Emotional principles

Many years ago, I was a jet-setting IT consultant. New Zealand, America, Hong Kong. I was billed out at $300/hour in the pre-Y2K mania. Hotels, rental cars, lavish meals. Success? Tick. Yet I didn’t know I was about to run face-first into one of humanity’s immovable principles. That which brings you success is that which […]

Genealogy is big business. We all know that family member constantly immersed in online research or rushing off to visit old battlegrounds or musty parish records. Over the years, the facts pile up in old ring-binders or sprawling digital archives. Few of these researchers are aware of the difference between thinking about the past and […]

One of the pitfalls of a society characterised, as ours is, by emotional immaturity and irresponsibility, is a blurring of boundaries between ourselves and others. As we bring our unconscious to light, excavating programming that undermines us, we gradually expose these inappropriate boundaries. We learn to stay in our lane. Staying in your lane is […]

From very early on in my journey, one of my guiding mantras has been Carl Jung’s quote. “Man’s task is to become conscious of that which presses upwards from the unconscious.” It’s a great quote. But how do we comply? How do we reduce unconsciousness? Jung’s quote succinctly outlines what I also believe to be […]

Over the course of recognising and releasing my own generational trauma, I’ve noticed various principles. These principles are repeatable, consistent, and constant. You can rely on them as much as any scientific principle. I’m convinced there is science behind them, we just haven’t deconstructed it yet. In Living with ghosts, I’ve documented some of my […]

“The past is a door I don’t revisit very often”. I’ve heard this, and similar beliefs on leaving the past behind, over the years. This seems to me like wishful thinking. My own experience is the opposite: the only exit from the past is by going back through it. Pema Chodron writes that “nothing ever […]

One of the characteristics of trauma that may seem confusing from the outside looking in, is that the more traumatised we are, the more we defend trauma. However, when we understand how trauma works, this seemingly paradoxical stance reveals itself to be entirely congruent with the emotional mechanics of trauma. The more traumatised we are, […]

Over the course of my emotional principles blogs, I’ve outlined some of the laws of emotional mechanics that govern our lives. One of the laws that eluded me for a long time—there are no doubt more—is that every interaction happens as a quid pro quo. Every time something happens that isn’t consciously what you want, […]

In 1998, using a personal development tool called the Enneagram, I broke into my unconscious and started to clear its toxic contents. It’s taken me ever since to articulate it, but this is perhaps the First Law of the Unconscious: that which you make conscious cannot remain unconscious. By this, I mean that once you […]

We never see the S-bends of life coming until they loom out of the fog on a narrow mountaintop road. It’s too late. We’re committed. We’re going through a zig-zag no matter what. After years of personal development and healing, I’m pleased to report that life conspires to keep us on the road. The more […]