James Ballantyne

Tag: Journey

  • Standing On the Bridge

    Standing on the bridge

    As I walk on

    Slow step by slow step

    What is behind me?

    What is in front?

    What can I see?

    What remains hidden?

    What is underneath?

    The fall, the gaps, the fear, the height

    What is above?

    Sky misty in wonder, grey, with promise hidden

    As I walk

    I make it to the middle

    Am I still standing?

    Am I wondering?

    Am I still?

    Am I?

    I am?

    Yes..but who

    Am I….who…am..I…as I..am…here?

    I sense

    And wonder

    What this bridge could be?

    Inside

    Me

    A bridge..

    Between ego and soul

    Between past and future

    Between heart and mind

    Between body and spirit

    Between conscious and subconcious

    Between life of wounds…and the promise of life.

    Bridges inside

    Which one calls me on

    As I walk?

    Which way takes me back?

    Which way can I choose?

    As I stand on the bridge

    I take a step

    A step

    One step

    I feel the movement

    I feel me

    Making the movement

    My soul carrying me forward

    Love calling me

    As I take courage

    And

    Power, over me.

    Slow step by slow step.

    The unknown full of promise beckons me,

    Mystical dreams awaiting,

    Angels clouded, waiting to hold me,

    I walk

    I just walk.

  • Could my Soul have an Ancestory?

    I know my Name.

    I know where my name comes from.

    Actually finding out a little more of my family history in the last 4 years has helped me to join the dots, reconnect and give me a sense of something.

    It stared with googling my name.

    I’m now on a bit of a treasure hunt. To find evidence of past Ballantynes, and also artefacts of both RM Ballantyne and the published works of James Ballantyne (based in Edinburgh from the 1700’s).

    Some of this I want to know about, some will be a treasure and surprise when I find it.

    I have a physical ancestry. A story.

    But – what if my soul has an ancestors too?

    My body and mind aren’t going to last forever, but my soul might?

    And if so – might it have been somewhere else before?

    and further still …. might the soul I have now, have been someone else’s one time before and was there a process for it to choose my body, my life and my experiences…

    and if so…for what purpose?

    Have you ever thought this?

    I don’t think I mean reincarnation, but maybe soul ancestry, what’s the history of my soul, and curiously was it reluctant, happy or determined to exist in my experience now, for the time I am hosting it?

    Was my Soul happy before and why my experiences?

    and might there be a point when my embodied soul considers itself complete? or will it accumulate experiences, feelings and character for all eternity – if that’s even what it is doing?

    Or will it become something different, like non human. Animal even? Is that what my soul might become next? Was it non human before? might this explain my affinity with nature – but then might this explain all of our affinity with the natural world?

    Then, thinking Shakespeare… If all the world is a stage… what’s the role of the soul? Might Jung be right to consider the God archetype part of our humanity to exist – and this might be the soul- but what stages, performance, directions, scenes has my soul played before? Or has it been the same one, and its just the actor, the body that’s changed.

    And, when there’s different performances of the soul – what happens in the gap? The Soul interval? From one person to another – and in those moments where might the soul rest, or wait, or choose?

    Then again… Would I want to know? Would I want to know the full list of other people, objects, animals, trees even – that it has inhabited since it was created.. and when was that – what would I do with that list , my soul ancestry? Would it help me to explain things now? Like my genetic make up, from 10 generations of Ballantyne for example.

    Continuing that thought. When was my soul created? Or was it always, well just always there. When did it come from?

    Isn’t that it all along. Is the question not about how the world was created, but how the souls did?

    Might this be God, divine or source all along? A lake of souls from which emanated souls like rivers into the flow of human existence?

    Is my soul in my today, in January 2023, right now for a purpose?

    And if so…what is it?

    So so many questions, maybe the start of this was to recognise having a soul in the first place, as well as wanting to have some understanding of my familial past.

    Like discovering Ballantynes, maybe my souls journey will take me on a similar treasure hunt.

  • Personal Thank You

    Personal Thank You

    I just wanted to say

    For the very positive responses, comments and feedback from my recent blog about ‘1000 days since leaving Church‘ which I published just over a week ago.

    I did not quite realise, though had I thought about it, I may have also realised it, quite how common my experience has been.

    Thank you for reading, sharing and commenting on it, thank you.

    Its been very apparent in the comments, both public and private to me, from youth workers, pioneer folks, leaders in churches and denominations, for how many folks, they had to leave church, to re-find God, and find a faith.

    I guess I wasn’t brave enough to do it all those years ago.

    I guess I still wanted something about what ‘organised church’ could offer, anyway..

    So, thank you.

    Thank you for reaching out, thank you for encouraging me on the same journey.

    And that’s just it, its a journey. Cliche alert.

    I haven’t ‘made it’ , neither have I the answers, and any certainty expressed sometimes comes back as vulnerability or a lesson to be learned.

    But something feels more coherent.

    I found home in myself, in a way that I was trying to find home elsewhere.

    There was a hole in my life and heart – it wasn’t God shaped, it was because of childhood abuse, because of neglect. That God was an external being to surrender to and lose myself to – despite an internal ache that never went away.

    Haemin Sunim says this:

    We must cultivate all three intelligences for our overall health

    Critical intelligence, emotional intelligence and Spiritual intelligence

    If one falls to the wayside, it slows the growth of the other two

    Haemin Sunim, Things you can only see when we slow down.

    If I were to do a 3 way audit of these three intelligences at different times in my life – what would I have found – how might this pie chart look like?

    Something like this, probably

    And that’s 5% emotional intelligence and awareness on a good day.

    In fact I was scared of those weird things like emotions, best to stay disconnected from them, dissociate, and stay in my head. That was the safe place. Critical intelligence to the absolute full. God is to be understood and not felt.

    But without all three, no growth. No heart. Or peace. Or Joy. Or love.

    What I had been looking for, was closer than I realised. Everything I needed was within, and I have just had to be given permission, and the tools to see it. I just Am. (as are you)

    I like this from John O’Donohue too, on coming home to yourself:

    May all the is unforgiven in you

    Be Released,

    May all your fears yield

    Their deepest tranquilities.

    May all that is unloved in you

    Blossom into a future

    Graced with love.

    So…..Thank you , I am very grateful and appreciative, I really am.

    James

  • I had to make it happen – myself

    I love when I read something and because im in a different time and place, it means something different to me, I see something different in the words and meaning that I didn’t before. When I studied hermeneutics as part of my theology studies and then personal research 10 years ago, I would have understood this as the ‘reader response’ to a text, and thought then only of sacred texts like the Bible.

    I have just finished re-reading The Hobbit, it’s the fourth time I have read it, and the second time I’ve read it out loud, I read it to my son George about 10 years ago, and recently to my fiance Christelle, also as a bed time story.

    It’s the first time I’ve read it in 8 years though, and I had sort of dismissed it as an adventure story, and wonder how I’d find it compared to having just read the Harry Potter series

    As well as finding resonance in the conversation with the dragon part, the sneaky burglar role and the effect of power and wealth – whether got for legitimate or non legitimate means, it was this part at the end that stood out

    And why should they not come true, surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bring them about yourself? You don’t really suppose that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?

    What did I once believe? That God would sort things out? That I couldn’t make anything happen? Maybe even that my destiny was never to be happy and that was what my luck was?

    Or was I waiting for someone else to fix it for me? Me, the passive victim waiting to be emotionally rescued and someone else patch me up, and yes at the point of crisis I needed immediate patching up. But..

    I had to make it happen

    I had to act, even with all the best guidance and support in the world

    I had to make a myriad of choices and actions happen

    I had to learn how to make decisions for myself and also that were for myself

    I had to stop being passive, or waiting for someone or something else to fix it, or play a never ending waiting game of was a manipulation in itself.

    Echart Tolle writes something very similar, stating that in simple terms, if we want to get out of a situation, or change it, we must act, and doing nothing is also action. Improbably misquoting him, but hey I’m writing this on a train

    If I attributed what I did to ‘The Gods’ where would that leave me now? What if how Ive changes and grown and dug deep been all just God and not me? I’m not going to say that I don’t believe God wasn’t in it, and I’m rediscovering God again, but what sense of power, or achievement or self pride would I have in it, if It was just God’s plan or destiny? Or good luck?

    The universe conspires to help the dreamer – Paulo Coelho

    But even then I had to make things happen, i had to take responsibility for myself, make choices and decisions, not all of them perfect or right, but I where I listened to my heart, and sought to do something that I felt was best for me, somehow that did. And that includes every day. Every day even now.

    Whether that’s a positive decision to not have a TV or watch the news, whether that’s a positive decision to listen to my feelings and anxiety and sit, write and express them, whether that’s to cook good food for myself, whether that’s to continue to deal with the mess of the past or survival strategies of the past through therapy, whether that’s to embrace love and vulnerability with my fiance Christelle, whether that’s continuing day by day to attend to myself, be kind to myself, these are all active choices I make every single day.

    So maybe, this is all about power after all. I had to realise I had more power that I thought, more power than I knew, more power than I wanted, and that I wasn’t fatalistically dependent on someone else. That I didn’t need to be scared anymore.

    From a place of fear, of being abused and scared, I had to take power, I had to start to make things happen for myself, sometimes one vulnerable step after another, but still steps.

    Maybe destiny and prophecies have to be found and created, and not waited for…thanks Gandalf…

  • 2 years of being able to breathe

    I realised this week that I’ve been able to breathe for 2 years now, these were the first two years I’d been able to breathe in my whole life

    I remember when I walked into the flat 25 months ago and being emotional in front of the estate agent. Realising that this was going to be my space, my space to look after, my space to look after myself in, my space , haven, calm

    My space, to make home. To light candles, listen to music, read, and enjoy life in my own pace.

    My space to determine boundaries of what I listen to, read or who I allow in

    My space to look forward to coming home to after leaving it

    My safe space

    I can breathe

    Stop and slow down

    41 years of emotionally abusive home space, with 2 in-between of working/living in houses with gap year teams, with me being the ‘responsible’ one

    2 years of being able to breathe

    2 years of being enough, 2 years of listening to my heart, 2 years of not having to revolve around the often crazy unpredictable needs of others, 2 years of being just me.

    2 years of healing from the 41 years previously

    2 years of starting to see

    Healing requires time, safety and connection, and in the process, self determination to make decisions, take control, for me about putting myself first, making decisions for my own good.

    It makes me stop and realise quite how unhealthy places are when breathing isn’t possible. When eggshells are the only floor covering and avoiding fighting or fawning conflict is the only reality. That’s not to mention lies and gaslighting, and trying to constantly work out who the crazy one is.

    It’s worth saying here, if you’re the one creating eggshells for others in your relationships, or family, through manipulation, control, bullying and neediness then maybe decide to give it up. You can change. Problem is, that you’re unlikely to read this. But…

    If you’re not breathing you’re not living, you’re just surviving. I was just surviving all my life. Ignoring every attempt of my heart to make itself known. Just surviving. Bouncing from one crisis to another. Fawning over the needy anger of toxicity.

    Breathing for 2 years, learning to be me. Realising who ‘me’ is.

    As I write I’m on holiday, camping in the rain, and up to now, my few holidays have been busy ones, climbing, walking, city breaks, and I’ve filled my days. Today I’ve tried to do what I am learning to do in my home. To stop and enjoy a ‘doing nothing’ day.

    Yes I’ve walked a short distance,but no rushing for trains , or climbing hills, just a short meander to the village a walk by the river and now just time reflecting on it as I write this, in a tent in the rain.

    In the past I realised that I struggle to slow down, in the last two years I’ve realised quite how much I’m able to slow down.

    Business was my ongoing distraction. Busy work, busy hobbies, busy. It’s no wonder that I’d wait to get ill during Christmas holidays only, when I had the time and my body relaxed. This was the pattern since childhood.

    Learning to slow down

    2 years of being in and feeling like being home.

    Safe

    Rest

    Breathe

    I’m sure I have more healing to do, as more layers are uncovered, as I listen more to my inner child, as I draw, write and play. But for now, a mark to note two years of being able to breathe, and feel new life, growth and change.

    Thank you to all friends and family alike in their support and encouragement to me in these last 2-3 years, and to Christelle whose healing, loving kindness is a joy

  • Recovering and Healing (Part 6) Being taught to say F**k

    Recovering and Healing (Part 6) Being taught to say F**k

    But its rude to say it

    Just say it

    No, it sounds wrong

    Just say it

    I can write it down

    Say it James

    You mean its ok to

    Yes, just say it James.

    It feels uncomfortable, ill get into trouble

    No you won’t, Just say it, get it out

    Why do you want me to?

    Stop delaying, just say it

    Ok……… FUCK…… (in the tiniest of calmest of maturest voices)

    YAY..well done!

    Learning to say fuck was one of my healing moments.

    Saying it, with my voice.

    Allowing the word to bubble up, and be out of my mouth before my head tried to stop it. Maybe not the first time. The first time was the excruciating torture I describe above.

    Do it, do it, do it.. Being taught to swear, was like everything I hadn’t been allowed to do since I was born. And definately something I stopped doing since I had to grow up and be the responsible one, the morally good one, the leader…

    Writing it didn’t count. Because often what I can type, is my head playing with words, its not my heart, my feelings actually making themselves felt in my body.

    Paralysed by politeness, inhibited by responsibility, fearing consequences. Thinking it was shameful.

    I was inhibited.

    Anger dormant.. (and it still is being worked on)

    Uptight

    Needing to loosen up.

    The ‘always responsible’ needing to let himself go.

    Relax.

    Saying F**K was a beginning.

    and trying not to give a F**K about it either.

    Enjoying it.

    It felt good.

    Saying it.

    Talking of inhibitions, I realised too that being the responsible one had meant I had never got drunk in my life. And especially not drank when I knew that emotionally unsafe people were drinking. Though also not because of the same reasons as above too.

    Not wanting to let myself go. Worrying about what I might find.

    Saying F**K was part of my healing process.

    I needed to say it, to bring out to the surface all the ‘F**K’s I had held in, all there built up rage, anger, frustration, hurt, pain inside.

    Sometimes F**K is completely and utterly appropriate. Because it described how you feel when you have been treated appallingly and abusively.

    It may not be the ‘release’ for you that it was for me, it may be something else.

    Maybe its to do something spontaneous, fun, silly, and let yourself go. Maybe we all need to do a lot more of that anyway.

    The problem for many is that we care too much about others, and too little about ourselves. We give too many F**Ks and care too much about stuff that shouldn’t feature (and books like this help, on prioritising where to, and where not to give a ‘F’ about)

    Part of my healing and recovery in those first few months was actually trying to toughen up a bit. To care less. To worry about others less. To give more of a F about myself.

    Learning to say Fuck was part of that process.

  • Is Generation X healing from Baby Boomer Parents?

    Is Generation X healing from Baby Boomer Parents?

    (This blog is written by James and Christelle to accompany their latest video which is here, in which we ask the same question. We would like to prompt a conversation about this, and would like to hear from you and invite you into the conversation.) 

    This blog is dedicated to those who have supported us on our journey.

    It is also for those whose hidden journeys are yet to be revealed.

    Why?

    Because we are wondering if there is a trend going on.

    James; When I was first volunteering in Youth Ministry back in the 1990’s, there were a number of studies done about the difference in ‘generations’.  The reason was that youth ministry then, and now, became about relevance. Discovering what each generational demographic was broadly like, became a guide, and marker. What we didn’t really hear about was stuff about the potential of generational trauma to be passed down from one generation to the next. Why do I say this?

    Well..because…

    It seems like there are a significant number of people in their mid/late 30s through to 50’s (Generation x born 1965-1980) who are undergoing a realisation of the emotional abuse/trauma from the parents who were born around 1945-1960 (the baby boomers)?

    Why might that be?

    We’re not sure that Generation X has hit ‘mid-life’ crises all at once.

    ‘Mid-life crisis’ ….doesn’t equate to the number of people who are having their eyes open to the realisation of the horror of the behaviour they were subjected to as children or adults, by their Baby boomer parents.

    Descriptors like entitled, precious, favourite princess babies (after the war), narcissist, self obsessed, driven, also.. busy, aloof… are all words that fit the behaviour of many parents from the Baby Boomer generation.

    Psychologists and counsellors have also said the same, in the following books.

    Maybe its now when Generation X have had enough, and started to make different decisions, rather than accommodate abuse.

    Instead its time to deal with it, by working on themselves.

    Realising that they werent the problem all along.

    Maybe, as in our own case, we realised that we played rescuer, and it was a role that was exhausting.  It’s time to devolve that responsibility to those who should have it themselves. It’s easy to be forced into the rescue game for those who play victim and persecutor. Its ironic also, that generation X will continue to over stretch taking responsibility for an older generation as they age.

    What caused it?

    We could go further back and make an argument that the parents of Baby Boomers could be ‘at fault’ – but this isn’t about blame. Blaming upwards, or not taking responsibility, is what we’ve heard all our lives.

    We are already the generation who has taken responsibility – by fighting on climate change, poverty, young people, equality and many other matters, we are already equipped with knowing that if it’s going to change, only we can change it. We’re also seeing our children fight for justice at an earlier age again.

    Blame won’t change the pattern. We already know change starts with us.

    But we’re wondering – is there some kind of collective generational trauma revealing and healing going on?

    So, are Generation X adults undergoing a collective healing from Baby Boomer parents? 

    Open question..What are your thoughts?

    Please comment below, please do share this post or our video. Maybe talking about it might mean that you can know you’re not alone.

    If you would like to watch the accompanying video to this blog it is here: