Thomas W E Budge is a teacher, therapist and author using Hypnosis, NLP and Life Coaching

Clinical Hypnotherapist, ACHE.

Certified Hypnotherapist, IMDHA.

Certified Lecture and Examiner, ACHE.

IMDHA International Scriptwriter of the Year, 2011 and 2013.

Nominated in an international peer survey as one of the world's top ten hypnotherapists.

Honouree Award 2014, SAMHA.

Author of It Is What It Is — Grace through acceptance.

Co-author of Addiction: Life between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Writer, producer and presenter of Soul Searching,
52 episodes commissioned and broadcast on radio, now available on podcast.

Founder of the Hypnosis Guild of Southern Africa, a non-profit academy for practising hypnotherapists.

The majority of us are beings without malice, just trying to find meaning, purpose and a livelihood in an overcrowded, overstretched world. Some of the very institutions that our forefathers created to help maintain a cohesive society have failed us. Disillusioned, many of us have already abandoned religion, become sceptical of our political leadership and disheartened by the way globalisation has torn the fabric of family life apart. Moreover, every day we become ever increasingly aware of our isolation, having to face our problems alone. It's ironic, given that there are more of us on this planet now than have ever lived here in the history of humankind and yet, we may often feel so alone. Each of us, in our moments of despair, believes that these problems are unique to us and that these challenges are greater than that which we can bear. It's at times like this when we lose sight of the magnificence of the human spirit and how greatness arises out of need, like the Phoenix from the ashes, into new realms of inventiveness, inspiration and remarkability.

The city of Johannesburg is built on gold-bearing ore. Thousands of worker travel to depths of up to 3km into these mines every day where they laboriously pick and blast away at the rockface, bringing tons of rubble to the surface. Each metric ton contains a miniscule 5-7 grams of gold. That small yield seems to make the whole endeavour rather pointless until one comes to the realisation that gold is a very precious commodity. In this analogy, we must frequently face the hardship of our rockface, those personal dark nights of the soul. There we toil, struggling to prise away the rock. Many of us getting stuck in the depths of despair and sinking into states of hopelessness and depression, believing that we shall never again see the light of day because it's lonely, frightening and dangerous down there.

Rather than facing these unyielding hardships, we prefer sidestepping them, whiling away our time on fruitless above-ground activities or numbing our awareness of them out of fear that we shall get trapped down below. Others, in the spirit of the seven dwarfs in Grimm's 19th-century German fairy tale, do so bravely with a lilt in their voice, singing Hi ho, hi ho. Let's off to work we go… These optimistic, merry people intuitively know that their efforts at the rockface yield something precious — not gold but something of far more value, wisdom.

The loosened rock becomes hazardous rubble unless it is brought aboveground to the processing plants that crush and free the powdery traces of gold it contains. Even then, gold is worthless until it is extracted, smelted and poured into 24 carat ingots of glistening gold. Only then does it receive its hallmark stamp.

The moral of the story is that unless we are prepared to face the darkness, we will never bring wisdom to the light.