Every ending has a beginning. Significant endings (psychological suffering) and beginnings (spiritual awakenings/recovery) freedom from the daily hell of complex trauma, addictive behaviours, compulsivity, obsession, chaos and consequences.
in the Spring of 1986, making a decision to volunteer in response to a need within to help, to be of service in the community. A series of spiritual awakenings occurred with impeccable timing. When something is meant to be, it is without the struggle or self imposed fail-fast mentality. Upon reflection my early recovery was an extraordinary time, full of grace to my seemingly challenging efforts at the time.
For my 20th birthday, a generous friend gifted me a visit to a retreat, I was part of group who were taught the practice of Transcendental Meditation – in Sydney’s gorgeous Blue Mountains. I will never forget that feeling of being safe, albeit for a few minutes, my soul silently calming down to a state of perfect silence and stillness within.
I continued to meditate until I simply forgot…in the same way I forgot to pray…my world was becoming smaller and smaller…and addiction came to eclipse every area of my life. The “ism” of alcoholism is truly insidious. Consuming more and caring less….
Unconditionally feeling supported is being mentored by people who saw something in me that I didn’t and they trusted one day I would too – has been Seva in action, without their support my life would have taken a completely different trajectory.
Mentors evolved into teachers, friends whom I felt an initial connection with but did not understand at the time how deep these relationships would become, and how precious this would be until it was gone…such individuals are irreplaceable I guess what made their support so graceful.
I am truly grateful that the majority of people in my small circle of trusted family and friends only ever wanted to love me until I could love myself. Meeting many remarkable, likeminded souls in the universal recovery community continues to help me in the most comforting ways. Their love and support has remained a constant in my life 35 years later from that moment of surrendering – and the journey to wholeness began.
Poetry soothes my soul’s yearning for love and acceptance. Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” re-awakened my love of her insights into what I call a “poetic surrender” into the moment.
WILD GEESE
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your placein the family of things.
© Mary Oliver
In rehab a counsellor suggested that the age I began using substances to self sooth was the age I stopped thriving, maturing and being accountable. Made sense at the time to me that my default setting was narcissistic and entitled. Shame blocks humility, ergo asking for helping was impossible, Withdrawal from others is a maladaptive coping mechanism against vulnerability. Punitive, emotional abandonment.
I take rejection personally, and will not make myself that vulnerable again. So I disconnected. All the while acting out blaming others. Pathos & pain. Avoidance anxiety and anger: I was desperately unhappy, and as we say in the 12step programme it was a moment of desperation that changed everything, I asked for help.
It was difficult at first to change but I didn’t quit because I was no longer alone. I became teachable. I reconnected to a daily spiritual practice of prayer and meditation. In the beginning, I experienced moments of abject stillness in my TM daily practice. Over time these strength in stillness moments engendered tangible trust in the process…engendering releasing negative patterns and themes…I was leaning to love the hurt, until it became love…
All the while listening with a quiet mind, there is so much to hear. Inside ourselves we can begin to hear that “still small voice within,” as the Quakers call it, the voice of our intuitive heart which has so long been drowned out by addiction’s negativity. My skills and needs, subtle intentionalities, limits, and innate generosity meant I had no choice but to help others, in them anyways I had been helped. I felt called to help others who were suffering alone, often in silence. I fond my way home….
In 1986 @ “The Church of the Heavenly Rest.” volunteering with Andy Warhol. 1988 supporting sober women in recovery with First Lady Betty addiction healthcare advocate @ universal recovery community. 1989 volunteer and fund raiser working along side Marianne Williamson @ “The Manhattan Centre for Living.”
A professional crisis, required distancing myself, in the gap came the internal response to retreat, transcend into the practice of meditative silence, pilgrimages, all the while living and working nearby Meher Baba’s Ashram/Retreat Centre in a rural village in India. Love in action is doing service, giving back, giving people what they need is a series of many small actions. I left behind a successful career in fashion, film and broadcasting to live a simpler, much more rewarding life.
Freedom the bondage of selfishness: my life changed from being bound by addictive behaviours, obsessive thinking, selfishness, chaos and and cravings to one of being of service, as a volunteer in NYC and much more. Hopefully this will inspire people who are suffering, in pain and feeling hopeless and helpless. People who despite their circumstances can not stay stopped. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
Recovery is the foundation for living sober, an abstinence based life, freedom from the fear of relapse, is what awaits all who wish to stop. Ask for help. You are not meant to do recovery alone.
I am allowing the process of self discovery momentarily unsettle me as I revisit my past in the present. So, one day at a time, one chapter at a time as I write my upcoming memoir: “From Andy Warhol to the Ashram” a homage to humanity.
Intimate, transformative encounters with luminaries Andy Warhol. Recovery advocate First Lady Betty Ford. Universal humanitarian Marianne Williamson. Meher Baba’s Mandali: wise, patient teachers in Eastern & Western spirituality, philosophy, mythology, and psychological awareness.
Before covid I travelled, with my husband to Baba’s ashram almost annually for truly memorable pilgrimages/visits to ancient sacred sites: India. Egypt. Australia. France. Italy. England. Scotland and America.
Origin is ever-present. Every ending is a beginning. Here and now. A deep bow to my darling Scottish mother. Echoes of salient thoughts always soothed my troubled soul. Love, she believed was our the highest calling. She was well known in our community as a kind, compassionate person. A friend too many, always ready to help. We shared a love of humanity, always wanting to see the best in others. I continue to find comfort in her wisdom, particularly when a relationship finished because of what she had taught me as a child, the antidote to suffering is in helping others, doing service, within one’s community.
G.B. SHAW philosophy on suffering: “This is the true joy in life. The being used for a purpose considered by yourself as mighty. The being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfishlittle clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and while I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch that I’ve got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn s brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
The unbridled progressiveness of addictive behaviours: neurotic obsessiveness, compulsivity, inconsistent impulse control substance abuse and dependency: prescription pills, alcohol and opines valium for 17 years manifested intense suffering in the immediacy of my daily life.
Freudian Psychoanalyst Karen Horney’s “Neurosis and Human Growth is a revelatory study in the holistic template for individual development, growth and maturity.
Dr. Karen Horney writes:
“Only the individual himself can develop his given potentialities. But, like any other living organism, the human Individuum needs favorable conditions for his growth “from acorn into oak tree”; he needs an atmosphere of warmth to give him both a feeling of inner security and the inner freedom enabling him to have his own feelings and thoughts and to express himself. He needs the good will of others, not only to help him in his many needs but to guide and encourage him to become a mature and fulfilled individual. He also needs healthy friction with the wishes and wills of others. If he can thus grow with others, in love and in friction, he will also grow in accordance with his real self.
Of course, when one is a highly functioning addict, or so I believed, surrounded by a close circle of enablers whose addiction to pain and drama mirrored mine. Mutuality, maladaptive coping mechanisms chaos, consequences and conflict were the norm, Deflecting, reactionary behaviours automatically suppressed.
Chapter One: chronicles family intervention, rehab, A spiritual awakening, transformation and mind, body and spirit.recovery, repeat. Deep dive into addiction, what happen in an intervention, how to navigate 12step meetings, working the 12steps and beyond addiction: integrative therapies, TM daily practice.
Living in NYC, is not dissimilar to a love affair. Some mornings I’d wake up, not hungover almost hopeful, excited about the day ahead. Or I would be hungover, ergo cancel my diary, turn on the answer machine on, shut the drapes, nightshade on, pop a sleeping pill and numb out.
One morning in the lead up to Easter, a brochure arrived in the mail. “How to volunteer” which listed NYC churches, dates and times. I chose the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, for no other reason, other than it was closest to my Upper East Side apartment. At the church I was introduced to the welcoming, Rector, on leave from Sotheby’s, Hugh Hildesley.
I was about to learn a few lessons in love, life and humanity. For many years Hugh hosted the homeless every Easter Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. At the time I did not know Andy Warhol was one of about 80 volunteers that showed up to do service, feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Or that I would come to know a previously unknown side to Andy, his quiet generosity of spirit.
I would often see Andy, sitting quietly in the church. Few knew about Andy’s regular Sunday church services close by his town house on East 66th street. At Heavenly Rest we would extend chats about God, spirituality away from the Church if he decided he wanted to walk me, part of the way home, along 5th Avenue.
I learned from Andy what inspired his last known series of works “Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. ” this series was commissioned by Alexandre Lolas who had given Andy Warhol his first show in New York in 1952. This series of works based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper was offered to show at a gallery in Milan. Perfectly placed, across the street from Santa Maria delle Grazie, which houses the original Da Vinci painting.
Andy Warhol Last Supper series is based on plaster kitsch reproductions of the scene that he found, according to various sources, at a service station on the New Jersey Turnpike and religious trinkets from a Times Square tourist shop.
Sadly for us, Andy Warhol’s health was deteriorating – the frequency of stomach pains led to major surgery, the removal of his gallbladder. That the surgery had been frequently postponed by Andy’s complex fear of hospitalisation, certainly since his brush with death in 1968 when was shot by paranoid schizophrenic Valerie Solanas may have contributed to cycles of un-wellness.
Andy had never fully recovered from the gunshot wounds to nine vital organs, despite ongoing health issues, he mastered the art of concealing physical pain and digestive discomfort by rarely eating out with others. Sadly Andy survived major gallbladder surgery but died the next day, due to ventricular fibrillation, February 22, 1987.
Upon reflection, I felt saddened but comforted to have known an unknown side of Andy. The Andy who loved walking around the room full of honored guests, nameless New Yorkers, filling their cups, from a huge coffee pot. Some recognised Andy, all recognised him as a true friend to the friendless.
VICTIM TO VICTORIOUS Representing the far reaching impact of addiction. “A divinely intervention” beyond the heart opening encounters through the various stages of recovery. An archetypal journey to freedom from the bondage of self. A continuum of catharsis: internally and externally healing the wounded soul. The cycles of recovery as being connected to a greater purpose.
I engaged in the hero’s journey, from what I could recall bringing with my birth through the various stages of my life, each archetype revealing more as I released memories of unresolved trauma.
Unflinching honesty. Intimate insights. Introspective. Courage to change, to love and overcome adverse encounters and experiences. Breaking down walls of silence, shame, secret and lies. Establishing healthy fluid boundaries, ego strengths and personal freedom.
Chapter Three`:
A RETURN TO LOVE: Within a few months of learning how to live sober, I volunteered at Marianne Williamson’s “Manhattan Centre for Living” a downtown loft space created to be a safe haven for people suffering from AIDS. As volunteer I worked alongside integrative healthcare practitioners in treating the suffering with non invasive practices.
Marianne’s Centre was groundbreaking at the time. The seeds of her vision for universal healthcare took hold in NYC and LA. brining unity and hope to so many suffering people who had been disenfranchised from their families, employers, peers and friends, moreover the Gay men’s health crisis was impacted by a universal crisis: accessing care. In tandem an epidemic of global fear was creating separation in communities that healthcare workers struggled to heal.
Deeply humbling because nothing was asked of us – simply to bear witness to those in need. I came to the conclusion that because of living a privileged life it was time to give back. My third career in counselling and psychotherapy – a journey of the next 10 years of training began in earnest during my time at the centre.
Expansive healing: Family constellation healing inspired by the path to love, spirituality and non-duality underpinned by illusion /Maya. Threefold, mental, spiritual and physical suffering.
ATTACHMENT THEORY: I began my family constellation healing in 1-1 therapy. Gestalt and Transactional therapy techniques formed the basis of profound healing. I learned how to love the hurt, until it became love. Trusting the process engenders revealing the past in the past. As opposed to reliving trauma in the present I found this process one that I brought into my Harley Street practice, the benefits of emotional maturity are evident in ensuring the client felt safe, unhurried and encouraged.
MY FAMILY CONSTELLATION HEALING IN 1-1 My family taught me how to love, what to think, principles, and standards. But more than this, they are my mirrors from which my own individuality has been shaped and is forever reflected.
The blueprint that shapes our personalities stems from being the recipient of different types of attachment engendering a childhood development from narcissistic to dependent to eventual inter-dependency. The different stages of childhood intellectual and emotional development occur before adolescence and the flow is as follows:
• Symbiosis
• Narcissism
• Ego separation
• Differentiation
• Individuation.
A synthesis of intellectual development: our for life ego strengths, emotional intelligence and inherent maturity. Free will, logic, and behaviour patterns. Communication, styles and personal boundaries, in essence the formation of the archetypal personality.
Whereas internal family system acts a catalyst for creation/our relational template. hat we think, feel and experience, we internalise trans-generational trauma bonds: relational, spiritual, psychological narratives, shame, and betrayals.
The primal need to protect the family of origin is hardwired, to endure for a lifetime.
The human condition of wanting to belong and fit in seamlessly with others by being accepted for who they and not what they represent is a realistic and mature expectation. But the acceptance and approval of the family of origin will remain a constant need long after we have left our childhood home.
The legacy of the family of origin, was it a curse or a comfort for the journey through life. How you coped with whatever rites of passage were made available to you will have shaped and then directed your life story:
And this is what we bring to our relationships; our persona and our shadow will act as heat seeking missiles to get us what we want in life. When there is an in balance of illusion/Maya there is confusion, addiction, chaos and pain. However great suffering can awaken great understanding. Its time to now to seek out a deeper understanding life. Changing how you think and feel is what you alone can control.
IMPERMANENCE is infinite. The way forward would begin with a relationship with a higher power, a strong sense of self, committed family union, significant one to one partnership, sustaining professional satisfaction, compatible friendships and a sense of belong in our community. Our mirror neutrons continuously reflect/project personify patterns, behaviours, wants and desires of the collective unconscious.
ILLUSION/MAYA AND HUMAN BEHAVIOUR The ability to question everything is essential. If we were to believe all that we see, hear, think or feel, and accept this as the only choice on offer, then we are choosing to live in denial as an easier, less confronting solution. .
Life is challenging; therefore to live a marginalised, un-evolved and unchallenged existence is avoiding being personally accountable, which impacts closeness, compassion and curiosity in relationships; this impedes the potential for sustaining personal and professional success. The dark night of the soul spirals into the stronghold of chaos, conflict and confusion.
There is no easy solution way in which to re-route negative thoughts, simply put what you resist, persists. The brain is hardwired to recall, and then respond instantaneously.
Being in the throes of experiencing a personal crisis is the accumulation of external situations clashing with the internal your core belief, ideologies, and assumptions.
Duality of the self is occurs when we are in deep conflict with our persona and shadow. Maladaptive coping mechanisms perpetuate psychological suffering. Denial catalyses. This makes it impossible to be connected, be present and be accountable to anyone else in your orbit.
NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS. Hugs swathes of civilisation, the critical mass are disconnected, ergo disassociated. through life, there is no one “minding the minder” There are no leaders in government. Chaos reigns, rules, and mind-fucks people seeking to action assistance, amend or change protocols, policies or procedures. Denial can be transformative, the catalyst for engendering the process of freedom.
Illusion/Maya is part of our essential being. Without a degree of illusion in our lives we would not be able to get out of bed in the morning. Life would be an Orwellian theme of powerlessness, hopelessness and helplessness, or so we are led to believe. If and when the balance tips too heavily into illusion/Maya it becomes hard to readjust the focus.
Striking the balance of illusion/Maya and illumination is what divides and separates the winners from the losers in the game of life. Choices in life embody the continuum of beginnings and endings. The banners of destiny, desire, envy, greed, love, lust, betrayal, jealousy, and revenge are headings for the chapters that become ones life story.
PILGRIMAGE WITH BABA: Living the New Life – a new humanity: I first heard of Meher Baba when I was living a working in Sydney. My siblings requested I spend a year in Sydney with the, helping my ageing parents adjust to life in a retirement village. Reluctantly I packed up my London home, and within a short time had resettled. Hired as a clinician. Opened a small private practice. near the treatment The human condition longs to belong, to a tribe, be part of something bigger than ourselves.
I was asked to film a series about relationships for a “Current Affairs” broadcast. All in person therapy with me enquiries were initially screened by the assessment counsellor at the clinic I was associated with. . A couple in crisis were assessed as being appropriate and an appointment to see me in my rooms was made.
A safety mechanism to filter out the with a couple whose marriage was in a crisis that prompted a well known surgeon to connect me for couple counselling with his partner.
A clinical supervisor once told that if ever felt triggered and or unsafe when assessing a new client for therapy, that I can choose not to work with them. So, I referred him to specialist doctor, prompted by a series of calls from his anaesthetist who was concerned for his colleague’s safety, he had confided to him he would kill her if she left him in addition to mercurial behaviours, he was a I believed at risk person.
Fortunately, at my urging he was able to schedule an urgent medical board intervention. Sadly, the feedback was that he manipulated the medical team, they thought he was more than capable.
Despite my intervention, followed by being admitted for inpatient care in a local mental health facility, the day of her discharge, he was waiting to see her, that evening, after a dinner date he parked his car in a dark, lonely stretch of seaside road, stabbed her until she died, then himself. Sadly the driver who stopped to offer assistance also fatally inured.
The headline read “Millionaire’s madness and mayhem. The story unfold with his back story a thoracic surgeon whose racing car career and ended when he crashed his car and had suffered a sever brain trauma. He presented to me a person who was enraged his partner wanted to leave him.
I had discussed my concerns about working with him, he personified easily triggered repressed rage.
Transference and confer transference aside – intuitive warnings were proven to be an accurate assessment of the danger he posed to himself and his unfortunate partner.
This tragic event deeply disturbed me. A month later, I met with a colleague to told me about Meher Baba, his father, a renowned psychologist had met Baba and one of Baba’s male mandali, Bhau Kalchuri would be visiting from India in two weeks, would I like to meet him?
I did. And this visit prompted me to abandon my life in Sydney, travel to India and begin a new life whilst living there, often in silent retreat, at Meher Baba’s ashram.
Darwin Shaw, a NYC professional spent time with Baba in India. He wrote of this time and other visits with Baba in his book: “Effort & Grace”
Darwin says:
” Meher Baba refers to the gradual effacement of the false self as “the progressive conquest of the unconscious by the conscious.” This means that the goal of life, simply stated, is to make our unconscious minds conscious. However, between the unconscious and the conscious resides the subconscious – and this is where our central problem lies. The unconscious, subconscious, and conscious are layers of consciousness, layers of the same cake.
The obstacle we have to contend with is the residue of sanskaras – deposits of impressions accumulated from past experiences – embedded mostly in our subconscious minds. These sanskaras create veils over our consciousness, blocking us from the awareness of who we really are. Each one of us has amassed a unique set of sanskaras due to our own particular experiences.
In the Discourses, Meher Baba explains the evolution of consciousness in great detail. Here I will only say that the whole purpose of it – during which consciousness was chiseled, hammered, and brought into being through suffering, pleasure, and all of the opposites – was to evolve consciousness. Once we have achieved creation-consciousness as human beings, our consciousness is complete and we
are equipped to experience the unconscious – the Oversoul – consciously.
However, because of our sanskaric veils, we are conscious only of creation, and of ourselves as being limited. We have the means of being aware of who we really are, but we go on using our fully evolved consciousness to experience the illusory creation, the gross world, which was merely the means to the end, when the end – full consciousness – has already been achieved! That is our predicament: We have become addicted to the creation.
We perpetuate our own bondage by continuously accepting what our sanskaras impel us to think, feel, and do. Sanskaras give rise to false thinking, which in turn creates the passing illusory drama we take to be “reality,” causing us to remain ignorant of the one reality, our true identity. That is why Meher Baba says, “The problem of deconditioning the mind through the removal of sanskaras is therefore extremely important.”
Instead of using our consciousness to express our sanskaras by pursuing more pleasures, excitement, and experiences in the gross world, Baba says that we should turn our consciousness inward toward the reality and begin to explore in that direction.”
Trauma healing takes time. I became a pilgrim. Eventually, Meher Baba\s teachings, revivified a love of Eastern philosophy, mythology, spirituality and psychology. My soul had come home. I was safe. Quietly happy when helping the local villagers learn ways in which to create sustainable incomes.
And so it goes…life is enriched by being of service, loving my life in London, my beloved husband and darling stepson. We are blessed with abundant joy and harmony.