The Path

By Marcel van Heijzen

Nothing is special about Tommy, apart from him not fitting in very well in an ordinary people group culture.

The story deals with the life of Tommy, the spiritual parts, and the materialistic parts. It is easy to pretend that we can always walk forward on the path of life. However, life does not work like this, setbacks and diversions are the norms for most of us.

The story intends to show that ordinary people can – and will – divert from the spiritual path. Life at the material awareness level is interesting, and it is easy to divert and believe in the illusion we call: The Material World.

Although at some stage during the story Tommy loses himself in the material world, a series of occurrences steer him back on the spiritual path. We class these occurrences as coincidences.

A coincidence is part of the spiritual development process, and it represents a communication that we receive from our Soul.

Coincidences are, therefore, not accidents or plain luck; they are planned events. We just do not know who planned them, and what for.

Tommy eventually follows the path of coincidences, and in the process, he returns to the spiritual development path and leads a happy life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcel van Heijzen
• Release date: Apr 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386814887

Book preview

The Path

The life of Tommy

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In the story, the reader follows the life of an ordinary boy.

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Tommy has a set of experiences that

we refer to as spiritual development

These include progress, as well as setbacks

during the evolutionary process that we call:

Our Life.

Marcel van Heijzen

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor of Spiritual Life Magazine for allowing me to develop the set of stories about Tommy for the magazine. The magazine went through a change, with the result that I did not complete the Tommy stories for the magazine. However, I completed the set of stories in this book. I still write for Spiritual Life Magazine, but I now write short stand-alone stories.

My wife, as usual, must be mentioned, as she puts up with a husband who often sits in his man cave, which he refers to as my office, writing books and short stories.

When my life changed due to something that at the time my doctors classed as terminal cancer, I re-directed my interests in life, and based on a suggestion made by the doctor who brought me on the path to cure my cancer, I started to write books. The path I now follow leads to meeting people who ask for my assistance, as they received a diagnosis of cancer. It also led to meeting very interesting people, who follow the spiritual path in their own, unique way, as we all do. Life is so interesting, and I fully embrace the concept of: change the way you think, it will change your life.

I changed the way I think, and it changed my life.

After everything I went through, I committed to helping anybody who is in need, and who wants, my help, when going through the phase of trying to cope with a serious, and possibly terminal, disease. However, this commitment goes deeper now, as I also deal with spiritual development. Anybody who feels lost when following the spiritual path in life can get in contact. Expect to find somebody who went through very harsh circumstances, and who will listen, and give advice, whenever appropriate.

To get in contact, please write an e-mail to:

[e-mail]

https://alyaconsultancy.com/

First edition – April 2019

Copyright of this book rests with Marcel van Heijzen.

All parts of this book may be copied and used, provided you reference the author.

Other books by this author

Beating Cancer

Spiritual Development

Short Stories on Spiritual Development

My Life as a Lioness

Life of Derek

A Life of Adversary

A Seekers Guide

I dedicate this guide to Spiritual Life Magazine, and its editor, Kamala.

With the help I received,

this book got to publication.

Contents

Personalities, defined in the story

Introduction

Introducing Tommy

The Concept of Consciousness

The process of Meditation

Thoughts and Feelings

Communication

The Evening Out

The Spiritual Path

Diverting from the Path

Losing Believe in Humanity

The Great Wide World

The Path of Drugs

The Path of Money

The Path of Power

The Path of Fake Friends

Realisation

Return to Seeking

Meeting Boy again

Meeting up with Bonny

Reunion

Return to the Way

How a Seeker treats the concept of Bad

The Concept of Happiness

Summary

About the author

Personalities, defined in the story

Big John Leader of the student gang. Tommy meets him later in life again, when John works for an architect.

Boy Tommy’s boyhood friend. Boy is gay, and Tommy considers him the best friend he ever had.

Bonny Tommy’s boyhood girlfriend, later to become his wife.

Bonny’s mother Teaches spirituality and shows signs of being a spiritual master.

Tommy’s mother Friend of Bonny’s mother.

Kelvin Artist and vet. A friend of Tommy, and part of the Friday crowd. Kelvin has no interest in a sexual relationship.

Babs Biologist and part of the Friday crowd. Loves nature. No interest in any sexual relationship.

Gerald Deaf and cannot speak, part of the group of special friends of the Friday crowd. Together with Sheila, adept at predicting future events.

Sheila Deaf and cannot speak, part of the group of special friends of the Friday crowd. Together with Gerald, adept at predicting future events.

Will The lady that introduces Tommy into his first job in London.

Mary Drug user and working as a private secretary in an investment firm. The first intimate girlfriend of Tommy.

Bertrand Friend and later business partner of Tommy.

John Supervisor of both Bertrand and Tommy.

Harold CEO of the financial company Tommy works for.

Johnny Fake friend and leech.

Barbara Power broker lady, who pushes Tommy from the path of power.

Bert Works with Barbara to push Tommy from the path of power.

Gary Student gang friend, who proves to be gay.

Laura Receptionist at the National Park company. The company is managed by Boy.

Hazel Girlfriend and later wife of Bertrand.

Tom Partner of Boy.

Isabel Part of the Friday crowd and gay. She teams up with Gary to help him to face being gay.

Introduction

This book started off as a set of monthly short stories for Spiritual Life Magazine. As the layout and issue frequency of the magazine changed, I stopped writing the Tommy stories, and I now write single short stories for the magazine. The set of follow on stories about the life of Tommy I combined into this book.

The objective of the story is to show that people go through various phases and coincidences in their life. It is the coincidences that determine our spiritual development. Formally, we assume that we have the free will to decide to do what we feel like doing. At the material level of awareness, which is under the control of the mind and the dimension of time, this is indeed the case. However, at the awareness levels of the Soul, we do not adhere to the dimension of time, as this dimension is an illusion, created by the mind. At the level of the Soul, all coincidences and life situations we experience, are happening at once. At least, with the limited understanding we have at the material level of awareness, that is how we can describe such a situation. The concept of making a decision without the dimension of time becomes fairly irrelevant at the awareness level of the Soul. At this awareness level, all we are is awareness.

The way all the awareness levels of our consciousness are constructed is highly complex, and every time I write about this subject, new conclusions turn up. Our Soul is completely immersed in the various body shells we occupy at the physical planes. When spiritual literature refers to the chains that hold the Soul imprisoned at the physical awareness levels, this means that the Soul is immersed. As long as we use terms related to any of our senses, we are still tied to the physical awareness levels. We see this happening when we discuss the concept of meditation. Some refer to fantastic light and beautiful worlds. Such descriptions compare what can be experienced with what we know in the material world. We must learn to leave the illusions of our bodily senses behind.  How to do this? With great difficulty!

Tommy is an ordinary boy, but as so many people, he does not properly fit into society. The reason for this is that to fit in properly, we need to give up our freedom to follow our unique path in life. Instead, we adhere to the rules set by the cultural environment of our society. Some people have the opinion that nobody tells them what to do, they decide all that happens for themselves. When we study those people in more detail, they fit in perfectly in the cultural straitjacket of their group. Nothing wrong with this, people, like all other living entities, have to follow their cultural guide. Life at the material awareness level is like this. We do what we need to do, which is inherent in our environment.

At some stage in our life, we will be following the guidance of our inner voice, which is the guidance of our Soul. It is at this moment that the Soul starts to untie the chains that hold it to the physical awareness levels. The result is that we start to seriously progress on the spiritual path of life. The process to learn to follow our inner guide is a slow acting evolutionary type of development. It takes a long time before we come to this phase. When it happens, some other changes start to happen as well:

We realise that our life is not what we think it is.

We start consciously looking for the truth of life.

We search for guidance. Initially, we search for this guidance in the outside world.

Further on the path, we realise the real guide is already inside of us.

At a slow pace, we move towards the realisation that real spiritual development is a path that requires us to go inside. The outside world is an illusion, created by the mind from information received from our body sensors. The world as we know it exists only in our mind, nowhere else.

The Tommy story tells us how this development may happen to ordinary people. Although at some stage during our spiritual development we look for very special people who we can look up to; the reality is that such people in most cases are fakes. At the material level of awareness, it is easy for somebody with a high level of intellect and a good memory to learn a lot about the subject of spiritual development, and its terminology. Doing this allows such a person to become what some people refer to as a spiritual master. The reason that people acquire this knowledge and become a spiritual master is mostly to acquire assets and power.

Nothing wrong with this; the material world as we know it works like this. However, following such a person is not spiritual development. In some way, we still develop, even when we follow a fake master. Eventually, we will realise where to find the truth, and we will follow the path inside, we will follow the inner guide on the path to our home, to the awareness levels of the Soul and to the Common Soul, which I often refer to as Life, with a capital L.

No person can speed up this process or slow down this process. It happens the way it should happen, as happened in the past, and it happens now, and it will happen in the future.

Do I say that we should not look for, and follow a spiritual master? If what I say sounds like this, I did not mean it. We do what we want to do, and if this includes following a person who is classed as a spiritual master, keep following this person. We keep doing what we feel we should be doing in this illusionary world of form until we feel that we need to do something different.

The emphasis is on the word feel. We follow our feeling, and we listen to what our inner voice directs us to do. Doing this will always be correct.

The story of The Path causes Tommy to make two serious changes in his life; the first change is towards the materialistic side of life, while the second change is that he returns to the spiritual part of life. I made Tommy do this to make the story interesting. However, life more often contains a lot of slight diversions, and two serious changes are not what commonly happens. However, it is the life of Tommy, and it develops like it has to develop for Tommy.

I have introduced a few cases of people who are not fitting into the box that ordinary people refer to as ‘normal’. I did this intentionally. We all follow our unique path in this life, and as the path is unique for each one of us, the concept of the life of a particular person being normal or abnormal is irrelevant. Society has to change to allow everybody to live their life as they got it handed to them. Until our society comes to this point of change, discrimination of people who are regarded as different and abnormal will keep on being part of our lives.

I noticed that over the last couple of years a lot of terminologies got changed, compared to the type of words and terms I used when I was young. From the stories I hear, these changes make the world accept people who are different.

I got a mind that is both suspicious and sarcastic, so I look at the reactions of ordinary people, and I consider that the intended change to the ordinary people is not yet as big as some scientific minds appear to think. However, some form of progress is clearly ongoing. Let us hope that it leads to real progress.

It is my view that change can only be affected by pushing carefully in the direction that change is required and avoid blaming anybody who does not follow the projected change. I follow this concept in the story by including specific cases. Affecting change cannot be done fast. People try to affect a change fast, but it does not work. Proper change requires a lot of understanding of those that are affected by the change. Shouting at people who do not embrace the proposed change, or those that appear to stay behind is not the way to affect change.

Change cannot be affected by forcing people to change. I included an example of this in the book as well. People may appear to be different, but in the background, they will still have the same opinions. They will not change, as they cannot discuss the way they think, society will not allow that. Science fiction refers to this concept when they invent stories of governmental ruling collapsing, causing people to revert back to being barbarians. My take on this is, of course, my opinion. Do not consider this as the only truth in the world. The material world is highly complex, and anybody that professes to know the only truth is most likely a fake. The real truth is not available to those that live at the material awareness level.

Enjoy the story.

Introducing Tommy

Tommy is a British teenage boy of average height, with dark curly hair and expressive dark eyes. Tommy and his mother live in the South West of England, in a village not too far from the greater London area. Tommy does not have a father anymore, he died in a car crash years ago, and Tommy’s mother never got married again. Having a higher than normal level of intelligence, Tommy managed to get into university. Apart from this, he is a normal teenager, provides that such an entity exists. We meet Tommy during one of his discussions with his friends when Tommy arrives at the campus:

‘Guys, how are you? Got all the work done for this morning’s lecture?’ When Tommy walks into the main meeting area of the university, the reaction he receives from the study group is lukewarm. Clearly, nobody has done many preparations; it is Monday morning. The group uses the weekend for going out, lecture preparation is not something that his friends are spending much of their free time on. Tommy does not understand why they do not take this effort; they will have to do their preparations now, and that will never be efficient. ‘Come on, professor Tommy, give us a hand. You have all your work completed, now it is time to help us!’ This reaction comes from big John, the leader of the group. Nice enough guy, but he only tolerates Tommy because of the assistance they all get, and they definitely rely on this assistance.

Tommy does not react back, but he starts helping the boys he calls his friends. He is always there for them, why do they treat him as an outsider? Even now, he does everything to help them with the lecture preparation, but they still see him as an asset for assistance. After completion of the preparation, they do not want to know about Tommy.

After completing their lecture preparation, the boys go outside for a smoke, leaving Tommy inside in the meeting hall, as he does not like smoking. Not one of the boys openly says thanks, Tommy. They just leave him on his own. Tommy sits down, but he suddenly realises that he is not alone. He is aware that a new student joined their study group mid-term, but he has not met the boy yet. Apparently, the newcomer arrived from abroad, and the university has allowed him to start mid-term based on accreditations. Tommy introduces himself and learns that the new student’s name is Boy. ‘You do not smoke, Boy?’ Boy shakes his head. ‘I do not need your help for lecture preparation either, Tommy. I have the habit of preparing in advance, much like you do it appears. The rest of the crowd does not appear to like you too much. Ever wondered why?’ Tommy shakes his head and admits that this has indeed crossed his mind, but he does not know why they do not accept him.

Boy tells Tommy that he just arrived from America. His father landed a job in the UK, so the family moved to the UK as well. Recently, Boy read a short story from a poet called Khalil Gibran. In short: People automatically prepare themselves for each situation they get into. These preparations mean that they are not reacting as themselves, they play a prepared