Personal Development for Creatively Conscious People

Detail of painting by John Rocheleau

Satisfaction is our primary objective in life. Everything we do, we do to satisfy ourselves in one form or another.

This self-gratification reflex of ours is far from self-fulfilling though. Everyday, we make choices to satisfy our desires, and what we choose while under the influence of this intoxicating human imperative, is often unwise.

Short-sighted satisfaction carries a steep price tag, and willing or not, the debt is always collected. Our drive to satisfy ourselves can then seriously damage us.

The clouds were low; silver-grey with blushes of violet to the west, and an intense blue-grey to the east. It was 1994, and spring was about to bless us with some needed rain.

“The garden will love it,” Rosemarie said. I agreed, though not with the same hard-won conviction as my Wife’s, after all, it was Rosemarie who created our garden and it was she who mainly toiled in it.

We had a large garden (and still do) filled with plenty of delicious raspberries, gooseberries, currants of all sorts, and most of the vegetables we needed for the year ahead. For Rosemarie, the garden was her labor of love; her way of connecting to life at its purest, and to who she is at heart.

It was a quiet day, and every living thing seemed to be in their own separate world, including us. I was taking a break from a new painting I was working on, Rosemarie was finishing some planting, and the ravens were dive-bombing Jones, our black cat.

Seduction is a big part of life for us mortals.

Seduction is in our genes. We’re programmed to seek satisfaction but when we talk about satisfying our seductive desires, most of us automatically think of sexual seduction.

And sexual seduction is powerful stuff for sure. Is there anyone out there who has not fallen under the intoxicating spell of some god or goddess who has targeted us in their sexual sights?

But sexual gratification is not seduction’s main target. Believe it or not, we mostly seduce ourselves and it has nothing to do with sex.

Fear lives within us all. It breeds in the warm liquid of our flesh, feeding on our spirit. Fear is the real original sin.

Existence, as seen through a high consciousness is a completely unified thing; a marvellously interconnected miracle. Let’s call this unified point, reality or truth.

For those of us who haven’t quite mastered our higher consciousness though, life is more like a linear scale with fear at one end, and unity or truth at the other. Only unity is in keeping with the truth of existence. The fabulous interconnectedness of the natural world is the obvious example of this. So, only the unity end of that scale holds the power and potential of reality.

Today I am here for my friend. I want to support him through his troubles. My friend was sexually abused as a young man by a Catholic priest. My friend (we’ll call him Robert) has finally quit running from the dysfunction of his life and he is bringing himself — and this priest — to accountability. As a result he is going through some dark nights of the spirit.