Brandon Bays is possibly the purest looking person I have ever seen. Her serene smile and blinding blonde-ness, to me, advertised a perfection far beyond that of mere glossy glamour, but an actual, unobtainable, real deal, inner radiance. So, although I’d seen The Journey and it’s accompanying marketing material emblazoned with the blonde-one all over the proverbial mind, body and spirit shop for donkeys I’d given it a miss.
Brandon bright & beautiful
Then recently, through a series of fortunate events, let’s say, I decided to read The Journey and indeed undergo the Journey work.
It all began with my summer hols. Being on the impecunious side I stayed home. And being a bit cheesed with the old “career” I embarked on a tactical mission: including a plan to blanket bomb Brick Lane and its environs with my wee CV.
Fancy dung beetle, eh?
But, first, in the name of vacation celebration I bought myself an iridescent perspex winged scarab pendant, I’d had my eye on, from Spitalfield’s Sunday market. A few days later, armed with CV and adorned with said scarab I left the flat to implement said mission.
A nagging feeling gnawed at my gut. And, as the day drew on, it seemed that one thing after another went against the completion of operation “I’ve got a job I dread, get me out of here!”. The nagging feeling turned into an outright groan.
In the old days, the old me would have ignored all this groaning and put it down to too many Grapenuts. But now I take the groaning to be a message of sorts. So I returned to base, where my guts and I had it out.
“You never listen to me,” said guts.
“I do!” I protested, a little too loudly to mask the guilt – I knew they were right.
Guts grumbled something incomprehensible, but utterly unmistakable.
“Ok, ok, I’m listening!!” I said. “I know the CV thing is a bad idea. I need to go with the flow… and all that jazz. I need to go back to mind, body, spirit boot camp.”
Guts prescribed a course in Damien Senn’s People You Should Meet free audio interviews and Hay House Radio – Radio for Your Soul -all good for the down at heel as well as down of heart.
PYSM happened to have a recording of BB on Abundance. I listened. I learned. I was intrigued. BB’s personal journey began with a basket ball size tumour – wtf! Instead of following the conventional cut-it-out method, she decided to see what the tumour was trying to tell her – and it had some pretty darned interesting things to say, diminishing and finally disappearing altogether like a monster confronted in a fairytale.
Colour me beautiful
And so I was thinking about what I really wanted to do for a career. And I was pondering the question of colour. I’d been to an aura painting class last year and met a lovely lady who worked intuitively with colour. We’d been partners for the day and she claimed I’d drawn her aura almost exactly as she sensed it. She in turn had drawn a curious image of mine, which someone had remarked looked like a scarab. And it featured a winged diamond at a point she said was the third eye. I dug the picture out. And it got me thinking that I was thinking too much. I’d felt her aura, almost imperceptibly, like the beating of butterfly wings…
Then my friend T, back from her own incredible one woman journey round the world, came up to stay. I donned the scarab pendant and we hung out in London’s finest holistic and esoteric bookshops, from Watkin’s to Atlantis. But it was in the Oxfam bookshop near the British Museum that I found, yes, a copy of The Journey. Being as it was a few squids I bought it, despite Brandon’s seemingly over zealous blissful blonde-ness.
Painting by books...
The next day I went park hopping and devoured The Journey cover to cover. I even looked at doing a workshop, but bank balance said, “No”. I flicked through the worksheets at the back of the book and mentioned the book to sis, in the hope she’d read it and agree to be my partner in The Journey, but she had her own distractions.
And then in amongst all this I’d been in and out of various medical establishments assessing the state of my lady bits. I even dragged sis to a scan, to take a squiz of my ovaries over the nurse’s shoulder. Ick and yet more ick. And I am getting to thinking that this particular physical problem can be pinpointed to a particular episode in real time and that doing some of this Journey work is the way forward.
But, as per usual, I’m procrastinating. And I’m back at work. And I’m wearing the scarab pendant, which makes my eccentric boss squeal “Nefertiti, Nefertiti!” and just drew a whole lot of attention from passers by, including one comment from a guy who said, “There’s an old rock band who used that symbol on their album covers. Who was it? Uhhh… oh, yeah, Journey.”
Don't stop believin'
And so I’m thinking… what’s all this about? Is it synchronicity? AM I meant to do something with all this? And so I look ‘synchronicity’ up on the web and lo and behold up comes Carl Jung and the Golden Scarab – a story of the birth of the theory of synchronicity or “meaningful coincidences”. Jung had this to say of the symbol itself:
“The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth symbol. The ancient Egyptian Book of What Is in the Netherworld describes how the dead sun-god changes himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and then, at the twelfth station, mounts the barge which carries the rejuvenated sun-god into the morning sky.”
Dream man...
And in another story, I’ve mentioned before, goes something like this:
Once upon a time was born a brand, spanking new sparkly diamond, a twinkle in her creator’s eye. Perfect for shining and reflecting light she really brightened up the place. But then shit happened. This was said, that was done, and her light began to fade.
Pretty soon she was unrecognisable as her former self, a crusty pile of poo. Convinced she was ugly and seemingly attracting more piles of poo, she went out and got herself some fast acting, bedazzling body paint, the ads had said she was worth it, perhaps she was.
And for a while she felt a million dollars, as people flocked to frolic with her, told her how great she looked since the paint job. Thing is it was only skin deep, when it chipped, the poo showed through. And she began to feel poo and attract yet more poo all over again.
Then one day, she remembered when she was a little diamond, and how bright she’d shone. And so she began to dig inward.
Diamond geezers...
BB uses this analogy in The Journey and goes on to say:
“We should never stop transforming; just come ever more fully into the awareness of ourselves as the pristine diamond, always letting go of the limiting layers that seem to obscure us from our true selves.”
This then is The Journey. A real holiday. I wonder if I’ll get me a Journey glow?
Adventuress Undressed 