If you are not open to risktaking then this book (and this section of our web site) is not for you. It is designed to make you question, to seek, to commit to transformation wherever you begin to realise that that is what is needed in your life. There is a certain recklessness required. Not the recklessness that comes with unconsciousness or failing to stop to consider the consequences of any action, but a recklessness which arises out of conscious daring in the face of fear. Certainly ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ applies to coming consciously to sacred relationship, with reverence, with love, with insight and wisdom.

This book is a story, of humanity’s present, its past and its possible future; of our intimate life, of the life of communities, groups, nations, businesses, organisations, governments. To come into sacred relationship requires a certain state of mind and heart that is identical for both the individual and for the larger more public body. Essentially, no matter what the relationship, it is individuals who are involved, along with their individual agendas. In the end all that matters is the way in which each person chooses to come into relation. If there is a sense of sacredness and goodwill, then no matter what the situation the outcome will be life-enhancing for all concerned.

The human story began with a sense of oneness and relation born out of a tribal way of being, along with a simple instinctive relationship to earth, sky, goddess and gods, nature and each other. Over tens of thousands of years this developed into an awareness of self-consciousness and the need to function as individuals. Herein lies the origin of the sexual, emotional and power issues which continue to cripple relationships today.

This book challenges us to move on – to relationships based on soul meeting, on love as we may have never before conceived it, on long-term commitment to the journey of sacred partnership. Deep in our being we know that these will not be risk-free encounters, demanding little, giving even less. We know that they will ask more of us than we have ever given, take us to places we haven’t even conceived of, temper and test us in ways we don’t want to think about. We also know that when we dare to commit to the sacred mystery of true connection the outcome is mutual life, joy, creativity and empowered shared service at a level we have never before experienced. We do not, we cannot, emerge from the fire of true connection the same person we were when we entered it.

I must have been five years old when the family shifted to an old house set high and wild above the Huon River in south-east Tasmania. I’m sure I cannot have been allowed to go to the river on my own. Even the stony track down to the road was steep, and I would then have had to cross the road before heading on down an even steeper bank through gum trees and scrub. To this day I don’t know how I came to be beside the river, but the memory is an exquisite jewel etched brightly on my being.

I am alone, and then suddenly I am not. In front of me, playfully oblivious of my presence, is a platypus. I have never before seen one but I know what it is and watch fascinated as it curls and nuzzles its way across the stones, tail ruddering against the current. I am held spellbound, not daring to twitch or even swat a fly off my face. It is one of those magic moments reserved for the lucky ones, and I am one of them. The world no longer exists; there is only the platypus and me. Then, even that distinction blurs. There is an immense sense of having been let into one of the secret places of God, and allowed to witness the mystery of creation.