I had picked up one of these little beauties and read any of the nectar that lay within their pages. Then the light bulb moment happened,the reason for my present circumstances and specifically my state of mind was that I had totally and utterly ignored my inner life and been seduced back into the material world. I picked a book out at random and on the front cover was a wonderful picture of his His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama with a huge beaming smile that seemed to pierce my heart like a spear and for the first time that I could remember since seeing my three children born I wanted to cry.

I allowed myself the luxury of a good blub at least for a few minutes anyway, before I remembered that real men don't cry. Once I had got over the shock of all this raw emotion pouring out all over the place I composed myself and took myself back out into the Garden with a fresh cup of tea and a new perspective on my world.

I would love to regal you dear reader of tales that I had an spectacular epiphany with the universe and I became a wise Sage who then went on to teach mankind how to live in perfection. Fraid not, I was still very much a mess however it was the chink of light that I needed to at least try and sort my sorry self out.

Firstly I knew that the cause of my woe's was my state of mind. Secondly I had realised that it was because I had totally ignored my inner life.I had traded the peace of mind that I had developed years previously for the magnetic pull of the material world which in turn fed the yearnings of my manly EGO.

The problem is with the physical world which I had found out to the detriment of everything I held dear is that it is liable to change at every given moment. The whole Universe is in a constant state of change and flux from the quantum level of energy particles to the the massive movement of the Galaxies in the Cosmos you align yourself with the world of 10'000 things as termed by the ancient Chinese you build your world on shifting sand, a House of cards.

After I had released this pent up pressure in my head it gave me the space and finally the inclination to try and start putting things right. I made a vow sitting out in my deckchair that from that moment forth never again would I stray from the world of spirit ever again even if it was 2 minutes a day reading or 1 minute watching my breath, there was and inner life and a worldly outer life for true balance I must combine the two. But were to start I had no time, no money and my head was a mess and worst of all I still felt a heaviness deep inside my stomach which I would say was a state of depression or the black Dog as some people call it. I felt that I couldn’t really function properly until I released this dreadful weight from my being.

This is a long piece so you might want to make a drink now or visit the Toilet.

Who

No, I needed a method so I headed for the internet and fired up the Google search engine and typed in "Depression cures" as you can probably guess I got millions of results, some good, some bad and others just plain barmy.

You will often hear a saying especially by older people that goes " Well it was meant to be " and as I get older myself I find that this phrase springs to mind more and more. If you can manage to slow this crazy mind of ours down for just a little while and reflect on some of the synchronicity that occurs in our lives it does start to appear that way. At this particular dark spell in my life these strange things did seem to be happening the reason for which I do not know.

This particular day while searching the inter web I came across a Reiki website with a very nice Man offering e-books on how to re-fire up reiki energy that hadn't been used for a while. Sensing that was me I purchased said book and began to read.Later that day,armed with with my new knowledge I set about doing a special reiki practise.

I had only been doing it for 5 minutes and suddenly it was like I had been plugged into the national grid with a surge of energy rushing up my legs through my back and out through my head.

I sat there stunned by what had happened and took stock of how I felt which was different.There was a certain lightness to my mind and body which I hadn't had for several years as well as a feeling of wellness and a sense that all would be well. The depression seemed to have lifted of its own accord leaving me transformed.

I didn't realise it at the time but this day was to set the scene for my future. I was amazed that I had been able with a little effort change my whole persona and world view and with It I had hope again the rest of my life didn't seem like a dark black hole. A little while after this I contacted this Reiki master and enrolled in a Reiki level two class which was wonderful.

Don't get me wrong I still wasn't transformed into this all knowing wise Sage, I still had a long long way to go in my evolution as a Human being but what I had realised is that I had choice in how my life was going to be lived AND I CHOSE HAPPINESS.

OH! how we Men underestimate Women, This was the Lady that had bore me three beautiful children, small in frame she had carried them, given birth, OUCH ! and raised them with all that is involved with bringing up Children which as every parent knows is no mean feat. There was me worried about how she would cope if she knew the dreadful truth of how we where fixed financially. On reflection looking back I now see how insulting this is to my wife and Women in general, they have more backbone in their little fingers than many Men have in their whole beings. Women can cope with a lot more than Men give them credit for ask any Man who has witnessed the miracle of a Baby being born and you will see where the strength lies.

My Wife knew things weren't good anyway so it came as no shock to her when I spilled the beans. But with my new sense of purpose I felt that I could now start to rectify the situation.

I dropped the poor me, victim mentality that I had been nurturing and decided that it was time to roll up my shirt sleeves and get stuck in. With a background in construction I offered my services in the daytime and at night went to work at the Hospital.Powered by Reiki I did literally work day and night and in effect earn t two incomes. When I look back I am still amazed where my strength came from but that is one of the themes of this website that a Human being can do almost anything when It puts its mind too it. That is the essence of what I learnt and wish to teach, we are utterly amazing creatures and our boundaries are only set by our own minds.

That brings me to the next stage of my journey to wellness. During 2005 while browsing the inter web again I came across a link from a Reiko website to something called EFT or the Emotional Freedom Technique. This made all sorts of claims about curing ailments and illness's as well as being a way to get rid of negative thinking and replace with positive traits. It claimed that 85%-90% of all our Human difficulties were emotional in their source including many aches and pains.

I had thought that Reiki was the be all and end all where self development was concerned but back to this feeling of " meant to be " again this EFT seemed to get under my skin. I ended up obsessed with this healing modality. The speed and ease of its method where nothing short of miraculous. In the Hospital That I worked in I got the reputation of something of a healer sorting out problems as varied as frozen shoulders to constipation from headaches to dodgy backs.

I was then gripped with this passion to help others with their lives to help alleviate their pain and troubles. So I started to read everything I could find out about how the body is constructed and how we can heal ourselves and others. At night while all the other staff would sit watching TV and fighting to stay awake I would be doing course after course including Indian Head massage, NLP, Kinesiology and any other healing method I could get my hands on. The only trouble was I was leading a totally unbalanced life again literally on the go 24-7.

Through Dr Hawkins writings and with what I had learnt about the the mind and Body connection and Kinesiology I realised that our ultimate task is to evolve as Humans to raise our consciousness.

I have realised with much of what I have learned and experienced over the years that this physical plane that you and I find ourselves on is basically a School and we are here to develop or not the choice is ours. If the writings of Dr Hawkins are to be believed many choose not to develop but stagnate and stay at the same level their whole lives. However that leaves millions and millions of us with a yearning to grow and take it from me if its in you it won't go away.

Don't get me wrong we on the worldly level we are all totally different each of us will have our own personality traits that are deeply embedded in our make-up of who we are. Sometimes the lessons are not spiritual sometimes they are rooted in the world, but what I do finally realise is that this Universe of ours is so, intelligent and we are not and I repeat NOT separate from it.

But we do need to slow down and start to listen and watch this wonderful life unfold and the veils that separate us from our Universe and each other will start to drop away. This is what the sages have always said and it is true.

I will continue to empty my head and heart of all what I have learnt in this last half century onto a computer screen because if I can leave this mortal coil just tiny percentage point better than I found it then as the song goes "My living has not been in vain".

If you made it this far- Thank's for listening

.

White Haired One - SUMMER 2011

Happy days PS you can dry your eye's now

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