joyriding n. informal: the crime of stealing a vehicle and driving very fast.
I think perhaps I should point out that by calling my new book ‘Joyride’ I was not trying to endorse or recommend to readers that criminal activity described by the Oxford English Dictionary. I make no apology for my love of fast cars, and even fast driving (er… within legal limits of course…) but that’s where the comparison ends. The real subject under discussion is found in the book’s sub-heading “One Life, Three Principles, Infinite Potential.”
‘Joyride’ proposes an imaginary road trip down the Florida Keys in a Mustang convertible with me in the driving seat and the reader as passenger. As the trip slowly progresses towards its destination at Key West a conversation unfolds on the mystery of existence, our place in the universe and why we don’t achieve all that we could in life. The journey is a metaphor for the possibility of personal transformation, of leaving behind notions about ourselves that have passed their sell-by date. Readers are encouraged to reach a new understanding that can free them, once and for all, of those nagging doubts and ingrained negative beliefs that have held them back. In fact ‘Freedom’ was my original title, one that certainly fits with the idea of packing light and cruising down through the Keys in a Mustang, but I found I needed something that invoked the idea of movement. ‘Ride’ gave me that. ‘Joy’ is, I hope, self-explanatory.
Why did I need movement? The book took its time to arrive from Mind. I should explain that statement a little. After many years of searching for answers I now know that there is a Universal Spiritual Intelligence (Mind for short) that is working through me. If you’ve been reading my blogs you will already be familiar with the many ways in which this new understanding has impacted on my life, my work, my relationships, everything, and all of it more enriching than I could ever have believed possible.
But it didn’t happen overnight.
Immediately on discovering the Three Principles and the pioneering work of Sydney Banks that brought them to our attention, re-awakening us to an ancient wisdom that is as relevant today as it ever was, I began to have profound insights about life. It was an exciting discovery but the trouble was it didn’t quite fit with the methodology I was teaching. There was a mismatch, not on every front but at its core the approach to change work that I had spent so long studying and passing on to my clients differed significantly from what I now instinctively felt was true.
As I saw it I had two choices: to turn my back completely on everything I had taught, effectively starting my business from scratch, or to gradually transition, evolving in my own way and in my own time and hopefully bringing my clients along with me. (The third possible choice, to continue doing what I was doing, ignoring this great truth I had stumbled on, I dismissed as inauthentic and simply wrong). I chose to transition. There were dates in the diary. Courses had been scheduled, money exchanged. I owed it to my clients to deliver on what I’d promised, and I determined that whatever misgivings I had, I would honour those promises.
There was another reason.
A handful of individuals through time – Syd Banks being one of them – achieve enlightenment instantaneously. In most other cases the truth dawns slowly, by degrees, a slow accumulation of small insights like signposts along the way. I felt intuitively from the start that I had seen one of those signposts – actually a massive one – that I was on the right path at last, but also that I had a long way to go. So when it came to finding a narrative structure for the book, an attempt to bring the formless into form, a journey was the obvious choice. It mirrored my own experience. It felt authentic.
What I’ve come to realise since writing ‘Joyride’ is that the journey never ends. Books are finite. You turn the last page, put the book back on the shelf and get on with your life, taking that small glimpse of wisdom and truth – if there is one – with you. But life is infinite. We are connected, in every atom of our being, to the universe. From the start of my personal journey I believed that there was infinite possibility within every human being, that there was joy to be found in life.
Now I know it!
PS. Here’s that link if you’d like to pre-order Joyride. Publish date is January 9th. Thanks!