Mark Twist - Building With Love

NAME: Mark Twist
AGE: 51
LOCATION: Goonellabah, Australia

Bricklayer
My name is Mark Twist, I grew up in the inner city suburb of Balmain in Sydney, it‘s where all my family grew up. As young kids me and my cousins would play outside all day only coming inside to eat. I remember I loved to build things, especially anything out of mud. I loved to create. I would put rocks together and seal them with mud so that it looked like a house. I would draw house plans up and set out rooms, all the time feeling a real achievement. I loved to build with Lego and Meccano – it’s no wonder that as I grew older I got into the building industry. 
​Looking back as I write this, even with all the ugliness going on around me, I really enjoyed life and was so full of life as a child. I loved meeting people and wasn’t put off by those who were better educated or more ‘important’ than me, nor did anyone feel less than me, famous people didn’t worry me, race never bothered me – to me people felt the same, no-one better than another. 
As I got older and school got less and less important I started to work, eventually getting a start as an apprentice bricklayer. It so felt like the job for me. I remember going to the hardware store to get all my tools for work and feeling so excited, I was doing what I was born to do, build homes and make mud pies. I was a natural, I picked up a trowel and it was an extension of me; I had an eye for detail and was good at problem solving, I could talk to people and sort through any difficulties that may be going on with the job. I was a leader.
​At this point I also found out about how 'Brickies' liked to drink beer and how good they were at it. The motto was ‘work hard play harder’, and boy could I do both. We would drink at smoko, drink at lunch, drink after work and sometimes drink before work. I knew my way around Sydney from the pubs, if I had a job in a suburb, I knew where it was because first I would remember the pub in that suburb. The culture in the building industry was one of work and drink and if you didn’t drink then something was wrong with you and boy would you cop it.
​For the next 25 years I played hard, I lost what
​innocence I had as a child and became a very hard and tough man who didn’t tolerate anyone who didn’t agree with him. I lost friendships and relationships, I did things that hurt others without what seemed a sense of care. I lost myself, I lost the playfulness of me, the compassion towards others – the care of humanity, it was pushed aside, forgotten, for the badge of manhood was my pride and joy. I worked hard and drank harder and I’d made it!
Fast forward to 2000-01, it was while visiting some friends on the North Coast that I first met Serge Benhayon. I had a session with Serge, he was working out of a room in a private clinic in the Northern rivers area. I arrived expecting this healer dressed in light white clothing whose room smelt of sandalwood incense and played ocean music. If I remember he was the complete opposite, no light white clothes, room didn’t smell and there was no music playing. In fact Serge was like me.
Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon
Mark Twist
​I spoke to Serge about being a bricklayer and the toughness and hardness I had to be in to work and survive in this industry and how I struggled to connect with people. Serge very simply stated ‘you are a very sensitive man and you feel this, to go into the toughness is to dull you’.
​It was a light bulb moment . . . I remember just feeling
​the truth of it, thinking, ‘Wow I don’t have to be that way.’ I remember my body very calmly saying that was it! I could feel the tenderness in me and how I didn’t have to go into a toughness to relate to people especially men. 
It was like the first time I heard a man speak truthfully to another man and that it’s okay to feel, which allowed me to feel the gentleness in me. 
​To say I walked out of there and changed on the spot would be a lie, yes while I was away from Sydney I let myself rest from all that was abusing my body and I remember starting to feel a freedom, but alas upon returning to Sydney the old ways came back to play and for the next 3 years I would say things stayed the same. What I couldn’t shake off was what Serge had spoken to me about – being sensitive rather than hard, and what I go into to stay in that hardness. 
​Well as it goes, drinking, smoking and gambling went out the window a few years later and I was able to start for the first time in a long time a connection that was about me. In taking Serge’s words and putting them into practice I started to share more of myself with other men in conversations that we would have at work, rather than just talking about day-to-day superficial conversations. I started to talk more about how I felt. I found this allowed other men to share how they felt and in doing this it made the relationships more open and real. I found the old feeling of connection with others, so enjoying that, it’s what I made work about, not the hard slog or daily grind – it really was a joy to go to work and lay bricks. 
​I’m now 51 and still laying bricks enjoying each and
​every day. Yes the work I do is physically hard on the body and my body has taken some hits from this, but I don’t make it about the hardness. I have come to an understanding in my body that the way I work affects my body.
​If I start to go into a ‘doing’ or ‘making it hard’ my body will react and naturally let me know that it’s best if I slow down. If this is not the best relationship that I have with me then I don’t know what is. All that I can say is I know now what I was born to do and making mud pies was the best choice that I ever made.