Prologue Pt. III

If you missed my introduction that lays out why you might want to sit through all of this and where we’re headed, feel free to catch up here. Navigate past and future chapters via the Table of Contents, including part one and two of this prologue. Note that I will pepper my prose with occasional subscribe or comment buttons — I want reader input! So I invite you to stick around and journey with me; share some tea and stories. Thank you for being here.

Looking closer — and over the few years since this exchange took place — I realised there were much deeper, and wholly unanticipated, reasons for my coming into The Alchemist waiting to be unearthed. Gosh, so many.

When I first began mentally translating this experience into the concept of a book, I merely intended to use it as the launchpad for a compilation of crazy travel narratives. There are a lot I’ve never written about in detail, and only exist as yarns I’ve shared with certain interested friends, emails to my mother, and strangers on dating apps for whom I was trying to sound cool. I liked the idea of copying down what scraps I can remember — owing to the memory-destroying combo of tech-era overload and not enough journalling while on the road — while conveniently justifying my unconventional life choices.

Until recently, I genuinely thought my travels (my willingness and readiness to leave my comfort zones, to leave my attachments and former iterations of self and failings behind, to just leave) were the most interesting and noteworthy thing about me. Their retelling seemed to capture people’s attention in intimidating social situations I might not have navigated unscathed otherwise, and kept them listening in a way that placated my recognition-starved inner child. Every now and then, someone would tell me I inspired them. I got comments like, “You’re the only person I know that really grabs life by the horns!” Which I absolutely lived for and interpreted as praise; for my bravery, my spontaneity, my smarts as a solo female traveller, my capacity to take on as much chaos as could find me and tenacity to JUST KEEP MOVING AND NEVER STOP EXPERIENCING. (To quote Bojack Horseman again: “Don’t stop dancing ’til the curtains fall.”)

The way I once saw it: my gift I had to give this world — accompanied by prose that would knock the socks off my apathetic university tutors, and vibrant, jaw-dropping pictures — was a story of a girl who found her treasure, over and over again out in the great big hair-raising world, sticking it to all the people who ever regarded her as weak or small or scared. And maybe, that story would rally other dispirited folk into realising they too could be big and brave and better than they were ever conditioned away from believing — worthy of being and belonging everywhere. The world could do with more of the earthy integrity, peace, and “stubborn gladness" 1 that comes from having a deep-rooted sense of one’s belonging and worth in the world...and here I was, running in frenzied, backward circles to try and cultivate it.

Anyone with a touch of pop culture psychology under their belt could have told me that, despite the noble intent, maybe this wasn’t the healthiest mantra to be branding myself with. (A check-marker of dopamine addiction, perhaps?) The depth of my burns, how fatally I was learning to suture my sense of self-worth to external circumstances — as I did with the documentary project — had not become clear. So I persisted with the rewards while ignoring twittering canaries in the proverbial coal mine that I was encroaching on a massive collapse, in both my internal and external worlds.

Cue burnout that seemingly came out of nowhere. Cue the resulting fallout of my creative business because I couldn’t sustain the pace and project load I once had (let alone complete my taxes or remember to clean my equipment once in a while). Cue many months of mental and physical debilitation that filled my brain with fog, my body with lead, and my kitchen floor with floods of confused tears due to monthly full moon emotional meltdowns.

As a high-functioning, busy and active person (who prided myself as such)…this was a bitch. I couldn’t work, I could barely exercise — or for that matter, remember to do simple things like feed myself, shower, or brush my teeth — and I couldn’t string coherent words or sentences together to start making sense of what was happening to me. (To this day, I still don’t fully understand and have trouble describing it.) I felt dumb, debilitated, and wholly useless, like my entire being was bound in an invisible straitjacket. I had never experienced anything like it. I couldn’t distract myself or escape from it. And it lasted for close to a whole year — honestly, even two years later, I feel like I’ve regained only a fraction of my former capacity.

I hated it.

Yet I truly believe it was necessary (and might indeed have been the only thing) to render me inert for long enough to take a good look at some really hard stuff I needed to see.

Since first intentionally sitting down with all of this, I’ve peeled away at layers thinking each one would lead into the core, the heart, of why this creation started coming into being — and why it might prove relevant to anyone else — only to touch on something yet more profound than the thing before it, and dig up yet more bountiful buried treasures of wisdom and truth that struck my worldly armour with deafening clangs.

These discoveries, and the space between them, are slowly piecing together into something of a Coelho-esque journey in itself, each stage showing me a great deal about what it means to be alive and human today against a backdrop of some really quite troubling stuff going on in our world. Matters I have been losing sleep over, redrafting my life plans around, really questioning whether there will be much left to make plans for in a future that seems increasingly terrifying and desolate and full of destruction — and seriously what is the fucking point of it all anyway?!

Maybe you have been too; we’re far from being the only ones. To quote Iain McGilchrist — psychiatrist, neuroscientist, writer and philosopher whose mind-bending work you will hear about in later chapters — in conversation with John Cleese that I popped on for some light listening today while sweeping the house:

“I’m very concerned...about the way the world is going...top of the list has to be the destruction of our home, of the planet, but also of various strange things like destroying other cultures, destroying our own civilisation, turning ourselves into machines – I’m very alarmed at the speed with which mechanistic thinking and machine-like thinking is taking over in everyday life...the business of leading a life now depends on your adopting a rather machine-like way of being, and we’re encouraged, all of us, to think of ourselves as slightly faulty machines because we have emotions and bodies and things like that...and the lust for power and control, which is extremely worrying, and accelerating a pace and the means whereby to acquire it by people who have little wisdom in how to use it.”

It’s been a wild time; so much so that I’ve been driving myself a little mad with it all. Tumbling down rabbit holes, retreating from the world, refraining from sharing too much of my earthquaking self and findings with others (or feeling too frozen to share, even when I want to). I’ve seriously wondered whether I should, whether anything I have to say on these huge matters would make any damn bit of difference, whether it would all come across as a bit much; I already go around feeling like I leak all over everyone enough from my bleeding heart as is.

Despite how badly I had been scorched and feeling like there wasn’t much left of me to give — or maybe there wasn’t a whole lot left to give for — something continued to flicker and burn from within, telling me there was more to this. To keep trusting. To keep digging.

“...But when we dig in the ashes
We find one ember
And very gently we fan that ember
Blow on it
It gets brighter
And from that ember we rebuild the fire.”

— from “Sit Around the Fire” by Jon Hopkins and East Forest, sampling the words of Ram Dass.

[MADDENING EDIT IN PROGRESS! Author bit off more than she could chew and accidentally tried to drive home two big points in one post; exasperated after several hours of chopping and changing and realising her mistake, signing off for now.]

During one of said periods of sleep loss, probably out of desperation for a salve, I picked up a book about anxiety written by my spirit human, Sarah Wilson 2. She navigated a similarly self-referencing journey into the “answers” for her anxious questioning that kept her up at night (sometimes six in a row), got her diagnosed with an array of mental and autoimmune disorders, and convinced her she had somehow missed the memo on how to do life “right”.

She draws links between gnawing, relentless anxiety and not having uncovered the meaning of our lives — not connecting with what she calls the “Something Else” that intertwines us all into the very fabric of nature — arriving at the conclusion that we need to go down into our darkest, gnarliest depths to find true connection; to ourselves, to that thing bigger than ourselves, to the world and our kindred folk at large.

“Because anxiety, eventually and inevitably, makes us sit in our shit. It takes us there, into the darkness. It forces us to do the journey. And only then can we see what we were looking for. We can see the truth. We see it all as it is…

Can we find untold wisdom and maturity and meaning without going through the ringer of anxiety? I guess so. But would we go there unprodded, knowing the grit it takes? I doubt it.”

She posited earlier in her book that this craving for connection — for proof that we belong as a necessary, glistening thread in nature’s fabric, as a worthy recipient of peace in our earthly bodies and the everlasting love of others — is really what we’re collectively anxious about, and what we’re perpetually trying to numb and distract and medicate ourselves against; why we buy ludicrously expensive throw rugs and watch too much TV and eat too many sweets and follow that infinite scroll down until our heads spin from the lack of reality oxygen.

Or, if we’ve come into enough resources and “lust for power and control,” as McGilchrist put it, in our lifetime...we bomb countries that contain “the others” we don’t like, or clad the whole world in branded, chokepoint capitalist bubble wrap that slowly rots the planet and people’s selfhood from the inside-out.

Reading Wilson's work made me realise this is essentially what I discovered after I went north on the documentary bus, on this laughably terrible and confusing adventure that went wrong in all the ways I didn’t want it to, that I hated and railed against for not being what I thought I wanted or was looking for. For the amount of personal shit it made me sit in and sift through, and do the same for others that I would really rather just not deal with if I had a choice. Because there was no way that dignifying the reality of all that shit by my sitting in it with the other shit-sitters could actually be the point, and the true pathway toward belonging and all-encompassing love within this indescribable, anxiety-loosening force bigger than ourselves…right?

I could point to a bunch of other, far sexier reasons for what I’m pretty sure the point was instead — the pursuit of artistic perfection and my name in a credits roll, for example, or having my idealistic plans play out in a god-like way that laid waste to any doubt ever cast against me — but it definitely wasn’t the yucky, ugly, unremarkable, bread-breaking stuff with the people who had bungled this project and screwed up my career and left us adrift in the middle of nowhere. Definitely nothing even vaguely associated with what the word “shit” brings to mind (which is how I might have described the misadventure at the time, more than once).

I do hope my italics convey the dripping irony within my ignorance, and the way that life, more graceful than I am, began to point me in a different direction.

So I would add to Wilson's statement: Would we “go there unprodded” while knowing not only the grit it takes, but what we arrive at on the other side might not be what we expect or think we want? Maybe, maybe not.

In my case, I took a long time to see that this adventure was less about the aesthetics and ego validation of filming a documentary — not so much about outcomes or “changing the world” — but more of a gnarly journey into shit-sitting and pain-sharing with myself and the difficult people around me I had otherwise been avoiding, and would yield the most surprising and beautiful results…if I were to only try and accept that my controlling and projecting tends to get in the way, and stop doing that.

I could have contributed to a lusher harvest for all of us. Instead, I hoarded my full self away; I stopped the camera rolling. I gave into the tense, cranky, gossipy and despondent way we developed with one another the more that got heaped on our customised platters of shit to sit in. I re-read the entire Harry Potter series without speaking to my coworkers/former friends for days on end, and when I ran out of books, I reactivated my online dating portals so I could distract myself with anyone else and get my ego needs met that way. (I met my next boyfriend during this window of sullen grasping; I’m sure you can imagine the kind of karmic retribution that came of it.) And when I got a chance to flee the bus for good, I did so swiftly and without so much as one grateful glance back over my shoulder.

(Again, if you don’t want to entertain partial spoilers, perhaps skim past the next couple of paragraphs.)

Mercifully, the Universe still threw me a bone, a wildly unplanned reward in spite of my arrogance; finally coming into my copy of The Alchemist that launched this whole book project, bequeathing lessons that filled in what I didn’t know back then, and guide me almost daily now as I’m slowly rebuilding post-burnout. For example: the boy returning home in tatters, asking the “old sorcerer” in the sky if he could have been spared from his suffering, learning he could never have encountered the beauty of the Pyramids without enduring said suffering…and ultimately finding his treasure back where he started.

If he had been spared the suffering (as I have frequently whined to be) and painful journeying outwards, he never would have arrived at the treasure — metaphorically, at “home” within himself — because he would not have known where to dig and what he was digging for. He would not have experienced remarkable grace and discovered his own capacity for grit and love. He would not have been presented with opportunities to master skills he didn’t even know he had before starting his journey, nor to grapple with his moral and spiritual self. He would not have seen so much beauty and endured everything the Soul of the World had to throw at him; would not have experienced becoming an integral part of it, merging with the higher power, the “Something Else… big, magnificent whole,” as Sarah describes.

And it is here we can truly rest — truly experience the joy of reuniting with our whole selves once again; reaffirm who we really are and what we really care about; heal from whatever scary things were chasing and depleting us along our way; relish renewed connections with the wider world and special people we didn’t know existed — until we stay for too long in our own little worlds and forget all of this, and anxiety and restlessness drives us to repeat the process all over again.

Restart the cycle. Rediscover anew. Remember. Rest. And so on into eternity — or at least until we find ways to spin in the teacup while staying perpetually centred, “at home” internally. (Or find complete freedom from suffering, as the Buddhists posit, and we let go for good.) Who knows — I sure as frigging hell don’t yet. That’s what I plan to explore here, as a way of trying to crash-proof my future and keep resulting existential crises to a minimum.

What I do know is: I “saw the Pyramids”, and could never have arrived there if I didn’t dive headlong (if only barely trustingly) into a situation that wasn’t all that upfront about what it would ask of me and how much shit I would have to sit in to get to the other side (and conveniently forgot to disclose that the shit doesn’t stop coming, even on the other side).

In the way the boy dug for gold and jewels beneath sands and sycamores, I dug deep inside myself to remember the real me and my worth beneath my external conquests. I was pulled into a cage wrestle with my really quite belligerent fear of “coming home” in both the physical and metaphorical sense:

E.g., Honouring my new, lesser productive limits and settling into a (much) slower, more spacious and familiar place within myself.

Learning to love Lauren-as-she-is, even (especially) when she wasn’t striving for something or setting off on cool adventures or creating wicked art for people — and in some instances, crumpled in a snotty heap on the floor.

Accepting the displeasing life circumstances that pushed me back, yet again, into the boring-ass Brisbane suburbia I thought I had escaped from for good — which had, somewhat by default, become my literal “home base” of 16 years in between travels; the respawn point I reluctantly wound up whenever I hit rock bottom and exhausted my escape options; the loathsome mediocrity that, I have to admit, did well to nurture me back to health and financial freedom, the many different times and ways I have needed it.

And so on...all of which finally ground into my thick skull the uncompromisable importance of finding the treasure back where we started; of unearthing a true richness within us beneath all we have built on the outside to supposedly make ourselves more accomplished, impressive, and “better”.

Not only for building a sturdy, un-fuck-with-able inner foundation, detached from external glory and gratification — but for helping us truly appreciate where we’ve come from, what we have, and where we’re headed...while mastering necessary lessons along the way that help us move through our future pursuits less harmfully. (More on this later also.)

I practised patience. I was beaten around by my own fighting. I let myself be defeated, crushed by the crumbling of my own bullshit, many times over.

Eventually, the evidence of my healing began to reveal itself. Another unbelievable chance encounter — yet again, made possible only through the exasperating life circumstances that led me to that point, a la receiving The Alchemist — placed the final block atop my mental Jenga stack that toppled the whole thing into a completely new sequence.

I resumed a regular writing practise for the first time in years. A whole bunch of scattered ideas I had for this speculative writing project suddenly began to connect and intertwine like mycelium. The gift from the curly-haired man in North Queensland — which already rearranged my DNA in a certain way where I couldn’t be the same — managed to rearrange me for a second time.

It was time for a re-read; for Coelho, the boy, and the alchemist to make an unwitting, humbled student of me once more. And in the process, bequeath littler, though no less valuable, treasures I unintentionally skipped the first time around because I was focused on getting to the final pages.

These little answers to my big questions — nestled alongside glittering nuggets of wisdom from philosophers, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, scientists, journalists, poets, artists, and many more — will make up the following chapters. My intention here is to not to instruct (that would I imply I know what the hell I’m doing), but gently offer my own figurative treasures as I dig them up; for wealth should be shared, and never hoarded.

Because if you’re a Big Question Asker like me, and been paying close enough attention, you might be witnessing the state of our world and moving through a whole heap of big feels right now. Overwhelm, fear, anger, apathy, guilt, sadness, despair, confusion, exhaustion, just to name a few — maybe all and more on an average weekday.

Seeing it all, feeling it all, you might be (as I did) wanting to take some kind of human responsibility and say something, do something...but it’s all a bit too much, and you wonder whether anything you say or do can make any damn bit of difference.

You might be (as I am) tempted to clam up, numb out, not bother, just grab what pleasures you can while there is still time, in denial or bargaining until the cows come home. You might be losing your way, on the verge of giving up. Or, you might be full of hope that the climate scientists, the tech giants, governments, billionaire philanthropists, David Attenborough, Donald Trump, whatever your camp — will step in clean up our collective mess before it’s too late.

I get you. I really do. Everything feels way too frigging complicated and we’re only one silly person trying to remember what day the bins go out amidst the thick of it all.

The thing is...respectfully, we are not only one person. We absolutely can make a difference. We absolutely must (at least try to) make a difference. And there is no one coming to save us from ourselves — but ourselves.

No pressure. Thankfully though, refreshing my soul with simple truths from The Alchemist — among other brave ideas by kindred Big Question Askers — has taught me something:

It’s the littler, often reassuringly simpler, ways of seeing and tackling problems that really count. When they start to intertwine and are faithfully embodied by enough people, they become Big Answers.

And (cue collective exhale of relief), they generally ask so much less of us, of both effort and suffering, than all this bloody complication does. In the words of Bill Mollison, co-founder of permaculture: “Though the problems of the world seem increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”2

I live, and have lived, in search of as many of these spiritual, philosophical, artistic, and occasionally scientific (for credibility!) salves as possible, to help prepare my perpetually anxious self for not just surviving, but (dare I say) thriving in the unchartered global circumstances I’m painfully aware are gaining fast ground on us. Or, at the very least, cut through the confusion, and learn to live meaningfully and authentically in the face of massive impending loss; in ways that strengthen us against the industrialist, ideological, cultural and political (among countless more) forces that lure us away from our true selves and swiftly destroy the only home we have ever known in this lifetime.

And at this stage along the path of my Personal Legend (a concept you will soon read much about), I am feeling called to share these salves with you — should they, by divinely brilliant chance 3, help you back onto the path of yours.

Make no mistake: humanity is headed for some hard stuff. In fact, we have already begun the civilisational, economical, and environmental equivalent of careening off a cliff at high speed 4. This pilgrimage is going to be a hard one.

Like I said at the beginning: We must be willing to cross deserts in their many metaphorical forms.

Similarly: We must become brave enough to pursue our heart’s desires against any obstacle or external force…and to always choose Love.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all: We must return to the treasure buried within all of us, in the sacristies of our hearts, like our lives depend on it...because, well, they kinda do.

In the words of the boy:

“It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse.”

If you stuck with this whole mammoth introduction — well done you. I’m really glad you’re here and to share the following chapters with you. Let’s make ourselves, and the world, better together.

[2] [fuck I hate Ghost's fucking convoluted footnote function] Get used to her name; I’ll be referencing her, and her brilliant journalism, a lot, for it’s been so cathartic for me coming to terms with my own unconventional ways of “doing life” (and feeling like I’m always doing it badly) and connecting the dots between the big life questions that practically cripple me on a daily basis.