Lessons From My Five Year Old Self: Personal Essays that Support the Path to Higher Consciousness

By Charles Holt

In his third book, Lessons from My Five-Year-Old Self, Charles Holt shares personal essays on crucial topics such as finding freedom from religious and cultural views, stepping to the unknown, and discovering truths about fear, faith, rage, respect, and love. Charles places the way in which he processes information, his impulse and response to social and cultural themes, and his way of being on the altar of his intuition and inner wisdom to craft a life that feels aligned with his authentic self. Unbeknownst to the ways in which his journey meanders into daunting and relentlessly challenges at times, he persists in his search for what he believes to be his truth and his unfolding reality. Weaving a journey from Nashville to New York, to Los Angeles and back to his Southern roots, Charles offers inspirational stories that help us move to our next level of awareness. His candid and transparent accounts of the good, bad, and seemingly awful reveal Holt's desire to set a stage for the reader to investigate and call forth the original blueprint of one's potential, genius, and freedom. With this awakening we can work through challenges to become our best self—the self our inner five-year-old knew we could become.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098364984

Book preview

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© 2021 Charles Holt

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-09-836498-4

Table of Contents

Respect Your Ancestors—And Your Own Journey

Cherish Community

Return to Your Soul

Step Beyond Your Comfort Zone

What You Desire is What You Can Become

Extract the Gift from Every Problem

Make Peace With Your Past

Surrender to the Truth of Your Heart

Trust the Process

There is No Vision without Provision

Reclaim Your Child-like Imagination

Be Someone’s Champion

Conquer the Force of Internal Rage

In the Name of Jesus

Emancipate Yourself

Introduction

I have experienced a glimpse of the essence of what I believe to be my truest character and nature, a few times. I am not talking about the obvious outer appearance that is seen through and by the natural senses, but rather a peering that can only be previewed through insight. Some would call these spectacular showings aha! moments or bolts of realization. Many, like myself, confess to experiencing such flashes through verbal messages, vivid demonstrations, or striking illustrations. However, my first encounter was through a visual impression. It was a precise image, full of the design and detail of the face of my mortal recognition. But it was not the actual face that drew me. It was what I could not describe with words that penetrated my Soul.

Somewhere deep inside, this snapshot of my original self called to the memory of what had already been etched into my DNA before I landed on the planet. For decades I scratched at its surface, searching for the nerve endings of what I felt when I first experienced it. After what seemed to be a lifetime of catching impulses, sources from all the paths that I had walked led me back to the screening room where I could remember the face of my authentic identity. Still intact, this quantum identification revealed a view of a current reality, a unique compilation of my life and all that I had brought with me up to that present moment. Scrolls, volumes, and an exposé of the good, the bad, and the awful unfolded in my mind.

The burden from vaulting a combination of hopes and expectations stirred an impulse to dream beyond myself. Raising my head from watching the dust settle around my ankles was a saving grace. After a heady reflection of my past I looked ahead to a vast field that I had not yet chartered. And though hopeful and promising, these mountainous views on the horizon were intimidating. It was these particular moments that caused me to remember the first encounter, for it held within it all that was possible.

Though not lengthy in time, this split-second of insightful remembrance suspended itself long enough to activate within me a conscious journey back to my essential identity. So, what is the essence of life? It can be explained many different ways, depending on the person. However, I believe there would be parallels and similarities that could be the connective tissue that would bind us all into a civil and moral knowing of what life is all about: Love that is given and received.

At five years old I granted myself the permission to have a thought, a voice, and an opinion. Though my mind was fresh, I came knowing that these things were my birthright. Life is no more than an idea waiting to be fully self-expressed. I was that idea. I was free to be my best, and free to do my best. I didn’t have to compete with anybody else. For me the best was always yet to come. And what the present day could not manifest, it held within it the hope of a thousand tomorrows.

My dates with imagination became sacred courtships that yielded offspring of dreams come true. And after one dream was realized, I knew there was another great and grand idea waiting to come through. I believed in miracles. The luminous light of fireflies in summer’s evening, vibrant energy of dragonflies hovering on top of water, a shower that quenched the scorching heat on an August afternoon, a pile of leaves to run and jump into after Thanksgiving dinner. Miracles they were, and all very real to my young mind.

When I think of life I think of a place that we can call home—a physical space to reset and reflect; a grand concept and way of living; a civil arena where we can exist as unique individuals within a global community, without the need to eradicate another living Soul. I think life calls us to moral accountability—an understanding that talents, gifts, and skills may be different and carry a wide array of weight and favor, with the highest achievement resting upon our ability to share the forest of gifts we have been given.

It has to be that way for expansion and balance of high consciousness. Acts that have low frequencies often lessen our experiences of life, calling us to burden our self with things that cannot serve the unfolding good of those around us. In my young mind, I somehow knew this to be true, though I did not always practice it. One thing I clung to was the awareness that Life is creative, prosperous, full of happiness, and abounding in peace. I saw this out pictured through every living thing. The trees, the bees, the birds and the hills. Broad, fluid, languid, expressive, creative, and procreative. All of nature sang, and around me rang the music of life. I was renewed with each waking tone.

My young mind knew that in life abundance reigned. My grandmother taught me that our stories matter. My ancestors taught me that our lives matter. For without each possibility of life there would be less of its contagious force. Life begat life. And somewhere deep inside I know that life has always existed and shall never die.

Like my young self, I wish for more peace, more love, more creativity, more health and wholeness, more prosperity, more happiness, and more joy. Like my five-year-old self, I am now confident knowing these principles, which are like stars that illuminate the earth and the heavens. These principles are part of me, and so they are part of my life. I am more ready to receive them, and even more honored to give them away.

Chapter 1

Respect Your Ancestors—

And Your Own Journey

After crossing the waters from Africa, my ancestors brought with them a lineage and tradition of beliefs and rituals. My parents, being the second generation out of slavery, had the task of integrating into a system that held Christianity as the ruler of body, soul, and mind. African religions were not influenced by the embodiment of Christian belief, and reverence for ancestors was not accepted in Christian doctrine. Hence, praise to Jesus Christ became the name above all other names, and the one that was recommended we call upon. I am not sure how the act of being submerged under water and salvation became the things to secure one’s afterlife, but religion was the structure that ruled all others.

Yet why couldn’t my parents have been more hip to the time when I came along? Why were they so set in their ways? Regardless of how old fashioned I thought they were while I was growing up, I clung to their teachings. I have been on a unique path of my own design, but I never would have the tools to begin finding my way without my parents giving me a foundation. I am eternally grateful for coming to the planet through them, and what they imparted to me once I arrived.

My parents had grown up nearly a rock’s throw from one another. My father grew up with an older brother. The two of them were extremely close. You never would see one without the other. It was all about being frugal in their household. Though only two mouths to feed, my grandmother made sure that she squeezed as much out of a dollar as she possibly could. Grandpa, as his grandchildren called him, died when I was three years old. I didn’t get to know him, but my mother insists he thought I had fallen from the clouds. Your granddaddy loved you more than anything, she says.

My mom, like my father, grew up in a time that held drastically different conditions. She was born in 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression. I am sure that my mother’s parents hunkered down to very basics to make ends meet for their seven children. Much of what my mother believes was cemented during one of the most economically challenging periods in American history—what you had was all that you had during that period of time. And you made due with all that you had, she adds.

Whatever kind of work one could manage to get, you held on to it with your very life. For most, there weren’t many options to choose from. There were no thoughts of trying to change jobs, occupations or vocations. If you could get a job as a teacher, or if you were called to the ministry to preach, then you were in a better seat than some others, my mother reminisces. Being a preacher or a teacher were high standards and consistent pay back then. Due to layers of responsibilities within the family, there was no allowance for long searches in finding the right one job.