Breaking Free: A Journey of Self Discovery

by Chett Vosloo

  Even worse than crying in my office, it then started to happen to me while I was in the classroom. When my Korean co-teacher was busy teaching from the front of the class, I often liked to stand at the back of the classroom and observe from there. Looking around the room from student to student, every now and then my heart would suddenly fill up with so much love and my eyes would immediately mist up. Once again I’d have to quickly think of something else to make it stop. This carried on for about a month and then, as suddenly as it had started, one day it stopped happening altogether. No more tears. No more watery eyes in my office and in the classroom.

  When I look back at that month now, I think of it as a gift. That month of having moments of feeling such a deep, unconditional love was to show me that my real nature, the essence of who I am, is in fact this same boundless love. What is stopping me from feeling this same unconditional love all the time, is all my fears, insecurities, and all the other emotional baggage that I have been hanging on to for so long. It’s like God was dangling a carrot in front of me, and saying, ‘Keep going Jed, my boy. This was to show you the love that’s within you, as it is within everyone else, but to feel this love all the time, you first have to let go of all your bad habits. But don’t give up. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.’

  CHAPTER 30

  My second year in Korea was fast coming to an end. It was that time again for me to think about what I was going to do next. It was a little different now, in that I didn’t only have myself to think about, but I also had Kim to think about as well. Things had gone very smoothly at my school, therefore one option was to sign on for another year. But in the back of my mind I was thinking that I needed to get the last bit of my around-the-world cycle trip over and done with. My desire to do these big adventures was fading fast. If I didn’t do it now, I suspected, then I might never get around to doing it. One of the things that Eckhart Tolle had said that had made a deep impression on me was to ask not what you wanted from life, but rather what life wanted from you. I really liked this and found myself trying to listen more and more to my own inner guidance of what it was that life was wanting from me. I decided to phone Johnny, the same guy who I had cycled with across Europe, to find out what he was up to in 2011 and whether or not he still wanted to cycle across Asia.

  “Absolutely, Jed,” he shot back at me excitedly.

  Not only was Johnny up for the trip, but he had spent the past summer cycling from coast to coast across America to make sure that we would both finish off our around the world cycle trips at the same time. He was, therefore, just about as up for the trip as you can get. This put an end to the ‘what I was going to do next’ debate. If Johnny had said that he had other plans for 2011, then I would have taken it that our ride across Asia wasn’t meant to be and that life wanted something else from me, but all the signs seemed to be pointing in the direction of me hitting the road again.

  For a number of years I’d had a gut feeling that one day I would become an enrichment speaker at schools. This wasn’t something that I necessarily had my heart set on, but I did feel that this was where life would ultimately lead me to. In order for me to speak at schools, I had to have something to get me in the door, a hook. Perhaps this is where my around the world cycle trip would come in handy. Maybe this was why life seemed to want me to complete the trip, but who knows? This was only my take on it, and even if I had it all wrong and that my future had absolutely nothing to do with speaking to youngsters, I still did feel as if this cycle trip was the direction that life was pointing me in. When I told Kim what I was thinking about, she supported me all the way and said that I should go for it. All it would mean was that our backpacking trip together would have to be put on hold for a few months until I completed my bike trip.

  CHAPTER 31

  Before wrapping things up in Korea, I still had my two-week winter vacation to look forward to. I decided to go and meet Matt, the same Matt who had introduced me to the rave scene in London, and his fiancé on Koh Lanta, a small island in the south of Thailand. It had been five years since I had last seen Matt, and in that time we both had been through our fare share of troubles. Matt had been battling his way through cancer, and of course I had been going through my own battles.

  For some time I had been meaning to read a book that a friend had lent me. The book, written by a Buddhist monk, was called, The Joy of Living, and spoke about the connection between science and Buddhism. Seeing as though I hadn’t got around to reading it for all these months and that it had been left on the shelf next to my bed, I decided that I may as well take it with me to Thailand. I flipped it open on the way to the airport and knew right away that not only was it just the book I needed to read, but that the timing couldn’t have been better. In the first few pages of the book the author spoke about how he suffered terribly from anxiety when he was young, and how he had taken part in a three-year meditation retreat in his early teens, which of course was no easy thing for a boy of his age to go through. He said that the first year of the retreat was absolute hell, as his anxiety didn’t leave him. Then one day, when he’d had about as much as he could take, he locked himself in his room and remained in meditation for three days to see if he could get to the root of where the anxiety was coming from. By observing his mind very carefully, he realised how feeble and transitory his thoughts and emotions were. By focussing on the small problems that his mind said were there, they quickly grew in size and seemed so much bigger than they actually were. What he realised was that when he watched his mind carefully, without playing along with the thoughts that were arising, he could then clearly see that his fears weren’t as solid and scary as they had appeared for all these years. Within a few more weeks of closely examining his mind, the anxiety, which had bothered him for years, had dissolved completely. There was no more trace of it.

  Reading this filled me with so much inspiration. During the summer months in Korea I hadn’t felt much anxiety and fear at all, but since the start of the winter there’s no doubt that my old patterns were starting to creep back in again. That was one of the things with regards to my skin condition. There were many times when I had thought that I had finally learnt to live with it, to accept it, but then time and time again it would resurface and I’d feel as if I hadn’t made any headway at all, that I was still in the dark as much as before. So, hopefully this trip to Thailand would be a chance for me to close the chapter on my skin issue once and for all. If this Buddhist monk could get rid of his anxiety by closely observing his mind, then why couldn’t I do it as well? Therefore my trip to Thailand wasn’t only going to be a chance for me to chill out on a hammock on the beaches, but it would also be a golden opportunity for me to do some serious soul searching to see if I could get to the root of where my own fear and anxiety was coming from. Kim wasn’t able to get time off from work to come along with me, and so I’d have more than enough time alone to be introspective.

  ***

  Having been out of the sun for so long, my skin was as pale as it had ever been. My first few days on the island therefore left me with not only sunburn, but my skin had flared up quite a bit. This was no surprise, though. If I was going to be out in the sun with my shirt off, then my skin getting all red and blotchy was to be expected. Using this as an opportunity to observe my mind, that afternoon when I was alone in my bungalow, I took off my shirt and sat staring at the pigmentation on my stomach, chest and arms, to see if I could get any answers as to where the fear and anxiety in me was coming from. I tried my best to be watchful and not to identify with the feelings and thoughts passing through me, but as good as my intentions may have been, it wasn’t long before I had spiralled down into a dark place. Why me? Why have I got to be the one to live with this skin condition? Why me? Why me? Why me? It was the same thoughts going through my mind, the same inner turmoil, the same suffering. How sick and tired I was of this after so many years of trying to get over it. How many more times was I going to drag myself through the coals like this? This ti
me, however, I wasn’t only feeling depressed, as was most often the case in the past. I was feeling angry as well. Angry with God. God only knew how hard I had been trying to get over this. God only knew that I was trying my absolute best to follow the spiritual teachings that I had studied. Then why the hell did I continue to suffer like this? All these months of doing spiritual practices, yet still I was locked in the prison of my own mind. No matter what I did or how much effort I put in to make peace with my skin condition, I just couldn’t seem to break free. Were these spiritual practices that I was doing actually making any difference at all, I wondered? Because if they were, then why did there seem to be no end to it? I had been living with my skin condition for 12 years, yet I still couldn’t accept what I had. I sat alone in my bungalow feeling so angry that I made God an ultimatum.

  Fine, I said. I will carry on trying as hard as I can to get to the bottom of what is causing this fear and anxiety inside me, but if I haven’t made any progress after these two weeks in Thailand, then it’s the end of the road for me, as I am done trying. To hell with it, I’ll give up then. I’m just going to have to face the fact that I will be locked in this mental prison for the rest of my life. This was my ultimatum.

  That evening I sat around with Matt and a few others on the beach. As was the case most nights at the bar where we were staying, it wasn’t long before the weed came out. The night before I had said no, but now I decided to stuff it. Why the hell not? I was tired of trying to do the right thing and now I just wanted to let loose for a while. It had been years since I had sat around smoking a joint, so why not? At first it felt awesome to kick back and have a few laughs, but then the paranoia kicked in, which was standard for me whenever I smoked pot. The next evening I didn’t smoke a joint, but instead I sat by myself watching the sunset with a 750-millilitre beer in hand. It had been almost a year and half since I had last had a beer. Just like the night before, it had felt good in the beginning to sit there and chill out with a beer, but the next morning when I woke up there’s no doubt that I could feel it and that I was feeling a little dull. As nice as it may have sounded for me to start smoking pot and drinking again, it was obvious that my body didn’t agree with these things anymore. It didn’t make me feel good and to carry on would have been like shooting myself in the foot. If my goal was to learn how to steady my mind - which it was - then smoking pot and drinking wouldn’t do me any favours at all.

  ***

  One of the things that I realised was that I could never remain angry with God for long. So it wasn’t long before I was feeling the same intense love for God that had been growing inside me over the last three years. Once I had got over my speed wobble, it was back to the drawing board of looking at my pigmentation with my shirt off to see if I could get to the bottom of where my fear and anxiety originated. Just like a scientist would observe something in their laboratory, I tried to do the same thing with my mind and to work out why it was that my mind didn’t like having to look at the spots on my body. The answer, I felt, was because my mind saw them as a fault, ugly to look at, something that wasn’t meant to be there as nobody else around me had them. I then did a little experiment. I closed my eyes and imagined that everyone had these spots on their body except for me. How would my mind perceive this, I wondered? I’m willing to bet my life on it that I would feel as depressed then as I did now, not because I had these little spots on my body, but rather because I didn’t have them and everyone else did. So I guess it all came down to the perception my mind had of being different. I also noticed that whenever I focussed my attention on a certain part of my body where the spots were more prominent, and I felt a strong aversion to having to look at them, I could see with my own eyes how only that specific part of my body would flare up, without me so much as even laying a finger on my skin. There was a nice story I read in The Joy of Living, which demonstrated the power of the human mind.

  The story went something like this. There was a cowherd in India who spent most of his life looking after his master’s cows. Then one day, he decided that he’d had enough of looking after the cows and that he wanted to set off for the mountains and to learn the art of meditation. After some time in the mountains, one day he got lucky and found a spiritual master in a cave. When he asked the master to teach him the art of meditation, the master gave him basic instructions and sent him off to a nearby cave to practice. But unfortunately for the cowherd meditation didn’t come so easily in the beginning. As much as he tried to steady his mind, he kept thinking about the cows that he had looked after. Finally exhausted, the cowherd went back to see the master to tell him that he was having problems trying to meditate.

  “What’s the problem?” the master asked.

  “Every time I try to rest my mind, I keep seeing the cows that I used to look after.”

  “That’s not a problem,” the master replied cheerfully. “I’ll teach you a different meditation then. It’s called the cow meditation.” The master told the cowherd that from now on he was to pay very careful attention to the images that he was having of his cows. Every time he pictured his cows, he was to observe the images very closely. The cowherd then went back to his cave and, to his great surprise, meditation came so much easier than before. In no time he was able to steady his mind.

  “Good,” said the master, when the cowherd went back to see him to find out what was next. “Now that you have mastered the first level of cow meditation, the second level is for you to meditate on your body being a cow’s body.”

  The cowherd went back to his cave and spent a few months meditating as though his body were a cow’s body. A few months passed and when he felt as though he had mastered the second level of cow meditation, the cowherd went back to the master to find out what was next.

  “The third level of cow meditation,” said the master, “is to focus only on you having horns.” That said, the cowherd went back to his cave to follow the instructions that the master had given him.

  After another few months had passed by, the cowherd decided to go and see the master to find out what was next, but as he stood, he noticed that something was hitting against the top of the cave. When he felt upwards to see what it was, he was horrified to discover that he had grown horns. When he finally managed to get out of the cave he ran to the next cave to see the master.

  “Look what happened,” he gasped. “You told me to meditate on having horns and now I have grown horns.”

  “Don’t worry,” the master laughed. “Now I want you to go back to the cave and focus on the thought that you are not a cow and that you don’t have horns.”

  When the cowherd stood in his cave a few months later, he was happy to discover that he no longer had horns.

  “How does this work?” he asked the master. “You told me to meditate on having horns and I grew horns. Then you told me to meditate on not having horns and they went away.”

  The master explained that the horns came and went because of the way he was able to focus his mind. “The mind is a very powerful thing. It can make experiences that aren’t there seem very real, and it can also make them appear unreal.”

  ***

  I felt that what I had to do now was to change the perception that my mind had about the pigmentation on my body. Instead of seeing them as ugly and not nice to look at, I had to somehow get my mind to think that the pigmentation marks on my body were no problem at all. In other words, I had to try to re-programme my mind. I thought of it this way. I imagined that there was someone who I didn’t particularly like. In fact, I hated the guy, and whenever I saw him, the first thing that went through my mind was that he was an asshole. It carried on like this for a number of years, me bumping into the person now and then and every time thinking that he was an asshole. Then one day, it happened that the two of us got stuck in an airport lounge together. I was now left with no option but to start chatting with the guy, and the more we chatted, the more I realised that my perception of what he was like for all these years had been totally wr
ong. He was actually a decent person after all, and so, just like that, the idea that my mind had about him had changed completely. It had changed from a negative opinion into a positive one. No longer would I bump into him and the first thing that crossed my mind was to think that he was an asshole.

  In the same way, if I was somehow able to change the perception that my mind had of the pigmentation on my body from negative to positive, then I would no longer have to look at the spots on my body and feel all this fear inside me. However, as I knew all too well by now, it was one thing knowing what had to be done and then another thing to actually do it. The only way I could think of how to change my perception, was to spend as much time as I could looking at the pigmentation on my body in hope that something would change, that a shift would happen. By now I had already got myself a good tan going and so you could hardly even notice the pigmentation on my back and my stomach at all. However, the two parts of my body that I did still feel resistance to looking at was the pigmentation on my left knee and the pigmentation underneath my right arm. These two areas, therefore, were what I spent most of my time looking at. With each day that passed I noticed that the resistance I felt got less. That wasn’t to say that I had reached the stage in which I had fully accepted what I had and that I was thrilled to see the spots on my body, but at least when I did look at them now I no longer felt that sick feeling in my stomach, as though a thousand worms were eating away at my insides.