Barbara Tovey
SoulType 8

Once, when I was about three years old, I was sitting at a small table, painting the images of trees on a mountain. I thought what I was doing was splendidly perfect and that I was no less than amazing. I experimented with creating a sense of perspective by painting larger trees in the foreground and smaller ones in the background, so the smaller trees would look farther away.

I was most interested in the thickness of the green paint, and discovered that if I put globs of it onto the tree branches the paint would look more like real leaves because it was more three dimensional. I probably didn’t think the words “three dimensional” but that was the effect I was going for.

I loved to be outside and deeply breathe in the world around me -- like the wonderful smell of a winter night when the snow is so deep that the world has almost stopped.

One particular night when I was about ten years old, I stayed out ice skating in the dark after all the other children had gone home for dinner. The moon lit the land, the snow covered everything, translucent icicles hung from the tree branches, and the entire world glittered. It was wondrous. As I walked home, a sound caught my attention and I realized I was hearing tinkling from icicles tapping each other in the wind.

I cherished stepping out the door into a crisp Fall day. I loved to breathe the sweet smell of the leaves and the smoke from fireplaces into my body. I have never tired of this.

During torrential thunder and lightning storms in summer, I made an extra effort to go outside wearing my bathing suit so I could feel the rain against my skin, or I looked for something outside to sit under so I could be next to the storm. I lived it all in my body.

The animals in my life -- the large and the small -- have been important teachers. I made my first connections with the souls of other beings in relationships with animals. I looked into their eyes, saw their souls, and sensed the Source of Creation. This taught me that human beings are the caretakers, and animals are great teachers and healers.

I first sensed the universal feeling of a soul’s embodiment when looking into my cat’s eyes. I was captivated by her soul and the generosity and wisdom I saw in her eyes. I spent many hours as a child sitting with her after everyone else went to bed. Unnoticed, I got quietly out of bed to be with her. And now it is not uncommon for me to crawl around the house with my daughter's hamster so she can spend time out of her cage and have a more fun and interesting life. I see her soul, her generosity, and her wisdom.

During much of my childhood I lived on Staten Island in New York City. It was the 1960s. When I was not in school, I often went door to door, rounding up the kids so we could do all kinds of fun things. I created treasure hunts, took the kids on bike rides, and choreographed dances that we charged our parents to see. We slid down grassy hills on broken cardboard boxes, and we played in the water sprinklers. We played house, and I put together schools, restaurants, theaters, and haunted houses, in the basement of my home. We made elaborate costumes and acted out movie and TV shows. I loved to take my friends into Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry, where we rode subways to places like Greenwich Village, the Museum of Natural History, and Central Park.

My father is a physician, as were the fathers of most of my friends, and many of the mothers had been nurses or worked in other health-care professions. I remember feeling awe when I saw my father at work, or when I watched my mother carefully choose her words so that what she said would make a contribution. The adults in my community seemed to strive for excellence in whatever they did, at home and work. They expected their children to get the best grades in school and have exemplary behavior. Most of the children went to private schools. In the summers on weekends the families came together for community barbeques where they served delicious hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, and watermelon.

The adults in my life exemplified both a refined beauty of high ethical and moral standards, and the lowest. I saw a confusing mix of professionalism and aberrant behavior -- intentions did not always match the outcome. Some of the parents were getting together for group sex on the living room floor at one child’s house, and two of the parents were training their dogs to kill by setting them after live animals they bought at a pet store. They were also whipping their two children with a horse whip. I remember the strain on one girl’s face as she made up excuses for the bruises on her body. We often had to step over another child’s father because he was drunk and had passed out in their kitchen. And some of the teenagers were sexually abusing the younger children.

This was also the time when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. At my grade school we regularly practiced for a nuclear attack by hiding under our desks. I watched riots on TV as people demonstrated for basic human rights. My parents watched the news on TV every night and I heard the daily accounts of people leaving Vietnam in body bags. I asked myself why the world was not better off than this and I became very angry.

I went to public school, and at my Junior High school I saw at least one child a day shoved into a wall by a teacher for misbehaving. Whenever I saw things like this happen, I felt attacked as well, and I felt my body wrench with pain. Every day after school the building was surrounded with groups of kids cheering on girls fighting girls and boys fighting boys. These fights drew large crowds so it was difficult to get out of the building. I had to strategically plan my route because of the risk of assault. Avoiding physical or verbal attack became an art form.

The dissonance between the beauty I saw in the world, the way I was taught to be, and my personal experience of reality, made me suicidal. My underlying struggle was with reality as it was presented to me. I refused to accept that humanity had to be so violent with seemingly no way out. My history lessons showed me that humanity kept repeating the same disastrous mistakes. Wasn’t there a way to learn from life? For years, the thought It doesn’t have to be like this! repeated itself over and over in my head. I challenged the fundamental assumptions and beliefs about everything unless what I was told aligned with the feeling of truth that I had in my body. I was uncompromising throughout my struggle, even though it made me depressed.

My body revolted when I focused on anything that seemed to have no meaning or alive energy about it. This meant I did not graduate from high school or college, and after giving it a good try, I found that the American Dream (the idea that the acquisition of the “right things” leads to happiness) did not fit. For a period of time I smoked three packs of cigarettes and drank over twelve cups of coffee a day, went to endless therapy appointments, and spent at least ten years feeling nauseated.

I always sensed a connection with a tenuous, but alive, energy thread. I trusted it and kept trying to feel its direction. Sometimes life felt like driving a bumper car while blindfolded; I was never sure when the path would clear, when I would be hit, or where I was going. Over the years this thread has taken me in many directions.

My first job was making sandwiches at a restaurant, and within six months I became the manager. Within the next six months I was hired to open a new chain of restaurants. I was in my early twenties, with no professional training, and was suddenly employed as a general contractor, interior designer, and manager. It was a tremendously challenging project, and a lot of fun. After a year or so I realized that I had learned pretty much everything there was to know about that job. People told me that it was a great job and I should not leave it, but I felt something was missing. Confused, I stayed on but began talking with people about my plans to leave. The people I worked for sent me out to dinner with one of their associates who had the assignment to find out my plans. I felt it was a good idea to answer his questions and tell him that I did not picture myself staying with the company. I was fired.

I changed direction and went to work part time at a child care center, where I worked with children ages two to four years old. I felt pride in my ability to care for these children and help them feel safe and happy while they were away from their parents. A vivid memory comes from this time. I looked into the eyes of a child while we were talking, and we looked so far into each other that I saw the soul of this beautiful little person. It happened like a flash -- lasted only a moment -- but the impact was huge. It was a great gift he gave to me. This was something I had never experienced, and it shifted me forever. I realized that in order to be present for these children, I needed to always strive for this kind of connection. Before long, I could feel the thread pulling and I changed direction again.

I took two positions at the same time, one as an administrator for a medical research and education foundation, and one as an administrative assistant at a hospital. Under my administration, the foundation was awarded one of the largest medical research grants ever funded by the National Institutes of Health. Holding two jobs turned out to be too much work, but I learned more about myself, my skills, and what I was capable of doing. I became confident that I would always be able to find a job and support myself. My life was still missing something. I could sense what it was a little bit, but it remained elusive and undefined. I had to move on.

I put an advertisement in the local newspaper, and began to work for myself. I became a consultant specializing in management and bookkeeping. I traveled throughout my community, got to know many people, and learned a lot about the diverse local businesses. It was interesting, and working for myself was much easier, particularly because I enjoyed being in charge. I was excited and thought that maybe I had finally created the kind of life that would make me feel fulfilled. Once again I faced disappointment when I realized I had not succeeded.

I had been receiving bodywork for a back problem and became intrigued by the intimacy of the one-on-one relationship that the practitioner has with their client. I also loved to work with my hands, and see immediate results. In this profession, I could have all of this. I trained and became certified in Aston Patterning®, a paradigm that uses soft tissue and joint mobilization, movement reeducation, and ergonomics to create dynamic and fluid movement patterns. I was especially attracted to this paradigm because it honors both the body’s natural alignment and its relationship to the environment. As my practice grew, my life became richer and my relationships with people deepened.

During this time I met Alan, and our two paths became one. We were adventurers going in the same direction. We opened a physical therapy clinic specializing in innovative and brilliant bodywork paradigms. Alan was certified in the Feldenkrais Method® and I practiced Aston-Patterning®. Over the years, we hired highly talented physical therapists who were trained in other modalities, as well. We expected to spend our lives helping people recover from injuries.

I discovered that I could remember other lifetimes with Alan. In one lifetime we lived in the western part of the United States, isolated in a dusty, hot desert. It was during the 1800s and we were very poor. Another time we lived on top of a hill in the arid, Mediterranean climate of ancient Greece. During his time off from work in government, Alan occasionally got drunk with friends and raced chariots. I am still excited by how handsome he looked in his “official” white draped garment with a brightly colored sash across his chest. Our journey together is beyond space and time.

When Alan and I married, we anticipated a simple, comfortable life together in the small town where we were living. However, A few years into our marriage the joining of our paths took us in a completely unexpected direction.

We were both very interested in exploring what made people feel happy and fulfilled and held study groups in our home where we extensively interviewed people. Alan had also begun to work with the same people using a martial arts exercise to see if we could detect a relationship between what a person told us about themselves and how their body naturally responded (see Alan’s bio). Our awareness and ability to perceive reality began to expand.

We also began to make observations that were not only new to us, but also new to humanity. They led to discoveries that were unprecedented in their magnitude and significance. They were discoveries about the nature of human beings -- about how human beings can find their soul, communicate soul-to-soul, and create their own transformative experiences for the benefit of all. Because of our discoveries, the soul is no longer a concept, but a physically demonstrable reality.

While we were making these pivotal discoveries, we were confronted by dark forces that were not only alien to us, but threatened to tear our relationship apart and destroy both me and the work we were doing. Before we could see the big picture, we found ourselves fighting to save my life. We learned how to use the energy that nourishes and sustains humanity, and about destructive energies that “have no Light.” We drew on our relationships with beings of Light who helped us. We survived because of our love for each other and our connection with the Light. This experience gave us a very clear framework for protecting the integrity of New Equations.

My relentless search for something that I could not define, and my uncompromising nature helped me discover that reality was very different from what I had been taught, and much more than I first perceived. It was true; the world “did not have to be this way.” There was a way human beings could live harmoniously, learn from their experiences, and not repeat pain and destruction. People could do this by aligning with their souls, the souls of others, and the Light.

The energy thread I had been following was no longer tenuous. It became strong and always present. Alan and I now experience what we call the Light with no Shadow. Everything that I have lived has contributed to our finding this Light. With it comes both a responsibility to bring peace to the planet, and gratitude to the animals and people who, by sharing life with me, helped me find the Light with no Shadow and become capable of teaching what I have learned.