“It is said that the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.” ~ Thomas Fuller, (1608-1661) Churchman & Historian
I was 52 years old when I woke up or more accurately, started waking up. Like most great adventures, this one began unplanned and unheralded. I had absolutely no idea how much my life was about to change when I went to bed one seemingly normal night back in the spring of 2014.
The bed I was going to that night, a night that would change my life forever, was in a single rented room in a small terraced house in a dreary working-class town in the north of England. It wasn’t my town, I was a stranger and the only reason I was there at all was because my eight-year-old daughter now living there with her step-family. I had washed back up on the shores of my homeland after decades of wandering around the world. And this was no triumphant return I can assure you. I’d spent most my adult life chasing dreams, excitement, adventure, fame and fortune. I had little to show for it, apart from being broke and not just financially. Looking back I’m not even sure now what I was chasing! I had experienced the highs lows of life more than once (but that's another story), now I had a deep intuition the clock was ticking, time was running out and I had been caught empty handed in every aspect of my life.
Now there are many testaments to the fact that the one of the best ways to get to the top is to bounce off the bottom. When we reach the depths of despair, we reach a place where surrender is not only possible but inevitable.
It is a lot easier to see the light when the darkness surrounds you...
And I suppose I can stand witness to that. For I did wake up the next morning. I woke up to a world full of hope and inspiration. A beautiful world, again full of infinite possibilities. Possibilities wilder than my wildest dreams! My heart was full of joy, and my head was full of knowledge. I had been given a glimpse, a taste if you will, of the True Nature of Reality. And wow, what a reality it was! Just when I thought I was at the end, I discovered I had hardly even begun!
Connected
So, what happened that night that changed my world in an instance you might ask? Well, I’m still trying to understand it myself all these years later but as I laid down to sleep that night, thinking God knows what. I began to feel an unusual sensation, a tingling feeling on the top of my head, not my forehead but directly on the top of my head.
I was totally conscious but had my eyes closed, my scalp felt numb and tingly and it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. And then bang, I was ‘connected’! Connected to what? Again, I’m not exactly sure, it felt like I was connected to everything.
To the entire universe!
To everyone and everything.
There was nothing that wasn’t me, that I wasn’t aware of. For the first time in my life I felt part of it all and I saw through the illusion of physical separation. What was happening to me?
It is difficult to describe in words and of course there was nothing happening to me physically apart from the numbness of my scalp. But in my mind’s eye I envisioned a circular beam of shimmering light extending upwards from the crown of my head into infinity like one of those transportation beams you find in Si-Fi programs like Star Trek.
Of course, for all I knew up to that point I could have been having a stroke, some sort of phycological break-down or a brain aneurism but I felt no fear, no panic. I just lay there and accepted whatever came my way.
And then the fun really began, I started to receive/download packets of information. Pictures appeared in my mind, knowledge was downloaded into me...vast amounts of knowledge.
I was shown everything. I recall laughing, crying and so many ‘Wow’ moments I can’t even count them. I remember having a conversation with someone, something. I was asking questions and receiving answers. Not in English though I was still thinking and aware throughout but the answers were coming in feelings, pictures and emotions.
At one point I remember exclaiming, “Oh of course, that’s how it works”, I knew that. How could I have forgotten that?!” I have no idea what it was that I had forgotten, I forgot it again!
In another exchange I was shown the history of mankind from beginning to end, Past...Present…and Future - “You’ve done it all!” I marveled... It’s all finished!? I exclaimed.
Along with this dialogue, a marvelous feeling of well-being enveloped me. I laughed at how I could have ever worried about anything at all, there was nothing to be worried about at all, there never had been. All was well.
There was/is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing that I had done wrong, nothing that I could ever do wrong, In this moment there was no right and there was no wrong. There was nothing I had to do, nothing I had to achieve.
I felt an overwhelming love wash over me, a love that knew no bounds, a never-ending love that almost blew my mind in its unconditionality. I knew without a doubt that I was this love. This love was the font of all existence, where we sprung from and that this love is where we all remain each and every minute of our existence.
Forever.
No exceptions!
Nothing existed that wasn’t this love.
How long this went on for I’m not so sure maybe an hour, maybe all night long I really don’t know. It felt like forever.
At some point I must have fallen asleep though as next thing I knew it was morning, the tractor beam was gone but the numbness in my scalp remained. I recall touching my head throughout the next few days to see if the feeling was still there. It was and even though it has faded through time I only have to touch my head to recall that feeling, even now.
And then I stared to write, pages and pages of text flowed from me. Or to be more accurate through me, for even though I had written it, I had to read it myself afterwards to see what it contained. And as evidenced by this book, I continue to write till this day. Back then I had no plans to write or publish a book all I had was the compulsion to write.
So now I had the problem of what to do with all this knowledge?
As we discussed earlier, I wasn’t too convinced that I was the ideal candidate to spread these insights to others. I had no religious or spiritual beliefs to fall back on. I was a perfectly flawed product of a Scottish protestant working-class environment. My beliefs up to that point could be described as more apathetic than agnostic. Fortune or fate had had me grow up in a religiously tolerant society, (but that would be incorrect I grew up in a society that cared little either way). The conversations were more likely to be about the weather or football than esoteric truths and the meaning of life. Try talking about spirituality, God or even love, in a Scottish council estate, Pub, or the British Army and see how far you get. This was a society where hugging was not considered an acceptable form of greeting. The most you were likely to get was a nod or grunt or if you were especially liked, an insult!
The spiritual vacuum that I was brought up in did however have the fortunate side-effect of leaving me without any major religious or spiritual beliefs and the hang-ups that usually accompany them. Personally, I had always been pretty open and tolerant of others be it their beliefs or cultural differences. Travel had definitely broadened my mind and I was well used to the strange behaviors of those in foreign lands. As long as those beliefs and customs didn’t inconvenience me too much. I tried to stay out of it as much as possible.
But this was different there was no ignoring this! For some unknown reason the powers that be had decided that I was the most suitable outlet for this presumably important discourse and had dumped unsolicited an almost overwhelming amount of information, knowledge, wisdom, call it what you will, on me, in one giant helping.
Puzzlement was my first response. The world was already full of highly successful and talented authors and public speakers, if the aim was to spread this info as far and wide as possible, which I presumed it was, surely it would have been easier to choose one of these people for this task. They by using their already established reputation and resources could spread this information much further than me. I had absolutely no writing or publishing experience, very little money and frankly no real interest in these matters. God, if he did exist certainly does work in mysterious ways was all I could come up with for this puzzle!
But it is what it is, and I couldn’t dismiss this as a mental hick-up. This information had to have come from somewhere and what I experienced was as real, if not realer than anything I had ever experienced here in ‘normal’ reality. And what’s more I had the evidence right there in front of me in the form of a thousand sheets of paper filled with God knows what to prove it.
It seemed that it was my turn to be ‘It’.
My problem now was what exactly to do with all this information? I couldn’t dismiss it. I certainly couldn’t ignore it. I tried that for a while, it didn’t work. It was about then that I realised I would have to begin this new adventure with a little bit of that staple of all religious belief, faith.
“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of new beginnings.” ~ Meister Eckhart (1260-1328 AD)
I knew then that receiving this 'truth’ might have been the easiest part of this entire process. Accepting and adopting the truth into my life would prove a little more difficult. Now I have never been the type to blindly follow other people’s word or their orders, I like to check things out for myself. I’ve never been a follower, which didn’t go down too well in the Military but that’s another story.
So, I decided in the end that in-lieu of any further spiritual experiences of my own all I could do was search for validation of the words that had rapidly appeared before me, so I began to search for others with similar tales to tell.
I became what they call a ‘Seeker’.
