First published in the Metamorphic International Magazine 2011
I first came across the Metamorphic Technique 20 years ago at the Mind Body and Spirit Festival in London. Gaston and a few other practitioners were there. I had a taster session and had the thought ‘I will come back to this’. ( I even spoke to Gaston over the phone about coming to one of his taster Saturday mornings I think they were called). It took me seventeen years to come back. Three years ago this June, I did my first weekend with Gaston. Throughout the weekend I was deeply touched by the delicacy with which he was expressing himself – to be honest he seemed ‘delicate’ to me, as if he were on a cusp, between worlds. I noticed that tears were welling up in my eyes. There was a heart-felt urgency to his communication. By mistake, I had booked myself on to the Universal Principles that weekend too. On that particular occasion both Gaston and I were under the influence of the Principle of Polarity.
Over the last four years I have been living with some health challenges. I came to the Metamorphic Technique partly as a respite from the projections placed on me by various alternative practitioners. What a relief to be left alone! And I was looking for a way of helping myself. My partner and I had also recently made up our minds to move out of London in the next two years, (after 25 years!) I decided to have ongoing sessions with Gaston to support me in navigating these changes.
A year later I came across the non-duality teacher Mooji. As I sat listening to him and connected to his unitive message, I knew Gaston would resonate with it deeply. I lent him Mooji’s book ‘Before I Am’, and he was smitten. I remember one particular image he loved in the book. That of a knife being able to cut into many objects, but not into itself, being as it is one inseparable unit. Just like pure awareness – We can never know It with our minds, because we are It.
Gaston came to the very next Satsang weekend in London . He said during this weekend that for him Mooji was like the cherry on the icing of the cake. He had been deeply influenced by the teachings of Krishnamurti, and Mooji’s message came as a completion for him. This was to do with what he sensed as Mooji’s attunement to Objective Love.
A few months later on the 31st March, Gaston’s 70th birthday, I gave him a Metamorphic session as a birthday gift. The session took place close to the time of his actual birth. He was in jubilant spirits. He had just returned from France, drinking champagne on the train. He was full of the wonders of life, and was so happy to have reached these 70 years. “You know” he said to me, “I always had the intuition I would die when I was 70. Now I think the dying will happen when I go on Mooji ‘s silent retreat in India”. There was a real sense of urgency in Gaston about taking part in this retreat. It took place this last December. At the time of Gaston’s birthday I was rather envious of his plans – with a child to look after I didn’t see the retreat as a possibility for myself. And yet this last December I was on it.
Last June I did the Teacher Training with Gaston. I had decided to cycle to Gaston’s every day from South East London. Shortly after receiving a session from Gaston, I tripped on a loose piece of his decking, and a splinter sliced into the ball of my foot. I became pretty much immobilised. My bicycle was left in Gaston’s garage for the duration of the course. My partner had to ferry me forwards and backwards every day. My foot swelled up, I was in Accident and Emergency twice, and ended up on antibiotics. (It was only some days after the course that a huge one inch archetypal thorn rose out of my foot like some ancient dark megalith). On the last day of the course I could move a little better, and I decided to cycle home. Gaston insisted on accompanying me part of the way in his car, to make sure I was all right. ‘I will drive with you until we get to the place where Mooji held his satsang,’ he said. This was half way between his home and mine. I felt a little resistant and embarrassed, as I just wanted to get up and go, but at the same time I was deeply touched. As I cycled behind Gaston’s car I again had tears in my eyes. Ten minutes into the journey it was clear that I was fine, and we said our goodbyes. I went off on my vehicle, and he went off in his.
I phoned him a few weeks later. That day I was on my way to Wimbledon for supervision. Gaston told me he had been very unwell, and was going into St Georges Hospital – a stone’s throw from where I was going. I stopped off on the way home and gave him a session. His head was burning like nothing I’d ever felt, and yet he insisted on giving me a session too. I visited Gaston and gave him sessions on several more occasions over the next few weeks. I was packing for our big move to Devon at the end of the month, and the builders were in dealing with the subsidence claim on our London home. I last saw Gaston on 10th August. He wanted to do my feet again.
Our ways then parted once more. I moved down to Devon, and Gaston moved into a letting go of a fiercer nature.
The evening before he died I felt him very strongly in the room. I suddenly felt this rush of jubilant and joyous Gaston energy. The energy he had expressed so strongly on his last birthday. I said to my partner Gavin, ‘I think Gaston must have died’.
I am well aware that I am writing this tribute on the 28th March – three days before what would have been Gaston’s 71st birthday. How quickly life moves at times – like the flash of an arrow. Like the slicing of a knife.
Last year I wrote an article for the June edition of the Association magazine fired by Gaston’s encouragement. This year I am once again fired to write.
What a privilege to have known Gaston. The soil of my life has been enriched.
Blessings upon us all, dear one.
Hélène Demetriades
Metamorphic Practice practitioner and teacher
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