Love is an Action

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My scholarly performance was substandard at every school or college I attended. It looked like my early “bump on the head at birth” as my mother called, causing a severe haematoma, had a profound effect on my ability to read and assimilate classroom information.  I was always in the bottom class, in the slow readers group from year one and never achieved much academically until my late teens. I was regularly accused of being in a “dwam” as they say in Scotland.  It means “away with the fairies”.  In truth I was probably bored and lived more in my imagination, dreaming of being some kind of a superhero and saving my world.   

As a reclusive twelve year I took an interest in herpetology, the study of snakes ( I still have no idea why but I was always trying to find the biggest or most poisonous)  and “Laughter is the Best Medicine” in a stack of Readers Digests that my father had.  Despite reading slowly and enjoying the pictures more, I read an article about how little we use our brain and what percentage of our brain lies dormant.  Whether it’s still the case now, or not, I don’t know, but the statistics then were amazing to me, stating that up to sixty percent of our brain seems to remain unused and therefore available for reassignment to better use. It was something that encouraged me to learn in any way I could. I thought that if I put effort into the right direction, I could kickstart other parts of my brain and make up for what I quietly knew was “my stupid head”.  

Unaware to me though, there were other parts of me that were fully functioning that would help me through life.  The first came from being a reclusive, hiding in my bedroom and getting a good understanding of practical things through hands-on toys and experiments, with hobbies like Meccano, Lego, Airfix Kits, Hornby trainsets and mini science experiments; it gave me an excellent awareness of how things worked simply by looking at them and led me into many of my successful careers later in life. Another part of me, was a move into a more developed sense of intuition than most, a greater depth of feelings, of prediction, of cause and effect. In one sense I need to be wary of the dangers around me and developed a hypersensitivity to significant people, yet in another sense I became attuned to the animals and nature around me. If there is such a thing as a mammalian brain which is about emotion and feeling, then that was highly developed in me and was much more attuned more to that than academia.  

And of course, there was the adventurer, always trying to escape or go higher, further and faster. As a result I became enthusiastically athletic, artistic, practical, connected to nature and the animal world. 

It’s only retrospectively that I understood why I moved into a kinaesthetic world of healing and spirituality, using intuition, feeling, empathy and practicality to connect to a world of people where relationships with women seemed easier than with men. Despite being an adventurer, I was a bit of a lost boy too, keen to find out how to connect with caregivers who would look after my inner self better. 

What had a huge effect on me and my future that was mostly a positive one, came from a vivid dream that I had aged 3, one night in my lonely Edinburgh bedroom.  

In typical night-time dreams I was being chased by demons and monsters. It was almost a nightly occurrence and I felt that this was to be a forever thing – a fear of things and people that I didn’t understand; dark, scary entities that I couldn’t escape from and were going to haunt me throughout my life. 

But one night in one particular dream I had had enough. I challenged the monster chasing me. 

Darth Vadar, the tall, ominous character out of Star Wars, wasn’t known to the human conscience at this time as the Star Wars series wasn’t released until the late 1970’s, but if it had, here he was in front of me, large, in a hooded black cape, ominous, powerful, terrifying, preying on my vulnerability and fear.

Having met him many times before in my dreams, but frustrated with the way it left me feeling, and with a tinge of curiosity, I bundled up the courage to ask in my three year old language something like  “Who are you?”.  

I faced up to him, scared but determined. Eyes wide open, looking up, fearing that this might lead to  death.

“What do you want?”  

I looked into the darkness and waited for a brief moment, cowering.  

The big, fearful, scary thing suddenly changed.  

It was as though his dark cloak fell off and it presented to me something protective of me, a friend, an ally.  

No longer a something holding fear or power over me, the transition was so quick it took me by surprise, which is why, now, years later, the memory of that dream has remains so vivd.

In that dream, by overcoming fear, I found friendship, from finding bravery I found support.  Though the energy of this “monster” seemed much bigger than me, when dealt with it became a powerful guide that could go on to help me cope with life.

I have a sense now that the “monster” was my unconscious and this was it speaking to me to be cautious of it, but to make a friend out of it, as this was where my true strength lay and when harnessed it could have unimaginable strength. 

In retrospect my new ally didn’t save me from the tough events about to come my way, or the pain of loss and shame that was going to put a heavy burden on my shoulders, but it did arm me with something incredibly valuable. It was to have the strength to face my fears; to uncover the truth that resides within me and to have faith that courage will lead a way to a better life, that there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that that light could be immense.

It gave me the building blocks of what became an unshakeable faith in the light and in the good, to build a truly winning belief that positive intention, however phrased or framed, would always bring me into to the light and into joy, no matter how dark or crazy or painful life was or was about to become. 

As what I call my Spiritual Awakenings of my life, this was the first of many.  

This one was the turning point that secretly and quietly set in motion the valiant, oddball, often dysfunctional journey of my life to uncover “the truth” and whatever that meant.  

It set in motion my own “Hero’s Journey”. That journey that became more important than life itself.  

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