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What can this process do for me?

 The following story was written by one of our regular students, artist, teacher and writer, Basil Eliades, as an expression of his experience of working with the Spiritual Metamorphosis processes

There was no path beneath his feet. So he was lost. There was no doubt about that. But that was OK. He was sure that others had been lost in the past, and surely they found their way out? Being lost wasn't such a bad thing. No one really ever knew where they were, he reasoned. So being lost was just recognising that the path he sought was still to come.

Come to think of it, he had been lost before. Surely those experiences would have equipped him for this time? He went through the stories of his life. Lost at the Zoo aged eight, running, running, terror in his head and heart, and unable to find the exit that the P.A. told him to go to, and then getting caned by the nuns for not going straight to the exit. Lost as a three-year-old when he tried to follow his sister to ballet, and the police were called out to find him, and he clearly remembered the large plastic coloured keys that a stranger had held up to his face, that he reached for, and then put one in his mouth. Lost as a teenage cyclist, riding for hours and hours. Lost in outer London , walking for miles and miles. Lost in the bush. Lost when driving, lost at University, lost at sea. Lost so often. So often lost.

But they didn't. An experience of being lost does not give you the tools for finding your path again. Only path finding skills do that. Experiences of being lost merely reinforce your feelings of an inability to find the way. He had that feeling now.

He was off course. Disoriented. None of the usual markers worked. Both floor and ceiling were the same colour, and texture, and neither held him in place. His body felt wrong, too. Misshapen. Under-aged. He was definitely not himself. For a start, his arms and legs seemed shorter and thinner, but he was nonetheless holding himself in stasis between two parallel surfaces, which could well have been floor and ceiling as he had surmised, but which could equally well be walls. There was nothing between them except light. Light and him, holding them apart. The most confusing thing was that there appeared to be no up or down, and that that didn't seem to matter. At the very least, these walls formed a passage, and a passage was a kind of path. All he had to do was follow it.

Following it was trickier than he expected. Not that he expected it to be easy, but he did expect it to lead somewhere. He crept forward on his fingertips and toes, quite sure that all directions were equally useless, for they all lead onwards to infinity: there was no end in any direction to this path.

But how did he feel, suspended in that white, bright passage? He did not feel much. And for those that know, this is a bad omen. For those that feel, feel often, deeply, and privately. Those who do not know, believe their voices and anger to be their feelings, and defend their awkward wielding of these as weapons. Deep inside, he knew that he felt lonely, and that another's presence would be a fine thing. So he called out.

‘Hello?'

‘Hello,' replied the Light.

There was a faint ripple after the greeting. The Light seemed to fluctuate near the edges of his understanding and grow inwards. Subtly at first, slowly, and then growing suddenly and more rapidly. The Light swelled and undulated, rings rippling more powerfully until they grew into waves that washed over him and through him, through his cells and center. The glowing, growing light filled him with an ecstatic rolling joy, drenching him in love and understanding. The walls melted and shrank beneath his fingers, growing into him, forming a column, a tube through his centre, which filled and flushed with liquid light.

The liquid formed a solid cylinder of light inside him which grew and grew in intensity, so that light shone from his feet and head, sparkling and shining like a majesty of stars gathered together. He felt heat in his chest and looked down, and where the light grew and shone most powerfully was in his heart.

And he was ready to move on.

He turned inwards, and was found, and was gone.

You can connect with Basil via his website: www.basileliades.com