Sovereign Insight, the Essence of Transformation
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It was the end of another busy day at my clinic in Marylebone.
The light outside was gently dimming, as the sounds and bustle of the day gradually faded into the cool and quiet of the evening.
As I was showing my final client to the door - someone who’d been receiving regular acupuncture sessions since I first opened my clinic over 25 years ago - I mentioned that I was in the process of revamping my website.
‘Why are you doing that?’ they asked. ‘I looked at your website today and it looks beautiful.’
‘Well’, I explained, ‘I need to make some changes so it truly reflects what I do.’
‘But everyone knows what you do - you’re the last chance saloon. You’re the person people go to when all else fails. And to be blunt - no pun intended - you stick needles in people and make them feel better!’
After laughing for a moment, I paused at the door - ‘Well, in some ways you’re right about the last chance saloon. But these days I’m being called to go deeper - to make a shift from penetrating needles to penetrating questions.’
‘Penetrating questions eh? How on earth does that work? Surely questions can’t work in the same way as needles? Why are you changing? And why are you doing it now?’
‘I could tell you’, I said, ‘but if you really want to know - and if you really want to understand - we’d need to start right at the beginning.’
I held the door open but he stood rooted to the spot. He was looking at me intently as though something had landed. ‘Penetrating questions? Working better than a needle? I think I do need to know about this.’
So, letting the door swing closed I ushered him back inside, and, putting the kettle on, we sat back down to discuss the journey of Sovereign Insight.
A faulty foundation
The journey of Sovereign Insight closely mirrors my own personally struggle to find meaning in the face of adversity.
To escape the immense stress and unhappiness of my early childhood and teenage years, I hurled myself into the pursuit of academic excellence, significantly up-levelling my life through hard work and dedication.
At 12 years old, I met my first teacher of Buddhist meditation, and from my mid-20’s onwards, I immersed myself in the practice of meditation, as well as the academic study of Buddhism. To improve my physical health, I mined the depths of the Daoist healing arts, particularly Qigong and Tai Chi Chuan under the guidance of a recognised teacher and mentor.
My attitude throughout was that life wasn’t for simply living, but for self-cultivation and mastery. I devoted all my time to keeping the various meditation practices, qigong forms, affirmations, techniques and rituals in an attempt to ‘stay ahead of the curve’.
I believed that if I did more, knew more, practiced more, acquired more wisdom, went on longer retreats, consumed more information, trained harder, set an impeccable example of a cultivated being, and presented an image of perfect health and presence, I would achieve the ultimate goal of enlightenment.
Underneath it all though, an underlying dis-ease remained - a constant nagging sense of underachieving and of somehow falling short. It felt that it was entirely on me to make myself happy, and that if I didn’t keep my mind focussed and clear through all these practices and rituals, it would all come tumbling down.
As I finally realized though, that gnawing sense of falling short, and the fear that everything was about to give way, was due to the whole edifice being built upon faulty foundations. Although the practices and techniques were not flawed, the underlying basis upon which I was practicing them was. And the central underlying flaw was this - a tacit belief that I was intrinsically broken. And not just me, but everything and everyone else.
As a person I therefore had to constantly patch up and fix myself, and as a doctor and acupuncturist I had to constantly patch up and fix my patients. But if we’re all intrinsically broken, then these are only ever quick fixes and temporary solutions. Which meant that any apparent breakthroughs would inevitably transform into brick walls.
You are not broken
From an early age I'd read much about how our feelings of both stress and happiness come primarily from within. In my healing I’d learned that we’re all innately well - that we’re all connected to a source of deeper wisdom that sustains us in every aspect of life.
But aside from an intellectual understanding of this, I had no direct embodied experience of it at all. The idea that we are not broken and do not actually need fixing was simply an idea that had no impact on my day to day experience of well-being.
Realising that there must be something crucial that was missing, I asked myself the following question: what is the essence of healing?
To help me make a breakthrough, I sought out the guidance and inspiration of people who have embodied that understanding and had a transformative experience of it. And for the past two years, I’ve engaged in weekly masterminds with my friend, Edwin, to bounce around ideas and to map out that process experientially. Edwin also does a remarkable job of editing my writing.
All their input has been and continues to be invaluable in helping me to mine the depths of that one essential question and what gradually began to become apparent was this:
When we fall out of our personal thinking we drop into an inner space.
It is in this space that we connect to a deeper source of wisdom.
Sovereign Insight
The Sovereign Insight approach works by facilitating an experience of pure consciousness and connection. It does so by employing special penetrating questions that facilitate the relinquishing of our default ideas, projections and distortions.
Back in Marylebone, quietly sipping tea after a long day of work, this is how I explained it to my patient:
‘When you rest in that space of pure consciousness and connection, it’s abundant positivity heals both body and mind. When you live from that place its abundant creativity maximizes performance and flow. When you connect from that place its abundant love and compassion facilitates new levels of harmony and intimacy. And when you explore this space more deeply, you’ll grow closer and closer to ‘the divine’ - the profound meaning of life beyond our ordinary daily concerns.’
Every problem we have in life is the result of losing our bearings and getting caught up in the content of our own thinking, and the solution to every one of those problems is to find our way back to that source.
For more information about Sovereign Insight, click on the link below: