The Journey: A Practical Guide to Healing Your life and Setting Yourself Free

The Journey

A Practical Guide to Healing Your Life and Setting Yourself Free

By Internationally Bestselling Author

Brandon Bays

Dedication

In gratitude to my mother

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

A Letter from Brandon

Introduction to The Journey

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29 Your Journey Begins

Contact Details

Seminars: Information and Resources

The Journey Accredited® Practitioner Program

Stop the Food Fight

General Overview of the New Process Work

Instructions for the Effortless Emotional Journey

Detailed Instructions for the Emotional Journey

Effortless Emotional Journey Pre-Frame

The Effortless Emotional Journey Process

Physical Journey Instructions

Staircase into Source

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Praise for The Journey

Also by Brandon Bays

Copyright

About the Publisher

In gratitude to the healing grace pervading all of life.

May we all experience the magnificence of our own souls.

A Letter from Brandon

Beloved Reader,

In creating this new, revised, updated edition of The Journey book, it was my deepest prayer that you get the latest up-to-the-minute teaching and process work. It has been nineteen years since I healed from a basketball-sized tumor. This profoundly transformative and liberating healing work was originally born from that humbly life-changing experience.

Of course, over the years as I worked with tens of thousands of people around the world, I have seen what works and have also seen what doesn’t work. So the work has quite naturally, quite organically, evolved, deepened and expanded. Over time, new work birthed itself. It has not only become more user-friendly and refined, it has become more liberating, more freeing.

The Journey Method™ was not derived from some theory or conceptualized formula, but rather was born from people’s direct living experience of healing their lives: physically, emotionally, spiritually. And my wish for you in reading this book, dear reader, is that not only are you inspired by the stories contained within its pages, but also that you are catalyzed to begin your own healing Journey into the freedom and wholeness within.

It is my prayer that you come “home” to the love and peace that is your own essence, your own soul. And that you not only use this grace-inspired process work to heal your own life, but that you give the work away to your loved ones to begin liberating their lives, helping them to discover and open into their divine potential.

Since the book was first written and became a bestseller, I have been awed by how Journeywork seemed to “catch fire” wherever it traveled around the world. In the last two years, The Journey Intensives—our beginning workshops—will have been offered in thirty-five countries, and this book is now translated into twenty-three languages—and that number is still growing.

Wherever I travel globally (and most years I am on tour usually around forty-four weeks a year), I experience that, no matter which country I am in, there is such a deep longing to open into, to “awaken” to, the divine potential, the greatness that exists within all of us. There is in all of us a genuine thirst to heal our lives. And people want tools, methods and process work that will liberate them, free up their lives. They long to bring healing and wholeness into their everyday world. And they want results. Lasting results.

There is a huge wave of awakening and healing sweeping our planet right now, and I think all of us are feeling a “pull” to respond to a global imperative that we be a part of the change, the healing that our world so sorely needs during these tumultuous times. And we seek practical work, work that is real, down to earth, that gets measurable results. Work that helps clear our blocks, silent saboteurs and our limitations. Work that gets right under our skin to the root cause of our emotional and physical issues and clears them. Work that opens us into our essential greatness, into the love, the freedom, that is our own essence. We all long to have a direct experience of our own authentic greatness. We want to liberate our lives and experience the natural joy in the core of our being.

Ultimately we want to take the lampshade off our own lights and discover our own truth, find our own answers. We want to live a guided, grace-filled authentic life, lived from the love that is our essence.

And this book is designed to give you those tools, those methods, the life-changing process work needed to experience that healing.

Since this work was first published, Journey Outreach, our international humanitarian organization, was born, and for me it is a source of daily inspiration, gratitude, indeed, awe to see this healing work transform the lives of people who ordinarily could never afford to come to a seminar, let alone buy this book.

We have been graced by being invited into some of the most heartbreakingly challenged communities, and daily I marvel at the human heart’s capacity to heal, even in such adverse, seemingly insurmountable conditions. Many indigenous people around the world have welcomed us into their tribal communities, villages, ghettos, reservations and townships to help clear the results of violence and abuse, and the addictions that have resulted from the intolerable life circumstance of oppression, separation, disenfranchisement.

We have worked in the desert reservation in Ceduna, Australia, with the Aboriginal community there, and with the elders from the Maori community in New Zealand. We have fostered over one hundred projects in the African continent—in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia—and in North America we work closely with the First Nation’s People in Saskatoon, Canada. In India, our work is with orphans and the “train children” who have been abandoned by parents who could no longer afford to feed them, and we have projects all over the world with schoolchildren in their schools. We work with “lifers” incarcerated in prisons, and with medical teams working in the most intolerable, impoverished conditions.

If people in these most heartbreaking of circumstances can genuinely heal their lives and find wholeness and peace, then we certainly can. These individuals are a true testament to the work, a vision of possibility to us all, and they offer to us a compelling invitation to begin our own healing journeys.

One project that is particularly dear to my heart is a project called the Phelophepa Train Project in South Africa. Journey Outreach joined with other international charities to create a “Health Train” complete with an operating theater, a team of medical doctors, psychiatrists and Journey Practitioners. When the train pulls into a village, the villagers can board the train and receive the medical attention they need—even surgery. If they have some kind of mental challenge, they can see the psychiatrist on board, and if there is some kind of emotional block or shutdown in their lives, they can see a Journey Practitioner.

So for instance, let’s say a child has been bullied in the schoolyard. Well, no one gave that child a manual with instructions for how to deal with that kind of trauma. So naturally the child tries to cope by shutting down emotionally and withdrawing. Then when he gets into the classroom and the teacher says, “Turn to page 356 in your textbooks,” the child can barely read what’s in front of him. He can’t focus. He is too shutdown. He ends up being classed as dysfunctional at school.

With The Journey Process, the practitioner helps you get to the root cause of what put that shutdown in place, and you are gently guided to release the trauma, to come to an understanding of what took place and ultimately, to forgive so that the body and the being can naturally heal. The Journey Method helps you open up to your own innate potential so the natural intelligence can shine, once the old “cell memories” shutdowns and limitations have been cleared.

In essence, these kids are given the opportunity to take the lampshade off their lights.

So at the behest of the South African Ministry for Education (and we now work with several ministries worldwide) once the train has pulled out of the village, then a team of Journey Practitioners is invited into the schools to train the teachers in The Journey Method, so that the kids can undergo regular Journeywork. After a year’s worth of case studies, they found that children who received weekly Journey Processes averaged 91 percent to 93 percent pass rates on their exams, while those who did no Journeywork averaged only 67 percent. (Check out our website www.thejourney.com to view quite a heartrending video of this project.)

What recently has been blowing me away, as it is a sign of hope in these most challenging of times, is that many businesses and governmental ministries are actually trying to bring consciousness into the workplace—to liberate and empower their employees by using the powerful work from our Visionary Leadership Program (Conscious Company, with its Visionary Leadership Program, is now a sister company to Journey Seminars). Kevin Billett, my partner and CEO of both The Journey Seminars and Conscious Company, is currently working with the Ministry of Justice Department in Canada. And I have worked with a number of education ministries around the world, and have been moved by my recent work within the Education Department in Israel, where the ministers themselves have undergone the work. In Holland, if you are an employee of any governmental ministry and have “work-related stress,” then the government will refer you to and sponsor you to undergo The Journey Method at a ­government-approved clinic, to get to the bottom of and clear whatever is causing it.

So we are living in very exciting times indeed!

And of course, over the years the work itself has developed and expanded way beyond what I could initially have envisioned. We now offer the Journey Practitioner Program on four continents, so that everyday people from all walks of life can bring this powerful, life-changing work into their lives, into their family’s lives and into their communities. And as the work evolved many additional courses have become available to address and heal just about any aspect of your life. So there are many ways you can use this work to liberate your life and go on your own unique healing journey.

There are so many more projects and stories I wish I could share with you here. Unfortunately, there’s just not the space, and I know you are keen to get into the book. But what moves me the most, above all, is the human heart’s immense capacity to heal. Your body’s extraordinary healing potential can heal almost impossible seeming hurts, pains, even the most deeply held traumas, and each of us can find our way home to the wholeness, the joy that is our own essence. (If you want to be truly inspired by some of the stories, get the companion book to this one, Living The Journey, and it will break your heart open. It is filled with life-transforming stories.)

So, beloved reader, I pray this book will not only heal your life, but that it will also propel you on your own extraordinary healing journey. I hope it will open the door to your deepest self and that you will respond to your heart’s calling and come home to the magnificence that you are. And I pray I’ll get to meet you personally along the way, at one of the seminars somewhere in the world (check the back of the book: in addition to the new process work, we have information about all our seminars, website, contact details and products to give you continued support in your healing journey), and that together we will open into this infinite presence of love.

Until then, all love and blessings.

Namaste,

Brandon

Introduction to The Journey

This is a book about freedom—freedom to live your life as you’ve always dreamt it could be.

Deep inside all of us a huge potential beckons, waiting to open us to the joy, genius, freedom and love within. This presence is calling you home right now, longing to set you free. Yet all of us have issues we have felt trapped or limited by. We hear the whispering of our own soul calling to us, but feel unable to access that greatness. Instead, we feel covered or blocked in some way, limited by our issues—anger, fear, depression, grief, hurt, anxiety. It may be as simple as feeling there must be something more to life, or as complex as feeling a complete failure. It may be as debilitating as an addiction or as life threatening as a serious illness.

No matter how deep the issue is and no matter how much you have struggled with it, the possibility exists for you to become absolutely free, whole, and healed. You are capable of getting to the root cause of these issues, resolving them, letting them go completely and setting yourself free to live your life at your highest potential, as a full expression of your true self.

Through the humbling and profoundly transformative experience of naturally healing from a tumor in only six and a half weeks, I uncovered a boundless joy and freedom that have been my daily experience ever since. This is the most priceless gift of my life. Since that remarkable journey nineteen years ago, it has been extraordinarily moving and inspiring to watch Journeywork catch fire in every country in which it is offered. Across the globe, tens of thousands of people from all walks of life use The Journey Method to discover true freedom in their lives. They’re discovering their own answers and uncovering their own deepest truth. They are cleaning out past emotional blocks and physical challenges that have held them back. And they are finally healing on all levels of their being. Ordinary people are getting extraordinary results. It seems that no matter what your background is, how old you are, what your culture or upbringing has been, everyone knows there is a huge untapped potential, a boundless presence, inside, and we all secretly long to experience it. This presence is awake while you’re asleep at night, making your heart beat, cells replicate and hair grow. Part of the extraordinary gift of my own healing journey was to discover and pioneer a simple yet powerful step-by-step method to get direct access to this infinite wisdom—a wisdom that can reveal to you old emotional patterns and memories stored in your cells, and a healing energy that is capable of resolving and clearing those old issues completely, so the body and the being can go about the process of healing naturally.

Today I travel all over the world with Journeywork, giving workshops and advanced programs. I’m always delighted that it attracts people from all the helping professions: medical, traditional, complimentary and spiritual. I give talks and seminars at hospitals, hospices, abuse centers, homeopathic colleges, healing centers, spiritual organizations, churches, and to cancer support and addiction rehabilitation groups, schools, universities, government ministries and of course to people from all walks of life. Everywhere I go, people successfully incorporate Journeywork into their professional programs with ease and grace. I believe we all recognize that there are some issues that simply require truly in-depth, roll-up-your-sleeves-type healing work. We know it’s important to address an issue at the deepest level to finally clear it out and resolve it completely. Together we understand that The Journey Method is a way of bringing about profound healing, wholeness and a deep sense of well-being—no matter what our healing backgrounds. One of the programs I give is a worldwide practitioners’ accreditation program, which has attracted medical doctors, alternative therapists, counselors of all types, psychiatrists, priests, nuns, ministers, social workers, schoolteachers, college professors and, most of all, ordinary people from all walks of life.

In South Africa, there are doctors taking this healing and forgiveness-based work into communities where they can’t afford medical treatments, and we are helping train their staff. Police trauma units are using this work with victims of violent crime. I’ve trained abuse counselors in Soweto to use the work in their community. In the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia, priests are taking the work back to their flocks. Schoolteachers are getting extraordinary results with their youngsters, helping develop the most balanced, confident, high-achieving classes in their schools. In Australia, where this book was a number-one bestseller in its field, several medical doctors and complementary healing therapists keep the book in their waiting rooms for their patients’ reference, recognizing that some illnesses require more than just a pill.

Addiction rehabilitation groups are using the work to clear out the intense self-loathing connected with drug abuse, and nurses in cancer treatment facilities are using it alongside the chemotherapy treatments. A swami has taken the work back to his ashram to help people deepen in their experience of the Infinite, and nuns are using it to experience the deep peace within. Rabbis in synagogues in Israel are helping their people free themselves from long-standing emotional issues, and some grief counselors who help people on their deathbeds are using Journeywork to open their patients into the infinite peace inside to ease their passing. Journeywork is clearly cross-cultural and appeals to people from all religions, creeds, all ages and walks of life.

What moves me most are the hundreds of phone calls, letters and emails we get from people who haven’t had a chance to take the workshops—people who are courageously using the processes explained in this book to undergo their own healing journeys. We hear from people who have successfully and completely cleared long-standing debilitating emotional issues like chronic depression, overwhelming grief, intense low self-esteem, jealousy, abuse and betrayal. We are always inspired when people share how they’ve become free from physical challenges including heart disease, breast cancer, chronic fatigue, debilitating arthritis, Crohn’s disease, skin diseases—the list goes on. Every day in our office we receive messages of healing from all over the globe. And the message is always the same: “I was able to tap into my own infinite intelligence, uncover my own blocks, free them and set myself free—just by using the processes in this book.”

It has been the greatest gift of my life that grace revealed the means to let go of the past and discover the beauty, love and peace that is inside all of us. And it is my deepest prayer that everyone, not just some of us, awakens to this extraordinary presence of greatness inside and that we all begin living our life as a full expression of the love, the potential within.

This book is written as an expression of the deep gratitude that I feel for the powerful healing process I underwent, with the prayer that it will be a living tool that will inspire you to embark on your own journey.

May you discover the boundless joy at the core of your being. This is your invitation to freedom, your road map to the soul. Are you ready to soar?

“Come to the edge,” he said.

“We can’t, Master, we’re scared.”

“Come to the edge,” he said.

“We can’t, Master, we’re scared.”

“Come to the edge,” he said.

They came. He pushed them . . . they flew.

Freedom is our destiny. Yet we fear taking the very step that will carry us into the greatness that is our own true nature.

Foreword

I once heard a story that each of us comes into this life as a pristine, pure, flawless diamond. And through the trials of growing up and the course of life’s pains, our innate brilliance becomes hidden by a load of rubbish—lies, judgments and limitations we buy into.

Then, when we become adults, we cover over the whole mess with a coat of bright, shiny nail polish. We present this artificial veneer to the world and wonder why no one seems to think it’s that extraordinary. Over time, we may even come to believe that this protective shell is who we really are, and we shape our whole personal identity around it.

But if we are very lucky, life presents us with a gift—a “wake-up call.” Something takes place when for a moment we crack through the hardened surface, look past the layers of all the lies and shutdowns. We penetrate the layers of muck, and we catch a glimpse of the radiant brilliance shining from deep within.

Then, if we are very, very lucky, we spend the rest of our lives journeying homeward into this exquisite beauty and freedom. We discover that we have always been, and will always be, this pristine, flawless diamond—completely whole and free.

This is the story of the journey home, and the soul’s incessant call for us to recognize the greatness inside ourselves. It is your wake-up call, your invitation to finally come home to who you really are.

You are that which you are seeking.

Chapter 1

I woke up that morning in the summer of 1992 and realized I finally had to face whatever it was that had made my tummy grow so large over the last few months. I just couldn’t stay in denial any longer. Some part of me knew there was something seriously wrong inside, and that I was finally going to have to face the doctors and get it checked out.

I didn’t want to believe that anything could possibly be “wrong” with me. It seemed I had been doing everything right! I’d been extremely health conscious, proactively conscientious for over twelve years. I ate vibrant, nourishing, vegetarian food, drank only pure, clean, filtered water and rebounded on a mini-trampoline every day. I lived in a little cottage on the beach in Malibu, California, and breathed fresh sea air. More important, because of all the personal growth work I’d done over the years, I no longer needed to direct my thoughts along positive lines; that was already happening naturally. I was deeply fulfilled in my marriage, loved my kids, and felt enlivened by and extremely grateful for my work—traveling the world giving seminars, inspiring others to create vibrant health. My life was everything I had ever longed for.

I’d spent a lifetime attending workshops and seminars, learning everything I could about healing the body and the spirit. It seemed my entire life was about living the principles of health and well-being—I definitely “walked my talk.” Yet here I was faced with a tummy so large that I looked pregnant, though I knew I wasn’t. How could this be when I was doing everything right?