Chasing your Dreams: A Memoir

By David Swan

Dave has partied too hard. He’s taken too many drugs and tried to end his life. Like all good children he heads back to the family home to reconsider his future.

He replaces ecstasy with cheap lager and ponders on his next high. An old hippy friend of his sends him a book on enlightenment and at last he has another fix to keep him focussed.

Dave dives into the world of alternative therapies and retreats hoping to escape his past and his habits but all he meets is the past.

Holotropic breathwork, Reiki Masters, silent walks through the Sahara Desert, all are tried in an attempt to attain enlightenment, but Dave has to resolve his past issues with his father and his addictions.

Does Dave find contentment on the spiritual path? Can he let go of his struggles and embrace the future?

This book is a light-hearted romp that uncovers the darker aspects of Dave’s life while traversing the spiritual path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Swan
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005483890

David Swan

I have been writing for 5 years and prefer novellas. I have not yet established a genre and find myself enthused by an idea and then build a story around it that happens to be science-fiction or urban fantasy.I studied creative writing at Bangor University, Wales and had the chances to study other great writers which helped me a lot.I have not written much since a I have traveled a lot recently but I am starting to fire things up again.Looking at what I have written so far I am inspired by the world around me, my own personal experiences, and my hopes and fears for the future.

Book preview

Chasing your Dreams

A Memoir

—by—

David Swan

Published by The Spiritual Junkie at Smashwords

Copyright 2021 David Swan

www.dpswanwriter.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Chapter 1: Home

Chapter 2: Stepping Up My Game

Chapter 3: Reiki and the Dead Doctors

Chapter 4: Silent Desert

Chapter 5: All You Need Is Love

Chapter 6: Tibetan Dreams

Chapter 7: Tibetan Nightmares

Chapter 8: Where the Hell Is the Dalai Lama

Chapter 9: Care Man, Not Angel

Chapter 10: Beer and Leprechauns

Chapter 11: Amsterdam, Mushrooms, and Jesus too

Chapter 12: Home

Chapter 1: Home

I have always been looking for some kind of buzz. The buzz of alcohol, the buzz of drugs. The buzz of not knowing what will happen next. Each buzz more intense than the next. Drugs more intense than beer, ecstasy more intense than speed, acid more intense than amyl nitrate, and the notion of suicide, the most intense buzz of them all.

I tapped my fingers across the scars on my wrists as if playing the piano. As the song goes, clearly the drugs no longer work. Lucky for me the human body has tough sinewy wrists, and coupled with my inability to see any project through – whether an A level, or suicide – I gladly gave up, called the police, and like all good children returned to the family home.

‘Your dinner’s ready son,’ bellowed my father. When my father shouted you moved quickly. Even though I was twenty-eight his voice still made my stomach rattle with nerves. He was an ex-sergeant major with thirty years in the Scots Guards, and two tours of Northern Ireland under his belt. I didn’t feel like I could question him. He was a bona fide Scotsman. A successful piper. That’s bagpipes to the uninformed. He wore a kilt, drank whiskey, and on occasion swore like a trooper. You couldn’t get more Scottish than my parents.

My mother barely peaked five feet tall, and although smaller than my father, was equally tough. If not tougher. A testament to the earlier years of booze-fuelled fights which often went with the territory on army base camps. Although he wore the medals on his uniform I would have preferred to see them pinned to her chest.

After a long career in the army my dad took an easy job to last him until retirement. They were servants, cooks, and butlers to the wealthy. They were afforded a reasonable wage and allowed to live in a very desirable cottage which was at the beginning of a very long driveway, hence the name ‘Lodge Cottage’.

‘You need something to fall back on, son,’ said my father. ‘This acting shite is clearly not working out.’

I nodded in agreement. This acting shite, which consisted of several failed attempts to get into drama school, poor amateur dramatic performances in impoverished inner schools, and several auditions murdering classic musical songs, was clearly going nowhere. Not to mention that most of my time auditioning was actually spent recovering from lost weekends cocooned in a world of chemical love and intense focus brought on by the use of amphetamines. After my last fatal binge I had no option but to change. It was time to get a serious job.

While at home I had applied for a course in computing and started applying for jobs locally. Anything to keep my parents happy and to keep me grounded. Going from long weekends pilled out to the max, to office work, and nights spent watching the soap operas, was hard to take. Still, a plentiful supply of high-grade lager made the transition smoother.

After a few weeks searching I landed a job in a local call centre as a technical representative and before I knew it, it was shirt and tie on at eight in the morning, and off to work. My dad was as pleased as punch.

‘Smart as carrots son.’ His face beamed with pride. ‘Shirt, tie, and shaven. Computers are the future.’

I agreed. Computers were the future. Even if they bored the hell out of me.

After a few weeks of family life, watching another soap opera fight in the Queen Vic and my dad discussing the ups and downs of his share portfolio, I decided that I needed something, anything, to make me feel excited again.

Clearly drugs were off the menu but they had always provided me with a sense of escapism, a certain kind of high that I felt changed me, and I wanted to know where I could get this buzz again without the four-day hangover.

A package arrived for me one day from one of my clubbing friends, Mara. She was one of the few rare ones I actually remained in touch with. She too was seeking something else and had started to embark on some kind of spiritual path. The book was called: The Autobiography of a Yogi.

On the front cover was an inconspicuous Indian man dressed in robes. The book basically explained his spiritual life. On reading I encountered for the first time phrases such as eternal bliss, and transcending consciousness. He talked of walking the path of God, finding your true self, and questioning the nature of existence, and more importantly, he could levitate. Yogis proficient enough could actually levitate, that’s right, fly. This man sounded like he had been on a trip but no drugs were involved. I was hooked. My utterly bored and directionless mind now had something to replace the nightly television soap series my parents were addicted to. I had found my new drug, and its name was Spirituality.

Spirituality these days encompasses so many things – alternative therapies, esoteric teachings, the World’s religions – all offering different ways to a different God. I didn’t have a clue where to start but seeing as I was the type of person who liked to pick the icing from the cake before I ate the cake itself, I thought I would go straight for the jugular and try and induce some of these experiences he talked about in the book.

The Internet seemed a good place to start. It was said that the Internet would hopefully spread knowledge throughout the world and raise the consciousness of humanity, but research found the most popular searches were websites related to satanic porn and David Hasselhoff, with climate change coming a close third. Humanity clearly had a different goal. Rather than be distracted by the Internet I did an old-fashioned thing and headed to the local bookstore.

I wandered over to the MBS section of the bookstore. That’s Mind, Body, and Spirit to the uninitiated. There was a plethora of spiritual books on display. There you will find all manner of books, from the Dalai Lama’s latest teachings to hypnotherapy books on How to Create a Richer You in 24 Hours. I also managed to find some ‘mind wave’ goggles made in California. These were Terminator-style sunglasses that had flashing lights fitted inside and headphones attached to a small sound box which would emit bleeps of a high order thus inducing your brain into the alpha state. A state of mind normally reserved for Tibetan yogis, or college kid dropouts high on dope. These mind wave goggles could raise your consciousness from mild stoned hippy to Dalai Lama style enlightenment in about forty-five minutes. I grabbed a stack of books and the goggles too and headed home.

Knowing full well my father’s lack of interest in anything spiritual, I did my best to hide my newfound Interest, which wasn’t easy when living at home.

‘What books are you reading son,’ asked my father.

‘Oh, just a few books on spirituality. You know healing the self, find a better me. Just want to question a few things in life,’ I said.

‘Sounds like shite to me,’ offered my dad wisely. Shite was my dad’s response to anything he was not interested in. Which was basically anything that didn’t involve rolling up the sleeves and doing a hard day’s work. You have to give him credit though, his generation were not exposed to alternative therapies, counselling, group hugs, and all that shite. He shovelled coal at the age of fifteen as he often reminded me, earned one pound a week whilst serving in the army, and the only thing he believed in was tough love. Life was tough. You worked hard, tried to enjoy it, and then you die.

Luckily my mother was at hand to rescue me as she was into psychics and mediums. Her religion was a mixture of bastardised Catholicism, and Nostradamus. You could start off a half decent conversation on the afterlife, talking about God existing, and angelic beings then suddenly she would start quoting Nostradamus, snarling about the end of the world and some doomsday scenario in the middle east. I didn’t need to watch horror films as a child, I just listened to my mum, cigarette dangling from her mouth, eyes peering at me.

‘Believe you me, son. It will all end over the oil. The Mayans predicted it, so did the Hopi Indians.’ It seemed the Mayans and Hopis were great at predicting everything but their own demise.

I stared at my new library of books. Instruction manuals for a new me. Guide books to a better world. The collection seemed quite eclectic, ranging from the traditional Yoga and Dalai Lama meditation books, to the downright weird, How to Have an OOBie, and Contacting Aliens in 3 Easy Steps. The aliens I added because they were always regarded as an advanced form of civilisation and highly intelligent. I imagined they would have created the right conditions for me to contact them easily.

To begin with I picked the book that required the least effort and seeing as having an out of body experience could be achieved during sleep it was a no brainer. An ‘OOBie’ is an ‘out of body experience’ and without appearing to patronise, involves stepping out of your physical body until you are left in your spiritual body. Apparently once out of your body you could just go where you liked. Fly around the universe, visit dead relatives, or people still alive, and no one would notice because you would be in your spirit body. It came with instructions and diagrams too which was handy.

I now had all the gear I needed to achieve some sort of spiritual experience. I just had to get to work applying the methods. I was like some mad scientist trying to find the formula for turning metal into gold.

The best time to induce an ‘OOBie’ is when you are fast asleep. Right in the middle of REM that’s Rapid Eye Movement. The trick is, to wake up whilst you are dreaming and attempt to wrestle your spiritual body out of the physical body, and then do what you like. What you would actually do whilst out of your body I wasn’t so sure, but I was considering floating to Kent to scare the hell out of my older sister. Why? I don’t know that’s what brothers do to sisters, isn’t it?

I set my alarm clock to 03:00 hours every day as this was the time considered to be the most deepest sleep, when dreams occur. Initially I would just wake up at three and write down the odd dream. They were mostly about me being chased by monsters with the head of my father, or being chased by mothers with the heads of monsters, and some naked nuns.

After a few weeks it was proving fruitless and my parents were concerned about the dark circles under my eyes. They thought I was back on the pills again and silence at the dinner table became the norm, but what could I say, I’ve decide to transcend consciousness and access the area known as the mind of God, or put up with some mild suspicion.

It wasn’t too long before I had my first success. I had decided to try and induce a deep sleep with a hyper dreamy mind and had worked out that a day at the gym, followed by a Lamb Madras at dinner, and a brie cheese sandwich before I want to bed, would have the right combination to induce the kind of state of mind that was lucid enough for me to wake up in. And I was right.

At about 03:00 hours in the morning, without the aid of my alarm clock, I awoke within my dream. I was making love to some hot blond-haired actress, every young man’s fantasy. There I was lying on a bed wrapped in golden silk sheets, looking up at a ceiling full of mirrors, in a very expensive hotel suite in Las Vegas. She was on the balcony having a smoke, no doubt exhausted from my hours of perfect lovemaking.

‘They don’t make men like you these days, do they Dave?’ She sighed.

‘That’s David,’ I reminded her. I was stretched out on the bed, arms folded behind my head feeling like a king as she started to complain about the move industries’ refusal to recognise her as a serious actress.

‘Hollywood is tough on women, David,’ she said. It was at that point that I noticed an uncomfortable feeling of realising I was in a dream. I could tell I was waking up within my dream because I had started to feel like ordinary Dave again with the same old worrying thoughts about how will I manage to keep this up all night long popping into my head, as my manly insecurities returned.

I knew I had to seize this moment while I was dreaming, and as the instructions told me, ‘Shoot a beam of blue light into the sky above my head into the ether,’ which I think is what the spirit world is made of. It was like hooking into some magical energy grid. I imagined a clear blue line shooting out of my forehead and into the core of the universe. The actress turned briefly to look at me, smiling as she was, with those man-hungry eyes. She was coming back for more so it seemed like a good time to get out of this dream. I nodded briefly, knowing I didn’t have long. All of a sudden I felt like I was Luke Skywalker dropping the bomb into the middle of the death star.

My blue line seemed to have hit some kind of celestial jackpot as the universal vibrations came shooting down through the blue line and into my body. My whole body started to vibrate