The following excerpt is taken from Urban Deva founder, Thea Euryphaessa’s recently released memoir Running into Myself: A Journey Through the Soul of the Feat. If you’re a fan of Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s international best-seller and soon-to-be motion picture starring Julia Roberts, or Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ now classic New York Times best-seller Women Who Run with the Wolves, we recommend this incredible true story of one woman’s rite of passage from girl- to womanhood.

Limited edition signed copies of the book are available to buy direct from the publisher here (also ships overseas). The book is also available in the United States at Amazon.com.

Preface (Return with the Elixir)

I am telling myself the story of my life, stranger than song or fiction.

- Paddy McAloon, I Trawl the Megahertz

This book is an attempt to disentangle my destiny from my fate. It’s about a long-overdue, threshold-crossing to womanhood. And it marks The Return – the third and final stage of my initiation, fulfilling an old agreement made with my soul. It’s not a book about running. I run, yes, but that’s not the point of this book. In fact, there is no particular ‘point.’ Points seem contrived, convenient and conclusive. And my journey has been anything but.

Oftentimes the only way to make sense of a life and give it meaning is to share it within the context of a story. Some are supremely gifted at this. They have a knack, make it look easy. I wish this had been so for me. Composing this book has been a painstaking process, demanding all my mental and emotional resources.

I enjoy writing. After dancing, it’s my most natural means of self-expression. But it’s a means to an end. My focus is to nurture the soul and live an authentic life. To help do this I write – not to be creative, but to express energy. Writing helps mirror myself to myself; it provides a container in which the transformative process can unfold, a way to track and trace the soul’s meanderings.

Once thoughts, images and intuitions are on the page, I sort through them, hold them up to the light for reflection, turn them over in my mind. Like dreams, they don’t always make sense – at least not immediately. They can be vague, indecisive and contrary. I also find the flat, one-dimensional nature of words frustrating. They restrict and rigidify. They’re inadequate at expressing the fullness and ambiguity of a human life. But they intrigue and enchant me all the same. And so I keep writing.

Further challenges involve my perfectionist tendencies. I like everything just so. I much prefer writing essays. That way, I can retain absolute control over a piece, stay on point. So to make the leap to the rambling expanse of a book exposes my weaknesses and shortcomings as a writer. In composing this book I’ve had to accept my work can never be perfect. I often lose my way, veer off track – a humbling process mirroring the soul’s journey as it grows down and takes root within the limitations of a human life.

Then there are those whose fate has entwined with mine. There’s an old saying in alchemy: As Without, So Within. I believe those with whom we interact are outer reflections of an inner psychic process. Because of this emotional entanglement, I know my perspective will be distorted. To compensate, I try to be as honest as possible about my version of events. If I’ve been petulant, infantile or provoking, I’ll say so. Sometimes emotions may get the better of me and I’ll speculate about others’ behavioural patterns and traits. But for the most part, I rein it in.

So this book is a story within stories, a life within Life. Life that does not run in an orderly, linear fashion, but spirals, backtracks, spins off at tangents and raises more questions than it answers. Not everything will be boxed off and neatly concluded by the end of the book. Along the way I share pivotal moments, hopes and dreams, setbacks and journal entries. There are mythological ideas, psychological theories and spiritual concepts. These may not always make sense. As the quote above says, I’m telling myself the story of my life. So if I labour a point or circle an issue, it’s more a frustrated attempt to clarify my soul’s nebulous, inarticulate messages, to ascertain a pattern, extricate meaning.

This book also reflects the organic process of a life’s unfolding and becoming. Intuition tells me this is a book within books, a springboard – an opportunity to share, and discuss. Not all of my thoughts and ideas are carved in stone. Many are ephemeral. But I don’t have time to wait until they’re fully formed – my soul demands expression now.

In tribal cultures, when an initiate returns home after a quest they’re expected to share their experiences. That’s because the lessons learnt aren’t strictly for the individual but for the benefit of the group. As the initiate tells their story, the story takes on a life of its own, its essence revealed. People don’t think of stories as having souls. But the soul manifests as the kinks and knotty imperfections – the seeming irregularities that perplex so many. In our ‘plastic fantastic.’ high-speed modern culture, we’ve lost touch with the soul. We’re uncomfortable with it. In many cases we’re afraid of it. And so we rampantly edit, refine and process until nothing remains but a soulless shell. But grainy mishaps highlight our humanness. They add warmth, remind us of our imperfection. They expose the vulnerability involved in the process of creativity, the struggle of a complicated, multifaceted soul seeking expression.

My decision to self-publish honours the soul’s wrinkles and knotty irregularities. I didn’t want the book’s essence to be extracted in the centrifuge of profit-driven publishing  or shoe-horned into an unnatural shape, its soul contaminated and diluted by the uninitiated opinions of others. I wasn’t willing to compromise. As the song says:

I’ll go it alone, that’s how it must be

I can’t be right for somebody else

If I’m not right for me

I gotta  be free, I’ve just gotta be free

Daring to try, to do it or die

I’ve gotta be me.

-Walter Marks, I’ve Gotta Be Me

And so I follow my soul as it sets out its stall in the early chapters. I watch as it introduces itself and reiterates statements time and again before gradually relaxing into the story. Sometimes I cringe at its audacious, naive, bombastic nature. I ponder its uptight, defensive, secretive tendencies. Other times I grow bored with its incessant ramblings, wonder where it’s going. But all the while I stay with it, try to honour its paradoxical, elusive essence as best I can.

So I encourage the reader to relax and not to get too hung up or too bogged down in my mercurial meanderings. As psychologist Carl Jung says in his memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ‘I can only make direct statements, only “tell stories.” Whether or not the stories are “true” is not the problem. The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth.’

(Thea Euryphaessa is hereby identified as the author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.)