Fumbling Towards Freedom

<p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>My journey is one of soaring to heights of ecstatic experience and diving to devastating depths exploring the caverns of my soul and shedding much of what I knew to be myself along the way.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>I share what I have learned from my own experience. </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Ever since I can remember I have wanted to know why human beings suffer what causes this ache in the soul and the longing to be free. I have come to recognize that as human beings we are on an evolutionary journey. I call it the Alchemy of Awakening. </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Each one of us goes through rites of passage times of initiation by Life itself testing times when we are asked to shed aspects of our personality and identity and strip naked to face the new-the unknown-so we can grow and awaken in Consciousness.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>For me it has been helpful to embrace the idea of initiation as a way to recognize and acknowledge how we gather wisdom. </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>My rites of passage have included making love for the first time exploring myself through drugs and altered states traveling the world on my own finding a teacher acquiring skills becoming a teacher myself... and then of course letting go of it all and encountering death. Each step is a doorway to a new dimension of life.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Similarly I have found it helpful to understand the phases of a rite of passage which I can summarize like this:</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Unraveling when we are asked to let go of our old identity.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Descent when sinking into the darkness of the unknown.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Limbo when the old has gone and the new has not yet come.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Emergence when we sense the new and begin to explore it.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Integration when we find ways to live out and express the new.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>When things happen too soon and too fast however and are too overwhelming for us to integrate they cause trauma which leads to coping strategies such as self-abandonment and addiction. So please remember in this tale as I blunder my way from one transition to the next that many times I was forced to change before I had the wisdom and maturity to embrace it.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>And yet through all of this whether we know it or not Grace is guiding us on a journey towards individual awakening and collective evolution. </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>And with our whole planet now suffering from our acts of ignorance greed and exploitation-which threaten our very future-I think you will agree that a more mature approach to life is way overdue.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Here in this book I share the story of my grace-filled journey my personal challenges and my own rites of passage. My wish is that my story gives you hope and inspiration for your own growth and awakening.</span></p><p><br></p>