The Journey for Kids: Liberating your Child’s Shining Potential. Brandon Bays
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it could be mine. Recently I was in South Africa where The Journey is being used by teachers in primary schools. After I gave a school assembly programme to 800 shining, beaming children, I walked out into the school car park. There, two parents were standing in their Sunday best clothes, clearly having taken time off work to meet me personally. They stood there patiently waiting in the hot African sun with their three beautiful children, all in starched white shirts and school uniforms.
When I approached the mother, she had tears in her eyes. She simply said, ‘Thank you for giving me my son Daniel back … He’d been so withdrawn and aggressive towards his brothers and sister and had become so anti-social we didn’t know what to do with him. He was failing at school. Our doctor said he had ADD and put him on Ritalin, and his behaviour had become a little better. But I hadn’t really seen my son in three years. Do you know what I mean? It was as though he was under a dark cloud and I couldn’t reach him. But after Jayshree, his teacher, worked with him with The Journey – she did four processes with him – he became so joyous and loving towards his brothers and sister that we took him off the drugs. Now he’s thriving at school and playing with the other kids in the playground. Recently he won an academic award for excellence in all his subjects! Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving us our son back. That’s all we wanted to say to you – thank you.’
I was overwhelmed. I simply looked into her son’s eyes and said, ‘He shines like a diamond! What a beautiful being. Jayshree is an amazing teacher – she really cares about her students. She genuinely wants to bring out the best in them. I’m so glad your son opened up and let her in. And thank God he let himself out.’
Later, Jayshree shared with me that when she was teaching a class about geography and gold mining, she asked the kids, ‘Where do you think we find gold?’ No one raised their hand. Then Daniel jumped to his feet, hand in the air, and said, ‘I know!’
‘So, Daniel, where do you find gold?’ Jayshree asked.
‘In your heart, ma’am. That’s where the real gold is,’ he replied.
Jayshree was blown away by the answer. The simple, innocent wisdom of children can, indeed, take our breath away.
Here is an excerpt from the letter Daniel’s mother subsequently sent to me:
… My only hope was that he would take the medication, which controlled his attention in class so he could at least finish some work and barely pass. The medication helped him to keep focused and not daze off into his own world. He also managed to write in a straight line when on medication. However, he became very quiet, withdrawn and silent. He never laughed or played like the other kids and always looked so serious.
Then his teacher suggested that he try something new called The Journey, which had helped her family. And I thought that no harm could be done, so let’s give it a small try. She worked with him in the class and then at her home for ten minutes at a time. She also gave him special notes of motivation and encouragement, which he read all the time and kept in his top pocket. Two weeks later, I took my boy off the medication! He was answering questions in class, participating in sports, laughing, running – he was a normal child again!
Because The Journey is so widely used in so many countries, I hear these kinds of stories every week. Yet they never cease to awe me. The courage of the human soul, and the ability of the body and being to heal, no matter what our age, is astonishing.
All of us come into this world as this same vast potential, yet so often life can seem to conspire to cover that natural radiance, obscure our genius, shut down our joy, block out the love. Still we sense that just beneath the surface there lies true greatness – if only we could get access to it. The Journey gives us the tools – simple step-by-step processes – for finally liberating that shining potential, so it can be fully expressed, wholesomely and joyously, in our lives.
In South Africa, at the school where I gave the assembly programme for 800 beaming school kids, I spoke of this very phenomenon in a general metaphor that I felt both kids and adults could relate to. I said that we all come into this world as a big bright shining diamond, completely whole, radiant and pure. We come in as a vast presence of love and joy, as a huge open potential that is capable of creating anything. And then, through the traumas of life, this diamond can seem to get covered over with layer upon layer of limiting patterns – the time we failed our exam at school; the time our brother or sister made fun of us in front of our playmates; the time we got shy and said all the wrong things to our first crush and they were off-hand with us. As we got older it could be the time we were interviewed for our first job and were so awkward and silly that we blew it, and later still it could be the time when we were at work and made a bad mistake then tried to pretend it didn’t happen or, even worse, let someone else take the blame … Layer upon layer upon layer our shining radiance gets covered over, until sometimes, as adults, we forget that there ever was a brilliant diamond inside. Instead, we identify with all the mess, the layers that cover it.
I told the kids that this was, in fact, exactly what had happened to me. As an adult, I completely forgot that there was a beautiful diamond inside. Instead, I identified with all the layers that covered it … until one day I got very sick. And part of the great blessing of my healing journey was that it carried me deep inside, where I uncovered a shining radiance that I realized had been there all along. I fell so in love with this light that I didn’t want anything to cover it anymore and so I began a process of clearing out all the layers that had previously hidden it. In that process, not only did my body heal, but I felt as though the real me had finally been set free. I’d finally taken the lampshade off my light.
I then asked, ‘How many of you are already aware of this light shining deep within you?’ Eight hundred hands shot up all at once – some kids practically stood up, their hands went up so fast. Then I asked, ‘Would you like to go on a magical Journey right into the core of this light – right into your very own diamond?’
‘YES, MA’AM!’ resounded 800 bell-like voices in a huge cacophony of sound so loud it felt like it shook the rafters. It was so loud that everyone burst into laughter. I then asked, ‘So are you ready to start?’
‘YES, MA’AM!’ followed by more laughter so loud that one kid actually fell off his seat, which of course produced even more laughter.
After it all died down, conspiratorially I said, ‘Well, I need your help, though. In order to go on this inner adventure, you will really need to pay full attention and go for it – otherwise the headmistress may get mad at me!’ I winked in her direction. ‘Do you all promise to pay extra close attention and go for it, so I won’t get in trouble?’
‘YES, MA’AM!’ came the enthusiastic reply, as some of the kids glanced in the headmistress’s direction, just to see if she approved.
Once we’d all settled down we began with the first ever simultaneous live Journey process with 800 joyous and enthusiastic souls aged five to eleven. And what a magical time we had. The little ones sometimes had a bit of trouble keeping their eyes closed, and kept peeking to see if everyone else was doing it right, but on the whole, I could tell it was all going very well. Even though their eyes were closed, their faces were so animated, they clearly were following the directions with gusto. Some of the kids were gesticulating with their hands, as if they were holding real balloons, while others were mouthing their conversations at the ‘campfire’. Children are so natural and open. They’re already aware of their own inner light, and processing with them is always a joy. By the end, they were all smiling, and everyone seemed to complete successfully.
Ten minutes after we’d begun, everyone opened their eyes and they were just beaming! They looked so beautiful and shiny that spontaneously I said, ‘Why don’t you look straight into the eyes of the person next to you and say, “You are such a beautiful person.