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Wednesday 17th June 2009
I have received several emails asking me to tell some of my story and to share a bit about my own path. My siblings are a bit repressed and exclusive about the early years, so I tend to steer clear of that, not wishing to offend their sensibilities. Because of my experience as a child, I left home at the age of fifteen, the best thing I ever did. Despite my relationship with my mother, my contact with my father and siblings has been minimal and is now non-existent. As we had very different experiences of our upbringing and they effectively have a collective experience that is so different from mine, it is as though we came from different origins.
When I first left home, it took me a while to orient myself in the world and to direct myself in any meaningful way. Eventually I got going, I found my path and off I went.
The Path
When I went travelling, on my quest to find the answer to life, the universe and everything, I didn’t travel alone; I had two very close companions. Our personalities complemented each other like the three characters in a transactional analytical life script of Parent, Adult and Child.
The Parent
Jon Ironbridge was tall, strong, quiet and sensible. He never acted without consideration and hardly had a spontaneous bone in his body. As a dutiful and righteous soul, he was certainly our conscience and if we were ever about to do something silly or walk into danger, he would step in like a nurturing parent and save the day. Jon maintained his spiritual commitment, and to this day works to help those that have slipped on their spiritual path to regain their footing.
The Adult
I, Sean, was the adult in the T.A. trilogy. Unlike Jon, I was not looking for a Guru or external authority to validate myself. I was seeking the knowledge that would show me that all of us are equal, just at different places on the path. Our teacher, when talking to us, identified me as “the one who does not need a guru”. I heard that as an insult at the time, though now I know what he meant. I have always been uncomfortable with Guru-itis and also disciple-itis, though both diseases seem to provide complementary support for the participants. I took my learning and left the confines of the community that we lived in, becoming an active psychotherapist in the outside world.
The Child
The child in our trilogy was Naz Droffi, a man guaranteed to make you laugh. In TA terms, Naz was a free child. He had not been tarnished by a negative childhood, and always rose above the problems and challenges that we encountered on our journey with humour and a positive energy. His smile and twinkling eye made him a magnet to the opposite sex, a role that he did not shrink from. Naz went on to study Tantra and meditation. Then, with some psychotherapy training, became a psycho-sexual therapist and teacher of the Tantric arts.
Three men with a hope
We have been firm friends since we discovered each other in our teens, in a bazaar setting that I will tell you about sometime. We have a symbiosis like brothers, so that even if we are far apart, we have that connection that is beyond cognition and yet below awareness, in an intuitive understanding of what each other is up to, and that includes support and help when needed.
Anyway, the decision to set out together, although momentous, was quite easy to make. Jon wanted knowledge of matters spiritual; I had fallen out of a difficult relationship, a speciality of mine at the time, and was seeking some meaning to life; and Naz wanted some fun and a new experience. Our greatest commonality, beyond the fact that we were all young men with testosterone-charged bodies, was our spiritual beliefs, all from different origins, all questioning our roots and all seeking ‘the truth’, if such a thing could be found. So, where to begin our quest?
Mr Moon
The reverend Sung Yung Moon was a self-styled spiritual leader, who fathered a world-wide church that was both evangelical and controversial. His followers, also known as ‘Moonies’, lived in communities and ashrams. They claimed to know ‘the way’, so off we went to have a look. We did not go alone, altogether there were about twelve of us who knew each other.
The Moonies were all respectable young people in suits and smart haircuts, a complete contrast to those of us in hippie garb, with hair that flew in the wind or, in my case, a topiary of curls. The Moonies were fresh-faced and healthy, while the rest of us smoked a variety of substances, and most of us looked like a good meal would not have done us any harm.
The New, New Testament
The way the system in the Moonies worked was that each week we were introduced to a new chapter of ‘The Divine Principle’; that was their new bible, a bit like a new–new testament. As the sessions went on, we saw those that we had arrived with being sucked into the church. One man who, a few weeks earlier, had resembled an under-nourished mountain goat and who made his money from the sale of cannabis resin, was now wearing a suit and in danger of becoming overweight.
We could buy most of it. After all, the teachings of any faith have an element of truth and this was based in the teachings of Jesus, plus Mr Moon’s additions. There were two things that happened that brought us up short. The first was in the final chapter of the divine principle: this revealed that Mr Moon was the second messiah and that the second coming of Christ had and was happening right here and now. As I said earlier, I have never been a good disciple. The second thing was that Mr Moon would be coming to pay a visit and that we would all be able to meet him.
We do not fit into everyone’s shoes
Well, I have no wish to offend any followers of Mr Moon. I can only say that for me, he was as far away from my image of a Christ figure as anyone could get. So, after talking it over, we three decided that it was time to go and take our search to other people in other places. The rest of those that we had arrived with decided to stay and were put out at our leaving. At one point, and it was quite intimidating, we were told very firmly that the only reason we could not see that Mr Moon was the new messiah was because the Devil was in our souls, and that if we just ignored that inner voice and went along with the rest of the church, all would, in time, be revealed when we were ready and we would see the light.
The learning for me was this. Whatever the nature of God, or whatever you would like to call that causal energy that brought the universe into being, it must be inclusive, not exclusive, and there must be many gates to heaven. The concept that there is only one way and one path belonged to the dark ages of the inquisition.
So we three made a pact. I, on our quest, anyone or any group ever told us, “this is the way and the only way and if you don’t come this way it is hell and damnation for you”, we would pack our stuff and move on until we found a place of inclusion, that had a potential to create what we agreed would be heaven on earth, a place where equality and acceptance really did exist.
Heaven and God are within each individual, in you and in me. There is not, and never will be, any external agency or force that will solve anything for us. The psychology of your soul is within you. It is your connection to the entire universe. Listen to your inner voice and follow your heart, and in so doing, you will progress on your own path.
Take care
Sean x
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