The treasures unearthed on the odyssey are not in the words, nor in the carefully polished texts. The revelations flow out of the conversations we have on the fringe, with family and intimate companions, with friends and colleagues, with practice partners and clients, even with opponents and foes.
Revelations rise from our consent to embrace the wholeness of life, to explore the full gamut of the human experience, its intrinsic messiness as much as its glorious splendours.
Revelations gush from our willingness to be loved, and to love, unconditionally so.
Revelations heave from our willingness to feel the regrets and sorrows threaded in life.
Revelations pour out of our willingness to convene the sacred marriage of love and grief, so that we may recognise our innate goodness and the indwelling presence of love.
Introduction
First Wave: Material Purification
Chapter One: The Emerging Pathway
Chapter Two: The Devotional Pathway
Second Wave: Psychological Integration
Chapter Three: The Pathway of Introspection
Chapter Four: The Pathway of Metanoia
Third Wave: Imaginal Purification
Chapter Five: The Pathway of Conscious Love
Chapter Six: The Pathway of Kenosis
Fourth Wave: Spiritual Growth
Chapter Seven: The Pathway of Integration
Chapter Eight: The Pathway of Contemplation
The second part of the odyssey with wholeness celebrates the collective story of humanity, the ‘We Story’. It charts the unfolding movements of human consciousness and the itineraries followed on our quest for wholeness. Like fractals bearing exquisite complex patterns, the pathways are enfolded in the vast sweeping movements of consciousness unfolding unto itself, implicate order made explicate, with each pathway representing a specific portion of the all-encompassing movements inherent to the cosmology of wholeness.
In simple terms, the second volume follows our trajectories in life. First, as we awaken to self-reflective awareness, we dismantle the configurations of our personality operating on egocentric consciousness. Then, we move towards, or are moved onwards, to unitive consciousness where wholeness of selfhood dwells. The sequence of circuitous pathways begins with the conscious choice to take part in the incarnate experience of becoming fully human. It then leads us to the centre of the pattern of our life where we learn to contemplate, and act, from wholeness of selfhood in service to a larger arc of life of which we can barely grasp the contours.
The excerpts below echo the passages cited from An Archaeology of the Personality to illustrate a ‘Me Story’, in this case a personal story around shame and a bewildering initiation to the power of fire. In Pathways to Selfhood, the elemental power of fire first appears on the pathway of metanoia (Chapter Four) and returns towards the end in the pathway of integration (Chapter Seven). On our quest for wholeness, we encounter two qualities of fire with, first, the yang fire of the combustion chamber and, then, the yin qualities of the refiner’s fire.
The pathway of metanoia is essentially about the major shift in perception and cognition that occurs in the combustion chamber. The shift in perspective rises from three inner movements: sensing, stoking and discerning.
Sensing means to allow the flames to consume us burning off the dross made of fears and relational pollutions, shearing off the temptation to cling and clench so as to assuage insecurities, moderate self-doubt and alleviate unworthiness. The pathway of metanoia reveals the subdued and quenched passions. Following its provocative summoning, we learn to burn our inner fire and trust the wild heart clamouring its desire to be known and express itself with no restrictions.
There is also fear here, a lot of fear, which we approach gently, as we would do with a terrified young child who has been unexpectedly initiated into the power of fire, asked to receive it and hold it reverently. She stands trembling and shaking in her terror while bewildered adults dismiss her eruptive behaviour as a tantrum to be smothered immediately, rather than celebrated. …
The reclamation of the elemental power of fire enables us to decouple reactivity. We singe the ropes tethering us to horror stories, fastening us to tales of distress … and the narratives intrinsically woven into our histories and cultures, passed on from generation to generation, branding us with the fire of fear. We belong to that fear. We name ourselves through that fear in the same way livestock is branded so as to ascertain its owner. Until we are prepared to throw the whole bundle into the fire, we will continue to identify ourselves forcefully with our fearsome structures. …
Only fire can burn through the restrictions and protections. Only fire can dislodge our survival kit designed to save us from the hostile environment we have fashioned from the trials and tribulations scripted by our sense-making mind into a plausible narrative. We know this but perceive it, afresh, for what it is: illusions dancing in front of us, scornfully mocking our cowardice, the deepest fear of all, the fear of fear, the fear that summons our adversary the devil, roaming wildly like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
Nicola Mary Christensen-Johnson, Pathways to Selfhood. Self-published in December 2024, pp. 94, 100-101, 102, 103
Stoking is the burning movement of shifting by adding fuel to the fire and consciously offering ourselves to the intensity of the alchemical mystery brewing in the cauldron hanging above the blaze. The unknown self coaxes the distraught mind to be shaken up, recklessly, and to some degree dramatically, by the fierce love billowing on the flames.
The combustion chamber waiting for us on the pathway of metanoia beckons us to encounter, then relinquish, the fictions and illusions, visions and dreams we cloak ourselves with in order to maintain an outward focus, scanning reality with alert attention, preparing ourselves to wrestle with threats.
Nicola Mary Christensen-Johnson, Pathways to Selfhood. Self-published in December 2024, pp. 95, 104
Discerning is the unambiguous movement of shifting by waiting for the cinders to cool before genuflecting to gather the gems forged in the fire. We then dust off the ashes and polish the stones with the lustre of our refined discernment. But before picking through the yield of the furnace, we stay awake, close to the blazing heat, receptive to the images flickering in the haze. We watch the shards slaying the images, slivers and splinters of light which no longer inflict pain nor embitter our wounds. We observe the shards, metamorphosed in the heat of the fire, become powerful swords cutting through the illusions, severing all the accessories sticking to us and clouding our vision.
Nicola Mary Christensen-Johnson, Pathways to Selfhood. Self-published in December 2024, pp. 96, 108