As I walk along my chosen path to help people establish the essence of who they are and overcome the effects of bullying to find their true identity, it is necessary for me to continue to place one foot in front of the other on my own odyssey too. 

We are being encouraged all the while in the 21st century to be open-hearted, authentic, honest and true to our nature in our individual quests. It is a courageous route for us all to take because in doing so we are being prompted constantly to embrace and show our vulnerability.

In our own hero's journey, where we triumph over adversity, we expose ourselves in order to build rapport and trust with any person that we wish to work with who recognises their own story of suffering in our sharing too, this is our triumph.

However, the exact same action that we carry out in speaking our truth in order to attract new friends towards us can also invite old foes that might wish to seek out and exploit our defencelessness for their own gain. They might be notable abusers, bullies and other critical influences that we have experienced in our past who continue to try and keep us small or indeed quiet for their own benefit or justification. In sharing our story with the world we have to be ready for this type of scenario too, for if we aren't fully prepared for it, we will continue to absorb, collapse and descend back into the realm of adversity, very quickly. 

Both forces are at work in the universe constantly to help us develop and evolve towards where we need to be as human beings. When we start to bring awareness to all aspects of the situation that we encounter we can start to see the overall divine plan for our lives and the state we need to be in, between triumph and adversity, if we are to keep an even keel within our lives, one of serenity and peace. 

Recently I have chosen to share more of my 'overcoming the effects of bullying to find my true identity' story in order to hopefully connect with other people that might be continuing to experience this situation in their own lives too. I wasn't however prepared for the storm that was about to present itself when my truth started to permeate in the direction of my own immediate family.

Over the past month it has felt like I have been very much walking between the eye of the storm and the tempest that has then come to surround me.

Many people have indeed expressed their admiration in my direction for my very brave account of what it was like for me to grow up within my own home, at school, college and then in the workplace, all within a bullying type environment, when I chose to express myself both through poetry and film as part of Anti-Bullying Week back in November. This is when I felt I was in the eye of the storm and completely in the flow of life, stepping forward on my path. 

Conversely however, completely unknown to myself at the time, my comments were also being received in a very negative, fearful way by some of the people that have been closest to me in my 50 year existence upon the planet. In fact they found my statements to be most shocking and hurtful as their version of events, their own truth, was being perceived quite differently to that of my own. 

Here, the thunder, lightning, downpours of rain and howling gales have been difficult to experience once again. It has been necessary for me to batten down the hatches for a while, an old age survival strategy of mine. However, with all the personal development I have done on myself over the years, together with the support systems I now have in place, both with regards to individuals and communities in my network, I have been able to continue to stride onward towards my goal.

In the past I would have felt totally uprooted by this experience when the hurricane has come to hit, this time around however I have been able to weather the storm and come out the other side perfectly OK, grounded, centred with my roots, trunk and branches all still fully intact, I can still stand tall within the forest. 

This primarily is because I have been far more aware of what has been going on around me when the winds have started to pick up this time around. I have been able to take my share of responsibility within the events that have occurred, I can perhaps see now where other people are coming from and what their angst is all about connected to me and my living situation.

I have been able to accept this scenario for what it is and not tried to change the process that has been instigated, instead I have let the necessary healing start to take place. I have released my attachment to any outcome and let go of any expectation as to what the final result of all this will be, I have just acknowledged that it is all taking us somewhere to where we all need go. Things are a lot better I believe as a consequence because of this change in mindset. 

​At this moment in time I am inspired by the words of Oscar Hammerstein II and his song that he wrote in 1945, 'You'll Never Walk Alone', which also happens to be the anthem to my favourite football club, Liverpool FC. I am choosing to recount all the words here as I believe they bring hope at this time to us all.

You'll Never Walk Alone.

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of a storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone  

Indeed if your story in any way matches my own, you will always have me here in support of yourself in your corner, if you choose to connect with me in this manner. You don't have to walk alone through the storm you are encountering we can do so very much together. 

And as I believed might happen when I originally wrote this blog, all of these events were leading to a place where I could experience the next stage of my personal development journey and gain the maximum amount of learning from it in the new information that was being provided to me from the coach I was working with. 

Indeed as you approach the Visibility Gateway so all of these things will blow up into your face to try and keep you small, back where you have always been, but you need to summon up the courage to step through the storm you are being greeted with in order to find that 'golden sky' and indeed 'the sweet silver song of the lark' because in my experience they do in fact exist when the clouds start to dissipate. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.

One of the paradoxes of my bullying story is that I actually feel somewhat blessed to have been able to live my life in fairly comfortable accommodation throughout. In these places nature has always been at my beck and call and I have felt well looked after, nurtured and nourished, even over-nurtured at times too perhaps.

For sure, I consider myself to have led a privileged life, one where I have been perhaps spared the ravages of reality and an ordinary existence thus far by sheltering within my parental home for a period of time that has far exceeded the perceived norm by others. 

This however has led to its own pitfalls and problems, living within my own comfort zone and also finding envy at every turn from peers, contemporaries and dare I say relatives too. I have come to realise that being privileged or being in a privileged position is not necessarily a privilege.   

The shaman exists on the edge of society, where he or she is able to view community from the periphery, upon the margins. I have always lived on the edge of town. I have felt most at home with clear access to fields, grassland, moorland, woods and shoreline. It is here that one can properly commune with nature and start to see where the social models we live under are failing, or going wrong altogether, and hence the apparent reason for me to want to remain separate from all of that. 

Together with that there is the 'Angry Shaman' archetype that believes because he or she, in previous lives, would have been looked after as part of the community, cared for, in exchange for his or her services, that in some way shape or form that ought to be happening in the here and now today. Instead of which in a modern world things don't exist in that way at all and a monetary exchange is now required in order for the shamanic practitioner to remain sustainable him or herself. This can be a difficult thing to get one's head around as a contemporary medicine man.

My living accommodation, rather sadly, has for a long time been viewed by my friends and foes as a place where a great deal of projection can be placed upon it. Projection, as I have come to realise later in life, is just another form of bullying. When it is perceived that things are such a way when in reality they are far from it. 

This is not to disguise actual bullying because this was apparent too throughout all of my upbringing and was first witnessed, outside the family unit, when a betrayal by a so called friend led to more than two years of tyranny from brothers in arms. 

The boy that I had befriended in the early part of secondary school used to come and play with me at my own house, the first parental home that I grew up in. That was before one day I saw his bike not parked outside of my gate but propped up against the wall of a notorious lad across the street. Someone who had perhaps always looked longingly in my direction, festering a degree of envy towards the perceived lifestyle I seemingly led, with two doting, loving parents. 

It is a potent mix when a traitorous friend combines forces with an envious foe, living in such close proximity to my own existence. 

It was the early 80's and one of the most popular programmes on TV at the time for any would be teenager was the Blackadder series. In it, within one of the sketches, Lord Edmund Blackadder asks Baldrick his servent 'Where is the Nutcracker?', of which Baldrick replies saying, 'Oh, it's his day off!'

A fairly innocuous statement one would imagine, one that is pretty funny for most, indeed myself too no doubt when I first heard it and yet it was subsequently used as weapon of destruction towards me to cause me ridicule as to what my family life was like down the road, just because I lived in a slightly bigger, privately owned, detached house compared to my playground buddy's council house alternative. 

My father in his own life journey had done very well for himself, working his way up through the ranks of his business, earning 50p a week when he first started with the company right up to being senior partner some 40 years later, working for the same firm all of his salaried life. He was then able to leave the business on his own terms and move into a fairly abundant retirement without any real financial worries. 

On his upward curve through life, taking his family with him, I was able to live in better houses than the majority of my immediate friends. The second house I lived in, was a six bedroom house stood in at least one acre of grounds that included a tennis court within the garden. 

I like to feel, that naturally, I am a person of a generous nature and wish to share my bounty with others. I have a fairly open, honest and authentic streak within me that endeavours to welcome people into my life. I have found also however that in my openness I can leave myself quite vulnerable and exposed to those that are perhaps not fully appreciative of me and my circumstances. 

I have thrown many a party when I have been allowed the space, inviting a number of guests inside my own four walls, some great evenings have been had, cooking fantastic meals, offering wine, women and song. I jest, it wasn't quite like that. 

However in inviting people into my parents residence, in the same way that I was ridiculed for seemingly having a 'Nutcracker' at my service, I was then deemed to live on 'The Blackler Estate' where we had wildebeest and other game from the African Plains running about here, there and everywhere within the Serengeti upon the back lawn. 

Was this innocent jesting one asks? Or was there more poisoned arrows, cloaked within those statements of envy and jealousy? Certainly as they followed the then distant 'Nutcracker' jibes I found them quite hurtful, until later in life when I was able to bring a whole lot of healing to the issue at hand and realised that my buttons weren't so easily pressed any more.  

In the shadow work that I engaged with through David Richo and his book 'Shadow Dance' I gained enlightenment in the fact that envy just masks the qualities of admiration. A quality that is readily at hand for us to absorb back into ourselves when we take the negative aspect of the shadow and transform it into the positive alternative instead.

The irony now is that I find myself at times envious of others, and have to remind myself or bring myself back to a mode of first attention to realise that this is just admiration and I am capable of living and leading my own life in just the same way that this person is, should I deem that to be the path that I wish to take also. 

So, in short that person is acting as a guide to my higher self and what is possible for me in my own life once I start to put my mind in that direction and take self responsibility for the benefit of all. It is only then that I can start to bring parity to my life and lead a happier existence, free of the cages I otherwise find myself in, it will be the same for you too. 

I cover issues like this in my Transformational Talk sessions as part of the Shamanic Practices that I offer. If you are interested in investigating issues like this yourself I can help you once you click on the links below and we answer The Call To Adventure together as part of my Introduction Services. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.