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Chapter 1In The BeginningExtending The LightI woke up in light as light. Light was everywhere and everything. I was everywhere andeverything. Not a bright white light, one that hurts your eyes when you look at it or onethat burns you if you get too close or freezes you if you get to far away. Instead it was asoft amber light. One that has already oozed into every nook and cranny of being-nessand is there to stay. Like a warm bath, this light was something I had already relaxed intoand been opened by. Alive with being, extending in all directions. Not that there was asense of direction. More one of simply infinite being, enjoying being. I existed in thisocean of soft amber light. I was one with the ocean. Endless and at peace. Pulsating andalive with love and harmony and an effulgent joy. Bliss in being. The eternal moment.Foreverness.Or so it seemed.Almost imperceptibly, in the depths, there was a stirring, the slightest murmur of lowgrumbling discord, that, like a maelstrom, broke out in a mad shrieking cacophony ofunbelievable, unrelenting proportions and in what seemed like the blink of an eye, all thatbeautiful light was gone and only darkness and sickening terror remained. Chaos anddisorder reigned.Then I woke up, panicked, stressed and on the verge of, if not openly, screaming, fromwhat was one of my main repetitive nightmares as a kid. If I couldn’t handle the terror I’dhead for the bottom of my mum’s bed. Dad had left years before so mum was my refugeand the floor at the bottom of her bed was the closest I felt I could safely get to the comfortof her presence. I’d had too many memories of waking mum up in terror and being told toget back to my own bed, that I was unwilling to risk jumping right in for a cuddle. So I’dlay there, as close and as quiet as I could to not disturb her. Listening to the sound of herbreathing and being close to her helped me recover a sense of safety in the world that hadbeen completely shredded by the dark force that had overwhelmed the light.Years later mum told me she would let me into bed but it’s an interesting thing about theway we selectively remember the past that I don’t remember those times at all. I certainlydo remember the long cold hours spent at the foot of her bed in the north of Scotlandshaking both from cold and fear until either I fell asleep there or I settled down enough togo back to my own bed or waking mum up and being told to get back to bed. Over time Ilearnt I could handle the fear so I’d stay in bed till it quietened down and I could get backto sleep.It had just been a dream. Or was it, ‘just a dream’? Was it something else? Somethingreal? Was it a ‘memory’ of my birth, my emergence from the womb into the world? Orwas it a ‘memory’ of my conception, from the world of spirit, beyond mind and body, into12

the physical world? That sense of coming from the light of consciousness into the body?I had that dream experience once more in my adult life, shortly after I started doingbreath work.I have heard and can make up all sorts of stories about it but when all is said and done,how would you really know and what does it really matter?What did matter for me is that dream experience of the light felt as real to me as my bodyand the world we live in, feels now. Because of how undeniable that was for me, I’vechosen to accept and recognise that experience as a guiding inner light and I have, ingeneral, continuously sought to bring that experience of light and love and joy and peaceand harmony into my everyday living. I have wondered how life on earth, what we do formoney and work, how we interact with our family and each other, could reflect thatbetter? And that has been a driving force for a lot of my life choices.For a long time I thought the journey was to ‘get back’ to the light and it was at the tenderage of 57, while sharing my story on a leadership panel, that I was able to hear myself saysomething in a new way.That revelation for me, was that there is no ‘going back’, there is only going forward.I’m sure that sense of needing to go back to sort something out is not unique to me but Ihad it pretty bad. For the first time the realisation that there was no going back was adeep visceral sensation that brought to light, pun intended, how I’d been perceiving on adeep level, my relationship to the ‘light’. I could see that my relationship to the light hadbeen about being separate and needing to get back to it.In that moment, I understood that all along it has always really been about me needing toacknowledge, appreciate and trust the presence of the light in me and in my life – now.So that in living from that place I could help to extend it.It was a paradigm shifting moment for me.You may have heard this tale used to describe what a paradigm shift is:A battlecruiser in a stormy ocean at night was faced with a blinking lighton a collision course with it.The captain radio’d the source of the light and commanded it to change course.The light responded back with the exact same command.‘I am not moving, I suggest you change course.’Not being used to having his authority challenged, the captain ordered the returnmessage, ‘I am the biggest battlecruiser on the ocean, Lord of the seven seas and Icommand you to turn aside.’The light replied with elegant simplicity,‘I am a lighthouse.So I suggest you choose a different course.Right NOW.’You can imagine the change of mind the captain went through.13

It’s my favourite analogy for describing a paradigm shift. Often we may experience apuffed up sense of importance of an idea we have, only to experience a ‘lighthouse’moment and completely change tack, to hopefully a more life supportive one, like thatcaptain would have needed to.I wonder if society as a whole may be on the verge of its own ‘lighthouse’ moment aboutlife? I hope so. But what I’ve come to understand is important, that no matter what therest of the world is doing, whether it be someone really close to me or someone I don’tknow that is being portrayed in the media for whatever. What really matters is how Irelate to the moment I find myself in and everything that is appearing in it.I don’t believe my experiences with the light are unique. Somewhere along your timeline,I imagine, you’ve experienced something that has had you wondering similar thoughtsabout the life we are part of. The life that lies beyond our bodies and beyond our mindsand that our bodies and minds exist within.Whatever it was for you, I believe those experiences are worth paying attention to. If youhaven’t already I’d suggest you take the time to write them down. Include your responsesand questions to them. Share them with someone close. Take time to savour theirmeaning in your life.I am reminded here of Viktor Frankl’s comment in his book, Man’s Search For Meaning,about what got him through the atrocities he and many others experienced. Viktor was anAustrian Jewish psychiatrist that survived the Nazi concentration camps where his father,his mother and his wife, died. He says it was the discovery that he was free to choose whatwas in his mind.I believe that freedom to choose, not just what is in our minds, although that is a majorturning point, but what exactly to listen to within, is a key factor for all of us to learn toexercise.14

Chapter 2Who Am I?Answering The QuestionOnly once have I been made mute.It was when a man asked me,Who are you?Kahlil GibranHow you choose to answer this question has consequences that will either reverberatejoyously throughout the universe or slip off unannounced into nothingness.Once people find out I graduated as a medical doctor and then left nine months into myfirst year, more often than not the very next question is; Why did you leave? My answerhas often felt inadequate to me. Partly because there is a part of me still answering thatquestion for myself and also because it’s not something I can truly encapsulate in a fewwords.Bush doctor - New Guinea medical elective 1978Here is a fuller answer 15

I have started this chapter several times and wondered how to begin. Like, how about From The Frying Pan Into The Fire, which might give you a sense of what it may havebeen like for me.Then one night while watching Greg Braden’s Missing Links series, the one where he talksabout this question, Who am I?, as the most fundamental question that anyone can askthemselves because the way they answer it will govern their whole field of perception.While watching that episode I was reminded that it was attempting to answer thisquestion, Who Am I?, that was the biggest part of why I left medicine.Let’s go back some.On the strength of those light dream experiences I wrote about in Chapter 1, I rememberone day questioning my Sunday School teacher about the nature of God. We were still inScotland, in my home town Fraserburgh aka The Broch, so I must have been 9 or younger(we came to NZ when I was 9). Sorry, I didn’t write down the date of that momentousoccasion. At least it was momentous for me. I never asked the Sunday School teacheranything ever again so I never got to find out how it affected her:)! At one point I becameconscious that it was my first ever stand up argument with an adult and it felt like a life ordeath issue.It was centred around my confusion. How could an All Loving God do all those nastythings they were talking about? Turning women into pillars of salt, flooding the worldand killing everyone apart from Noah and his family, asking Abraham to sacrifice his sonand then doing the same thing with his own Son, for real this time, among a host of otherBiblical dramas and current day disasters and personal trials and tribulations that wereoften mentioned as God's Will.It really didn’t make any sense to me, at all. And I couldn’t reconcile that, with the innersense or knowing that I had, that an all loving God just wouldn’t do that. That kind ofbehaviour had nothing to do with the everlasting light that I knew and everything to dowith that terrifying darkness.So here I am standing, quaking in my boots, having this ‘discussion’, with everyone else inthe class looking on and neither the Sunday School teacher nor I, were going to changeour minds. It was impasse city and indeed it went nowhere but it did have an impact onme.I don’t remember the exact words from both sides but I do remember the conclusion Icame to as clear as day. Well if what she says about God is true, I want nothing to dowith Him. It didn’t occur to me, at that tender age, that my position might have somevalidity. So I did as the proverbial saying goes, I threw the baby out with the bath water.God and I were finished.16

Mum never went to church, at least I have no memory of going to church with her. Forsome reason as far as she was concerned, she’d made up her mind that church was not forher but she had told me that she wanted me to go to Sunday School so that I could makeup my own mind.So, on my way home after that conversation with the Sunday School teacher I imaginedthat when I got home, I’d tell my mum that I’d made my mind up that I didn’t want orneed to go to Sunday School anymore and that would be that. But alas, that was not to bethe case. Mum’s argument? Ye’re o’er young t’ be makin’ yer mind up aboot things likethat. So Sunday school wasn’t finished for me just yet.It seemed it was only shortly after that, in 1964, we emigrated by ship to New Zealand andto my chagrin I was packed off to another Sunday School, which was just over the fencefrom our home in Charlotte Ave, in Brooklyn, Wellington. I went a few times but I was 10now, I’d wisened up a little around my mum and I wasn’t going to use the same reason fornot wanting to go that hadn't worked for me the last time. So, one Sunday I came backand said I don’t want to go and blamed it on not liking the people there. For some reasonshe accepted that and there was no more Sunday School for me. It was well after mumhad passed over that I wondered if maybe she just wanted Sunday mornings off, withoutme around? One of those questions I’ll never get to ask.That’s perhaps a good life lesson to pass on. I’m sure I’m not the only one who hasquestions that will never be answered. It seems to be a reasonably universal trait that weoften don’t think to ask our folks about all sorts of things that we find we’d love to knowafter they’ve gone. If your parents are still alive you can start a list of: questions I’d like toask my folks before they die and can no longer ask. Another question you could use ifyou want to stimulate your mind to come up with questions could be: if my folks weredead now what questions would I be most upset that I hadn’t asked? See which ones youreally would like to ask now and go ahead and ask them before it’s too late. You’ll begrateful you did.Funny thing about the mind. One of its favourite things seems to be to ask and answerquestions and one thing to learn is if you want better answers its best to ask betterquestions. I’ve come up with a couple of questions there just to show you an example ofthat in action but the thing is for you to learn to think of and ask better questions yourself.I may have overcompensated with our own girls, trying to tell them repeatedly about theirown family history so that hopefully they will remember it:). They’ll often moan at meabout that but there are also poignant moments where they realise something that Ithought they would have remembered from my previous memory sharing. Alas, it’s onlywhen something becomes important to us that we bring it to light.Back to my story. I felt bad about lying about not liking the other kids but it worked andhappily, there was no more Sunday School for me. As I said, even though I had beendutifully going to Sunday School I’d left the idea of God behind with that argument in The17

Broch and it stayed that way for a while. But it wasn’t to be for that long in the grandscheme of things.In the early 7o’s in New Zealand there was a big screen film came out, called The Bible. Iremember going to it with my girlfriend, Anne. For some reason it made a big enoughimpression on me that I came away from it thinking well maybe I should revisit thiswhole idea of God?That revisiting started in earnest when my girlfriend and I split up. The pain was intense.I was suffering, and Malcolm, one of my friends from a neighbouring Catholic BoysSchool, St Patricks, handed me a book he thought might help. It wasn’t a book you wouldexpect a Catholic boy to be reading but he wasn’t exactly a model Catholic. I didn’t knowhow important a part of my life it was to become. The book was ParamahansaYogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. It was a book I would return to after eachsuccessive break up. There were 3 of them. So I read it 3 times before I left medicine.At that point in my life my relationships tended to last about a yea

help ease your way. As the title suggests this book is about Simplifying Life’s Lessons for you, so you can LIBERATE yourSelf. The acronym I created for LIBERATE is Life In Balance, Expanding, Radiating And Touching Everyone. For me that is the essence of how love works in the world. But the thought of l