What if the most important part of the life of Jesus Christ is not found in what he taught, nor even in the acts that are most often associated with his life, but in what happened to him after something within him awakened, after that moment where something shifted from being implicit to being known, from something quietly forming beneath the surface into something that could no longer be denied? There is a moment in that story that people recognise almost instinctively, the moment of awakening, the baptism, the point at which something becomes conscious within him, and yet what follows that moment, what unfolds immediately afterwards, is rarely given the same attention, and perhaps even more rarely understood for what it represents within the life of a human being.

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Because what follows is not clarity in the way we tend to imagine it, and it is not the kind of certainty that people often associate with spiritual insight. What follows is uncertainty, a kind of internal disorientation, a withdrawal from what is familiar, and a period of testing that does not necessarily show itself outwardly but is experienced with absolute intensity inwardly. If you have ever found yourself in a place where something within you has opened, where something has shifted in a way you cannot fully explain, but where everything else has become less certain rather than more, then you will not simply understand that part of the story, you will recognise it as something that belongs to your own experience.

 

I am not approaching this from a religious standpoint, and I am not asking you to accept any doctrine about who Jesus was or what his life represents in theological terms. What interests me is something much simpler and much more human, which is what his life might show us about awakening itself, and more importantly, what happens to a person after that awakening begins. When you look carefully at the structure of that experience, when you step away from interpretation and observe the movement of it, a pattern begins to emerge, and it is a pattern that does not belong to one tradition or one individual, but something that appears again and again in the lives of people who find themselves drawn toward the inner life, toward mediumship, toward something they cannot quite define but cannot ignore either.

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There are two moments in that story that matter here, and they sit so close together that it is difficult to separate them without losing something essential. The first is the awakening itself, the baptism, the moment where something becomes known in a way that cannot be reduced to belief or imagination. The second is what follows immediately afterwards, the movement into the desert, into the wilderness, into a condition where that knowing is no longer supported by the structures that previously held the individual in place. When those two moments are placed side by side, what becomes clear is that awakening is not the completion of a process but the beginning of one, because what is revealed must then be tested, what is known must then be lived, and what is sensed must be brought into a form that can withstand the pressures of experience.

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It is this second stage that people do not expect, because most people assume that when something opens within them, clarity will naturally follow, that confidence will increase, and that certainty will become stronger as a result of what has been experienced. But in reality, what often happens is the opposite, and instead of things becoming clearer, they become less defined, less certain, and more open in a way that can feel unsettling rather than reassuring. You begin to question yourself in ways you did not before, you feel that something is present but you do not yet know how to trust it, and you sense that there is a direction but you do not yet know how to walk it. That space, that gap between awakening and understanding, is where a great deal of real development takes place, and yet it is also where many people struggle, because it does not feel like progress in the way we are used to recognising it.

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And this is where the desert begins to make sense: the desert, in spiritual terms, is not simply a place. It is a condition. It is what happens when the usual points of reference fall away, when the things you relied upon no longer feel solid in the same way, and when you find yourself in a position where you cannot go back to how things were, but you do not yet know how to move forward either. It is a stripping back, not necessarily of your life outwardly, but of the structures within you that gave you a sense of certainty, identity, and direction.

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Most people, at some point in their development, find themselves there. Not physically, but inwardly. And it is often misunderstood, because it does not resemble what people expect the spiritual journey to look like. It does not feel like progress. It feels like silence. It feels like being on your own with something you cannot fully articulate.

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When I look back at my own life, I can see that I entered that condition long before I had any language for it, and certainly before I understood it as part of a process. There were moments earlier on, experiences that opened my awareness slightly, but the desert itself began when everything I had built began to fall apart. Within the space of six months, I lost my job, my relationship, and my home, and everything that had been giving my life structure simply disappeared.

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What followed was not dramatic outwardly, but inwardly it was absolute. I found myself completely on my own, without distraction, without support, and without any clear sense of direction. And what I did not realise at the time was that this was not just loss, it was a stripping back. It was a removal of everything that had previously allowed me to avoid looking at myself more deeply.

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I began to walk for hours, not with any clear intention, but because something in me needed movement. Stillness, at that point, felt too exposing. And then one night, almost without thinking about it, I walked into a meditation centre, sat down, and began to meditate. At first it was simply something to do, but gradually it became something else, because through that process I began to encounter myself in a way I never had before.

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Everything began to surface. Thoughts, patterns, memories, ways of being that I had never properly examined. I had to sit with them. I had to face them. And there were moments where I tried to avoid that, where I tried to justify things rather than truly see them, but something in me would not allow it. It would not settle unless it was looked at honestly.

That was the desert.

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Not a physical place, but a condition of being where everything unnecessary is removed, and you are left with what is actually there: it is within that condition that the testing begins.

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The story of Jesus describes three tests that take place within the desert, and each of them reflects something fundamental within the development of a medium, not as isolated events, but as ongoing pressures that arise within the self.

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The first test is the question of intention. The invitation to turn stones into bread is not simply about survival, it is about the use of what has been given. It raises the question of whether what you have recognised within yourself is to be used for your own gain, for security, for identity, or whether it is to be used in service to something beyond yourself. This is not a question that can be answered once and put aside. It is something that returns again and again, often in subtle ways, asking you to examine why you are doing what you are doing.

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The second test is the pull toward sensationalism, the suggestion to throw oneself down from the temple in order to prove something, to demonstrate ability, to be seen and recognised. This is perhaps one of the most difficult pressures for a medium to navigate, because once something begins to work, there is a natural pull to show it, to prove it, to validate it through the response of others. But the moment the work becomes about that, it begins to lose its grounding, because it is no longer rooted in the experience itself, but in how that experience is received.

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The third test is the question of compromise, the offer of everything in exchange for alignment with something that is not true to what has been recognised. This is not simply about moral failure, but about the subtle ways in which we lower our standard, the ways in which we allow ourselves to move away from what we know to be right because it is easier, more comfortable, or less demanding. It asks whether you are willing to remain aligned with what you have recognised, even when it is difficult, even when it would be simpler to step away.

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These tests are not events that happen once and are completed. They are ongoing. They become more subtle as you become more aware. And the closer you come to understanding yourself, the more refined they become.

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When you place all of this together, what begins to emerge is a process that is far more complete than the way it is often understood. Preparation, awakening, desert, testing, and then expression. And what is often missing is that middle stage, the desert, because people experience an awakening and immediately move into expression. They want to do something with it, to use it, to bring it into the world, but without that period of reflection, without that stripping back, without that testing, the foundation is not stable.

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If, however, that process is allowed to unfold fully, something very different begins to form. Not just ability, but character. And it is that character that ultimately determines the quality of the work.

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So if you find yourself in that place, in uncertainty, in silence, in questioning, it may not be that something has gone wrong. It may be that something is being formed. And if you are at the beginning, it is worth remembering that there is no need to rush, because what is taking shape is not simply what you can do, but who you are becoming, and it is that, more than anything else, that allows the work to take its true form.