Dr. Greg J de Castro Ph.D. in Philosophy
My Sacred Quest
Values
Management
Community Site & Use of Land
Building & Design
Building with Straw Bales
Guidelines to consider
Materials
Equipment
Fire and Safety Practices
Community Members and Staff
Retreat Centre
Sacred Spaces
Healing Centre
Self Catering Cottages
Restaurant
Camping Facilities
Centre for Creative Education
Art and Craft Centre
Community Hall
Bakery
Restaurant
Organic Farming
Farm Animals
Water Management Scheme
Waste Management Scheme
Storage and Processing
Area for Recyclable Materials
Membership Agreements
Site Holding Agreements
Concluding Statement
Values
Management
Community Site & Use of Land
Building & Design
Building with Straw Bales
Guidelines to consider
Materials
Equipment
Fire and Safety Practices
Community Members and Staff
Retreat Centre
Sacred Spaces
Healing Centre
Self Catering Cottages
Restaurant
Camping Facilities
Centre for Creative Education
Art and Craft Centre
Community Hall
Bakery
Restaurant
Organic Farming
Farm Animals
Water Management Scheme
Waste Management Scheme
Storage and Processing
Area for Recyclable Materials
Membership Agreements
Site Holding Agreements
Concluding Statement
Hi Folks,
In my introduction, I feel that it is important to go back into a period of my own life that tested all aspects of my well being... and which led me towards my Sacred Quest in Life.
In my early years of being a fireman and working 24-hour shifts I spent a lot of time missing my family. When I was off duty during the week I would often find myself alone at home while my wife was at work and my young children were at school. As fire-fighters we literally lived together for 24-hour shifts, the fire station becomes a combination of work and home, and colleagues constitute a sort of second family. I often spent more time with crew members than my own family. Although the life of a fire fighter may seem exciting and glamorous, it has many challenges. It is physically demanding and a dangerous occupation. Throughout an emergency, a fire-fighter must maintain a constant and heightened awareness never losing site of the broader picture while attending to a specific task. Other challengers included sleep deprivation due to exposure to trauma and tragedy that I have personally experienced in my fire fighting career in South Africa. I later became an officer of a substation and turned out to all kinds of incidents, such as, motor vehicle accidents, house and building fires, bush, grass and mountain fires, 'shack fires' better known today as informal settlements where I witnessed poor folks losing their homes with the little that they owned... I trampled over bodies without knowing until the fires were extinguished... I saw charred human bodies, burnt animals and all kinds of pain, suffering, destruction and loss...
My experience is also about the hope that I had in the medical profession and my understanding that I had of God, of which I felt both had let me down. I believe that we can only achieve wisdom both through life experiences and by acquiring a new awareness about life. It has been a little over twenty-seven years since my wife and I said our vows. Together we had two wonderful young boys and a beautiful baby girl at our side. All was perfect until a trail of unexpected and devastating events occurred in our family life. At forty-nine years of age my father passed away from a sudden heart attack. He was a fire officer at the time. At his funeral, my beautiful baby daughter became ill and the following day my wife and I took her to hospital where she was diagnosed with having lymphoblastic leukaemia. We didn’t quite know what this meant. It was explained to us that it was an unusual aggressive type of cancer and that it was terminal. Anything from one to three months and she would die. Only those that have experienced a similar situation could ever really know how it feels as young parents… Both my wife and I were in total shock. I remember my mind becoming immobilised; I experienced a sense of unreality. My ability to think clearly became a blur. Through a myriad of emotions and reactions I vaguely remember one moment there was denial, ‘the doctor can’t be right; she can’t be that sick,’ to anger, ‘why my baby daughter,’ or ‘why now,’ or ‘why not me’ to anguish; ‘how are we going to cope’ to ‘how are we going to explain this to our sons?’ As it turned out, we found ourselves in and out of Red Cross Children’s Hospital living in fear of the worst and living in hope that a miracle would happen and all would be okay again.
In the initial period of shock and disbelief, I remember clutching at straws. Well-meaning friends and relatives sometimes increased our confusion. Our home was suddenly transformed into a library of books and tapes. Everyone seemed to know someone whom we had to see or talk with and there were days that we felt so alone and scared. The more I read, the more bewildered I became. The greatest enemy became confusion. It undermined all good intentions and I felt powerless. Both our careers took a serious plunge. Our young lives were spent trying so hard to make ends meet. I vaguely recall how we arrived at a place called hospice. We were treated kindly by the staff who said that they would take care of our daughter while we got some sleep. I can’t remember how long we had slept for... if indeed we slept at all...
The next thing my precious baby daughter passed away in my arms... just six months after my father had passed to the other side. Months later, my wife’s mother suddenly passed away with cancer. She was also very young. Our lives were turned upside down. Survival took on a new meaning. Just waking up to get through each day became a task on its own. We were emotionally drained and on the verge of giving up… Three dear people were suddenly out of our lives in less than two years. Both my wife and I somehow managed to keep a loving home. We took care of our boys in the best way that we knew how.
After a number of years I eventually gave up my career as a fire fighter because I was not coping with the pain, suffering, death and destruction that I had repeatedly witnessed. I used my pension money and opened a business that demanded all my attention. It was two years of shear hell. I once again had little time with my family. I miss managed my business which caused me to finally give it all up... I was now without a job and very little money. I soon had a feeling of being useless and then exhausted, my self-esteem and confidence dropped to an all time low. These were the most frightening feelings I had experienced in my entire life… I felt trapped. My soul cried out in anguish, “Why is God silent? Why doesn’t He intervene in my life and send help? Why is everything so meaningless? Why is the world in such a mess?” Thousands of hours were spent on trying to understand what was going on in my life. I was searching and begging for answers.
A few months had passed since I had any work or hope of getting an income. I remember feeling sick to the stomach when the thought of losing our house crossed my mind. How my dear wife ultimately managed as a mother, wife and career woman brings my admiration today. I believe now that it was Divine Intervention that I eventually got a contracting job and I remember getting it just at the right time. In the early days and eventually it went into months I remember staring at the ceiling and asking “Why me, why us?” With time I managed to answer this question and safely reply, “I was chosen to show the world that life goes on.” Life has been tough for both my wife and I. Sometimes I felt what was the point of life because we still had to carry on with the same responsibilities that any other individual needed to carry on with in a normal day. There were those days that I was unable to handle any more pain, pressure and responsibilities. Somehow, from somewhere one manages to draw energy and strength to continue the uphill battle. One needs to live with dreams and keep on looking to the future. I remember reading and soon found myself working my way through a library of self-help books. I recall reciting words by Norman Vincent Pearl that said, “Day by day by the Grace of God I am getting better and better with a positive mental attitude.” And to this day I have never stopped repeating these words. My mind became active and hungry in this New World that I was getting to know a little better. I eventually studied towards an advanced diploma in stress management that exposed me to holistic healing therapies and then I found myself studying psychology. I became a reiki master. Today I hold a PhD in Philosophy.
My life is still not all plain sailing, but the point of value of using my own life experience is to highlight the fact that tragedy can turn out to become the greatest good in one’s life. It took many painful years before I realised this. If I knew what I know now I would have handled things differently.
Here I am many years later and I see my daughter as being a spiritual miracle firstly, for showing up in our lives and secondly, for igniting deep and meaningful change in my life. I now have a burning passion to share what I’ve learned with people who really would like to turn their lives around and get so much more out of them. Through my experience and awareness from studying, I am now working towards radiating my new consciousness outward. I realise that as long as I am living my life authentically and in alignment with my core belief system then everyone will benefit.
We are moving through intense times but nothing happens within or without us, except to the extent that we give personal meaning to it. In philosophy and spiritual truth, and grounded in the evidence of scientific research, love is all there is and love is who we are. It is time to end suffering by becoming the change that we want to see in our world. It is with this in mind, and my own life experiences that I have carried a dream of establishing a Self Sustaining Community and Retreat Centre in South Africa.
I have dedicated my life's work to my baby daughter Nicole who passed away in my arms and who has laid the foundation on which largely my life has been built. To both my sons, Dylan and Dean to whom I also give thanks for sharing and encouraging me in my own dreams, and for becoming fine young men who have both achieved so much in their own lives, and last, but not least I give heartfelt thanks to my dear wife, whose love, caring and support during my many years of studying, have meant so much to me!
I have a different perspective on death now because I have seen so much of it. It makes me more conscious of the fact that life is temporary, and for everyone, not just myself we should live our lives every day in awe and appreciation of each other and life in all its forms.
This site is dedicated to bringing about an awareness of my sacred quest, and I hope that it will connect people from around our beautiful planet.
Top
In my introduction, I feel that it is important to go back into a period of my own life that tested all aspects of my well being... and which led me towards my Sacred Quest in Life.
In my early years of being a fireman and working 24-hour shifts I spent a lot of time missing my family. When I was off duty during the week I would often find myself alone at home while my wife was at work and my young children were at school. As fire-fighters we literally lived together for 24-hour shifts, the fire station becomes a combination of work and home, and colleagues constitute a sort of second family. I often spent more time with crew members than my own family. Although the life of a fire fighter may seem exciting and glamorous, it has many challenges. It is physically demanding and a dangerous occupation. Throughout an emergency, a fire-fighter must maintain a constant and heightened awareness never losing site of the broader picture while attending to a specific task. Other challengers included sleep deprivation due to exposure to trauma and tragedy that I have personally experienced in my fire fighting career in South Africa. I later became an officer of a substation and turned out to all kinds of incidents, such as, motor vehicle accidents, house and building fires, bush, grass and mountain fires, 'shack fires' better known today as informal settlements where I witnessed poor folks losing their homes with the little that they owned... I trampled over bodies without knowing until the fires were extinguished... I saw charred human bodies, burnt animals and all kinds of pain, suffering, destruction and loss...
My experience is also about the hope that I had in the medical profession and my understanding that I had of God, of which I felt both had let me down. I believe that we can only achieve wisdom both through life experiences and by acquiring a new awareness about life. It has been a little over twenty-seven years since my wife and I said our vows. Together we had two wonderful young boys and a beautiful baby girl at our side. All was perfect until a trail of unexpected and devastating events occurred in our family life. At forty-nine years of age my father passed away from a sudden heart attack. He was a fire officer at the time. At his funeral, my beautiful baby daughter became ill and the following day my wife and I took her to hospital where she was diagnosed with having lymphoblastic leukaemia. We didn’t quite know what this meant. It was explained to us that it was an unusual aggressive type of cancer and that it was terminal. Anything from one to three months and she would die. Only those that have experienced a similar situation could ever really know how it feels as young parents… Both my wife and I were in total shock. I remember my mind becoming immobilised; I experienced a sense of unreality. My ability to think clearly became a blur. Through a myriad of emotions and reactions I vaguely remember one moment there was denial, ‘the doctor can’t be right; she can’t be that sick,’ to anger, ‘why my baby daughter,’ or ‘why now,’ or ‘why not me’ to anguish; ‘how are we going to cope’ to ‘how are we going to explain this to our sons?’ As it turned out, we found ourselves in and out of Red Cross Children’s Hospital living in fear of the worst and living in hope that a miracle would happen and all would be okay again.
In the initial period of shock and disbelief, I remember clutching at straws. Well-meaning friends and relatives sometimes increased our confusion. Our home was suddenly transformed into a library of books and tapes. Everyone seemed to know someone whom we had to see or talk with and there were days that we felt so alone and scared. The more I read, the more bewildered I became. The greatest enemy became confusion. It undermined all good intentions and I felt powerless. Both our careers took a serious plunge. Our young lives were spent trying so hard to make ends meet. I vaguely recall how we arrived at a place called hospice. We were treated kindly by the staff who said that they would take care of our daughter while we got some sleep. I can’t remember how long we had slept for... if indeed we slept at all...
The next thing my precious baby daughter passed away in my arms... just six months after my father had passed to the other side. Months later, my wife’s mother suddenly passed away with cancer. She was also very young. Our lives were turned upside down. Survival took on a new meaning. Just waking up to get through each day became a task on its own. We were emotionally drained and on the verge of giving up… Three dear people were suddenly out of our lives in less than two years. Both my wife and I somehow managed to keep a loving home. We took care of our boys in the best way that we knew how.
After a number of years I eventually gave up my career as a fire fighter because I was not coping with the pain, suffering, death and destruction that I had repeatedly witnessed. I used my pension money and opened a business that demanded all my attention. It was two years of shear hell. I once again had little time with my family. I miss managed my business which caused me to finally give it all up... I was now without a job and very little money. I soon had a feeling of being useless and then exhausted, my self-esteem and confidence dropped to an all time low. These were the most frightening feelings I had experienced in my entire life… I felt trapped. My soul cried out in anguish, “Why is God silent? Why doesn’t He intervene in my life and send help? Why is everything so meaningless? Why is the world in such a mess?” Thousands of hours were spent on trying to understand what was going on in my life. I was searching and begging for answers.
A few months had passed since I had any work or hope of getting an income. I remember feeling sick to the stomach when the thought of losing our house crossed my mind. How my dear wife ultimately managed as a mother, wife and career woman brings my admiration today. I believe now that it was Divine Intervention that I eventually got a contracting job and I remember getting it just at the right time. In the early days and eventually it went into months I remember staring at the ceiling and asking “Why me, why us?” With time I managed to answer this question and safely reply, “I was chosen to show the world that life goes on.” Life has been tough for both my wife and I. Sometimes I felt what was the point of life because we still had to carry on with the same responsibilities that any other individual needed to carry on with in a normal day. There were those days that I was unable to handle any more pain, pressure and responsibilities. Somehow, from somewhere one manages to draw energy and strength to continue the uphill battle. One needs to live with dreams and keep on looking to the future. I remember reading and soon found myself working my way through a library of self-help books. I recall reciting words by Norman Vincent Pearl that said, “Day by day by the Grace of God I am getting better and better with a positive mental attitude.” And to this day I have never stopped repeating these words. My mind became active and hungry in this New World that I was getting to know a little better. I eventually studied towards an advanced diploma in stress management that exposed me to holistic healing therapies and then I found myself studying psychology. I became a reiki master. Today I hold a PhD in Philosophy.
My life is still not all plain sailing, but the point of value of using my own life experience is to highlight the fact that tragedy can turn out to become the greatest good in one’s life. It took many painful years before I realised this. If I knew what I know now I would have handled things differently.
Here I am many years later and I see my daughter as being a spiritual miracle firstly, for showing up in our lives and secondly, for igniting deep and meaningful change in my life. I now have a burning passion to share what I’ve learned with people who really would like to turn their lives around and get so much more out of them. Through my experience and awareness from studying, I am now working towards radiating my new consciousness outward. I realise that as long as I am living my life authentically and in alignment with my core belief system then everyone will benefit.
We are moving through intense times but nothing happens within or without us, except to the extent that we give personal meaning to it. In philosophy and spiritual truth, and grounded in the evidence of scientific research, love is all there is and love is who we are. It is time to end suffering by becoming the change that we want to see in our world. It is with this in mind, and my own life experiences that I have carried a dream of establishing a Self Sustaining Community and Retreat Centre in South Africa.
I have dedicated my life's work to my baby daughter Nicole who passed away in my arms and who has laid the foundation on which largely my life has been built. To both my sons, Dylan and Dean to whom I also give thanks for sharing and encouraging me in my own dreams, and for becoming fine young men who have both achieved so much in their own lives, and last, but not least I give heartfelt thanks to my dear wife, whose love, caring and support during my many years of studying, have meant so much to me!
I have a different perspective on death now because I have seen so much of it. It makes me more conscious of the fact that life is temporary, and for everyone, not just myself we should live our lives every day in awe and appreciation of each other and life in all its forms.
This site is dedicated to bringing about an awareness of my sacred quest, and I hope that it will connect people from around our beautiful planet.
Top