SHACK 4051 STARRY NIGHT

Courtesy Mo Ma  The Museum of Modern Art

 Vincent Van Gogh the great Dutch artist it is said he painted this oil painting that many feel it portrayed his mental state particularly his depression and the song and lyrics sung by Don Mclean seem to be so apt.

This beautiful rendition lyrics and sung by Don Mclean touched me deep inside the first time I heard it years ago. When I was a child I felt the depression of my sweet dearest Mother and the frustration of My handsome father so addicted to gambling and the straining of father hood he wanted so to love and did not how. The anger and hate of my dearest late brother at my Dad until both their dying days. How my Mum suffered with various treatment to break the cycle of depression and suicidal thoughts in the end she had a thymus cancer I felt of a truly broken heart. How my mother worked to keep me and fed me, oh God what do people do to one another?

Then in forensics I saw the pitiful cries of victims of crime, rape, murder, torture, imprisonment, wrongful imprisonment and the harsh justice of law and the afterwards mental presentations of the after effects of scars physical and mental of the aforesaid events.

I then decided to investigate all of the above and took to psychotherapy with and of course went through the course and came out as a psychotherapist but this not seem to be the answer to my patients at first. I found that my Sensei and Sifu were Shamans and their philosophies coupled with meditation and Koan and Shifts brought me to an understanding of an intuitive awareness and coupling the two of therapy with the ancient arts began to see some success, not for me but for them. This brought me to present workshops (670 in various countries, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Spain, and of course UK and seen some 3000clients over 36 years) I worked at Forensics and did these in my annual leave, in the evenings and weekends, I did not charge fees as such just donations to cover my travelling expenses and keep, I kept out of the limelight of the big names at the time and some said I stole their clientele and I was banned from large exhibitions, it was said I worked for nothing and took their profits.

During this time I got to feel so much of my clients / patients ( I was not a working therapist as such, so client and patients did not seem to fit my title as it were).  I also did healing that was an aside as it were, however I got to see and feel all types of depression, anger, hopelessness, those shattered by broken homes, abuse, returning after war and so on fortunately for me I was able to shift negativity out of me. Yet a few stains were there and I knew I had to stop all of this, not only therapy, but travelling the air flights, the ships, car journeys hours of listening and talking being there as I had a phone in sessions after all workshops to 'mop up the residue that could surface'  I did not listen to my body and mind for several years and then it came two suspected life threatening cancers and through herbs and healing, meditation was the foremost healing agent got through both this was end 1999 and moved to where I am now in 2002 and started doing the internet with blogs in 2005 and just saw a few desperate folk here and there with therapy, now of course nothing but 'me ' time as it were.

My Starry Starry night is beautiful. I feel as though I am going out like a star ship, slowly, nonchalantly, leisurely going deep into the Milky Way, stars parting as I approach and  feeling as though I am touched by Star Dust, a perfume of exotic nuances, I hear and not hear, I sense singing, a divine chant which is eerily and yet not scarily presented an ancient melody I have always known from times beyond the Earth and the Universe. The sense of I is not me as I sit here typing this it is a disembodied awareness not person or local just a sea of awareness which The Universe shares with everything there is not singleness it is a seamless awareness of the Universe before it became dual. 

Now I understand dear Mother, dear Father, dear Brother, dear all and everyone and of course dear Vincent that we all seek that Divine Presence and in my view we are not really satisfied completely until we we are one with it and we often do know that is what we seek.

SHACK aka GEOFF