Breaking Free: A Journey of Self Discovery Read online

  CHAPTER 20

  I went to my second session with James with all intention of speaking about my future career. I thought that if I had a better idea of what I was going to do with my life, then maybe it would help lessen the fear that I was feeling. When I told James that I thought we needed to speak about my future career, he said that it was better to just wait and see what came up instead of having anything pre-planned. This was a great piece of advice. You may think you have a good idea of what needs to be spoken about, but very often your subconscious will have something completely different in mind.

  I took a few minutes to relax in my chair, then gave the tap on the chair to indicate that I was ready to get things underway. After a few seconds pause, James asked me what we needed to deal with today. Almost immediately the topic of self-confidence came to the surface. It was clear to me that this, and not my future career, was what needed to be addressed in our second session. When I journeyed back and had a closer look at my life, I could see that I was lacking in self-confidence. This came as a bit of a surprise to me as all my life I had always thought that I was a fairly confident person, but this wasn’t so. On the surface it may have appeared that I was confident, but when I scratched below the surface and took a deeper look at my life, I could clearly see how I had become more insecure over the years.

  By the same process of building associations, James took the wounded parts of me that were lacking in self-confidence and, by showing them what I was going to do with my life in the years to come, helped them to realise that they had nothing to worry about. Thinking back to my university days, I remembered how, like many other students around me at the time, I had completely overdone it on the bottle. I guess one of the main reasons why I had loved drinking so much back then was that it gave me a super boost of self-confidence. When I mentioned this to James, he suggested that I imagine myself going through university again, however this time without any alcohol. Surprisingly, I felt so much lighter and so much freer than I had before. No more hangovers. No more changing masks every night I got wasted. What a liberating feeling it was to just be myself. I left James’s room feeling as energised as I had after my first session. I was starting to enjoy these sessions with the hypnotherapist.

  After my two sessions with James, I was now completely sure that I didn’t want to go ahead with the UV lamp that the dermatologist had spoken of. The answer to my skin problem didn’t lie in some special UV light, but rather it lay within my own mind. I was convinced that my mind was the root cause of my problem, and not my skin, which is what I had been led to believe all these years. If I could sort out my mind, then maybe my skin condition would naturally follow and heal itself.

  During my third session with James he did what is known as the REM, or Rapid Eye Movement technique. By asking specific questions and getting me to look in different directions depending on what was said, the REM technique was supposed to shift deeply rooted mind patterns within the subconscious. I didn’t feel any difference at all after James had done the REM technique with me, but he did say that it worked at a deep level and therefore the changes could be very subtle. After the REM technique, I had the clear feeling that my time with James had come to an end. What needed to come up had done so. It was now time for me to go and see Jenny, the hypnotherapist living out in the forest.

  ***

  When I phoned Jenny to make an appointment and to find out how long a session was, she told me that she didn’t like working according to time and that the session would take as long as it needed to take. I was now even more intrigued to meet this lady who lived out in the forest. When I drove up the cobbled driveway to her modest home, Jenny, along with the three dogs following closely at her side, came out to meet me. She looked to be in her late fifties and had wavy golden hair falling to shoulder length. With her warm and friendly smile, I immediately sensed that Jenny was a deeply peaceful person and that she had a lot of strength. Strangely, I didn’t feel as though I was meeting Jenny for the first time. I felt perfectly comfortable and it was as though we were old friends. In the room at the side of the house that Jenny worked from, there was a picture on the wall of her guru, as well as many other spiritual pictures and ornaments hanging about the room.

  No sooner had we got things underway than the two of us began speaking about spirituality. I told Jenny all about Amma and how, despite the problems I was going through, I felt as though I was going through some kind of spiritual awakening. Jenny also shared a few of the personal stories that had led her down the spiritual path. The first hour and a half passed by and we still had not even got to the real reason of why I was there to see her. During this time of casual conversation, Jenny gave me many practical life tips, but the thing that made the deepest impression on me was what she called, ‘The Mirror Concept’. Jenny said that if we are open to it everybody and every situation in life can serve as our teacher, as they mirror back what is inside us.

  “The mirror reflects exactly what it sees, without any bias,” she said. To help explain what she was talking about, Jenny used an example. “Let’s say that you meet another person and you pick up that the person has a lot of jealousy in them. It is actually the jealousy in ‘you’ that is able to detect the jealousy in the other person. If you told a child that the other person had a lot of jealousy in them, the child would look at you and not know what you were talking about. They wouldn’t be able to see the same jealousy that you’re able to see. The reason for this,” Jenny explained, “is because the child is so pure and innocent. When you think of it this way, you then realise that the problem is not only in the other person, but in you as well, and if you’re able to see it like this without your ego getting in the way, then you realise that everyone and every situation in life can serve as your teacher, as it shows what’s inside you and what you need to work on.”

  One of the things that I found interesting about Jenny was that she worked with energy rods. Whether it was the energy rods, or the fact that Jenny had some degree of psychic ability, she was somehow able to ask the right questions and to go quickly to where the problem lay. After sitting quietly in her chair with her eyes closed for some time, she suddenly looked across at me and asked what had happened when my mother was pregnant with me, what had happened to me when I was five years old, and who was responsible for raising me when I was young? I didn’t know the answer to the first two questions, but I did know that when I was growing up my father had a particularly stressful job and had to work long hours. It was, therefore, my mother who had done most of the parenting when I was young. Jenny told me that I had to find out the answers to the other two questions before our next session as she was picking up that those years were the root of my problem.

  ***

  When I spoke with my mom later on in the day, I discovered that mother’s father had died when she was six months pregnant with me, and when I was five years old my best friend’s father had died. What was strange about this was that soon after my friend’s father’s death, I started drawing all my pictures in black, and I developed a serious aggression problem at school. When I told Jenny about this at our next session, she merely nodded back at me as if it came as no surprise to her at all. “Let me explain the deeper meaning,” said Jenny, moving forward in her chair as she looked intently across at me. “Your grandfather dying when your mother was pregnant with you was the first instance of the ‘father figure’ failing. Even though in the womb at the time, you would have felt your mother’s pain and at a deep level you would have seen her pain as being caused by her father. Therefore, it would have been the failure of the ‘father figure’, which had caused your mother the pain. Then your best friend’s father dying when you were five years old was the second instance of the ‘father figure’ failing. At a deep level, as before, you must have been able to pick up on the pain that your friend was going through and once again you would have felt that his pain was because of the failure of the ‘father figure’. The third instance of the failure of the ‘f
ather figure’ was when your own father wasn’t around when you were young. These events, although seemingly insignificant, and despite the fact that they happened a long time ago, would have created the first seeds of fear in you that one day you’d have to move into that ‘father figure’ role yourself.” Smiling over at me reassuringly, Jenny said that even though I had never been aware of it for all these years, this was always going to be a challenge that I’d one day have to face up to.

  “It was always going to be a part of your path, Jed,” she said.

  After giving me a little time to absorb and make sense of everything she had just told me, Jenny then wanted to go back to the issue of my skin problem. She asked me to sit back and make myself comfortable in the chair. Just as James had done, Jenny guided me into a deep state of relaxation. After asking several probing questions surrounding the night of my panic attack, Jenny told me to ask myself, my real self, my soul, my spirit, what it was that it wanted most from me. The strangest thing then happened. Almost immediately after Jenny asked me this, the word, ‘love’ appeared in big capital letters in my mind. “So it is love that your soul wants from you,” Jenny said, after I had told her what I had seen.

  Before bringing me out of the hypnotic state, Jenny told me to visualise myself being somewhere out in nature. I immediately pictured myself sitting in meditation posture on a broken log in the hills. The surrounding valleys stretched out before me and I could see spectacular snow-capped mountains in the distance. Jenny gave me a few seconds to enjoy being in this place, then said that there was someone next to me on my left. To my surprise, the person I saw standing beside me was Layla, my ex-girlfriend. Layla was a deeply spiritual person and had, in many ways, played her part in helping me along the spiritual path. When I looked up at Layla from where I was sitting on the wooden log, I saw her smiling down at me, not saying a word, only smiling at me. Jenny then said that there was a second person behind me. I immediately saw Amma standing in her white sari staring down at me, glowing and radiant as ever.

  “Now ask Amma,” said Jenny, “whether there is anything she needs to tell you.” At that moment, Amma’s eyes bulged, and, with a strong and stern expression, she said, “Be strong!” Immediately after, Amma’s face broke into the same joyful smile that I’d seen so many times before.

  “Good,” Jenny continued. “That means that Amma knows that you’ve got all the strength within you.”

  I drove out of the forest after my session with Jenny feeling as though I’d been on some kind of drug trip. So much had come up and I wasn’t sure whether to go home and relax, or whether to take a drive to the local pub and have a beer to help bring me back down to earth.

  ***

  The day after seeing Jenny, I was feeling in a particularly calm and serene mood. In this peaceful state I was in, everything seemed to fall into place. The pieces of the puzzle were now starting to make sense. I realised that my insecurities were as a result of fear, and the fear that I was feeling was because of an absence of real love for who I was. So it all came down to love. Love was the answer. I had to love myself – my body, my personality; I had to love all of myself – as I was. Only once I was able to develop this self-love could I hope to overcome the fear that I was feeling.

  CHAPTER 21

  In Caroline Myss’s book, Anatomy of the Spirit, I read two stories soon after my second meeting with Jenny that greatly inspired me. The first was about a lady who suffered with severe pain in her lower back. The pain was so intense that at times it often led to migraines. This went on for a long time without any cure. Then one day she saw an article about a saint, a holy man in India, and decided to go and meet him. Sadly she didn’t get to see him when she was there and came back home disappointed. After her trip to India she kept having the same recurring dream: Will you accept what I’ve given you, the voice asked. One night in the dream, she said, Yes, I will accept it. She was then bathed in white light and woke up waiting for the pain to leave, but it didn’t. In fact, for the next four years her pain only got worse. Then one night as she lay in bed crying, she finally said, “Okay, I surrender. Just give me the courage to face what I have to.” At that moment, her hands were filled with healing energy and her pain all but vanished. In hindsight she realised that she had not surrendered four years before as she had been making deals. Yes I will accept, but you take away my pain. She went on to become a genuine spiritual healer.

  The second story was equally inspiring. It was about a man who had been sent off as a spy in the Second World War. Sometime into the war the man was captured and tortured severely. By the end of the war, he had been beaten so badly that he had lost the use of his legs. With his legs in braces, he returned to his home village to say goodbye and to tell them that he was going to live in a special home that could look after him. When he got to his home village the spiritual healer said that what had happened was that he’d lost his spirit, and that he needed to call it back. He was then left alone for a few weeks to face his demons. The man said that what he faced during those few weeks was far worse than anything he’d been through in the war. During the time he was left alone, he had to let go of all the pain and anger that he’d felt towards the soldiers who had tortured him. Miraculously, the man fully recovered and regained full use of his legs. He went on to become a spiritual teacher.

  It amazed me at how I seemed to read exactly what I needed to, and at just the right time. From these two stories I understood that what I now needed was to do the hard work myself. I had to heal my own wounds and to let go of all the negativity and pain that I’d been holding onto for so long. The longer I held on to all the fears and insecurities within me, the longer my suffering would continue. It was all very well understanding this in theory, but to then put it into practice, to actually do it, was an entirely different story.

  ***

  I decided that the first thing I had to do was to get used to looking at the pigmentation on my body in the shower. Even this was not so easy. After so many years of denial, the scars were so deeply ingrained in me that just the site of the spots was enough to often bring on an instant wave of anxiety. There were the good days and the bad days. On the good days I’d feel strong and would be able to look at the pigmentation without that much of a problem. On the bad days, however, when my skin had flared up a little, I’d very quickly spiral down into a miserable state of self-pity.

  Once I had built up a little strength, the next step for me was to start doing my morning meditations naked. I figured that the more time I spent with my clothes off, the more chance there would be of me making peace with my skin condition, which would ultimately help me to break free from the mental prison that I had been trapped in for so long. In the beginning I had to be extremely watchful of my thoughts. If I wasn’t careful I could very easily get swept away in a current of negative thinking, but I kept at it. One morning I’d get into my meditation and would quickly forget all about my skin problem, but then the next morning the worry would completely consume me and allow me no peace at all. Three steps forward, two steps back. However no matter how tough it was at the time, the thought never once crossed my mind to give up. It was a kind of do or die situation for me at this stage. Making peace with my skin condition would, without a doubt, be by far the greatest struggle that I’d ever faced in my life. Cycling across Canada, running through India – these trips were nothing compared to what I was going through now. A long-distance adventure required a little perseverance and a bit of heart, but what I needed now was to somehow accept what I had, and to be completely okay with it, which was no easy thing to do, as my mind didn’t want to accept it. If only I had faced up to my skin issue when it had first surfaced nine years before, I wouldn’t be going through this whole saga I was going through now. The relatively small problem that it was back then wouldn’t have had the chance to grow into this mammoth problem that it was now in my life. If I could only go back to that time in my life, I would have handled things so differently to how I had. If
only, if only, if only! However, looking back with regrets now wasn’t going to solve anything. Big problem or not, I had to address the issue as it was now.

  ***

  During my second session with Jenny she had suggested that I consider doing a vipassana meditation course. Layla, my ex-girlfriend, had done a ten day course a few years ago in India and had spoken very highly of it, but other than what she had told me, I knew little else about vipassana meditation. Jenny said that vipassana meditation was all about feeling the different sensations in your body. Whether it was a good sensation or a bad sensation, the idea behind this style of meditation was to merely observe the sensation objectively without reacting to it. Jenny felt that vipassana meditation would be good for me, as for years I had been suppressing and turning a blind eye to my feelings and therefore I needed to learn how to feel more, instead of blocking out what I was feeling. With Layla having told me about it, and now Jenny as well, I took it as a clear sign that this was what I had to do next.

  It just so happened that the only vipassana centre in Africa was on the outskirts of Cape Town, a four-hour drive from where I lived. When I phoned to see if I could take part in the next course, the lady I spoke with said that my timing couldn’t have been any better, as the next course was starting in a few days time. Everything was falling into place perfectly.