Pillar 4: AWAKEN At Neist Point Lighthouse. The Moment You Become the Player

Awaken at Neist Point

(From The Moonlight Master Path, The Moonshot Mastery Academy)

The Edge of the Known World

It was close to midnight when I began the long walk towards Neist Point Lighthouse, standing at the far western edge of the Isle of Skye where the land finally yields to the Atlantic. The wind roared through the cliffs, carrying the taste of salt and rain; fine sheets of drizzle drifted across the beam of my torch, while the only other lights were the eyes of sheep scattered across the dark hillsides. There were no crowds, no noise, only the rhythm of my own breathing and the relentless percussion of waves against the rock.

I had come to capture the light that night, and somewhere between the gale and the glow something within me switched on. In that wild isolation I felt completely alive, no longer surviving existence but participating in it with every cell of my being.

This was AWAKEN At Neist Point Lighthouse, the fourth Lighthouse on The Moonlight Master Path. After the long work of healing, aligning, and inquiring, I finally understood what all those stages had been preparing me for: to feel again the full, unedited electricity of being human.

The Abyss and the Awakening

Every myth begins with a fall into darkness. Odysseus had his shipwrecks, Jonah his whale, Inanna her underworld, and each of us our own descent into the unknown. In psychological language it is what Jung described as the night sea journey; in trauma science it is the body’s protective collapse, the silent realm where life pauses to survive.

For years I had lived in that abyss. It lies between HEAL and ALIGN, that long, suspended tide in which identity dissolves, where you no longer recognise who you were but cannot yet glimpse who you might become. The nervous system remains braced; the mind loops through old stories; the soul waits, patient and half asleep, for light to return.

As Peter Levine explains in Waking the Tiger, an organism must first freeze before it can discharge the trapped energy and return to flow. Gabor Maté calls it the pause between suppression and truth, while Bruce Perry reminds us that the brain must rediscover rhythm before curiosity can re emerge. That frozen ocean is the abyss.

Where AWAKEN At Neist Point Lighthouse Lives

AWAKEN rises far beyond that darkness, the moment the tide finally turns. It is Odysseus setting foot again on Ithaca’s sand and realising that every monster was a mirror. It is the instant you break the surface after the plunge, lungs burning, eyes opening, air rushing in.

The abyss remains visible on the horizon but no longer owns you. When you awaken, the nervous system that once numbed you now permits you to feel. Dopamine and oxytocin surge; the ventral vagal system opens; awe and curiosity replace vigilance. The mind ceases to mistake safety for danger, and you begin to play again, not recklessly, but consciously.

That is why the cliffs of Neist Point Lighthouse felt so intensely alive that night. The abyss was still part of my story, yet it was no longer my home. I could sense its pull behind me, but I stood in the light, laughing into the wind. That is awakening: remembering the depths without being drawn back down.

From NPC to Player

Until this point I had moved through life like a non player character, following invisible scripts written by fear, expectation, and scarcity. But on those cliffs I picked up the controller again and realised, with startling clarity:

I am not a background figure in someone else’s narrative. I am the character.

So are you. You are Lara Croft, exploring the hidden worlds within yourself; James Bond, stepping forward with purpose and precision; Barbie and Ken, free to design the life you truly desire. Most importantly, you are you.

AWAKEN At Neist Point Lighthouse is the moment you break the code. You stop surviving inside inherited patterns and begin playing the game of life with full consciousness and choice.

The Neuroscience of Awakening

When genuine insight arrives, the brain quite literally illuminates. Studies by Jung inspired neuroscientists and by figures such as Dr Bruce Perry, Gabor Maté, and Kazimierz Dabrowski show that awakening is both psychological and biological.

During deep reflection or awe, the Default Mode Network, the region that maintains our inner narrative falls quiet, which is why time seems to dissolve on a cliff edge or under a wide sky. In that stillness the brain’s “Aha!” circuit releases dopamine within the temporal cortex, rewarding new understanding and embedding it. Awe also activates the ventral vagal system, slowing the heart, softening the body, and widening perception. According to Dabrowski, this is the fifth level of his hierarchy, secondary integration, when a new, self authored value system replaces reactive survival code. As Maté describes, authenticity re emerges and the neural pathways of play, once frozen by trauma, come back online.

Neuroscience calls it neuroplasticity. I call it remembering how to live.

Joy as the New Intelligence

Before this night, joy had felt dangerous, almost childish, as though delight were a luxury reserved for safer people. That is the echo of trauma.

Dr Perry reminds us that play is regulation in motion, the brain’s natural rehearsal of safety. When we refuse ourselves joy, we block one of the body’s oldest healing systems. Standing at Neist Point, with the wind tearing at my coat, I began to laugh, loudly, freely, absurdly, and that laughter was my nervous system remembering freedom.

Families. Awakening Compassion

For families, awakening means noticing the scarcity stories we unconsciously inherit: Work harder. Earn more. Rest later. Instead, AWAKEN At Neist Point Lighthouse invites rhythm, connection, curiosity, creativity. A family that plays together coregulates together; eye contact, laughter, and synchronised heartbeats restore safety better than any lecture. Play is not indulgence; it is biology in harmony.

Young People. Awakening Purpose

For children and teenagers, awakening means discovering that their worth has never been measured by performance. It is permission to explore, to make mistakes, to experiment with identity rather than defend it. When Milo runs through the wind at Neist Point he is not chasing perfection; he is practising presence. Every question, risk, and dream is a rehearsal for authenticity.

Adults and Relationships. Awakening Authenticity

For adults, awakening often follows exhaustion. We have worn masks for decades, the professional, the pleaser, the rescuer, and in the process we have traded truth for approval. Awakening is the moment you refuse to negotiate your authenticity any longer. You begin to build relationships in which honesty is oxygen rather than danger.

As Jung wrote, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Neist Point proved it. I did not escape the dark; I walked through it until it became luminous.

The Lighthouse of Light

Constructed in 1909, Neist Point Lighthouse rises forty three metres above the Atlantic and has witnessed more sunsets than any human lifetime could contain. That night it seemed less a building and more a mirror, steady, constant, awake.

Standing there, I realised that the world had not changed. I had. The light I had been chasing for years was already within me. Every Lighthouse of The Moonlight Master Path, Heal, Align, Inquire, Awaken had been guiding me to that recognition, each one a layer of remembering.

Play Again

Awakening is not about becoming someone new; it is about remembering who you were before the world taught you hide. You are no longer the NPC. You are the player, the artist, the scientist, the explorer, the child, the lightkeeper of your own life.

Step into the game. Play with wonder. Live awake.

The abyss still exists, but now it is only a horizon behind you.