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18 May 2012

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A Talk - The Happy Childhood Is Hardly Worth Your While

Frank McCourt, the celebrated Irish writer, was famously quoted as saying 'The happy childhood is hardly worth your while'.

This is the title of my talk at the Vale Centre, Stoke Trister on Monday, December 5, which explores the possibility that perhaps the way we conceive our lives is limited, with the need for the happy childhood serving the ego, the conscious self, rather than the greater desire of our soul.

There is the very tempting idea that we should be happy all the time; that things should have been different, but things are as they are and those things that wound us deeply also provide the impetus for a meaningful life.

The poet WH Auden put it this way: "The so-called traumatic experience is not an accident, but the opportunity for which the child has been patiently waiting...in order to find a necessity and direction for its existence, in order that its life may become a serious matter."

The search for meaning and purpose and the drive to find answers to life's tough questions and healing balm for our wounds can indeed take us down pathways we otherwise would not have travelled.

As the Greeks knew only too well, both Fates and Gods have plenty in store for us that the conscious self would not have chosen, but much ancient wisdom has now been forgotten. Psychology means study of the soul, but you will not find mention of soul within the modern psychology curriculum.

My work at Soulvision aims to restore the notion of soul to psychology and help those confused about their lives see with 'an eye for initiation'.

Having worked in counselling for a number of years, latterly for six years in the addiction unit at The Priory Roehampton, I was forced to conclude that psychological theories, although helpful, 'trim a life to fit the frame.'

One of the possibilities I help people to explore is that we come into the world called and that we are needed; the other - seemingly diametrically opposed - is that there is no meaning in life, that life is its own meaning, and that all our ideas to find meaning distract us from something else far greater than anything our limited minds can conceive.

One writer calls it 'the dream of individuality' and when that dream finally dies what we fall into is the discovery of Oneness and the realisation at the deepest level that there is nowhere to go and nothing to seek.

But to find that place we literally have to lose our minds...

'The happy childhood is hardly worth your while' starts promptly at 7.00 pm at the Vale Centre, Stoke Trister BA9 9PH. See www.valecentre.co.uk for directions.

Donations are invited. This talk will be followed by a one-day workshop, date to be announced.

www.soulvision.co.uk has been chosen as one of the best blogs on the internet on several occasions.

Simon Heathcote is available on 01963 350432, , tel: 01963 33360.