The Shadow Within

Excerpt 1 pg 44 - 45 Carol looking at me and telling me to close my eyes and just experience the light. Me closing my eyes still thinking: “OK let’s just pretend to go along”. The next moment this incredible white light all around me, pulling me through this vortex of light even more bright than the light around me. White light and then an even whiter bluish light. Lightning strikes playing together around each other. Having this amazing dance of energy, joy, peace and a sense of total synchronicity. It was such an extremely peaceful yet happy and energized experience. Such total opposite poles of experiences in one. Energy yet peace. A dance yet total stillness. Two souls dancing together in total love, peace and togetherness. An experience I never wanted to end. I never wanted to come back. Yet I was pulled back eventually. Total devastation to be back in this world. It took me a long time crying and then just being still, before I could even contemplate opening my eyes. When I eventually opened my eyes, Bryan looked at me so knowingly, so calm and full of love. He came over to me and just hugged me and we just sat together for the longest time. A ten year old boy who just unwittingly facilitated many lifetimes worth of goodbyes between his forty something parents. Him telling me that he has always been with us. Sometimes as the parent and sometimes as the child. These big brown eyes just conveying centuries worth of knowledge. Of knowing. We spent about four hours in Carol’s office, yet it could have been minutes or years. No sense of time. We eventually stumbled out of her office. Sat in the car totally exhausted. I have no recollection of how we eventually got home. Daniel and I said our goodbyes at a completely different level to those of Andrea, Russell or Keith. Bryan facilitated this as if it has meant to be ever since he was born or even before that. We both knew we have completed an amazing journey together. Yet we had to go back to the real world. A world where you don’t consciously operate at this knowing level. A world which is hard and full of lessons. Excerpt 2 pg 66 - 67 It is now 2 am after I received my meds at 11pm. Less than 4 hours sleep. Typical of a manic episode. I horrified the nursing staff by asking for more sleeping meds. As far as they are concerned I should be out for the count, zombified until at least 6 am. Welcome to my world. I am going to modify this manic episode even if it kills me. I am going to allow myself to spiral out of control until Mr. Depression finally gets his claws into me. I don’t feel stressed, just hyped, excited, my hands slightly shaking. I know in this phase people have been known to achieve phenomenal things, and right now I can do with some phenomenal achievements. But not at the price it normally comes at; weeks and months in the deepest pit of despair where every breath you take is an effort and death looks like a wonderful escape. Excerpt 3 pg 118 I started a brisk walk up the same mountain path I followed the previous afternoon. It felt like a million years ago. So much has happened in less than 24 hours, I could hardly comprehend it. I started running again and this time stopped about a 100 meters further up the path than the day before. This position gave me a whole new look of the mountain. The ridge on the far side looked like a lion lying there with his head held up proudly. I realized that in many ways it was what my experience here in the mountain has given me. The sense that I could hold my head up again. That people didn’t see me as the failure I felt I was. That my own perception of myself in the past was causing me to invite negative relationships into my life. That financial success did not make you a successful human being, but that you can only be truly successful if you appreciate yourself, and that other people often see qualities in you that you yourself are totally unaware of.