P H O E N I X: The 8 rites of passage to enduring transformation

By Nathaniel Hodges

Phoenix is a deep reflection on human transformation beyond habit change and identity change. This book takes the reader on a journey through extreme personal stories and client stories of real, irreversible transformation. Weaved through the book are the symbolic, spiritual, neurobiological and psychological underpinnings for such monumental changes. The author then outlines what this can mean for the future of human consciousness and the way we earn a living.
Phoenix | The hidden connections of emotion, intellect and spirit as they interact to transform the human psyche and the way we live and work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781649691156

Book preview

THREADS OF PERSPECTIVE

We are bound by context but context is boundless, where do we find ourselves in this conundrum?

If you are a living breathing thing, the value of you is inherent, yet we all run around every day all day screaming and pleading with the world to 'please give me a sign' that I am worth something. Forget about the crisis of planetary resources and global warming, we have a planetary crisis of human worth but the last thing I plan on doing is insulting your intelligence with a conversation about worthiness and 'feeling good enough', that road is full of rabbit holes and uanessacry painful inquiry. What about the spiritual path of connectedness and understanding your 'inner self'? That whole culture has some of the biggest tricksters in the game . If you come across anyone that has a bit too much 'light' about them I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. What about the relentless path of capital achievement? Have you noticed the guilt and irritability of the over disciplined man whose biggest fear is taking a holiday?

This book is about exploring eight passages, eight threads of perspective that seem to be present in every person I have come across that have experienced monumental change, life giving transformation and epic clarity on why they are here, they seem to permeate through realty regardless of what level you are at. People who seem to reject these passages have good reason to, they are difficult and will challenge common thinking but I think that is why they have remained misunderstood and hidden for so long. Without clear knowledge on these eight passages people seem to live in a world of denial, self-deception and pain. Denial of themselves, denial of the pain they are in and denial that they are the cause of their problems and the final denial that life is actually here to be enjoyed.

These realisations have all come to be after undergoing some personal experiences and experiences with clients. I am a psychology tragic and have conducted a range of independent analysis on meaning, self concept, the science of spiritual practice, spiritual experience, meditation, prayer, spiritual intelligence in business, and recently integral psychology. I have had the privilege of seeing and hearing what is going on under the surface of people’s lives and the interrelatedness of how they see themselves, the world and their place in it. I have seen thousands of people transform, their experiences are still to this day never lost on me, I still sit in awe of the capability of the human experience and our ability to make sense of these transformative moments. I have seen emotional and physical pain transform in front of my eyes to euphoria. I have seen one word said in the right way with perfect timing unlock a 30 yr old dormant emotion. I have seen human beings energetically numb and sitting very stagnant but going to war on themselves in their body and mind. I have seen couples that were about to call it quits sit with me talking through their separation and with one look of sheer loving openness that says 'I now see you', catapult these beautiful people into a new realm of love and connection.

This word transformation has captured me so much it actually guides my personal philosophy. A personal philosophy for me is designed as something to come back to what pulls your thoughts, emotions and actions back into alignment and for me it’s this 'Your only one moment away', it’s been a single moment that has transformed me, it's single moments that transforms people, including you. One moment of brilliance or insight can take the place of years of effort and labour.

These moments always carry two distinct features, connection and harmony. The first feature is connection, which can happen in three ways, through experiencing past events, behaviours and thoughts. Why these experiences occurred in you that way and how that shows up in the present is the key to forming these connections. The second form of connection is a union between yourself and your feelings; a feeling that you are exactly where you need to be and for right now it is perfect. The last form of connection is a bonding with other, to the environment, to a god, to the universe and sometimes romantically, more so on a deeper level because you are a conscious being we are connected and this includes the living and non-living.

I had a client who owned an auto company that mainly deals with interiors, seats, dashboards ect. He knew that in two years time his contracts with service centres were going to end because of a recent change in government. The change was going to cut incentives to keep the work on local shores. He deliberated for months on what he was going to do , he was frantic, nervous and scared for his future. Everyday he would stress himself into a place where only alcohol would get him to sleep. Three months after receiving the news we were inside our session, once again going around in circles tumbling back into the place of helplessness, defeat and overwhelm. I asked him ‘what are you afraid of’ he replied, I’m afraid of losing everything. I then asked him ‘what does that look like, losing it all, describe it to me’. He said, ‘well, I would lose my shops, my houses, all my money and my reputation." I said ‘what about your wife, would you lose her?’ He replied promptly with ‘not at all, she doesn’t care about any of that stuff, as long as I’m around.’

He then spoke subtly and without any real attention on anything said ‘can’t say the same for my mum, when dad lost everything, she couldn’t leave fast enough.’ My eyes widened and I interrupted his thought process ‘say that again’ I said. ‘Well when dad lost everything, he just sat back and didnt do anything about it, mum was gone within a month.’ It all hit him at once and the tears started to flow. He wasn’t fearful of losing the business, he was terrified of repeating his fathers behaviour, playing ignorant and losing his wife. The moment the connection was made, all the anxiety left because he realised it had nothing to do with business and everything to do with him having the courage to make moves his father never could. He realised his mum didn’t leave because his father failed, his mum left because his father knew he had to change and in his ignorance and stubbornness chose to do nothing letting everyone down, not through bad luck but by choice. On the surface what looked shallow and selfish behaviour from mum had deep roots of prolonged suffering and eventually left her no choice. This client then engaged a US based company to be the Australian provider of a particular type of interior design and when the government work dried up he had the jump on all the retail work that needed to be done and his business didn’t just survive but grew.

The second feature is harmony; being in harmony means you are in sync with yourself, other people and your environment. Being harmonised gives you a sense of meaning and importance. When you become in sync you realise you are inherently valuable to the harmony of everything and that if you are not in harmony with yourself it throws the harmony of everything else out of balance. You don’t need to do anything special or be anything special when you can get into tune with your day, in tune with the moment and in harmony and in tune with others.

After years of practicing, the people I noticed who felt the most disconnected naturally felt out of harmony and they would use words and phrases like 'I just don't feel important' 'I’m unlovable' 'I just want to get it right' and 'People are just pretending to be nice to me'.This language is identifiable to me when people have not accepted these passages of life.

When you look around and within you will see certain passages that are only for you, none of this will seem new to you but my goal is to illuminate them so brightly with real life stories that you will accept your path when it reveals itself to you. Most things we hear and learn growing up circulate around the fact that there are so many dangerous things trying to make our life hell. We have to be diligent and on guard all the time inside ourselves to make sure anything spontaneous gets shut down because spontaneity doesn’t fit ‘normal’. We are told we are in full control and that we must master ourselves, this causes a gigantic

rift between ourselves and the rest of the universe. There is 'I' and then everything else is 'out there'. We are trapped from the get go, convinced of the separateness. Then we further divide ourselves into mind, brain and body. We have to start reminding people that this is a story without destroying the very structure that holds them in place. You are all of it all the time although the part(s) of us we perceive as ‘I’ seems to be a combination of where you hold your attention and your will. This old wisdom has been kept from our modern ears and eyes and it contains our own unique path to transformation.

My path revealed itself to me after a great deal of protest and rebellion. I was so fed up with the way I was living I decided to adopt an 'ism'. First of all this is never a good move, be really careful of ‘isms' it seems like to me an ‘ism’ (psychism, socialism, Hinduism, ect) is when parts attempt to be wholes and proclaim the truth of everything. This proclamation is attractive to anyone searching for something more or deeper or better. When I say fed up I suppose I was just questioning the mundane, the inescapability of the work life cycle and the pervading dullness of no matter what I was doing.

After a significant life change I decided to identify with Buddhism, I read all I could, purchased small house ornaments that told everyone I had a spiritual side and had a rigorous spiritual practice. I took this very seriously, as with all stories in this book they are real accounts of trying different ways to live. I was feeling immediate benefits, I was lighter and I could maintain composure with much more ease, I was even walking slower. I started to notice a few monks around the area that I live that I had never noticed before. Then some interesting things started to happen, I started turning to prayer and meditation when I wasn't feeling great. Once again, it really helped so I started believing I had found 'the way', surely the world’s population would be better if they adopted this way of life?

What was slowly creeping in was this avoidance strategy; I started to get drunk on prayer as Abraham Maslow would say. Here's the deception with almost all spiritual systems. The idea of oneness, over optimism linked with non-attachment theory is a fast track and a slippery slope to 'depersonalisation'. Think about it like this. You cannot detach from your negative emotion without detaching from the thing inside you that makes you, you. It’s the baby and the bathwater. So yes I successfully achieved non attachment and this is what also happened. I lost my appetite, I Iost my value structure which means nothing had any meaning anymore (depression), my whole motivation became to defend Buddhism, my sexuality stopped functioning because pleasure was meaningless and I lost all reason for relationships because spiritual systems say 'everything is inside you'. This is insane and ridiculous and I know for a fact this happens all the time yet people will defend their faith all the way to the grave. Now when I see people kneeling at the feet of any 'guru' or sitting in satsungs’ in India pleading to have their insecurities soothed by the mighty wise one I can’t help but feel hurt for their desperation and their current state of mind because I have been there.

It is not uncommon to find people desperate for answers turning to spiritual systems; the desperation comes as such an intense inner pain, a relentless and unforgiving inner darkness that feels as though it is ready to consume you at any time. Some of you may relate to this. Ascending spirituality is not the answer. Ascending spirituality is essentially the forgoing of the physical and you escape the pain by denying and desensitising your body and although you are not feeling the pain anymore you have just replaced it with a raft of other problems that are much more detrimental over the medium and long term.

So after this I really was in an interesting place. My westernised brain and social norms had me feeling really quite helpless like I could never actually get ahead of the giant game of progress. The eastern way of doing things wiped out my belief systems and left me clutching at reality. I went to the extreme ends of the spectrum and found the same thing, then the obvious answer would be to find a balance somewhere in the middle where you can have the best of both worlds.? False, this is not a scale but a circle meaning, there is no range or levels when you accidentally create a dichotomy , just illusions of progress until you realise you are back where you started. So I took a magnifying glass to the spiritual materialistic side of the east in an attempt to either warn or help, or prepare others that are on the search.

Here is why I believe old eastern traditions can be dangerous and are not a passage of transformation on their own. Most people reading this will be brought up in the West (Europe, Australasia, Americas), which means we develop with a completely different set of assumptions and structures at all levels compared to the East (China, India, Israel, Indonesia). Biologically, physiologically, psychologically, sociologically, economically, culturally are all different in the west. Inserting eastern tradition into westernised assumptions can cause confusion and irrelevant confrontation. It's like saying that the technique for swinging a cricket bat will solve all your golf swing problems. The absurdity of that is ruining peoples belief systems, causing suffering and interrupting the natural path of real transformation. East and west can coexist in an integrated relationship, it requires a great deal of personal work and honesty not to get stuck, trapped or deceived along the way. This meeting of the great worlds so to speak will not be a one plus one equals two but a one plus one equals three. Something totally surprising and