When we reach moments of deep crisis or profound questioning, the idea of surrendering to a higher power often emerges as a beacon of hope. In this vulnerable state, we are left open to be taken advantage of – be it by some religious institute, a gang, a charismatic cult leader or any other un-toward predatory agent seeking to exploit human weaknesses. Close to the core of my wundr'ing seems to be "trust" and the recognition that we typically surrender when we are at our most vulnerable.
One way this manifests in my life is how I often worry that I am going to find myself as a member of a cult or, even scarier, conjure up one of my own (my sister always jokes with me that I will accidentally find myself to be the leader of a cult). I started to read the book "Cultish" by Amanda Montell, but my tenancy to read about 4-5 books at anyone time has led to it being left behind. In this book, Amanda analyses the social science of cult influences. I will likely pick it back up again at some point.
These particular wonderings have been partially inspired by Russell Brand, once known for his intellectualism and a lifestyle far removed from traditional faith, has undergone a remarkable spiritual transformation, embracing Christianity. This journey, intertwined with his dedication to the 12-step program, illuminates the complex interplay between vulnerability, faith, and the search for meaning. I am also inspired by recent conversations I've had with friends who are committed to the 12-step program and how they've told me of their experiences of surrender, faith and community support.
In this post, we'll explore these themes, drawing on personal experiences, Carl Jung's insights, and the ethical dynamics at play in spiritual guidance.
The Nature of Despair and Surrender
The First Swerve: A Shattered Dream
I was 25 and I felt utterly lost. It was during a period of intense personal upheaval – my marriage was falling apart before my eyes, my work life was overwhelming and I was questioning my capacity to provide for my family and my presence as a husband and a father. In the midst of this turmoil, I recall exploring all of my options; "ok... I need a plan", "how can I fix this?", "there must be a way to change this". And for the first time in my life, I came up with nothing. I found myself contemplating the notion of surrender, in the form of suicide!
The dread and despair I felt was overwhelming – I cannot control this! I had lost my grip on everything! So clearly, I remember the moment when an internal conversations began to unfold. I was at the wheel of my car considering swerving into a wall and an internal voice inside of me said "you're not going to do that", "too many people love and care for you", "too many people depend on you", "you will not let them down".
I pulled over, wailed from the pit of my belly and wept my eyes out. The voice told me, "the future you dreamed of is no more. You cannot control this. You can control yourself and that is all". I reminded myself of the roles that are most important to me. "I am a father, I am a son, I am a brother, I am a friend." I placed my faith in myself and my ability to control me and vowed to go on prioritising my steps on my commitment to fulfilling these roles as best as I can – in that order. Its striking to reflect on this all now. Such a pivotal moment in my life that led me to the person I am today. This is a story I had told myself to allow me to keep going. And it was one I largely kept to myself as I was embarrassed by what I told myself was a moment of weakness.
The first steps were the hardest. My behaviour adjusted and some of my most cherished friendships started to breakdown. It was like the old me had died and a new me was reborn. Who is this new person? My friends would criticise and make fun of me. Not in a spiteful way, but sometimes that's just how it goes. Slowly but surely, I subconsciously created new spaces with friends that were willing and able to listen and developed new relationships with people that made space for me to feel safe sharing my experience and grief. Through this, I developed a new strength, one that emerges from my own vulnerability and authenticity. Some of the criticisms I have picked up along the way are things like – I overshare, I am too feminine, I am too soft. But I have also received my fair share of compliments – I am a good listener, people feel safe around me, I don't judge. And I am confidence in the strength of the relationships I have built around me during that chapter of my life.
I still wonder about that voice that spoke to me when I was at the wheel. Had I subconsciously surrendered to "God"? I talk about this a lot these days. I'd developed a narrative whereby science was smart and religion and God was for the less "intelligent". I'm certain it was this narrative or story that had developed around me and within me throughout my life that prevented me from speaking openly about it. I was embarrassed. My experienced was in direct conflict with one of my core truths.
In moments like these, vulnerability is unavoidable. We face our limitations and confront the parts of ourselves we often prefer to ignore. This state of openness can be both terrifying and liberating, as it necessitates a level of trust and faith that goes beyond our usual defences.
Partial Annihilation: The Fatal Blow
I was 33 and life was sweet. It was the day of my sisters wedding and everyone was in the highest spirits imaginable. As I left the church, the sun was shining, the smiles on everyone's faces were beaming and the sounds of Bob Marley songs were coming from the courtyard after the ceremony. I headed over to where the champaign was being served. My Mum wasn't feeling so well. She was suffering with a headache, nausea and was feeling faint so she took a seat away from the crowd. Everything was so overwhelming. After a little time passed, the nausea hadn't passed so we walked back to the house we were staying to see if we could find any medicine and to get some rest space before the dinner. It was back at the house when everything really began to unwind and unravel and we were all left in a pit of horror and despair. I watched my Mum have a fatal stroke and disappear before my eyes.
I found myself in a familiar place. Overwhelmed by the stark realisation of how cruel life can be and the lack of control of the world around me. Once again I was reminded by some dark promises that we often sleepwalk in the shadow of – happiness is always temporary, death is promised to us all, suffering is a necessary part of living. But in this familiarity I found strength to place faith, once again in myself, and my family. I remember a voice again... but this time, it came from my mouth. "We are prepared for this. We know what to do. We will make it through this, together."
A week later, my Nan too had a fatal stroke and died. Our family, already torn, was shaken to the very core. Nothing would be the same again.
The days, weeks and months after that, there was so much pain, and so much healing. As a family, we held a space open for grief. We confronted it together. We witnessed it together, from each of our perspectives, in so many flavours. We surrendered to ourselves and each other, and I turned out I was right and wrong at the same time – we weren't prepared for what happened, we didn't know what to do... but we did it anyway. We made it through together ... and onwards we walk.
Trapped in a Nightmare
When I was a child, I would have recurring dreams filled with the overwhelming sounds of giant men and women, their voices booming louder than anything imaginable. The words were impossible to decipher, but their argument was unmistakable, carrying an intensity that felt all-consuming. The sheer force of their voices seemed to bleed into their physical forms, their bodies and faces swelling and shifting, merging with the sound like colossal, dark clouds of a violent storm.
In the dream, I felt utterly powerless, shrinking beneath their towering forms as their fury engulfed everything around me. The sense of terror was so profound, so all-encompassing, that even after waking, the nightmare would linger. I would curl into a ball, covering my ears and squeezing my eyes shut, desperate to escape the lingering dread that wrapped around me like a suffocating shroud. It would take moments before the storm in my mind would finally recede, leaving me drained and trembling, but finally free from the grip of that terrifying dream.
Grief has a way of tearing down the veils that shield us from life’s most harrowing realities. It exposes us to the raw, unfiltered pain that we often keep at bay, forcing us to confront it in ways we never thought possible. In the wake of my mother’s death, I found myself plunged into a grief so profound that it felt like living through a nightmare — one I couldn’t wake up from, no matter how tightly I shut my eyes.
There’s a scene in A Clockwork Orange where the protagonist is subjected to the Ludovico technique, a method of conditioning that forces him to endure a relentless stream of horrors, his eyes pried open, unable to escape the images searing into his mind. That’s what grief felt like to me—a merciless force that shoved all my fears and anxieties down my throat, making them burn, boil, and bubble in the pits of my stomach. It was as if every nerve in my body was set alight, the pain grinding and churning through me, scraping against the base of my spine, leaving me raw and trembling.
“This is the fucking real deal,” grief seemed to scream at me, “and it’s going to hurt in ways you could never have imagined.” The horror was amplified, inescapable, and each morning brought a fresh wave of dread. As my eyes would peel open, the first thing I would feel wasn’t relief, but an eruption of terror, rising from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. It was like magma surging from the centre of the earth, stirring up sickness in the pit of my belly, searing my throat, and leaving a dry, bitter metallic taste in my mouth. It wasn’t just emotional—it was physical, visceral, as if the very fibres of my being were being torn apart by this relentless force.
The worst part was that it always hit hardest in the mornings. Just as in those childhood nightmares, where waking should have been a relief but instead meant falling deeper into the terror, grief turned my waking moments into a continuation of the nightmare. I would wake not to the light of day but to the shadow of loss, each morning reminding me that the nightmare wasn’t over — it had only just begun.
In exploring this connection between my childhood nightmares and the grief I felt as an adult, I’ve come to realize how profoundly intertwined our past and present fears can be. The giants from my dreams, with their booming voices and stormy forms, were a harbinger of the real horrors that would come later in life. Grief is the real deal. It’s everything that horror is made of, amplified and inescapable. It’s waking into the nightmare instead of out of it.
Jung often spoke of the necessity of acknowledging and integrating our shadow — the hidden, often repressed parts of ourselves that we prefer to keep in the dark. He believed that to achieve wholeness, we must recognize both the "dark" and the "light" within us. This journey, which Jung called individuation, is about embracing every aspect of who we are and finding harmony within ourselves.
There’s a particular quote from Jung that has always resonated with me: "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." But becoming who we truly are is no easy task. It requires us to confront the parts of ourselves that we would rather avoid, to journey into the dark places within our psyche, and to bring those parts into the light. In my own experience, this has meant not just visiting these dark places but finding a way to return, to show what I’ve seen, and to be seen by others. It’s about bearing witness to my own darkness and pain and finding others who can connect with that part of me—who can share their own shadows in return.
For me, this process is integral to how I understand the artist within me. My creativity is rooted in this exploration of the shadow, in opening my eyes and heart to the things I’ve seen and felt deep within myself. The artist’s work, as I see it, is to shed light on these dark places in a way that resonates with others, that speaks to their own experiences and emotions. And to share what I see and feel with my witnesses. I find myself returning to these shadowy places often, but I am no longer the scared boy I once was. I am a man who has been through the fires of grief and come out the other side, marked by that pain but also shaped by it.
In visiting these dark places, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of parts of myself that I couldn’t fully grasp until life thrust me into them. There is a bittersweetness in looking back on the horrors I’ve faced, a recognition that those experiences have led to a sense of connection and togetherness that I now deeply value. In sharing my pain and allowing others to share theirs, I’ve found a comfort that is both profound and sustaining.
This shared sense of pain, this connection born of our darkest moments, has become something I long for. It’s through this shared experience that I feel most alive, most human. In the end, it is not just about surviving the dark places — it’s about finding a way to bring something back from them, to create something that speaks to others and says, "I’ve been there too. You’re not alone." Perhaps this is the privilege of a lifetime: not just to become who you truly are, but to connect with others on that same journey.
We Never Walk Alone
As I began to open up about my grief and share my pain aloud, I discovered something profound: the act of sharing brought me closer to certain friends who had walked similar paths. Friends who had lost their own parents, who were in recovery from addictions, who carried their own burdens of suffering. Our shared pain became a bridge, connecting us in ways that hadn’t been possible before. In voicing my grief, I found not just solace, but a deep, mutual understanding — a sense that we were not alone in our struggles.
But while some connections deepened, others faltered. I found that I couldn’t share certain parts of myself with some of my old friends. I felt judged, misunderstood, as if my pain created a distance they couldn’t or wouldn’t cross. It was a lonely realization, one that pushed me to seek out new ways to connect with others who might see me more clearly.
At the time, I was traveling frequently for work, and in those moments of disconnection, I turned to the anonymity of strangers. I would get drunk, looking for a way to numb the pain, and started smoking — not out of habit, but as an excuse to step outside, away from the crowd, where I might find others lingering in the shadows. It was in these encounters, with people who knew nothing of my past, that I found a strange kind of comfort. There was no judgment, no expectations — just the shared moment of escape and, occasionally, a conversation that felt more real and grounding than those I’d had with people who had known me for years.
These encounters led me to unexpected friendships, connections forged in the crucible of mutual understanding that didn’t require explanations. In these new relationships, I found the space to be fully myself, to share the parts of me that were still raw and aching, without the fear of being misunderstood. Sometimes, it’s easier to reveal your true self to those who don’t know you well, who don’t carry preconceived notions of who you are or who you should be. In the anonymity of these fleeting encounters, I found the courage to expose my vulnerability and, in return, received the gift of genuine connection.
But as much as I’ve drawn from my shadows, I’ve also always sought to embrace the beauty and joy that life offers. I am, at my core, a generally positive person. I see the light in the world, even in the darkest of times, and I strive to share that light with others just as much as I share the depths of my pain. It’s this balance — between the shadow and the light — that helps me stay sane, balanced, authentic, and complete.
Grief, I learnt, has the power to isolate, but it also has the power to unite. It reshaped my connections, both old and new, pushing me to seek out those who can truly see us, who understand the pain I was carrying, and who were willing to stand with me in it, whether they’ve known me for a lifetime or just a few hours. In the end, I realized that I was never as alone as I once thought. The journey through grief is a lonely one, but it’s also a journey that can lead us to deeper, more meaningful connections with others who share our pain and our path.
And through it all, I’ve found that it’s not just the darkness that defines me, but the ability to find beauty amidst it, to hold onto joy even when life seems overwhelming. This is how I navigate the complexity of life—by acknowledging the shadows but also embracing the light. This balance allows me to remain authentic and whole, connected not only to my pain but also to the hope and love that continue to fill my life.
A pause for reflection
As I prepare to take a break from sharing this part of my journey, I find myself both drained and relieved. This process of sitting with my thoughts, shaping them into something tangible, has been intense and, at times, overwhelming. Yet, it’s also been deeply cathartic — a necessary step in understanding and connecting with these experiences that have shaped who I am.
I realize that in this exploration, I’ve alluded to Russell Brand, a figure who has spoken openly about his own journey through pain, addiction, and self-discovery. While I haven’t included a significant mention of him in this piece, his influence has been a subtle thread throughout my reflections. Like many, I’ve found his willingness to embrace both the darkness and the light in his life inspiring, and his perspective has resonated with me as I’ve navigated my own path.
There’s so much more to explore, to unravel, to sit with. I’m not entirely sure how many parts this journey will take — perhaps just one more, perhaps several — but I do know that it’s not over yet. There are still pieces of the story that need to find their place, still shadows and light to be woven together.
For those of you who have walked with me this far, I want to express my gratitude. This is as much a journey of discovery for me as it is for you, and I’m honored to have you as companions on this path. I hope you’ll continue to join me as I dive deeper, as I explore the connections, the pain, and the beauty that make up the whole of my experience.
I believe this is no rush to reach conclusions — no need to tie everything up neatly. Instead, I invite you to wonder with me, to sit with these thoughts and feelings, and to see where they lead us. Life is rarely linear, and neither is this journey. Let’s continue to explore it together, one step at a time, and see what we discover along the way.
Until next time, I wish you moments of reflection and peace, and I look forward to where this path will take us.
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