Brandon Bays - The Journey - A Practical Guide to Healing Your life and Setting Yourself Free

In South Africa, there are doctors taking this healing and forgiveness-based work into communities where they can’t afford medical treatments, and we are helping train their staff. Police trauma units are using this work with victims of violent crime. I’ve trained abuse counselors in Soweto to use the work in their community. In the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia, priests are taking the work back to their flocks. Schoolteachers are getting extraordinary results with their youngsters, helping develop the most balanced, confident, high-achieving classes in their schools. In Australia, where this book was a number-one bestseller in its field, several medical doctors and complementary healing therapists keep the book in their waiting rooms for their patients’ reference, recognizing that some illnesses require more than just a pill.

Addiction rehabilitation groups are using the work to clear out the intense self-loathing connected with drug abuse, and nurses in cancer treatment facilities are using it alongside the chemotherapy treatments. A swami has taken the work back to his ashram to help people deepen in their experience of the Infinite, and nuns are using it to experience the deep peace within. Rabbis in synagogues in Israel are helping their people free themselves from long-standing emotional issues, and some grief counselors who help people on their deathbeds are using Journeywork to open their patients into the infinite peace inside to ease their passing. Journeywork is clearly cross-cultural and appeals to people from all religions, creeds, all ages and walks of life.

What moves me most are the hundreds of phone calls, letters and emails we get from people who haven’t had a chance to take the workshops—people who are courageously using the processes explained in this book to undergo their own healing journeys. We hear from people who have successfully and completely cleared long-standing debilitating emotional issues like chronic depression, overwhelming grief, intense low self-esteem, jealousy, abuse and betrayal. We are always inspired when people share how they’ve become free from physical challenges including heart disease, breast cancer, chronic fatigue, debilitating arthritis, Crohn’s disease, skin diseases—the list goes on. Every day in our office we receive messages of healing from all over the globe. And the message is always the same: “I was able to tap into my own infinite intelligence, uncover my own blocks, free them and set myself free—just by using the processes in this book.”

It has been the greatest gift of my life that grace revealed the means to let go of the past and discover the beauty, love and peace that is inside all of us. And it is my deepest prayer that everyone, not just some of us, awakens to this extraordinary presence of greatness inside and that we all begin living our life as a full expression of the love, the potential within.

This book is written as an expression of the deep gratitude that I feel for the powerful healing process I underwent, with the prayer that it will be a living tool that will inspire you to embark on your own journey.

May you discover the boundless joy at the core of your being. This is your invitation to freedom, your road map to the soul. Are you ready to soar?

“Come to the edge,” he said.

“We can’t, Master, we’re scared.”

“Come to the edge,” he said.

“We can’t, Master, we’re scared.”

“Come to the edge,” he said.

They came. He pushed them . . . they flew.

Freedom is our destiny. Yet we fear taking the very step that will carry us into the greatness that is our own true nature.

Foreword

I once heard a story that each of us comes into this life as a pristine, pure, flawless diamond. And through the trials of growing up and the course of life’s pains, our innate brilliance becomes hidden by a load of rubbish—lies, judgments and limitations we buy into.

Then, when we become adults, we cover over the whole mess with a coat of bright, shiny nail polish. We present this artificial veneer to the world and wonder why no one seems to think it’s that extraordinary. Over time, we may even come to believe that this protective shell is who we really are, and we shape our whole personal identity around it.

But if we are very lucky, life presents us with a gift—a “wake-up call.” Something takes place when for a moment we crack through the hardened surface, look past the layers of all the lies and shutdowns. We penetrate the layers of muck, and we catch a glimpse of the radiant brilliance shining from deep within.

Then, if we are very, very lucky, we spend the rest of our lives journeying homeward into this exquisite beauty and freedom. We discover that we have always been, and will always be, this pristine, flawless diamond—completely whole and free.

This is the story of the journey home, and the soul’s incessant call for us to recognize the greatness inside ourselves. It is your wake-up call, your invitation to finally come home to who you really are.

You are that which you are seeking.

Chapter 1

I woke up that morning in the summer of 1992 and realized I finally had to face whatever it was that had made my tummy grow so large over the last few months. I just couldn’t stay in denial any longer. Some part of me knew there was something seriously wrong inside, and that I was finally going to have to face the doctors and get it checked out.

I didn’t want to believe that anything could possibly be “wrong” with me. It seemed I had been doing everything right! I’d been extremely health conscious, proactively conscientious for over twelve years. I ate vibrant, nourishing, vegetarian food, drank only pure, clean, filtered water and rebounded on a mini-trampoline every day. I lived in a little cottage on the beach in Malibu, California, and breathed fresh sea air. More important, because of all the personal growth work I’d done over the years, I no longer needed to direct my thoughts along positive lines; that was already happening naturally. I was deeply fulfilled in my marriage, loved my kids, and felt enlivened by and extremely grateful for my work—traveling the world giving seminars, inspiring others to create vibrant health. My life was everything I had ever longed for.

I’d spent a lifetime attending workshops and seminars, learning everything I could about healing the body and the spirit. It seemed my entire life was about living the principles of health and well-being—I definitely “walked my talk.” Yet here I was faced with a tummy so large that I looked pregnant, though I knew I wasn’t. How could this be when I was doing everything right?

Embarrassed and ashamed, I couldn’t admit my fears to even my closest friends. Here I was, “an expert,” teaching others how to take charge of their health, yet I couldn’t even zip up my loosest-fitting slacks.

For over fifteen years I had been in the natural healing and alternative health field, and now, faced with a serious health issue, I felt lost at the prospect of going to a “regular” medical doctor. Though I knew I urgently needed a proper medical diagnosis, I had no idea of where to start or whom to call.

Not having the guts to call a friend, and with nowhere else to turn, I decided to check out the local book shop. I scanned the shelves and found a book written by a surgeon who specialized in women’s health issues; one who was known for not taking out all your organs as the first option. I figured she might be an intelligent place to start, and when I called the number at the back of the book I was surprised and thrilled to get an appointment in only six weeks’ time.

During that time, however, it seemed as if my tummy just “blew up” in size, and, oddly, my period began long before it was due. The night before my appointment, I plucked up the courage to tell one of my best girlfriends, Catherine, what was going on, and asked her if she would accompany me on my visit.