Psychopathic school teacher as "guru"

Something remarkable has happened - my singing voice is starting to heal...and it has to be down to the Healing the Family and Ancestors workshop.

I can sing on my own again (or perhaps for the first time). To be honest that I might sound like an out-take from Pop Idol doesn't phase me for a second... As I am actually singing, yes actually singing out loud and feeling very pleased with myself...

My introduction to singing was at the prep school I unwillingly attended as a boarder from the age of seven to 13.

It went something like this: we trouped up to the music room in the attic of the school, and the mad music teacher got each boy to come up to the piano to sing notes that he played. I was one of the poor unfortunates who could not sing these notes. For whatever reason, this inability seemed to enrage him to the point that he would lash out and hit me about the head.

This effectively "froze" my voice before I was even a teenager.

The sorry saga has more to it: in my efforts to please. I volunteered to help him record the choir during their practices using a reel to reel tape recorder. My stategy failed as it didn't stop the abuse. I can even remember him jumping on me in the gym - feigning horseplay. I say feigning because I could feel his erection in his grubby, baggy corduroy trousers. (He was one of three teachers who abused me sexually.)

I'm not trying to get the sympathy vote here, but it is a trauma not to be minimised - to have the music beaten out of you violently and at the same time have your innocence violated.

The consolation is that I've never really given up on getting better, and tried to live a spiritual, searching life for the last 40 years... And the return to singing is a real bonus...

I have found my voice singing a Tibetan mantra Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padme Siddhi Hum - the first three words are seen in Tibetan at the top of this post.

This is what we sang all day for five days on the Healing the Family and Ancestors workshop - but whilst there I still found that I couldn't sing it on my own and maintain the tune... Returning home I had tried with the help of my wife, but still couldn't manage it on my own, until yesterday when I was saying goodbye to her at the front door, I suddenly "burst out into song" - and, yes, I was singing and I could hear that I was singing it more or less correctly, and I felt that something had been restored, and that more of the past had been healed, and that I could lay to rest another grievance that has been festering in my pysche against my parents...

The characters below are the Tibetan for the famous Om Mane Padme Hum mantra - which I can also sing. And the picture above is of more Tibetan mantras carved into rock. This focus on the Tibetans, as well as giving me the means to help find my lost voice, is based on their belief that life's hardships are there to teach us what we need to learn.

So psychopathic school teacher as "guru" is not as far fetched as it sounds!


Downloads of me singing will be released in the quite distant future....