It was three days before
the solstice and the sage must prepare him.
I surveyed the pale
blotchy skin on the back of my left hand. I pinched it into little hills of
flesh and watched them slowly collapse back. I looked up towards the
receptionist. Her lips moved quickly, sharing a story on the telephone. I
looked at my reflection in the glass-top coffee table. I didn’t like what he saw. Stroking my greying skin, I flapped
my hand under my double chin. It wobbled in time with my sighs. My fingers
reached up for the bags under both eyes. I pushed them up, but they dropped
back in resignation. My eyes ached, their red streaks visible in the table’s reflection. I sighed deeply, closed my eyes and lay
back, my head resting on the back of the couch.
“Mr. Spalding, Doctor will see you now.”
I shook my head, waking from a slight sleep. Groggy and
confused I followed the receptionist into Dr Collins’ office.
Dr Collins sat in his black patent leather chair behind
his large mahogany desk. He smiled, hands clasped behind his head. He was in
his mid forties, his flecks of grey hair massaging his temples.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. His voice was soft, almost effeminate. His eyes were
warmer than his smile.
I grunted, “Okay, I guess.” My shoulders dropped further with each word.
“No improvement on the new diet?”
“No, Doc.” I breathed deeply, my shoulders rising to their natural height. “Some days I wake up with a burst of energy, but it doesn’t last.” My shoulders drooped again, and the corners of my mouth dropped
like unexpressed tears. “Why, Doc, why is it happening to me? One day I was fit, healthy
and successful, everything to live for and the next I can barely walk to the
toilet. Why? Why me? I did everything right. I dieted. I exercised. I took
vitamins. I worked hard. I was good to everyone. Why me, Doc?”
Doctor Collins sat back in his chair, his palms opened
out. “I don’t know, Every test we have done has shown nothing. There is a hint
of something viral left over, but other than that we are simply in the dark.” His hands turned over; he gently rapped on the table. “All we know is that you are allergic to at least 93
substances and it could be more.”
The front door of the
clinic slammed behind me. I continued to look down, shoulders hunched, hands
slack at my side. Walking to nowhere I began to replay pictures in my mind. I
smiled weakly to the picture of myself crossing the finish line of the
Melbourne Marathon, and then there was the picture of first place in the Horsham
10K. One after another I replayed pictures and relived the emotions of my many
sporting and working victories.
“No more,” were the only words, which escaped from my lips.
The early winter wind ripped through my clothes. I
shivered and pulled the collar of my jacket tightly around my throat.
I
continued walking and thinking. I heard the voice of Doctor Collins in his
head. “As I see it, you have two choices. Either you can go on
as you are, but this will only lead to a further downward spiral in the foods
you can eat. The other, the only real choice, is to spend a month in a bubble
while we scientifically quantify the foods and chemicals you are allergic to.”
It was the best science had to offer. I was to become an
experiment in reductionism, in the hope that they could rebuild the whole.
I
was in deep shit and I knew it
I continued walking. My arms hanging limply by my sides,
my shoulders pinched in an attempt to keep out the cold. More pictures began to
invade my mind. I remembered that fateful Sunday morning when I rose for my
weekly 32K run. I dressed quickly, taking a noisy swig of orange juice; for
there was not time for breakfast: I’d laced up one of my many pairs of old Nike's and ran out the
front door.
After a hundred meters I felt like shit.
Nothing unusual, I would be okay in another couple of
kilometres, I assured myself, when I warmed up, or so I’d thought. No such luck; fifty meters further and I was
doubled over, spilling last night’s vegetarian dinner in a heap on the side of the road.
I
had walked and half crawled the 150 meters back to his home, where I spent the
whole day in bed. Next day I could barely drive the 2 kilometres to work or
walk the fifty meters from the car park to my office at the supermarket, where
I was manager. I stayed in the office resting for an hour before I made a
pathetic tour of the supermarket. Exhausted, I went back to the office and
rested for another hour before I surfaced again. I struggled on like this for
four days before; finally, my complete lethargy forced me to see a doctor.
That
had been when the tests began and continued for the next eighteen months. I had
become a human pincushion. And every time the results showed the same thing:
nothing, or next to nothing. The traces showed something viral but not enough
for them to be sure what the virus was.
I
was passed from one doctor to another: an endless procession of wise men in
white coats, with stethoscopes hanging around their necks. The final doctor I
saw had seen recommended me to an allergy clinic, where the tests began again.
At least, there had been no more blood tests. The tests they performed were to
find what it was I was allergic to. The diet was depressing, but at least it
seemed to be helping. That was, until my last bout of sickness. I had gone back
to work and for two months everything had been going well: I was working too
many hours and had even started running again. Then one morning I woke up and
could barely make it to the shower. That had been two weeks ago and that was
why the only choice I had left was the allergy bubble.
I saw in my mind a picture of myself in a bubble, sucking foods
through a straw and having no contact with the outside world. My mind pictures
were over dramatised but they at least took me away from the real world of
exhaustion.
When I finally escaped the inner worlds of his mind, I stopped
walking and looked around. I shook my head in disbelief. I had walked all the
way from Richmond to the city. A distance of only a few kilometres, but given
my current state, anything over a hundred meters was a bonus. Confused, I asked
myself. “How could I have walked so far?”
There was more to this illness than the purely physical. I did not
know what or how, but in that moment I sensed, in a deeper part of myself, that
there was a way out of this debilitating disease and it had something to do
with his mind. Given my current understanding of mind body medicine this was a
quantum leap of universal proportions. We are talking about a man whose only
reading consisted of books on athletics or marketing. My whole world had
revolved around work and running. I was obsessed with becoming better. The
better I became the harder I worked, the harder I trained. The illness brought
all that to an end. The illness caused a crack in the person I thought I was
and yet, at the same time, there was a hint, or small glimpse, of something
else.
It
was then that I prayed for the first time. It was not an ‘our father who art in heaven,' sought of thing, it was
more a stillness in his mind where I asked what ever was out there for help,
help, plain and simple. I did not ask for any specifics. Then, within seconds,
his mind was once again a jumble of the millions of thoughts that fought for
his attention in the stillness.
A
red flash appeared at the edge of his awareness. I’s head snapped back, only to discover it was a red
dragon flapping above the entrance to a Chinese restaurant. My mind responded
to the memories of food eaten in the past and I began to salivate.
I wanted Chinese food. ‘Fuck the allergies. What’s happening?’ I thought to myself. ‘I have been so careful to only eat what I was supposed to eat, for
such a long time. What am I doing?’ I watched as my feet took his body through the doorway and under
the Red Dragon.
Once
inside the door, my shoulders raised and breath filled my lungs. I sniffed at
the thousands of smells that filled the restaurant, smells I had denied myself.
I sniffed through the smells, reacting to one spice laid on top of another.
There was garlic, which usually made him sick, then lemon grass, then chili,
and then I could not quite make out some of the other smells. I closed his eyes
and took another deep breath.
The
waiter led me to a table while I was still in a state of ecstasy. The part of
me, which existed in the earthly consciousness, ordered a bottle of De Bortoli
Chardonnay and mulled over the menu while the other part of me danced in the
province of angels.
The
waiter coughed gently, his hand in a fist in front of his mouth. I shook my
head free from my revere. I looked up into the waiter’s smooth, creaseless face and smiled. A smile returned
instantly, as if we were sharing a secret.
I did not have to wait
long. Within a few days I was introduced to a man named Glynn who ran a weight
loss program mainly for women called the IFA which stood for "Improper Fat
Accumulation". At a sickly 72kgs I did not need to lose any weight, but
there was something about Glynn that attracted me to his teaching. The program
ran over a season, or about 13 weeks during which time there was a number of cleansings
and detoxes, combined with mega doses of vitamins and minerals and a special
diet. Within about six weeks my allergies had reduced dramatically and I was
feeling better than I had in a number of years.
I was in the
audience on one of the last days of the program when Glynn asked a question
that would change my life forever. "Would you like to look at a person and
know them better than they know themselves to be able to talk to them in their
own language, to know their strengths and weaknesses and be able to their see
their health and disease patterns now and into their future?" Although I
was one of maybe a hundred in the audience I felt like he was talking directly
to me. In that moment my life was changed. My life from that moment turned in a
direction that even a few months before I would never have been able to even
comprehend what was happening.
The Elements of Man
Glynn
began the teaching with the following story:
‘Soon
he walked within his garden, each evening; and as he would touch the leaves or
sit beneath the tree or watch the birds fly, he wondered. The old sage of the
forest of K'an had taught him, when he was younger, of nature. What had he
said? His memory was old. It was so far away. He had once asked, `How do I know
when a person is truthful?' What had the sage answered... what were his words?
He could not remember. But as he sat beneath the tree he remembered that the
sage had taught him these things. And so he rose, and walked to his most
trusted minister, and said, `Go to the forest of K'an and bring back the sage.
You will enter through dark trees. Go forth for one half day until you come to
a lake, the lake of purification. Sit beside it until the sage comes to you.'
‘And
so the minister went and he found the forest and went into it. He sat beside
the lake and waited for the sage. As the sun was setting over the mountains, as
the birds were beginning to quiet their day, as the insects were defying the
silence, he felt a touch on his shoulder. `What can I do for you, messenger of
the Emperor?'
‘The
Emperor would like you to go to him. He has much trouble.' And so the old sage
said, `Three days from this day the old sage will be in his garden, beneath the
willow tree.' And so the minister went back to the Emperor. He told the Emperor
what was said, and he was happy. Three days later he went to the tree and sat,
and the sage appeared. They talked for many hours. And the sage said, `I cannot
teach the way to do this in one night or two. Being a dictatorial ruler will
not bring this wisdom. Mystics and magicians cannot. Spies will not. You must
leave your court for one year.'
‘The
Emperor said, `but I cannot.' And the sage said, `Let me tell you how you can.'
And so they prepared. And the Emperor was told how he would begin each day for
the next five days, to prepare his court for his leaving.
‘And
so the routine was changed, and the Emperor would sit upon his throne and he
would say, 'Listen. I will sit now.' And the ministers would come and talk; and
he would wave them away. This went on for three hours in the morning and three
hours in the evening. And the Emperor would dismiss his court. At the end of
five days, the sage said, 'We are now ready for you to leave.'
‘And
as the Winter Solstice approached, in the cold of the night, as the sun was
shining in the other parts of the world, and as the moon was high, they slipped
through the garden of the palace. And each day, at exactly the same time, the
old sage would appear in the guise of the Emperor and sit upon his throne. He
would sit and listen, as the Emperor was in the forest of K'an learning to deal
with people.
It was three days before the
Solstice, and the sage must prepare him. He told him what his role was to be.
He said, `First you must know that man is like nature. Man is but a cycle, as
your world is a cycle. Each thing has its seasons, as man has a cycle of the
seasons. This is not only within man, but also within the history of mankind.'
He pointed that in time he would be learning of the people who identify with
the seasons. And the Emperor was glad. As the Solstice approached, the Elements
of Man were revealed. Years later, Emperors later, when the Emperors no longer
went into the forest of K'an, these were lost."
When
Glynn finished telling the story I felt like I had been on the journey with the
Emperor and the sage. I knew in that moment that I would spend the rest of my
life working to understand the seasons within man and mankind. The story was
alive to me. The elements of Fire, water, Air and Earth were dancing through
the room. The elements within my body were reacting with the elements in the
room and elements within the earth. In my own microcosm I was connected with
the macrocosm.
This was the beginning of the study
of the elements. As the course continued and I continued to learn and develop
my understanding of the elements there was a number of disciplines which Glynn
gave me that allowed a deepening of my understanding of the elements and one in
particular that would become a part of my life for the next 30 years. The first
discipline was to keep everything I learnt in these sessions to myself. To only
discuss it with others who were attending the workshops. This was not done because
we needed to keep these teachings a secret. It was because we had such a
tenuous grip on their understanding that to discuss with those who did not
understand could cripple the unfolding of the teaching. We were not to discuss
the teachings for a season to allow the teachings to unfold within us. I went
one step further and did not share any of the teachings for a full year.
Looking back I could see that this and my passion for the teachings helped them
to continue to develop, even to this day.
The
other teaching that had a major impact on me was the concept of "walk don't run, for you are always in
the right place at the right time." This one discipline if practiced
correctly will allow you to connect with the synchronicity of the earth plane. The
next time you are late for a meeting, stop yourself for a moment and take a
deep breath and the say to yourself, "walk don't run" and know that
you are in the right place at the right time. How many times have I practice
this and find myself arriving at the exact moment when the other person turned
up for our meeting and then apologising to me for their being late. By
practicing "walk don't run" in everything you do seems to put you in
a balance with the all that there is and makes your life easier and on some
occasions far more interesting, but that is getting ahead of myself and I will
try to follow my own advice and walk not run as I let this story unfold as it
should.
'Walk
don't run' is more than not rushing to appointments. It is an intent. It is
knowing that you are always in the right place at the right time. Wherever you
are is where you are meant to be. Look around and you will always see the truth
of it. Wherever you are is where you are meant and chosen to be and there is
always a message therefore you. Jung called it synchronicity. The Celestine
Prophecy was a book filled with the concept of synchronicity. Synchronicity occurs
when the answers you are looking for internally are experienced and projected
into your outer life. 'Walk don't run' is the concept that aligns us with these
synchronistic moments.
