Postscript

I finished writing the previous 26 chapters in 2017, but of course my personal awareness and my relationship with Eva have not remained static since then. What follows is an abridged version of the Postscript I wrote in 2020 The changes within myself and my relationship with Eva since 2020 could comfortably fill another three chapters – but I have to stop somewhere! This postscript illustrates the way that my personal, and our relational, journeys continue – and will do so until our death. This is not a story with an ending, it is a continual ‘work in progress’.

In 2018 I noticed that I was frequently experiencing states of quite strong fear.  The immediate trigger was that I was planning to confront a close friend about something I knew would prove difficult. But I also found myself vividly remembering the fear that Peter used to experience prior to giving a public talk on energy issues back in the 1970s. The fear was so striking that I decided I needed to explore it further.

I had heard good reports of a trauma therapy with the catchy name Eye Movement Dissociation and Recovery; EMDR for short. A good friend recommended a therapist in Plymouth. When I contacted him I explained that I would like an intensive set of sessions, rather than the hour a week model. He agreed and I undertook two full days of EMDR with him; 3 hours each morning and afternoon.

On the first day I discovered a trauma that had not shown up in any of my previous therapies. In it I was being terrorised by whoever looked after me whilst my mother gave birth to my sister – so I was exactly 22 months old. I think it was my mother’s mother looking after me and each time I cried she shook me until I stopped. I was totally terrified and traumatised by her vicious shaking. This also explained why my mother’s punishment involved shaking me – sometimes until I passed out  My mother was simply repeating what had been done to her. This was probably also true of my grandmother and so on back down a line of violent mothering.

Uncovering this source of fear had a profound effect on me. One obvious change, which we tested in the sessions on day 2, was that when I relived the fearful experiences that Peter had giving public talks, the fear was enormously reduced.  A short time later I noticed that I was willing to ask strangers for help, for example for directions. Previously people had assumed I didn’t ask for help out of a sense of arrogance or independence. No, I didn’t ask strangers because I was terrified of them shaking me to death!

Another striking effect occurred when Eva had I had our next altercation – and yes they still happened despite being in bliss most of the time. First I was able to be more in touch with feeling hurt and express this to Eva. But what I also noticed was that although I was experiencing and expressing the hurt, I was not feeling sorry for myself, I was not blaming Eva nor wanting to cause her injury. This was radically new territory for me. In the past whenever I have felt hurt I have used it to justify being unkind in retaliation. Over and over again I found myself in a different place and responding differently. Eva noticed it and was very struck by it. She said I was behaving impeccably and by simply describing what I experienced I was helping her to see what she was doing.

Very early in 2020 Eva went to Australia to see her family and grandchildren. I decided to stay home because here was a chance to give myself a new retreat. So I initiated serious self-inspection, meditation and visits to my wise-man to understand more about what was going on with me. Each time I went to visit my wise man, instead of calmly answering my queries he would shout at me.  “What are you doing walking around in misery and despair when you could be Love?  Wake up and just be your real Self!” I was shocked, both by the change in how he was relating to me and by what he was saying. But slowly I let it in that he was giving me good advice and shifted my intention during meditation to “Being Love” And it worked. To my surprise I found I could access being Love, without all the bliss and fireworks of a direct experience, just the quiet presence of being what I actually am.

As you might imagine I found it hard to accept all this. Although I always wanted to be able to access this state, I never really believed I ever would. I had a very deep assumption that such a beautiful state would always be inaccessible to an old sinner like me. I noticed that I was very nervous about claiming this shift.

There was another interesting change around this time.  Previously when I using the wise man fantasy and  receiving the instruction “now become the wise man”,  I would go through a process of imagining being him and what his life was like. Now when I receive the instruction “now become the wise man”, I experience myself enter a new state of consciousness. It is hard to convey in words. I have a sense of being in a vast empty space which is peaceful, open and full of love. I often just sit in this space for several minutes before proceeding with the fantasy; it is a delightful space to be in. A few days after Eva returned from Australia we decided to do a dyad using the instruction “Tell me what you are”. I was struggling once again to really own that I was actually accessing the state of ‘being Love’. I started off wishing I had a teacher who could confirm my state .And then the penny dropped. The reason I was holding back was because I did not want to claim something that was not true. Mastering Intensives for many years had given me a relationship to Truth, to enlightenment, that I honoured by insisting on incontrovertible confirmation of my own and other people’s experiences. As I presented myself to Eva in that dyad I could see that she was visibly affected by my state. In fact it threw her back into the experience she had 40 years earlier on the Intensive where I experienced being Love for the first time. What’s more she discovered an aspect of her experience that she had previously overlooked. So I was finally convinced; I really am accessing a state of being Love, and when I do so it can profoundly affect others with whom I have close contact.