INTO THE LIGHT

The last two years has been HARD.

I'm not prone to resisting "what is", but truth be told, resist I have.

With many plans in place and the backing of years of training, destiny was calling.

I made the decision to step away from a twenty five year career into what had been calling for many a year.

However, seemingly overnight, as if the sum of our lives was a whiteboard, mine was WIPED CLEAN.

Weeks ensued of deep pain of perceived ‘loss’, I had forgotten the lessons of my past and bought into “a mistaken identity”. I had forgotten those hard won lessons that had allowed me to recover from my journey through alcoholism

I had finally, for the first time IN MY LIFE, come to a complete and utter STOP.

Not by design mind you, but seemingly Soul knows.

There was No-Thing to be, no-thing to do, my life had come to a grinding halt.

No business to attend to, nor clients and staff to take care of, no major spinal surgery to heal from, no uprooting family to live elsewhere, no demolition of our little House of Love to rebuild anew, no transplanting eleven HUNDRED mature trees, shrubs and plants to hold off site, no immediate mature garden to install after eighteen months out of ground - no nothing.

It was as if my whole identity had slipped away into the night, stealing away who I thought I was.

Upon life’s twisted branches, lay tattered the remnants of what had passed.

It was a thundering transition from what and who I thought I was into who I am yet to be, snapped into the ‘Gap’, if you will, of that space in between, the crack between worlds just as it gets light at dawn but the sun has not risen.

Combine that with the decades old & dusty thought process of “if my biological mother can give me away, how much can I be worth?”

Merging that with “Who am I?”, “Why the heck am I HERE” and “What is my purpose?”, it was as if I had forgotten EVERYTHING.

Being plunged into a radical unknowingness, it was a call into a pilgrimage where immense “alone-ness” began and it was time to leave “home”.

It was time to wake up from this trance state of ego.

Religion and science was not going to lead me home.

All my past learnings were not going to lead me home.

My sense of reality has been questioned and tricked. I had to separate psychologically from the ordinary life of family & community and turn away from the fruits of my first life.

Life had become a riddle again and I’d become a stranger to myself and others.

I was no longer willing - nor even capable - of continuing life in the way I knew it to be. This shift had loosened the beliefs about the world and the way I existed in it.

It was as if, since I walked out of a treatment centre, all those years ago, that I’d developed some kind of practical personality and had become forgetful to my prior life, but unlike the sufferer of amnesia, my goal was not to rediscover my old life but rather who I REALLY AM.

It was if the belief in the social roles we play had been lost. While I had lost the faith that I'd be able to identify my Self, to myself, in any significant way, deep within something profound was happening.

The whole way of defining myself was GONE, an extraordinarily deep kind of limbo.

Thoughts of the 'caterpillar and the cocoon' flitted across the screen of my life, seemingly the last eighteen months was analogous to just that. I truly thought I was in a 'cocoon'.

Yet something deep was stirring.

A forgetting if you will.

The forgetting that before a caterpillar turns to mush, it passes through a pupae stage, one that it MUST pass through prior to becoming the chrysalis.

The gap between the pupae and the chrysalis, the caterpillar turning into a liquified mush is deeply profound. A deep knowing that the caterpillar was gone and what is yet to be was yet to arise.

As TS Eliot so eloquently wrote, "The cost is nothing less than EVERYTHING."

Yet, I had forgotten this.

Even as I seemingly popped out of what I thought was the final stage of metamorphosis, even with my book, "Coming Home - The Long Way Back" being written in fourteen days, I had forgotten that this was NOT the final stage. All that was happening was another "shedding this skin", the pupae stage, NOT the finality of what it is to be in the cocoon.

Soul had different plans and down I went. AGAIN.

The last eleven months of free fall is - in actuality - FREEDOM.

It felt as if I had been completely liberated from social structures AND was ushered into deep mysteries & enchantment. A place where there is an inherent knowing of deep joy, a knowing that this is MUCH deeper than anything that had gone before.

Upon reflection, this did not happen until the longing to know the Truth became greater than the fear of not knowing.

This call to spiritual adventure had been touched upon, but not really allowed, it was as if psychic roots had grown deep into the bare rock of my surface life and driven deep into the fertile soil of my soul.

Eighteen months ago I started making inroads, beginning a search for my biological mother. Did you know I was adopted?

Well - you do now!

With the kind help of The Benevolent Society, an Adoption Information Certificate was applied for, and email received telling me, due to the current workload, it would be sixteen weeks.

SIXTEEN MONTHS later, the related information was received, seemingly relieving the wonderings of the last year and a half, the 'perceived' loss of all that had gone before, the not knowing of what is yet to come, the tribe I'm meant to help, the ones who can not only listen, but hear that silent call.

Lengthy discussions were had, much was shared of the last two years of my life, to be told, "John! You have no idea of the thousands of people wanting to hear stories of adoption, addiction and the overcoming of it. We're putting together a literary festival, get your book PUBLISHED for goodness sake, come and speak to those that are awaiting what you have to share."

I had opened myself to the possibilities that my destiny, what my soul has in store for me WILL learn to bring forth what these gifts to the world are.

I learned that joy and suffering dance long into the night.

I remembered that one does not drown falling into the ocean but by staying submerged in it.

Endlessly the devotee of thousands of books, Soul recalled many writings from remarkable humans. Memories flooded forth.

The age old axiom authored by St John Of The Cross,

“In order to come to the knowledge you know not, you must go by the way you know not.”,

Jean De La Fontaine’s

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”,

David White’s

“Find the image at the centre of your being that you were born with.”

The Gospel Of Thomas

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

And

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's

“There is a perfection in the Universe that few people ever get to know, but for those who do, their lives are changed forever.”

Like a flash of lightning cracking across the current thinking of my life to date, my locked down heart split open. The last two years of wondering dissolved in an instant.

A chill shot up my spine as an incandescent flame illuminated my whole being.

THAT perhaps this IS my path - to light the way for others, to highlight that the magnificence of who we ACTUALLY ARE far outweighs any thoughts, feelings or actions ‘society’ can put upon us.

There weren’t any elders in my youth to soften my ego or do that for me.

Seemingly in an instant, Soul had executed a swift U-turn, all these decades later, recapturing all that had gone before me.

That what has been in the way IS the way.

My book will be released soon, Coming Home - The Long Way Back.

For all those that have sent wonderful reviews I thank you.

For those of you wanting to stay up to date, hop on over here

www.johnmcmillan.com.au , wait a few seconds for the pop up and you adding your email address will have us all stay in touch!

From out of this somewhat long, hard won journey, I am exceedingly clear and inspired to bring forth what it is I know.

As Joseph Campbell said, "The cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek."

Teachings and programs to guide others through 'the cave' of Life are - as we speak - being developed.

The next few months are going to be interesting as a long awaited search for my biological mum is embarked upon.

I'd be honoured for you to join me - wherever the search may lead.

So come along now.

Hold my hand.

Let us walk together.

I hear the best is yet to come.