CounterPoint to Reality: A Personal Journey by Stephen John O’Connor was an easy read for me. As O’Connor relates his personal stories, there was for me a sense of familiarity: - not with the specifics of his journey, which is his alone, and unique but, with the overall direction through the ‘matrix of life’, as he calls it. We are all on similar but remarkably different journeys along the path. As O’Connor says “Overall, what I have learned, and am still learning, is that there is a Path. It’s not outside of us. There is no one who can truly guide us into the Path or help us along its way.”
O’Connor’s path is a truly fascinating one. A musician and composer, he engaged with various esoteric schools earlier in his life including AMORC. Yet, although he saw signs and bizarre things during his time working in the occult and with magic – some of which are recounted in the book – it seems as if these simply set the scene for personal explorations with Ayahuasca and meeting the Mother Daime later in life. It is through these deep and, at times, painful experiences that he arrives at an appreciation of life and the Path. “The Path,” he says, “has no path. It can only be traveled as it unfolds within one’s spiritual domain.”
What we are treated to in the book are a series of incidents, realizations and pointers experienced by Mr. O’Connor. These are interesting and well written in their own right and make the book an easy and fast read. Through these snapshots and experiences, we are given some pointers in terms of how he sees reality. There is the ego ‘I’ and the Self. We can dream our way through life as the ego ‘I’, or wake up to the light and towards re-integration with the Self. This is the Path where everything experienced happens for a reason ‘urging us towards awakening’. Mr. O’Connor points the way forward and it is by quieting the chatter of the mind, listening to the Higher Self and following the Path of no paths. For Mr. O’Connor, each of us has set out our course before we were born and now have to awaken to it again. Unless we do as a species in general, he sees dire longer-term consequences for the Earth.
