Safety is not the absence of danger, but the presence of connection
But what does that really mean?
There were more than 500 of us standing in the oppressive heat and humidity on the hill that overlooks the causeway that links Singapore to Malaysia at the Kranji War Memorial, at 11am on the first Sunday in November 2025. Mercifully the leaden clouds cut down most of the glare from the sun, yet still the heat and humidity was suffocating. It felt like we were trapped in a pressure cooker.
We were there to remember the fallen. Thousands of men died defending the causeway in 1942, as the Japanese overran their positions with ease. Singapore had been abandoned by the British and the military defences were woefully in-adequate, and the supplies of ammunition were quickly exhausted. The Eastern Gate to the British Empire fell easily to the Japanese army and the citizens of Singapore were slaughtered, raped and beaten.
As we remembered the fallen, the choir sang ‘Abide with Me’ at the Remembrance Day Service. The tears ran down my face, as I recalled singing this same hymn at my father’s and my mother’s funerals.
But something was missing.
For many years, I’ve avoided going to Remembrance Sunday events because I would feel uncontrollable fury.
Out-of-control, inexplicable, total red-hot fury.
This year was different. This year I didn’t feel it.
It was a big realisation, that I had pivoted away my awareness from my victim mindset of fury, blame and complaint.
At that moment, I had this flash of inspiration.
What I realised was that my previously inexplicable sense of fury was inherited, it was not mine.
It was my families’ fury at the betrayal of their sacrifice in World War I.
I was integrating the shadows of my family. Shadows that I had inherited from my ancestors.
So where did my fury come from? Remembering the fallen used to trigger me into out-of-control fury? And why did I KNOW it wasn’t mine?
I realised that doing the shadow-work had evolved my identity.
I had expanded the quality of my consciousness
I had turned the lead in my inherited emotional baggage into gold.
My conscious leadership had been alchemised.
I was living from my patterns of survival identity that I had inherited.
I was being the good son that my Dad was proud of, but I wasn’t living my life for me.
My inherited ancestral power had produced amazing results for me in my life.
I had been using my obligation to honour my Dad, and the sacrifices that had been made by my ancestors for a long time.
But copying that sacrifice had cost me two divorces and twenty-five unhappy years by modelling the avoidance that had kept my ancestors safe.
Chasing safety had got me absolutely f’ing nowhere when it came to creating a life that I was happy with.
Because what we inherit from our ancestors are the shadows as well as the gifts - and they all have power.
And unless we awaken to our ancestral power, we remain unconscious of what’s driving us. Unconscious of the shadows and the gifts.
The awakening in our ancestral power is what we need to activate our genius, and learn how to outwit the dragon in our DNA rather than appeasing it.
What I mean by that is we cannot directly confront our inherited patterns of identity - we have to learn to outwit them.
The reason that we’re unconscious of them is because we’ve embodied them in our muscle-memory.
It’s the same muscle memory that we have for keeping us safe while driving a car, or playing tennis.
With tennis, we don’t consciously position ourselves for the return shot, we just move without thinking about it.
With driving a car, we don’t consciously steer, brake and (if you have a stick-shift) change gears - we do it all without consciously thinking about it.
We unconsciously learn to model our parents and grandparents before we can talk, and neuroscience research has proven that we inherit their risk-avoidance epigenetically in our DNA going back seven generations or more.
We do this because safety has not been a feature of our world for generations.
Yet we’ve come to expect it in our privileged first-world.
But what is safety? And why do we avoid things that are ‘not safe’ for us?
Someone once said “You cannot teach accountability to someone whose entire identity is built on avoidance.”
The thing is that our relationships, and the culture we operate in is a mirror for the psychology of the people who are in them.
What I came to realise is that my ancestors were at their most powerful when they gave themselves permission to say ‘no’ to being sacrificed. And when they did that, they found very creative ways to rebel and not just survive but to find ways for the family to thrive.
But if safety isn’t the absence of danger, but the “presence of connection”, then what does that mean? And connection to what specifically?
Awakening to my presence of connection
Kranji was the first time I had really noticed I was actually missing a trigger.
One that used to be huge for me.
The presence of connection to myself, and my ancestral power, is what had carried me through and allowed me to be successful and achieve many things. That deep internal knowing that whatever happens to me, that thriving is possible in absolute chaos because my ancestors lived through far worse than what is going on now.
But this gift had come with the shadow of massive self-sacrifice. This was the dragon in my DNA.
I hadn’t discovered this awakening about myself by confrontation, I had done it by training myself to observe my triggers, investigating them and clearing the emotions that were there. The fear, the shame, the guilt… had gone.
Over the last 18 months, I had outwitted the dragon in my DNA, rather than confront it.
What I had experienced at Kranji was the death of the connection to the shadow of sacrifice of my ancestors.
But there was still a part of me that was the ‘good boy making his Dad proud.’
This part of me that needed to die was that part that was honouring his death, and his sacrifice and the sacrifice of my ancestors by playing it safe.
And it wasn’t the only inherited ancestral shadow in me that needed to die.
All the shadow parts that had been keeping me playing safe needed to die too.
I awakened to my presence of connection to my true-identity.
The tears that I had cried were in grief for the death of my old-identity.
This was the psychological alchemy that was defined by the ancient Greeks in their word ‘metanoia’.
It had taken 18 months, a deep healing journey to India, and it was completed on the hillside at Kranji.
I began to understand too that alchemy is not just about healing ourselves, but about healing our ancestral family too.
My alchemy & yours
Now it is my biggest wish and desire that:
We all CHOOSE to take the journey of the creative rebel that outwits the dragon in our DNA that is keeping us safe, and playing small.
We understand and forgive our family inheritance of fears, intolerance and sacrifice and create a legacy of presence and freedom for ourselves and our future.
We alchemise our inherited ancestral shadows.
My questions for you are:
Where are you playing small?
Why are you still hiding out?
What are the fears and concerns that are stopping you from choosing a life of delicious adventure?
What is it costing you not to tap into your ancestral power, and live a life of conscious leadership?
And, what is it costing our children?
Or do you want to be like me, and transform the inherited shadows of your ancestors into gifts?
It is time for you to put down the burden of all the expectations of being safe and look into where you’ve been relying on your survival-identity and your avoidant psychology that is keeping you ‘safe’.
My new book “The Alchemist” is launching at 10.30am on Monday 6 July
In my new book “The Alchemist - Activate your true identity and surrender to your highest purpose,” I document in detail the seven inherited shadows, and the seven gifts that I integrated as a result of awakening my ancestral power and activating my true-identity.
My new book is being launched live on Facebook, Monday 6th of July at 10.30am Sydney time.
The eBook edition will be $1.00 only on Amazon during the launch.
I want you to help me get it to a #1 Amazon bestseller - put it in your diary!