Читать книгу An Average Joe's Search For The Meaning Of Life - David Shaw - Страница 12

I went to James Hamilton Academy in Kilmarnock from 1979 to 1983. I hated it and nothing vaguely spiritual happened to me there, although I did get five ‘O’ Grades, only one of which attained a pass mark – Arithmetic. In my first year at school, I was in the top three in my class, but I fell out with one of the teachers in year two and started to rebel against the education system. I was a teenager! They should have made me study!

Actually, this is one of the big problems with teenagers. Everybody hates them and it’s not their fault!

I left school at sixteen and joined a Government Youth Training Scheme. I worked for forty-two hours a week and earned £25. These days I would need to emigrate to China to earn that kind of money. Still, it was a good learning curve for me. If you don’t put the effort in at school you work for peanuts and then get dumped at the end of the year for some other rebel without a clue.

It was during this first working year that I would often stay with my grandfather at the weekend. I can’t remember why exactly this commenced but we were both creatures of habit and we enjoyed each other’s company. My grandfather had lived alone since my grandmother passed to spirit in 1980. My mother was devastated by the loss of my grandmother and suffered terrible depression for many years after. I never really sensed my grandmother in spirit, but this was possibly due to the fact that I wasn’t very spiritually active at this time.

My grandfather was later introduced to a lady that my mother knew, and the dirty old devil asked her to marry him. They were married shortly afterwards on New Year’s Eve, but sadly I rather lost touch with my grandfather after that. He was married for just over a year when his wife died suddenly. He suffered emotionally afterwards and it was only about a year later before he himself passed over to spirit. I remember vividly the telephone ringing at two in the morning and my mother rushing to answer it. I knew what was coming, and I think she did too. We had been there before when my grandmother suffered a stroke. My grandfather spoke softly and calmly – ‘I think I’ve had a wee heart attack.’

My mother, father and sister all rushed off to the hospital after phoning for an ambulance. I decided to stay in the house – I still don’t know why, and the others never really questioned it.

I sat downstairs for a while, contemplating what was about to happen, but for some reason I knew full well what the outcome would be. Suddenly I heard a familiar voice say, ‘I’m all right now, David.’ I sat quietly, waiting for the arrival of my distraught family.

To my surprise they all returned in good spirits – no pun intended! I looked at my mother and she whispered, ‘He’s had a heart attack, but the doctor says he should be OK.’ I just looked at her and nodded. Had I been imagining the voice? Intuitively, I knew I hadn’t.

About fifteen minutes later there was a knock at our front door. My mother rushed to answer it. My uncle was standing there, shaking his head. My grandfather had died just after they left the hospital, after suffering a second, more severe heart attack. Apparently, at about the same time as I heard his voice in my lounge.

I never mentioned this to family till many years later. It didn’t seem important at the time. Fortunately my mother coped with the loss of her father much better than when her mother had died. For me, this was the first real occasion that I had communicated directly with spirit.

I’ve since found that when major events happen in my life I will always have a strong spiritual connection. Most people do. It’s just a case of recognising the signs and believing in your instincts.

In the summer of 1986, my mother, father and sister decided to take a week’s holiday in Spain. This was a traumatic time for me as I was now nineteen years old and fairly independent, so naturally I preferred to holiday with my friends. However, I was now about to stay in my big old house, with all the spooks, for a full week – all by myself! I felt both excited and terrified at the same time.

My first night came around in a flash. It was a beautiful summer’s evening and the sun didn’t set until almost ten o’clock. I went to bed apprehensively after two cans of strong lager. I remember lying in my bed thinking, ‘If anything comes in my room tonight, I’ll run out of this house naked to escape from it.’ I was deadly serious, no point in getting dressed while I’m being butchered by the ghost of Rob Roy!

Around 2am, I suddenly awoke. Fortunately it wasn’t the ‘witching hour’, but clearly something powerful was in my room. As usual I felt as if I was completely paralysed – but surprisingly on this occasion it wasn’t due to fear. I also felt an incredibly strong energy force to my right hand side and as I tried to turn my head to investigate the source of this unknown power, the force pushed my head back to its original position.

Amazingly, I then felt extremely relaxed and my eyes began to slowly close. It almost felt as though I had just been given an anaesthetic. As my eyes closed shut, I suddenly felt the force move swiftly from its original position on my right hand side, then fly over my head, before moving off out the door to my left. Almost immediately I fell into a deep and wonderful sleep.

When I awoke the next morning I felt fantastic. I had enjoyed the best night’s sleep of my life. I remembered vividly everything about the previous night’s events and couldn’t believe that I wasn’t terrified of the strange happening that had taken place. The complete opposite was in fact true. Whatever was present in that room was absolutely divine in nature and in all my life since that night, I have yet to experience again such a feeling of pure contentment. If there are angels in this world then I most certainly met one that night.

I finished my year in the labour camp of Youth Training back in 1984 and embarked on another training scheme at the end of that year. With few qualifications and very little real get up and go, I was starting to drift aimlessly towards a life of scrimping and scraping just to get by. I would visit the local job centre once or twice a week in order to give my conscience a small but nevertheless necessary boost, and on one such occasion, accompanied by my friend Kevan, yes Kevan with an ‘A’, I noticed a job advert for ‘Postal Officers’ with the Post Office.

‘I’ve already applied for that,’ remarked Kevan. ‘You have to sit an unbelievably tough aptitude test, and you need five “O” Grades just to even get past the initial selection process,’ he added sarcastically.

This was like a red rag to a bull. I didn’t honestly think I had much chance of getting an interview for this position, never mind the actual job – but don’t tell me not to apply because my prized ‘O’ levels were not of a suitable calibre! Fortunately, when I read the advert a second time it didn’t say that your five ‘O’ Grades must be passes. I was in, and after submitting my application form I was invited to sit the dreaded aptitude test.

There were at least another fifty people sitting this test, all vying for only three available jobs. Kevan had mentioned to me beforehand that nobody managed to finish the test when he had previously sat his ill-fated attempt. He also added smugly that he knew of at least three people who had multiple higher qualifications than me, and that they would probably get the jobs.

However, this wasn’t a test of academic ability or of how hard you were prepared to work to achieve your goals. No, this was an arithmetic test – and I was lightning fast at arithmetic. I was Carol Vorderman, without the legs – again, apologies if we’ve gone global!

I once sat an arithmetic test in primary school. It was the same test for the whole school, from age five to twelve. We were instructed to get friends and family to sponsor us with each correct answer receiving a specific amount of sponsorship money. I was third in the whole school, even though I was only in Primary four. I was feeling really chuffed with myself until I found out that because I only had two sponsors, my mum and dad, I raised less money than the class dunce, who must have been sponsored by the entire population of China. Still, my teacher was impressed by my arithmetic abilities, if clearly not by my marketing skills.

The Post Office aptitude test would last for thirty minutes. After ten minutes my head had surfaced, and as I gazed around the room it was evident that I was the only person who had finished. I had twenty minutes remaining and decided to double-check my answers. I only found two answers that needed to be amended. I was then convinced that I had every answer correct. I sat for the next fifteen minutes watching my fellow competitors chip away at their task, before the adjudicator announced that the given time had elapsed. There were muffled groans as the other applicants realised that they had fallen short of the required standard. I walked home feeling that I must have done enough for an interview, but that I’d probably mess up if it got to that stage.

I received a call that same afternoon from someone at the Post Office informing me that ‘Obviously you know that you passed the test, would you come for an interview next week?’ I had in fact been for several interviews recently and got absolutely nowhere, so I did not share too much optimism about being successful this time in a job that paid far more money than any of the others. However, as I walked into that interview room and was formally introduced to the two interviewers from the Post Office, I intuitively knew before a word had even been spoken that I would be offered the job. In fact, I could have jumped on the knee of either man, smacked him in the face with a wet fish, while singing Dixie – and still have got the job. I didn’t bother with Dixie, but I did get that job.

When I told Kevan about my success I could see he was both surprised and a bit jealous. Kevan was the opposite of me. He was a hard worker and showed great determination to succeed. He suffered from an illness that often held him back, but eventually he would recover and move down to Manchester, becoming both very successful and wealthy. I, on the other hand, would work for the Post Office for the next twenty years.

At first it was a difficult job, but it was a valued profession and I felt privileged to be a part of such a well thought-of organisation. Latterly, though, the job became a nightmare and I became embarrassed by how it was being run. In fact, the rumour was that you could murder your own mother and still get a job with the Post Office.

I worked at the Post Office counter and met some amazing people in my time there. I also met some right nutters!

Still, as an eighteen-year-old single guy, earning over £100 per week in 1985, I had the world at my feet.

Unfortunately, there was one particular thing blocking any potential spiritual development. I had been introduced to alcohol. I would drink four nights a week – Thursday to Sunday. I had nothing else to spend my hard-earned cash on and I decided to live the good life!

My teenage years were coming to an end, roll on the nineties. Somehow I had managed to land a decent job, despite that decadent spell in my teenage years. I could now start to be positive about my life for the first time in five years. Job Done!