Why me?

Introduction

These are mediocre times.
People are starting to lose hope.
It’s hard for many to believe there are extraordinary things inside themselves and others. I hope you can keep an open mind.
- Unbreakable

As a child I always loved stories of great adventure and discovery. Films such as Star Wars, Back to the Future and The Karate Kid consistently held a special place in my heart. I often dreamed about experiencing my own quest and story of dramatic transformation. Along the way I would meet wise teachers who would teach me great things, towards the end I would fall in love, and there would then be a dramatic climax where I did great things. Yet, by the age of fifteen years old I had all but given up hope of my quest, telling myself that such adventures only happened to other people. I was wrong. My own quest did happen, but it started in the least likely of places and the most surprising of ways.

One day I woke up and something in me was different. I was very seriously ill, but no one had any idea what I was actually ill with. In time it became apparent that I had developed one of the most poorly misunderstood chronic illnesses known in Western society, an illness for which according to the world’s “experts” there is no cure. “Why I have got ME? Why is this happening to me?” I endlessly questioned as I spent several years virtually bed-bound and sinking into a deeper and deeper clinical depression. Then, one day someone planted a seed of belief in my mind that just perhaps I did have all I needed to transform my life and my world, regardless of what traditional thinking suggested. Feeling like I had no other choice, I gave every ounce of my desperate existence to finding a cure for my ME, along with my clinical depression and major anxiety.

When I consider my world these days I still ask, “Why me?” but I ask from a very different place. Why was I able to change something that is apparently unchangeable? Why do I now have a quality of life that seven years ago I could only have dreamed of being possible? You hold the answers to these questions in your hands. I pray that as you let them sink into your heart they will be more than just intellectual concepts. Knowledge is nice. Action creates change.

In love and warmth,

Alex Howard

Chapter 7: Please no more, someone stop this (Winter 1996 to Summer 1997)

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
- Marcus Aurelius

With the new school term beginning, trying to survive went from a horrible nightmare to the impossible. The intensity of work was growing and I just couldn’t keep up. I was becoming severely stressed, and this was just making me even sicker, if that was possible. It didn’t help that I had no understanding from my teachers. As far as they were concerned, I was just another pupil who didn’t really care about learning. They had never known me when I was healthy, and so assumed that this was who I was, a malingering teenager. They knew that I was ill, but the way they saw it I was just tired. We all get a bit tired sometimes, I would be told.

My life reached a dead-end one Friday night in February. I could take no more. No longer was I able to hold up the immense weight that was continually crushing down on my already weak shoulders. It was a cold and wet evening, and I was feeling my now usual exhausted, spaced out and aching self. I had homework due in the next day and I was seriously struggling to sit at my desk for twenty minutes to get my dizzy head around it.

The driving rain attacking the window in front of me reminded me of life's constant barrages. Would they ever end? All I wanted was to go to sleep, although I was all too aware that I would still have to wake up and face life again. There just seemed to be no way out. In an attempt to lift my mood, I decided to take a couple of minutes away from my dreaded books and I picked up my acoustic guitar. As I sat there attempting to play a few chords and escape the world, it only added to my hopelessness. Something that had used to be the centre of my life had become just another cruel reminder of the life that I now lived. At least on this night I was just about able to strum the strings, I tried to reassure myself. Thank God for small mercies.

Unfortunately, I was not the only one that knew I had homework to complete. My grandmother was still playing her self-appointed role of home tutor. Over recent months she had been fairly tolerant of the fact that I was falling behind, but this was about to change. She knew that I felt like hell, but for her, study was the essence of life, and although my health was in jeopardy, she believed that I should be willing to risk that extra bit of effort. She, like my teachers, couldn’t see what was in front of her own eyes. As she passed my room and heard the sound of me playing my guitar, she burst in with a look of horror on her face.
"Why are you not doing your work?" she angrily interrogated me. “If you fall any further behind you will have to drop out. You know that without your A-levels you cannot go to university, and then you will have no degree. Where will that leave you? You seem to be perfectly capable of playing that guitar, so why not studying? It is far more important. I’ve told you before, you will never make a living through music."

It sounded like the same argument that we had had a thousand times. However, this time it was different. Playing the guitar these days wasn’t about music stardom; it was about a few minutes escape from my living hell. Did my grandmother not understand that every ounce of energy that I had found that week had been dedicated to trying not to fall behind at school? Did she not understand that this was the first time in days that I had even been able to play my guitar? I decided on avoidance tactics. I was too exhausted to argue. I just wanted to be left alone. My life was bad enough already, could no one see that?

"Do you not care about your future?" she struck again. "You have so much potential, it is terrible to see you waste it like this." Did she think that I did not realise? Was it not obvious that I hated my life? "I don't care," I whimpered in response, desperate to avoid an argument. I was past even being angry; that would take too much energy, energy that I would need to crawl into bed.

Yet, as I sat there trying to ignore my grandmother and her words, my mind started to remind me of what was happening to me: how my life had been stolen for no apparent reason, how I had lost my friends and freedom, not to mention my daily struggles with my health. And how could I ever forget the daily pain, both physical and mental; my endless days alone, with nothing to do but sleep, even when I knew it would make no difference to my exhaustion and never ending muscle aches? The more my reality hit me, the more I could feel the emotion building inside me. Getting to bed was clearly going to have to wait. I was not going to be allowed to retreat. At that moment I couldn’t conceive of things becoming any worse. I couldn’t hide from the truth anymore.

Before my grandmother could launch her next tactical assault, I felt a mutiny inside. My defences came crashing down. The armour that was defending me from the outside world and keeping my pain inside split open. Out burst an onslaught of emotion. "I can't do this anymore! I can’t do this anymore!” I screamed. Tears exploded from my eyes, like ammunition in a catapult that had been held back for months. I broke down and collapsed on the bed, shaking with the intensity of the emotion that was being released from within me. "I can't do this anymore!" I cried continually. "I can't do this anymore!" like a mantra, again and again, I relentlessly shrieked the same words. They seemed to be the only words in my vocabulary, the only words that could express how I felt.

There was nothing left I could do but just feel the pain. My grandmother, taken aback by the effect of her poorly chosen tactics, put her arms around me and held me as I returned my locked up emotion to the universe. There was nothing she could say. I had to let it out. At that moment I was inconsolable; it was a matter of waiting for the waves to become ripples once again. Even she did not feel strong enough to change the flow of a tidal wave.

The pain continued to cleanse me for what seemed liked hours, but after a number of final desperate assaults, the barrage retreated, leaving me further drained, but also strangely peaceful. Months of frustration seemed to have been dissipated for a while. However, even this release did not last long. After a few minutes, the harsh reality of my situation began to strike me all over again. Some of my emotional energy may have been released, but I was still in a desperate place.

There was one thing for sure: there was no way I was continuing with my life the way it was. It had become too much. As my grandmother continued to hold me in her arms, she knew that pushing me would work no longer. It would only lead to less time at school and therefore less of a chance of me living the life she wanted. Even she knew that there are times when you have to admit defeat.

For tonight the war was over; damage assessment and rebuilding would have to wait until the morning. In the meantime I had to deaden my mind; enter the greatest mind deadener of them all: the television. As I lay there and watched with my grandparents, I once again became lost in another world, one that was not full of frustration, illness and loneliness. The daily trials of soap characters seemed almost pathetic in comparison to the desperation I was experiencing. I went to bed that night more uncertain of my future than ever. I did have a glimmer of peace though; at least I may be allowed to stop fighting quite so hard. Perhaps I was finally beginning to be heard?

With my life reaching crisis point, a solution was required. Something had to give. If it were not my health and consequent sanity, then it would have to be school. The next day was spent discussing my options. Dropping out of school altogether was very appealing in that it would totally stop the pressure. However, what would I do with the hour or so of energy a day that I did have? Leaving school would mean that I would go from having little contact with the outside world to having absolutely none. Although there was a part of me that liked the idea of further withdrawing from life as I had come to know it, the thought of spending even more time alone with my growing depression was rather frightening. I therefore chose a compromise.

The best option seemed to be for me to continue with one of my three A-levels (economics, business studies and history) for the remaining half of the year, and then to repeat the first year of the other two subjects the following year. After that, in my third year, I would then do the final year of all three subjects. This way I would still get my A-levels, but I would be able to gradually build up my strength. It seemed like the ideal solution.

The next step was to work out the funding, for my grandmother had only budgeted to pay two years’ fees. The school was contacted, and it was agreed that I could have the final year at half price, for I had been using almost no facilities, and I was a potentially promising student that they did not appear to want to lose.

The next six months of my life were spent basically as a prisoner of illness who had a one-hour exercise period of school each day. I never went out, saw friends, or did anything social, that is apart from have regular appointments with an increasingly baffled Dr. Mansfield. The months blurred into one and almost nothing of interest happened. In fact, I may as well have been dead. In many ways I was. The only emotion I really felt was depression. There were, however, a couple of events that stood out from the blackness, but only because they were particularly dark.

One Sunday night, when I was visiting home, I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep. This was something that I found surprisingly difficult considering how tired I always felt. As I lay there hugging my duvet and extra blankets tight, pretending they could protect me from the pains of my life, my left leg suddenly jerked as though electricity had been passed through it. My heart skipped a beat. What the hell had just happened? I was used to feeling shaky, but this was different.

For a few moments I started to panic, terrified at what might be going on. But, after a time I did manage to calm myself, deciding it was just a freak occurrence and I once more tried to fall asleep. While I worked to relax and daydream, it suddenly happened again. If I had felt out of control of my health in the past, this was at a new level. My body was moving without my volition. I became increasingly anxious as it continued to happen. Soon my arms were also jerking involuntarily. That is to say nothing of my heart palpitating and the fact that I was totally freezing, despite the extra blankets wrapped all around me. Even the dull light shining under the door from the corridor outside was aggravating me. Just being alive was becoming agony.

I was soon so scared by my out of control body that I couldn’t bear to be alone any longer and I screamed out for help. As Mum rushed to my side, I was starting to shake uncontrollably. She was visibly shocked by the state she found me in and was desperately trying to decide whether to call an ambulance or not. Yet, despite the clear horror of what was happening, there didn’t seem to be any point. What could a paramedic do anyway? The several doctors that I had seen all appeared equally lost. In the end Mum just tried the best she could to comfort me and get me to think happy thoughts. This was almost impossible. The last nine months of my life had been just pure illness. It felt like there was no hope. With Mum sitting by my side for most of the night, I did eventually fall asleep and the shaking slowly settled. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the volatility around me.

My sister had again just been committed to a mental hospital, on this occasion for serious violence towards our Mum and grandmother, along with trying to overdose on paracetamol. My mum and stepfather were also in the process of trying to sell our home as part of their most recent attempt to divorce. What did I feel? To be honest I felt only one added emotion beyond my already severe depression: I felt emotionally sick. I was sick of the constant suffering. I was sick of my family. I was sick of being behind at school. I was sick of having no friends. I was sick of the constant sleeping. And, worst of all, I was sick of being sick.

Chapter 11: Gathering wood for a fire (Autumn 1998 to Spring 1999)

It is not our abilities that show who we really are; it is our choices.
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The first few days without television, attempting to quieten the torrents of my mind while meditating, and reading the first of hundreds of books I would read over the coming years were, in many ways, exciting. I had started to live what I would later come to call a 3D-life. I had Decided what I wanted, I had Devised a way of getting it, and most importantly of all, I was Doing it. With this new way of living, my life once again had some meaning. I had done something that few people ever do; I had finally, after so many years of hell, actually reached rock bottom. From a place as low as I had fallen, there was only one way to go, and that was up. For now my only dream was a life of health, a life where each day didn’t mean a constant struggle with my own body. I had no way of knowing if my new actions would get me any closer to this dream, but I did know that I had to stand a better chance than I did watching television and waiting for someone else to change my life.

As the weeks started to merge into one another, the true immensity of my undertaking became clear. Finding a cure to an apparently incurable illness was one thing, but with only a few hours a day to devote to it, and in those hours simultaneously battling with muscles pains and intense dizziness, it was something else. Thankfully, I did rapidly develop one life-saving resource: unbeatable discipline. Whatever was happening, however I felt, I always did my meditation, yoga, qigong and reading. I lived like my life depended upon them. In many ways it did.

Despite the difficulty of keeping to my original commitments, I quickly decided to increase my efforts, and so was soon meditating for forty-five minutes a day and doing ten minutes yoga and qigong. I was also pushing myself to spend even more time reading, to the point that if I was awake I was rarely to be seen without a book in my hands. I figured that the harder I worked, the faster my life was going to change.

I took more action a couple of weeks later when I went in search of a meditation teacher. Although through meditating by myself I was already feeling calmer and sleeping more deeply, I still felt I was not benefiting as much as I could. After the failure of looking through the yellow pages and in the local paper, I had the idea of going to the local library. My persistence was rewarded when I found a flyer for a weekly meditation group, which before I knew it I had joined. A lady who worked with the teacher was a chartered psychologist, and so she was soon visiting me also. I was discovering an interesting phenomenon: when we take a small bit of truly determined action, the universe often does the rest.

My first night at the meditation group I went through my usual, "Will I be able to make it through?" thoughts. Both my legs ached and just getting out of bed prior to going was a major struggle. However, I knew that it was an important step. Taking the easy option in the short term could have meant the difference between a life of illness and a life of health. That was too big a risk to take, even if my body didn't agree.

The class was held in the living room of the teacher, Shirley O' Donoghue (now the author of "Working with Natural Energy”). Going for the first time was nerve racking, as I had no idea what to expect. For all I knew I could have been the only normal person in a group full of nutcases. Thankfully, things started off rather tame, and there was not a VW van or a Bob Dylan record in sight. There were initially four other people in the class apart from me, and I was not even totally alienated by my being only eighteen years old, as there was also a couple in their late twenties.

The first evening was spent dowsing for “Bach Flower Remedies,” which were plant extracts discovered and developed by Edward Bach in the early 1900’s. They worked on the same principles as homeopathy, and had recently seen a surge in their popularity due to their being used by various famous people, including Cheri Blair.

Dowsing is something that many people are very sceptical about, and I have to confess that I was initially. In fact to be honest, I thought it a total load of rubbish. That was before I tried it for myself. Shirley explained that we were to hold our pendulums (effectively a crystal on the end of a piece of string) still and mentally ask a question. The crystal then, quite miraculously, rotated in one direction for yes, another for no, and a further direction for neutral. At first this seemed to me to be totally against scientific principles. But, in my subsequent reading I was to discover hard evidence explaining how dowsing taps into a person’s unconscious mind and aura, the field of energy that surrounds the human organism. A person’s aura is something that anyone studying a human being objectively can discover by feeling it with their hands (it can also be photographed using special instruments).

My weekly Thursday night sessions at the meditation group were to be the source of a lot of changes in my life over the coming year. However, the greatest source of my growth was undoubtedly the dozens of books I was reading. My uncle was the main source, but I also picked up books from the local library, Shirley and the members of my meditation group, and some books that I could find nowhere else I bought. The diversity of ideas and arguments I discovered was incredible, and also quite daunting. When confused and drawn between different viewpoints I tended to meditate on the problem, and by doing so a solution would often appear.

Despite my extensive research, I came across only a few books on ME. The ones that I was able to get hold of all said pretty much the same thing. They discussed possible causes and the available potential treatments, but the general conclusion was pretty much what my doctor had told me: there is no cure. The standard advice was to be patient and rest, and to possibly try some different complementary therapies. Something that rather concerned me was that several of the authors were actually ME sufferers who had been ill for decades and still hadn’t recovered. They were hardly the role models I was searching for. I was looking for people that were experts in curing ME, not experts in living with it.

There was something unique in many of the books that I had come across by people who had recovered from other supposedly incurable illnesses such as AIDS and cancer. These people had got better and they knew why; they had all undergone a fundamental psychological/spiritual shift. It was totally inspiring to read about people who based on modern medical “wisdom” should be either dead, or at the least severely ill and very depressed, yet had completely cured themselves and were living happy and fulfilled lives.

A powerful example was Niro Markoff Asistent, who was diagnosed as HIV positive and effectively given a death sentence. There were no mistakes, for her tests were checked, her symptoms were getting worse, and according to her doctors it was only a matter of months before she would die. Niro decided to see things differently. By utilising the power of her spirit and following a programme very similar to what I was starting to develop for myself, she not only survived, but a year later tested HIV negative. According to conventional “wisdom” this was totally impossible. I was pretty shocked. If someone could rid their body of HIV, then I told myself that ME must be a piece of cake. Especially as there are no time constraints, such as death!

The story of Brandon Bays was equally extraordinary. In six weeks she completely healed herself of a cancerous tumour the size of a basketball. She, like Niro, achieved this by devising her own programme of healing and experiencing a remarkable psychological/spiritual transformation. The doctors once again could not explain what had happened, claiming that it must have been a miracle. In many ways it was. Amongst other things the Oxford dictionary described a miracle as “an outstanding example or achievement.” I figured that this was probably rather different to the definition Brandon’s doctors were referring to.

In reading about such transformations, I started to become obsessed with the notion of what creates human destiny. I continually questioned; why do some people recover from illness and not others? Why do some people live happy lives, and others just wallow in a life of pain and depression? I was beginning to realise a universal answer to these questions. The people that defy the odds in life, be that by surviving a life-threatening illness or anything else, make very different decisions. They direct their lives by setting a course and following it.

For a while I bought into the idea that people who live extraordinary lives, although they clearly do take specific actions, are simply of a different breed and are somehow stronger people with more resources. I told myself that if they were to live in my position then they would also be trapped; they, too, would see no way out. However, I soon began to realise what an easy stance this was to take. If I lived my life with that belief, then would I not just be living a self-fulfilling prophecy? Would it not mean that I would simply take the weak option when faced with a challenge, and thus live a weak life? What if I was to believe that the difference that shapes our destiny is actually the actions we take? What if I was to take those actions? Would that not also determine my destiny? Applied to ME, this simple change in my thinking translated as follows: I went from believing that it was impossible to recover from ME, to believing that it was possible. Even more importantly, I started to believe that it was not just possible for someone, but that it was actually possible for me.

My doctors might have had more training than I did in the ways of the human body, but, as I was starting to learn, that was only worth so much. Anyway, I had something they didn’t: an insatiable curiosity and openness to new ideas. I wasn’t going to discard something simply because conventional “wisdom” couldn’t yet explain it. However weird things often sounded, I was still willing to experiment with them on my favourite subject, me. Within these diverse parameters of course conventional medicine did also fall, and so when I did need to learn something about human anatomy and physiology I dragged my weak body off to the local library and studied I understood what I needed to.

As I continued my research, I became fascinated by the relationship between the mind and body. Louise Hay, a prominent author in the field, had a particular impact on me. She basically worked with the philosophy that physical illness is the manifestation of dysfunctional psychological patterns. I could not fundamentally flaw her ideas. After all, this was a woman who had cured herself of terminal cancer. However, despite agreeing with the logic of her theories, and also seeing the practical implications for others, I could not see how they could benefit me. Fatigue and dizziness (still my two main symptoms) were suggested to be due to a lack of love for what one does. Yet, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life when I became ill. Sure, I hated my life now, but that was because I was ill. I started to become rather annoyed. I knew that she was right in many ways, but how could I ever have passion for life when I felt so ill? I convinced myself that my case must be different. I was very close, yet still so very far.

Autobiographies by people such as Christopher Reeve (star of the original Superman films) also provided me with much needed wisdom. For all his life Christopher Reeve had lived an existence built around his physical strength and stamina. Apart from the clear athletic needs of his work, sport was also his main source of relaxation and the place that he went for inner peace (this sounded rather familiar). One day while he was riding, he fell off his horse, with the result of being paralysed from the neck down. Totally unable to move anything but his head, for a long while his life hung in the balance. There were many times when it would have been so easy for him to die a quick natural death, as certain members of his family wished. Yet, despite the horrific events that he had been through, the frustration that he was facing everyday due to his paralysis, and the supposed hopelessness of his situation, he still had the courage to make the decision to be happy. That one decision to focus on what he had and not what he didn’t, rather than the fact that once he could move and now he could not, had saved his life in more ways than one.

If Christopher Reeve could be happy, despite being able to move nothing but his head, then I knew I had nothing to complain about. Any challenge I could ever face would be nothing in comparison. Although I did forget this many times and begin to wallow in self-pity, as soon as I reminded myself of how lucky I really was, I felt differently immediately. I was powerfully learning one of life’s most important lessons:

It is not the events of our life that determine our happiness; it is the way that we respond to them.

I developed the idea that two people could go on a roller coaster, and one be screaming with joy and the other with terror. Their experience would be decided by one thing: their internal representation of the event. The person screaming with joy would be linking pleasure to the sensations in their body, and the person screaming with terror, linking fear. The physiological processes would actually be surprisingly similar. I knew which experience I wanted.

In discovering how much we really are the gatekeepers to our own happiness, I also realised the same to be true for ME, as anything else in life; if I viewed it as a living hell, then so be it, my interpretation would equal my experience. However, if I chose to view it as an adventure and an opportunity to grow into the person that I truly am, then it could equally become this.

As I slowly integrated my new understandings, a further desire started to brew in my mind. I wanted to know how I could help everyone around me to change their lives, especially my family. On numerous occasions I tried to convince them to embark on a similar journey to mine. Let’s just say my ideas were not met with much support! Although the pessimism and cynicism of my environment never dampened my determination long-term, it frustrated me desperately to watch those I loved continue to destroy themselves and each other when I believed that things could be so different. I just could not understand why I could not make people change.

The gulf between my peers and myself was also becoming greater and greater. The more I searched within during my meditations and long periods of contemplation, the more I yearned to live as my true self. Yet, the qualities that I was finding to be who I really am were so different from what was seen as acceptable. I was supposed to be interested in alcohol, nightclubs and one-night stands, yet my heart was drawing me towards even more self-discovery, actualising my potential and making the world a better place. It was almost like I developed two sides to my personality. There was Alex who was still trying to be the person he believed others wanted him to be, and Alex, my spirit, who was moving towards a higher purpose. With part of me still desperate to be accepted by others, how was I now to present myself to the world? How could I explain to those around me what I was learning and discovering? I just didn’t know how to interact with the world anymore. Photographs of me during this period spoke volumes, portraying a sense of “lights on, but no one home.” My only reason left to live was my search for answers, and that was taking every ounce of my drained energy.

With my new passion for reading, some rather more profound questions than I had originally been asking also started to develop in my mind. Like everyone, I had always wondered, "What happens when we die?" "Are we just our bodies?" "Is there a meaning to life?" Although no one appeared to have the whole truth, some of what I was starting to read was becoming very compelling. It certainly spoke to my heart in a way that my Christian teachers hadn’t. Growing up, I had attended church more than anyone else in my family, and each summer I had also gone on an adventure holiday organised by a Christian organisation. Even back then I guess I had a curiosity for answers.

I remember distinctly one summer sitting in a basement room of a beautiful school building, near to the banks of Lake Windermere in the Lake District. The school and its facilities had been hired out for a week, consisting of outdoor pursuits and games by day, and bible study and worship in the evenings. It was a tame way of being taught the Christian ways and I know that I usually enjoyed the holidays, when I wasn’t being bullied anyway.

On this cool summer evening we were discussing salvation and how a person earns a place in heaven. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; it was so in contrast to what my heart was telling me Jesus had really meant. The core of the message was that if you are not a committed Christian, then you will go to hell, and even if you are a committed Christian you could still do so if you break the rules. I just could not understand how a god who created us could wish to make us suffer eternally.
"What if someone is brought up in a Muslim family?” I questioned. "What if they have never heard of Christianity?" "Then it is for the Father to judge them," I was told. The Father of mankind judge? It made no sense to me. "How about if someone is brought up in a Christian family, but the parents are abusive and violent and all that person sees of Christianity is pain? If that persons decides to be an atheist as a consequence, would they still go to hell?" I ventured, still lost at what seemed such a ridiculous concept. "Again, it would of course lie with God,” I was told. “But without practising faith, there is little hope."

I hadn’t understood at thirteen, and I still didn’t five years later. Our environment creates our religious beliefs, like nearly all our beliefs. Who chooses our environment? According to Christianity, God! And, how about the fact that God is all-loving and all-powerful? If he is all-loving, then how could he condemn us? I reasoned that an all-powerful being would also be unlikely to have an ego that needs worshipping! Unfortunately, this was not to be my last run in with such illogical thinking.

I knew that many Christians live amazing lives, growing themselves and helping others; it was neither they nor their faith that I had a problem with. It was those who take religious understandings and twist them into a way of controlling people that frustrated me. I reasoned that it must surely be the highest arrogance to believe you are better than other people because you hold a certain set of beliefs. To me, this was at about the same level as football hooliganism: fighting someone because they are wearing a different T-shirt.

My understanding was that many people have an experience of “God,” and then assume that only those of their faith could be having such experiences “legitimately.” Any spiritual experience outside that religion is therefore condemned and claimed to be the result of the devil or evil spirits. I gave up trying to reason with such beliefs. If you yourself hold such dogmatic beliefs, I have no wish to convert you to the devil's ways; this is a book about how I changed my life, not about consorting with the dark side. Please read on, and do not be put off that we see the world differently. In the spirit of my favourite comedian, and the great Scottish philosopher, Billy Connolly: I’m the one going to hell; you are just reading about it!

Thursday nights at the meditation group were becoming more and more fascinating, and less and less tame. Channelling was something that after a few months we started experimenting with. I was, at first, again highly sceptical. I was also rather fearful. The idea that it is possible to contact the dead, and that there are "higher" spiritual entities in existence, also meant that there is more guiding our lives than just us. Although other people in the group would "get stuff through,” I was pretty useless and never got anything (my being too terrified to relax probably contributed to this). However, one visit to a professional and I knew that, when done properly, there is clearly more than guesswork involved.

The channel I saw was Edwin Courtenay (quite famous in certain circles). As I walked out of the appointment, I did what I am sure many people do, I tried to conceive of a way in which he could have produced the information that he did through less ethical means. I immediately discounted the use of body language, for Edwin had had his eyes closed throughout, and the information was far too specific to have been read from non-verbal cues anyway. For a moment I considered that it might have been possible for him to research my life before he saw me, but there was no way he could have done this without my awareness. There was also the reality that he was working full-time and could not possibly research everyone that he saw. After listening to the tape of the session several times, there was only one conclusion I could draw: channelling was for real.

Apart from explaining the dynamics of a number of family relationships with incredible accuracy, Edwin essentially confirmed what I was already starting to believe, that I had chosen my illness before I was born as a way to wake me up to my true self. I was also told that I had lived many past lives in close contact to famous teachers such as Merlin and St. Germain. Apparently in one of my incarnations I was attuned to the “Violet Flame,” an extremely powerful healing energy used to create dramatic transformations in peoples’ lives. Although quietly chuffed at being told that I was “special,” I figured that everyone has similar experiences. Upon playing the tape to Shirley, my meditation teacher, I was told in no uncertain terms that this was not the case. This did no end of magic for my seriously confused self-image.

However, despite being convinced that Edwin was for real, I was still on the whole sceptical about mediums and channels. It seemed to me that even if someone is in contact with an entity it does not mean that his or her perceptions are the whole, or even partial, truth; for someone to channel, the information has to come through his or her own personality. In addition, I reasoned that being dead or from other places is hardly an automatic boost to genius level. After all, people have committed suicide acting on channelled information. I figured that in many ways, great channelling is like using a water filter: you need relatively clean water (information) in the first place, as well as a good quality filter (channel).

Probably the most inspiring example of channelling that I found was a series of books by Neale Donald Walsch, entitled “Conversations with God.” Once again I had unearthed another extraordinary story of personal transformation. It all began when one day Neale sat down and wrote a letter to God, explaining his grievances and frustrations with life. Many people have done such things, and for them that has been the end of the story; they eventually pull themselves together and get on with their life much as before. However, in the case of Neale it was different. As soon as he stopped writing his letter, the pen continued to move. God was writing an answer!

Over the next few years, Neale channelled a total of three books: the first covering personal truths, the second global truths, and the third the really big questions. The books made for remarkable reading, and answered many questions I had about religion and spirituality in a way that was both simple and logical. Things that have been the subject of wars and conflicts of so many kinds, were dealt with in a way which just gave me that "Oh yeah, I can’t believe I never got this!" feeling.

Reading books such as these, as well as ancient teachings from various Eastern religions, assisted me in developing my own sense of God and spirituality. I started to realise that all the great religions agree on the fundamentals, essentially that there is more to life than there appears and that we should love one another while being true to ourselves. Although not wishing to join any particular religion, such a sense of faith in life and the universe became invaluable to me.

As my understanding deepened, I also started to notice a larger force working in my life. Countless small coincidences started to happen, such as developing a question in my mind, only to find the answer in the next chapter of a book I was reading. Little did I know it at the time, but the more we are open to such guidance the more powerful it gets. Thank God this is the case, for it would not be long before I would desperately need such wisdom.