Discovering my true life purpose.

All my life, I suppose I have always felt 'a little bit different' and felt that many of the things I was being told just didn't make sense.

It probably wasn't until my twenties and thirties that I realised that many of the things I was being asked to accept by the society I lived in either just weren't true or had a hidden agenda. Added to that, I had several experiences that I couldn't explain, and that if I asked questions, I wasn't getting answers that made sense. I could often see lines of energy between people and had seen people surrounded by auras or transform into other 'states', some that scared me a lot.

Discovering what I understand to be my true purpose.

I didn't start to find out about what I now understand to be my true purpose until my early 40s when it was like a big hand came out of the sky and said, 'Robert, you are doing this now.' In the years that have followed, I have learned to trust and listen to those moments.

The first time it happened was in the late '80s when my marriage wasn't going very well. My son, was doing Year 12 at the time and talking about committing suicide, and I was very unhappy at work. My local GP said, 'Rob, you're stressed' and gave me a week off work. I can remember driving down to the Surf Coast with tears streaming from my eyes, and a fishing rod thrown in the back of the car, wondering what the hell I should do.

At Bellbrae, just past Geelong, I drove past a sign that said 'Health Resort,' which just happened to be running one of the most advanced courses of its kind in Australia at the time. I turned around and paid for a 5-day course.

After 4 days, on the day before I was due to return home, I went to Maurie Rayner who was running the course and asked for help. He said, 'Rob, before you leave tomorrow, can you make me a list of all the things in your life you are not happy with and bring it to me in the morning. Can you do that?'

I stayed up half that night with post-it notes all over the walls, by morning I had weeded it down to 14 areas of my life I wasn't happy with. When I went to him the following morning, I asked, 'Which shall I do first and when do I start?' He smiled and said, 'All of them, now.'"

As soon as I got home, I began working on Maurie's list. Within a year, I had quit teaching and started retraining as a hands-on practitioner in Postural Integration, followed soon after by Body Harmony and Hawaiian Lomi Lomi. All of which draw on knowledge that is outside the mainstream tactile therapies.

The following year, I went back to Bellbrae and completed training as a Life Skills Facilitator. A method of teaching I relied on extensively in years to come. It's a method of learning when you learn to listen to and learn from the experiences of everyone in the room. These, I recognise now, were my first steps in gaining some insight and wisdom of my own.

In the years that have followed, the big hand has come out of the sky in different forms many times, and I have learned to listen and trust that as a form of divine guidance.