Going Within, Remembering & Being Free

There once was a man who had his own house, he had adapted it over his lifetime to suit his purpose. He filled it with things that he liked to have and he felt that he was very comfortable there.

One day he noticed that the carpet seemed to be a bit damp and so he called in some experts and then made a new damp course around the outside of the home to stop damp from coming in…that’ll sort you out they said.

And so it did for a while until one day the man noticed that not only was the carpet damp again but the dampness was travelling up the walls and all the furnishings felt a little damp and smelt a little musty.

He called some experts in and they sold him a large and expensive air conditioning unit to dry out the air in his house. It didn’t look so pretty sat out in the kitchen and it quite often got in his way but it seemed a small price to pay for having his home back to normal.

Normalcy returned for a while until one day the man noticed that there was water coming up from the floorboards! He immediately called in more experts, telling them that this was an emergency and they came and put in a false floor…at great cost!

Over the following years this man quite regularly would sort out one problem with emerging water only to have it reappear elsewhere else within his home and he was getting quite sick and tired of it. He’d spent a lot of money with a lot of experts trying to get rid of the water.

He’d become so desperate that he’d even agreed to having a false wall installed so that the flow of water could be directed up and out of the top of the house where it was pumped away by a great machine.

The problem with all of this wonderful science and technology was that instead of having his home just as he had wanted it he was slowly becoming enclosed by the false floor and false walls…he could hardly breath for all the pumping and air conditioning machinery that cluttered up his living room. Living room….ha, that was a joke, it was almost impossible to live in there!

He had often wondered why this was happening to him as it seemed that other folk didn’t have this trouble with their homes…but he didn’t really like to ask either as they might think he was some kind of awful person that was cursed because he was so bad.

The man didn’t really think that was true but sometimes when he got really fed up with things he would wonder about it.

Finally the day arrived when the water started to appear through cracks in the false wall and floor and with a heavy heart the man approached the experts once more. They seemed very pleased with themselves when they offered him the latest technology…..a waterproof suit with an easy to wear oxygen line, guaranteed not to get tangled and interfere with your enjoyment of life.

The man thought about this and started to feel very depressed at the thought of spending the rest of his life encased in a suit…he began to wonder if there was another way.

He had heard about a healer in his area, apparently some folk had got good results from her but he had also read a lot about such people in the press and the descriptions were not very flattering or inspiring. He didn’t want anyone to think that he was an idiot and it seemed that they were certain to do so if he called this healer…but then he looked around at his home….if he could call it that anymore and decided that he was so desperate he didn’t care anymore what other folk thought…let them live in his water logged swamp if they were so clever.

He called the healer and she said she would come straight away.

When she arrived he told her all about the problems right back from as far as he could remember.

He was a little shocked, to say the least, when the healer announced that they needed to travel down through the false floor but for some reason he felt confident around her, she seemed to make him feel very secure and sure…though he couldn’t say why exactly.

They sawed a hole through the false floor, the healer took his hand and they went down into the water beneath with the healer leading the way. As they travelled through the water the healer pointed to something and he saw a trapdoor set into the original flooring.

As he looked at the trapdoor he began to remember it and recognise it…how strange that he seemed to know that it was there back in some strange distant memory. Then as his memory of the trapdoor began to expand he suddenly recalled something important……there was a monster on the other side of the trapdoor and that was why it had a padlock on it!

Now he realised this was the last place on earth he would ever wished to go to and he motioned to the healer that he wanted to get away from that place.

The healer took him back to the hole in the floor, holding his hand and guiding him so that he felt looked after and safe. Once back at the hole the healer explained that it was perfectly ok for him to stay away from the trap door because this was his life and he could choose what to do with it…but she also reminded him that the monster would always remain in his home even if he pretended it didn’t or even if he forgot about it again.

Remembering all of the restrictions on his home and thinking of his cramped and suffocating future existence the man decided that he would rather face being gobbled up by a monster…if the healer would be so kind as to come with him and hold his hand…and she said of course.

First of all the healer helped the man to remember back to the last time he was down by the door so that he could remember about the key for the padlock he had placed on it. They found the key and then went back down to the trapdoor with the healer holding the man’s hand and guiding him so he felt safe.

The healer had told him to expect a lot of water to come gushing out past them when the door was first opened, that it was ok for them both to just stay there and let the water rush past them even if it felt at times as if they would be swept away or drowned. If they just waited and let the water find its own path without blocking it with the trapdoor or themselves then it would become a normal flow.

The man wasn’t so very sure of this but as the healer looked quite prepared to stand there in the flowing water he figured that maybe he would be ok to do so too.

They opened the trapdoor and the noise of the escaping water was so powerful that the man felt like turning and running immediately, the current threatened to sweep him away into the never ending darkness, his lungs felt as if they would burst with pain. Truly he had never felt so wretched and terrified in all of his life…although now he came to think of it he did remember feeling like this before many many years ago.

As he remembered himself as a little boy feeling all alone, scared and unloved the man began to feel very sad…so sad that he felt he would cry more tears than all the water around him just now! As he cried and cried he forgot all about the water around him, he mourned the poor little boy that was him all those years ago…where had he gone to and what had become of all his crazy ideas of building a boat and sailing the seven seas?

What he wouldn’t give to tell that little guy that everything was fine, that he would look after him from now on, he would love and care for him, he would get those boat plans out and together they would set off across the seven seas on an epic adventure into the unknown…yes, if he could conquer his fear of trapdoors, monsters and cellars then sailing off into the unknown was easy.

He looked across at the healer who smiled as if she knew exactly what he had been thinking, he could almost feel himself as a little boy holding onto his other hand and gazing up into his adult face with love and trust in his eyes.

The healer asked him if he was ready to continue and she pointed into the corner of the cellar…..and there he saw a tap…and he turned it off.

No more water, no more need of pumps and machines and false floors and walls, no cramped living space.

For a split second the man felt angry with the experts who had covered it all up with their grand ideas, then he felt angry with himself for letting them talk him into it! Then he forgot all of that because it wasn’t important and he headed out the door hand in hand with the little boy excitedly chatting about their boat plans and the adventures they would have on the high seas.