All around there was music : The wind spoke through the trees and chimes in a harmonica that allows the mind to rush in anticipation of the sound of this music riding on the gusto of the gust of wind.

"I am as I am because I am what I am." Our generation was good to one another. At school we carried the motto "expect the unexpected", we had gangs and we invented our own sport. It was called huck. Imagination is in our nature, we are encouraged to dream, we are encouraged to be the spark of our dreams.

I am not of this world, for how can I be of a world not of my liking, not of my making? I was cast into this world as an offspring of the past and an intention into the future. Perhaps I never realised this until my being was over come by a great sadness of the body, a near fatal illness.
In 1988 (at the age of twelve) I suffered from a Brain Haemmorage. It was as the doctor described it, 'a time bomb that just happened to go off then." I remember waking that morning of 1988 in a rugby jersey. That's what I slept in ! I was a sports fanatic and was preparing for a golf tee-off time. Suddenly I was overcome by an extraordinary lethargy leading to a devastating nausea. So possessed by this nausea was I that I ran a cold bath. I was haemmoraging on the brain and within a minute or two I was unconscious, vommiting blood uncontrollably. Imagine falling from a ten story building and landing on your head. This is how my mom described it.

In a world of nothingness, time stands absolutely still and you are a student silenced to awe by the great expanse of the unknown. In an emergency operation Doctor Fuller removed the blood vessels and inserted a plastic shunt to drain the water from the operation from the brain to the belly. My mother described this operation as removing custard from ice-cream. So delicate it was. For those two weeks after the operation I was in a deep deep sleep that there was no guarantee I would awaken from. That time my mother lived in hospital, she was constantly by my side and she was never afraid. Her determination was incredible and was most certainly the route of my salvation. I was in extraordinary discomfort at the time with plugs and pipes from every orifice. In hindsight it appears as if the trauma that my human being was experiencing was too grand for the spirit within me. As a small child I was very devoted to success in the eyes of the elders. I practiced kicking a rugby ball through a gap between the branches in the big tree in the garden to improve accuracy. This technique was copied from some great fly-half (Keith Oxley) who practiced kicking the ball through a barn door to improve accuracy. I spent days with the cricket bat and ball, even nights rehearsing shots and styles. I was always on the golf course. And what all of this taught me was that we defeat the spirit of competitiveness with non-competetiveness. The great sportsman raises not only the trophy for the individual and shared achievements, but for the sportsmanship award (for exercising honour, grace and awareness on the sports-field). Determination is a desire for the self as much as a desire for the other. And when I was knocked out in this spiritual warfare with the unknown (that we understand as comatosa) it was a determination that rose above and beyond me too see me for what I was. To understand your pain is to go with it as on a journey and let it deposit you where it must!
As a small boy on the brink of death, I began to become touched by prayer. Alike the struggle of tug of war , the 'me' that was residing in this other perspective was being pulled back into my body by the collective prayer of those who know the power of love. School teacher Jenny Hands led prayer in the neighbouring churches of Durban. This was deeply significant. I was going to live. I was going to heal. I was going to fulfill my destiny.

Healing is the transformation of the self. Healing is to embrace the consequence of faith. Healing is to recognise the miracle and act accordingly. I was not healed as much as pulled into a world whereby I had the power to heal myself. I had a scar running the length of my head. I had the biggest scar at school by 10 000 times. They had to use clips to sew me up after the operation. These great mettle clips were most uncomfortable and consisted of 1000 micro-stitches per clip, in effect therefore 1000000 stitches in my head! Never mind the further ten or so stitches in my bottom belly where they had to insert the shunt!
And thus, through the experience of serious illness my life completely changed. My condition was unconditioning!

Rapidly, "game" learning became a thing of the past. All my many little tropheys and badges began to fade and disappear. All false aspirations and transferences immediately disappeared as with any importance pier popularity might have held. My mother enthused me with the task of rehabilitation and it was amazing how quickly I changed from a 27kg bald headed see through freak in a wheelchair to the strapping lad I find myself today!

That illness hit me so hard, it took nine months to learn to walk again and nineteen years before I felt back to ordinary. I became a completely new kind of human being. Whilst I had discernible ailments (such as paralysis) I was classified as very fragile. Most people kept their distance as I had brought a death reality to them. And when I had no discernible ailments I was classified as very sensitive. And most people kept their distance as I had brought a life reality to them! Illness shakes your world, helping you to learn which kind of a survivor you are. To realise this is the greatest of all riches.
Serious illness was a purging of some great anger, miseducation and misguidance. Serious illness is a human privalege to forget your social conditioning and remember your divine purpose. Our journey our struggle our pain is the meaning of our transition and transformation.

Learn to forgive and let go constantly : We build on our relationships, nurturing trust and understanding, we are aware of our surroundings, their needs and warnings and we move through the world leaving no waste or confusion behind us. And the stars, the millions and millions of parallel realities that speckle the cosmos in a shimmering reflection of all the peace on earth.

As every breath do pass, there is a greater and greater sense of gratefulness for the truth in the beauty that is life. For, once you have defeated death, you have nothing to gain and nothing to loose, you are a friend to the people, a friend to the planet, one who asks nothing of the world and one who gains everything. For life itself is greater than any single ambition.

My essay is for those that are eternally kind, those that are forever themselves and those that breath the colour of every day into a collective guidance for human evolution. For my essay is not mine at all, it is 'ours'.

The universe provides for those who love her. The universe can provide such goodness through the hearts of people. There is a give and take and a struggle for balance and stability.

Compassion is the value in generosity and the passion that drives prosperity.

Time has brought us to a natural revolution! For it is sincerely only when we sit in the brink of total cataclysm that humanity will realise that we MUST live in harmony with nature. For nature is the author of our livelihood. We are nature.

For, it is only when we fall down and became crippled, that the true colours of humanity become visible. It is our job to learn, to grow, to change. To constantly forgive, to stay humble at the feet of the heavens, to be rooted in the spirit of the earth and to serve my purpose in the great spirit of governance that has presided over mother earth and her heavens since the since in the beginning of time itself.

Let us prepare to embrace the light of collective healing and community rebirth. Human kind must embrace the spirit of human kindness.