The souls journey

Those of us on a spiritual path will believe that we incarnate multiple times in-order to evolve in soul consciousness, this human experience that we are having now is no more than that, a human experience in order to help us evolve. This life is not all there is, this is merely a life that we must live in order to clear the blocks of the past, clear generational trauma, and evolve into our highest selves in order to live in love and help the collective consciousness of the planet we see ourselves on. When we can understand this then we can be grateful for the family we were born into, the failed relationships we have had and challenges that we have faced along our path.

I want to tell my soul journey of this lifetime, how understanding has led me to gratitude and forgiveness for everything I’ve been through, forgiveness for myself and all the people I have blamed and resented for not treating me the way I thought I deserved and to see every experience as necessary to face the darkness and lead me into the light. To understand our soul’s journey leads to acceptance, to non resistance of what is and to let go of the thoughts and thinking that situations should be one way or another.

My soul knew what it was doing, the experiences it gave me was to learn so I could show others the path, communicate my knowledge and wisdom gained and help others see this lifetime as an experience and embrace love within their hearts that they don’t need to rely on the thoughts in their minds to control the outcome of their lives.

For our souls to expand into pure consciousness and become who we are meant to become we need to feel and see both the best and the worst of humanity, feel the joy and the pain of these experiences and just experience them. My soul chose to be born into civil unrest, into a family marred by murder, sectarianism, betrayal, abuse and a long line of generational trauma. A perfect experience for me to learn from and evolve from.

I was raised by a deeply traumatised mother and neglected father, both suffered tremendously in their childhoods and young adult lives due to trauma in Ireland that has been passed from generation to generation. They continued to perpetuate and add to this trauma onto the next generation; me. Don’t get me wrong this was not a conscious choice, this was not a deliberate act of neglect or abuse but a perpetuation of what was not theirs to start with. Conceived 3 months after my dad’s brother John Arrell and my mothers cousin were brutally murdered by the IRA, following a miscarriage at the same time, my mother manifested a son and exclaimed that he would be called John Arrell after his murdered uncle so that the b**tards won’t win. And so my soul’s journey in this lifetime began.

When I was born I was surrounded by betrayal, hatred, resentment, anxiety, sadness, fear, contempt, sectarianism and terror, basically the worst of humanity. To make my soul journey even more challenging, my family dynamic was devoid of showing love. Enmeshment and control were the order of the day and self love was something that was actively despised. Alcohol was widely used as the drug of choice to numb the pain of reality, fill the void of absent love and this all was normalised, my upbringing, my life in Ireland was typical, it was classed as a good life, a good upbringing, I never went hungry, I always had a roof over my head and we were a typical middle class family. I got married, had four daughters, started a number of businesses and perpetuated these normalised emotions and behaviours. I self medicated with alcohol and other drugs, spirituality was in the form of divisive controlling religion mixed with politics. I played out this life in Ireland for 40 years until something big happened.

My soul had learned enough, it was now time to unlearn and go through the process of healing the generational trauma, conditioning and programming normalised in my human psyche.

I had created a business that was export focused and landed one Sunday afternoon in Christchurch New Zealand, I got this overwhelming feeling of being home, it was an indescribable emotion I felt, but I knew at this point in my life I was destined to move to New Zealand, as far away on the planet as I could possibly get from Ireland. I convinced my then wife to move to New Zealand and in September 2017 we moved our four daughters to the other side of the world to start a new life. This didn’t go well, we brought our trauma, conditioning, behaviours and programming from Ireland with us and in July 2018 we all moved back.

My pull to New Zealand still remained and in the midst of personal and professional bankruptcy, relationship breakdown and the feeling of deep depression and suicidal thoughts with the walls closing in on me in Ireland, a job, a visa and an opportunity appeared for me to return to Christchurch. This time on my own but it would mean leaving my family, my children and everything I had ever known behind and embark on this next part of my journey alone. The unlearning had started and it had to be a journey I took on my own and I returned to New Zealand in March 2019.

Throughout the next four and a half years that included over two years of covid restrictions that meant I did not physically see my children, my soul brought in experience after experience to release the trauma I held from my previous 40, I had soul connection after soul connection, I experienced true love for the first time in my life, I made friends and connections that will last a lifetime, I had my heart broken into a million pieces where I realised I had no self love when the person I loved mentally disappeared. I met now who I believe was my twin flame, we mirrored how each of us were treated as children and I was shown all the conditioning, trauma and behaviours, coping mechanisms, toxic behaviours that I had created within myself that I used back then to keep myself safe as a child. All normalised behaviour that wasn’t normal at all, I needed shown all of this and I needed to experience this again to see what was stopping my expansion.

I also experienced genuine love, connection and respect, one of the things I had to learn was how to hug people. I never knew what it was like to hug someone or be hugged and I had major anxiety around this for a long time. I experienced friendships with honesty on a level I had never experienced before and genuine care and compassion for another without the expectation of anything in return. I learned that it’s okay to be vulnerable and show my feelings. I learned how to cry again and not be scared to be me in front of people. As these experiences kept coming I was able to connect more and more into my body, heal the trauma of the past, feel my true essence and feel spirit, source energy or God or whatever you wish to call it within me. I found my soul.

I’m on this journey because I had to learn the worst of the human condition and then unlearn it, not the most beautiful of processes but clearing trauma never is and the beauty comes when we look back and see how far we have come.

As I write this I don’t know where the next chapter of my life will take me, it doesn’t matter, what matters is the now, we live in the now and to give up all expectation of what or who may come into my life next and be ready to embrace the next stage in my path is the most unusual feeling.

I feel I’ve found my purpose in this lifetime, to help others see their own soul journey, to understand their human experience as something that when healing is embarked upon and reframed can be used to accelerate their own soul journey. There are so many lessons along the way that I can share and I can help people walk their own path. A path back to love, a path back to creativity, a path back to integration of body, mind and spirit. A path to live free in joy and abundance, free of constraints of generational trauma, conditioning, programming and social constructs that is keeping us trapped while on this earthly plane.

With much love

John