My Journey

through Past,
Present and Future

Book Three
By: Helena Hartman
 In uncertain times, spirituality is the
answer. The old promises of salvation
arent working. A new grand narrative is
being created. That is the narrative of a
new spirituality.
The new grand narrative presents
itself as a quest upon which each of us
individually embarks. It makes a strong
moral appeal to our sense of personal
responsibility.
Live in your body, not in your head.
The new spirituality is deeply involved
with the physical experience. Its about
what you feel in your own gut and
accepting all things life puts in front of us.
For many people there comes a moment
often through illness when they realize
Im in my head and Ive lost the
connection with my body, my heart, my
feelings, my whole being. And they start
meditating and rediscover their bodies
and its an important part of the new
spirituality.
With the new spirituality, the
journey cannot always be pleasant. We
must transcend ourselves and that is
usually painful. It is a crucifixion
experience to become our true selves
without masks, without survival mecha-
nisms, without armour.
Oh, who shall me deliver whole, from
bonds of this tyrannic soul
Which stretched upright impales me so
That mine own precipice I go
- Marvell
 Each person is travelling towards a who have processed their old pain are
complete union with the source in a long liberated.
series of lives that enables us to keep
learning.
Your individual development is your
contribution to mankinds evolution.
Everything that happens in our lives can
be used for spiritual development.
Particularly:
- Setbacks
- Illnesses
- Poverty
- Lack of recognition, etc.
None of it is an accident. It occurs
because we need it at that time. The
people we have problems with are
mirrors of our own shadows. And people
 Mans soul and world is a battlefield;
a mighty stage where the mystery drama
of freedom has to be performed and
played out. The visual arts are the
revealers of the souls turmoil of our
times. We were put on the earth in order
to find our way back home again after
the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
The sinking of Atlantis is symbolic of us
being thrown out of the Garden of Eden.
And so begins the journey of
remembering.
And the end of all our exploring will be to
arrive where we started and know the
place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate,
when the last of earth left to discover is
that which was the beginning.
- T.S. Elliot
We are all imprisoned by our own
history.
If we dont remember our history, then
we are doomed to relive it. George
Santyana
 The tree of knowledge and the tree of
wisdom in the Garden of Eden

The expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Michael

Angelo

The split between the right brain and the

left brain which is the same split as that
between the tree of knowledge and the
tree of wisdom
Painting by Picasso

The fall of man from the Garden of Eden

Top and bottom paintings by Helena Hartman
 In the Garden of Eden there were
two trees. There was the tree of wisdom
and the tree of knowledge. Adam and
Eve ate the apple from the tree of
knowledge and were thrown out of
paradise. Our most famous computer
today is called the Apple. Are we relieving
the same story? Because we have to
relieve the past until its healed. We have
both the tree of knowledge and the tree
of wisdom within us, which are the left
brain and the right brain. And when they
meet and come into balance, we shall
enter the Garden of Eden again.
Paintings by Shelly Fowler
 Illness is a soul struggle as well as a
physical problem. And its an opportunity
to go on a soul journey. Our life is like a
mystery to be solved. On my journey
from illness to health, I needed to be
broken in order to become whole; sick in
order to become well. I began to
meditate daily and drink wheatgrass juice
to cleanse my body. And my illness
became my gift. I chose the process of
healing over the medical model of just
trying to remove the symptoms as well as
parts of my body. I began to start feeling
stronger and less fearful; I began pulling
light into my pain and darkness.
 Painting by Helena Hartman

Painting by Shelly Fowler

 I am now stronger in the light and I
am moving closer to the tree of wisdom.
And I am now ready to start exploring the
traumas of my past:
- My childhood
- My youth
- My past lives
Because the present is the past becoming
the future.
 The Western world seems rooted in a
subdivided version of reality. Not shadow
and light, but shadow or light. This
perspective embeds our darkness. Rather
than converting it into the lessons we need,
we sweep our shadows under the rug and
we hide our light as well.
Carl Yung said, One does not become
enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious.
Resisting the shadow just makes it darker. It
is not about becoming continuously blissful,
it is about becoming more authentic. It is
about holding the light and the shadow all
at once; the quest to live in all aspects of
reality at once.
Poet William Blake said, Pain is a
direct portal to the real. We need to honour
our pain as teacher. He also said, Without
contraries, there is no progression. Without
the irritant of a grain of sand, there is no
pearl.
Jeff Brown, in his book Soul Shaping
said, I had been conditioned to flee my
discomfort by the world around me, by
doctors who give me drugs to dull my pain
and the ever powerful corporate cultures
which manipulate us away from our
suffering with substitute gratifications of all
kinds such as comfort foods, movies,
computers, cell phones, etc.; the insidious
trap of all gain and no pain. The true path
cannot be purchased by distraction. We
need to honour our pain as teacher. As Jeff
Brown said My struggles felt like gifts. I
went from the blame filled outer world to
the inner world of self-responsibility.
 Top and bottom paintings by Helena
Hartman

We are half angel, half dragon. St. George and the Dragon by Raphael
Painting by Raphael

I now begin to confront my dragon with the help of my angel

 Painting of our dark-selves by Shelly Fowler

Dancing with the dark side by Helena Hartman

 Illness is about integrating our dark to punish white South Africans for the
selves (which is the battle of cancer) and power they had unjustly wielded for
bringing them into the light to be healed many years. For him, reconciliation
and brought into balance with our triumphed over revenge and so it is with
opposite, light-selves. I start to explore the healing story; we need reconciliation
my dark past lives and the healings are with our dark side.
enormous. Chess is the game that goes
Mandelas journey of forgiveness
on inside you, between your light and
was the Christ journey. This same journey
dark.
we must now do within ourselves.
Nelson Mandela tolerance and his
ability to get other South Africans to
follow his example and choose reconcilia-
tion over revenge was a faith tested over
fire. The truth and reconciliation
commission was seeking pardons in
exchange for full confessions. Most
exceptional about Mandelas tenure as
President of South Africa, was his refusal
 Two trees in the Garden of Eden by
Helena Hartman

Picture of Kabbalah
Picture of Kabbalah

Swimming through the cycles of light

and dark by Shelly Fowler
 I swim with the cycles and through
the cycles of light and dark, past and
present. Life is not linear; it is cyclical like
the Kabbalistic tree of opposites. It is a
dance between opposites and the point
of beauty is where the opposites meet.
Painting by Shelly Fowler
 And now my multiple selves form a
rose, with each petal a different self and
a different past life. I discovered that I
have been every race, every colour and
every religion and that I have been both
male and female. Nobody belongs to just
one culture, one country or one religion
anymore.
What is horrible and painful can lead
us to the truth of knowledge about
ourselves. To be able to see illness as a
gift.
I become less judgemental and I find my heart in the tree of wisdom.
Paintings by Helena Hartman
 I have brought the two trees in the Garden of Eden together (which
equals the two sides of my brain). My soul now holds the whole world
inside of me because I have been everyone and I have experienced
everything. Painting by Shelly Fowler
 Whenever we integrate our opposite selves a jewel is formed in our soul.
Rudolph Steiner said When our souls are rainbow coloured, we are ready to go back home
again.
Top: Kabbalah; Bottom: Two trees in the Garden of Eden
Paintings by Helena Hartman
Paintings by Helena Hartman
 Our transformation is as beautiful
and profound as when a caterpillar
transforms into a butterfly. The world as
perceived by our senses is an illusion. If
we cling to the third dimension of illusion
we will see an increased, perilous
physical environment such as, global
warming, increased volcanic activity,
economic collapse, violence, food and
water shortages and frightening diseases.
We only change when the pain of not
changing is greater than the pain of
changing.
 Back to the garden where we now
have balanced the tree of wisdom with
the tree of knowledge.
The Remembering Garden
He brought me into a deep, remembering
garden
And I was like one that wakes from a
dream of pain
To hear the cry of a thrush in the woods
at evening
And the sound of a brook and the
whisper of Eden again
- Alfred Noyes
Epilogue
When the left brain (which is the
tree of knowledge) is in balance with the
right brain (which is the tree of wisdom)
we can go back to the Garden of Eden
again.
In Atlantis, they misused the left
brain (which is the tree of knowledge)
and the continent sank as a result. Today
we are reliving many of the errors that
were made in Atlantis, but I have faith
that we will make it right this time.
Because we have had many lifetimes to
evolve since Atlantis went down around
13,000 years ago. The Earth is as fragile
as a sandcastle (please handle with care).