21. A Crisis of Faith in the Heart of the Chrysalis (or) The Transformation Chamber

The relationship dance.

“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.” – Maya Angelou

The chrysalis is a metamorphic intermediate stage that shelters a state or stage of being and/or growth. Specifically, it is the protective enclosure or cocoon in which the caterpillar not only immerses itself, but liquifies itself to become something new. To put it another way, it’s a pressure cooker. It’s literally a transformation chamber—the process of which—through force and energy beyond one’s dominion—has the power to transmute matter, form, and being.

At some point in our lives, we are all initiated in the transformation chamber. To be in the heart of the chrysalis is to be initiated into a new way of being, and if you are going to take the next step forward in the evolution of your life’s journey, whether through courage or circumstance—if you are ever going to fly rather than die on the branch of the milkweed—then you need to see the process through. How does one do that? Through the darkest nights of your soul you simply hold on to the walls of the transformation chamber with all your strength and resilience.

When confronted with life’s unavoidable winters, we are called to go inward, for to evolve and become something new we must transform, and to transform is to endure the pressures of metamorphosis. The process of metamorphosis is transformation itself, and processes require energy. But I would argue that transformation is not just a form or function of energy, but in fact it is a specific state of energy in flux. For this reason, its evolutionary design is to expand and evolve consciousness. To resist this natural tide is to be condemned to the fate of Sisyphus.

To come out on the other side of the transformation chamber is to accept that life is a never-ending process of the transference, transmutation, and transfiguration of energy—and it is that energy which reorganizes perspective, matter, and physical reality. From the quantum, the smallest quantity of radiant energy, to the collection of cells that creates tissue, to the exponential ordering of tissues that form the human body, to learn how to move in the flow of transformational energy it is to learn how to master the self.

But I am far from a master, dear reader. I am simply a soul on the journey, which is why instead of surrendering to a new flow of energy, I gave all my power away to a woman. And it is in that transference of my vital force to something outside of myself that I once again found myself in the transformation chamber.

***

Surrounded by mountain flora, Douglas firs, and Ponderosa Pines, as I descended the wooded path towards Little ZigZag Canyon, I felt like a crustacean submerged in a slow boil. For weeks I had been simmering in my own skin and there was nothing more I wanted than to crawl out of it—to molt the energetic exoskeleton in which I found myself imprisoned.

Whatever was emerging, whatever wanted to be shed or birthed, was outgrowing its old form, and to withstand its constraints was to a suffer a psychic pain the likes of which I was not sure how much more I could endure. And yet like an old sweater, to let go of this way of being would be to let go of something familiar and comforting.

It was a mid-July afternoon after a very mid-life birthday that found me hiking ahead of my sisters on Oregon’s Mount Hood. The swiftness of my gait was not out of intention, but rather I was lost in the forest of my own mind. In the process, I kept forgetting to breathe, causing me to take big, deep gasps of air to compensate for all the otherwise shallow or forgotten ones.

When I reached the precipice of the giant gorge, to follow my gaze from the sunlit snow-capped peak of Mount Hood, down the great canyon, and down to the cascading river valley below was to witness a scale of incomprehensibility only known to nature—and only fully appreciated when standing in its humbling, majestic presence. When my sisters finally caught up with me, one of them asked a nearby ranger how much further the trail continued.

“Well, after you descend a 900-foot vertical slope, you gotta climb up the other side. Then you gotta hike another six miles to get to the next camp. And then you gotta turn around. It’ll definitely show you what you’re made of.”

A better metaphor for the current state of my life could not have been more aptly articulated.

***

During the winter and spring of 2019, I experienced a great expansion, the container and catalyst of which was a romantic relationship. To cap it off, in late spring we spent a week driving around the Algarve, Portugal’s southern coast, followed by three dreamy days in an apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. We were both living in Mexico, traveled well together, laughed all the time, had talked about kids, and it seemed I had finally found someone whose lifestyle was compatible to the life of freedom I worked so hard to create.

After our vacation, I unexpectedly found myself back in Seattle where my return plan to Mexico was temporarily scuttled. It was during this delayed stopover that she abruptly ended our relationship. Perhaps nothing in life gives rise to disorientation and questioning more than the death of a loved one or a mid-life broken heart. In a sense, they are both a loss of the relational self. In the process of unexpectedly finding myself once again walking alone, I forgot who I was, who I was becoming, and who I aspired to be. Having no idea where life was taking me, or what my next form would bring me, it was out of unconscious fear that I backed myself into the chrysalis.

What I did not know—because I did not yet have the language to wrap around the molten feelings of my internal world—was that I was in the midst of my life’s greatest crisis of faith.

***

It’s not just any old broken heart, nor any run-of-the-mill broken heart, that throws one into a crisis of faith. This woman who I loved, although unaware of what she said or who she was being, used shaming judgements and condemning words to belittle me, causing me to feel as if she had shot holes in the very fabric of the life I had chosen to lead. Not surprising, this was exactly what her mother had spent a lifetime doing to her.

The first time she ever shared any intimate details about her childhood, she cried in my arms. I wanted to make everything all right, but all I could do was hold her to try to make her feel safe. Her rare outward expression of vulnerability was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced with her, and yet when I asked her more about her childhood, she told me it was too painful to revisit.

As a result of my internalization of her projection, I questioned every decision I ever made with regard to my choice of being a writer—as if walking the uncertain path of an artist and believing in the manifestation of a dream only I can see and feel was not a hard or lonely enough path upon which to tread.

And so I bought into the projection of her own fears and insecurities—not because they were objectively true—but because she had managed to tap into the very heart of some of my life’s greatest insecurities and fears. Although I had done copious amounts of internal work to contain them, they had been patiently lying in wait for me to revive them with my attention and awareness.

Not that I could see them through the oxytocin dream, but there were clues early on that variations of the fears, insecurities, and unrest that lived in me also lived in her, for example, she once told me men never break up with her. She also told me that the men she dated always turned out to be needy, and that in the past eight years since breaking off her engagement, all of her relationships ended at either three or six months.

No one had ever accused me of being needy, in fact I was often accused of the exact opposite, so when she told me I was being needy, I was perplexed. What I couldn’t see at the time, and didn’t yet have the life experience to distill, was the role she played in constructing this perceived neediness—the energetic game of push-and-pull of which she had unconsciously become a master. A few months later, I would learn it’s called a codependent control pattern.

Every time it seemed like things were going great, like we were growing closer, she would swiftly retreat, each time taking with her not only our connection, but a piece of my heart. What I was experiencing as falling in love, she was perceiving as a threat, and what she was perceiving as me being needy, was actually the confusion and loss I felt every time she (her being) disappeared. Despite the strong, independent person she projected to the world, I knew through conversations with her and her friends that she really wanted a partner, but how can one ever expect to have a successful relationship when the feelings and sensations of intimacy trigger such visceral fight or flight responses? In observing this behavior, I later recognized it all too well as a pattern that up until my two most recent relationships, I too had been perpetuating to my own degree.

As you do in a romantic relationship, in the sharing of our stories it became very clear to me that her upbringing taught her love was not safe. It explained the anxiety that arose every time we grew closer, and her resulting retreat into the fortified castle of her heart. I also found it curious how every year around the holidays and summer break, without fail she would come down with severe bronchial problems, the place where it’s said we energetically store grief. As it turns out, this also coincided with the two times of year she would have to spend extended periods of time with her mother.

“What if I’m just a few years behind you in my journey and evolution,” she told me on more than one occasion.

“It’s not a race,” I would say trying to diffuse her anxiety.

What I wanted to tell her was that I loved her, that it was ok, that in the construct of our relationship, we had the opportunity to transform our lives to become something greater. In doing so, in being able to stand before each other in naked vulnerability, we could transcend the conscious and unconscious wounds and fears that held us back—while at the same time becoming the guardian of each other’s wounds and fears. Deep down, however, I knew it would be too much for her. As long as we stayed in the “fun zone,” as long as she didn’t have to jump into the deep end, everything was copacetic.

“It’s ok to be vulnerable. You’re safe with me. I don’t want anything from you and I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know you better,” I told her instead.

But that message never made it past her emotional moat. Because our brains are a neurological record of the past, we’re wired to only see what we know and have experienced. For many of us, relationships—whether romantic, familial, and so on— have caused a tremendous amount of unresolved pain, so if we don’t enter a relationship with intention, conscious awareness, and openness, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past.

And so from the safety of her guard’s tower, she unconsciously fired shots as to why I was not enough. What hurt the most, however, was that none of them were about my character, in fact, she often said I was the most thoughtful and communicative person she had dated. Instead, they all had to do with material comfort, despite the fact that she did not lack these things, had never lacked these things, nor would she ever. What it all added up to was that she couldn’t see me, nor did she have any belief in me or who I was becoming.

Like my former self, she was looking for someone who was fully formed to complete her, which is the greatest lie we have ever been sold when looking for a partner. The person who seeks this will never be fulfilled, because no one will ever be good enough for them. Another lie I bought into early on was that I always thought I needed to find the place to live, then have the job, then I would be ready for the woman. It took me a long time to learn that the journey is not about two fully-formed people coming together as one, but about who we become in the process.

Beyond her pedigree, success, education, and ability to charm and disarm others, beneath the external facade she projected to the world, I saw the wounded little girl who was actually reciting reasons why she wasn’t enough. I desperately wanted to tell her how beneath the man, the wounded little boy in me felt the same way, but she never got to see that that little boy, nor did she ever get to experience the true freedom and breadth of my spirit, because every time she disappeared, I felt less and less safe to reveal myself. Beneath each of our many layers of survival adaptations and learned behaviors, what we both shared was the outward search for something to complete an inward longing.

When she officially ended our relationship on my birthday, like a rush-hour train departing right on time, we had just reached the six-month mark. While I would love to blame her and make her wrong, because it would be so much easier to disavow my own culpability in the demise of our relationship, with time and distance I recognized that she was acting out of unresolved trauma patterns, just as I was acting out of my own.

To make matters words, as a result of my desperation to be seen, heard, and accepted by her—which was accentuated every time she disappeared—I began trying to become someone I wasn’t for somebody who no matter what I did, would never be able to see me through her own fears, wounds, insecurities, and unconscious programs.

And so in a relationship unlike any other I’d been in, our energies were like warm and cold fronts coming together over a coastal town, and in the uprising of the storm—like some long lost treasure buried beneath the sands of time—surfaced our wounds. Because we lacked awareness, however, we did not recognize them as a calling to transform. The ocean tide, which is another form of energy in flux, is a great reminder of transformation. Whereas at one moment you may see the bay, in a relatively short amount of time, shipwrecks and treasures once concealed are revealed. Thus is the ebb and flow of life. 

***

I’ve often wondered how it was I could “randomly” meet someone, be completely attracted to them, form a deep relationship, and then later come to discover they were inaccessible at the level of inner sanctum where I wanted to meet them. (Granted, I was that inaccessible person more times in my life than I was the open-hearted one.)

The answer is really quite simple, and it’s the same answer as to why relationships fall apart; it’s because we are energy beings, each operating at certain levels of consciousness, or strata of frequencies. We call this the law of attraction. When two energies (people) come together at the same frequency, on the constructive side, like attracts like; on the destructive side, wounds attract wounds.

The stories we wrap around our lives exist at a certain frequency, within a level of consciousness. It was in the gilded stories she wrapped around the experiences of her life that her emotional and spiritual development was arrested. The confluence of our stories and energies only fed my own story of lack, inadequacy, and the desire to be loved—which in itself was a level of consciousness within which I had become incapacitated. My previous relationship to her revealed my affliction of unworthiness, and in the mirror of this relationship revealed my unconscious love affair with lack. Both were unattended diseases of my soul that manifested in my relationships.

And so when two people come together in a relationship, they do so out of a shared level of consciousness (or unconsciousness). This strong woman, who at a another level was fragile and scared—this beautiful woman who caused me so much pain was my mirror, and as a result, she triggered my own unconscious programs. When that happened, she ripped off a band-aid, under which was a scar that hid a much deeper wound, the origins of which I could not yet pinpoint. It was only after the breakup, however, after spending months perseverating over imaginary conversations with her about what a terrible person she was and how deeply she hurt me, that I saw my own unconscious pattern emerge: I was attracted to very strong women who had deep, emotional, unresolved, early-childhood wounds.

While there is no questions in my mind or heart I loved these women, on one level I did so because I wanted to heal them. On another, more profound level, I wanted to love away their pain and sadness, just like I wanted to love away the pain and sadness of my mother.

At a soul level, this woman became the symbol of my pain, of the unhealed wounds I needed to look at. On the human level, she was the source of my pain, and to focus on something external as the source or cause was much easier than having to go within. At some point, the pain of this focus and blame pushed me up against my breaking point, so I had to make the choice to leave it in my past or let it destroy me. Thus, in the name of self-preservation, I had to surrender an old way of being and become someone new.

***

And so perhaps it was not out of pain but instinct that I retreated inward. Unbeknownst to me, on the other side of that retreat, was a precipitous downward spiral. While I was aware of the centripetal force that was syphoning me deeper towards my uncomfortable center, the pull was greater than my will to step outside of it. In the process of passing through this vortex, I felt lost and broken in the labyrinth of myself.

As a result, like so many other similar times in my life, what I thought I had outgrown or outrun had once again emerged in a new form and context. It appeared that as my life evolved, so too did this thing I called my soul ache—and once again it was eating away at my will to live. In the self-indulgent haze of my own pain, I lost sight of the soul ache’s purpose. Instead, all I could see was a 45-year-old man living the 17-year-old self’s actualized dream of being an artist—a dream that in the flesh was much more challenging than anything he could have ever imagined.

More than a dream, though, it was a calling—a calling for which I could not have known from the safe, secure vantage of the past that following this path would at times ask of me to sacrifice jobs, relationships, paid vacations, ease, comfort, healthcare, and more. That calling, which arose in my late teens, has always been greater than my will to resist it. In the youthful naivety of answering the calling’s nascent whisper, I asked to be used as an instrument of peace. While many times since then I have tried to jump off this speeding train, somehow or another life keeps putting me back on it. When life keeps placing us on a certain path, it’s something to pay attention to. Thus, in the end I elected for experiences and worldly knowledge, rather than security and stability. Was I just living in a delusion?

We are an absurd lot, us artists, for above all else we are driven to create, express, and emote. It is not a sickness per say, because a sickness tends to be an aliment of the body, but rather I would call it a madness, because madness is a possession of the mind and spirit. To be an artist is to walk the path upon which no else but you can tread, because you are answering an inner calling to express an ineffable aspect of the universal in the reflection of the particular—that being your soul’s humble Earth walk. Did I have a choice?

Of course I did.

At all times the human condition exists in a state of choice, and within that construct, choice and the infinite pathways, potentials, and possibilities it reveals, empowers us with the prerogative to resist transformation. That is creation’s gift to humanity, free will, for it is our free will and our creativity that separates man from beast.

As for me, I made the choice to believe and internalize this woman’s story of who she thought I was as a reflection of herself, and as I result I lost my way. I bought into her story, which aligned with unresolved stories and wounds within myself, and this caused me to turn away and shrink from the magnetic and generative greatness that is my life—that is all of our lives.

For me, the first lesson is to never again give away my power to someone or something outside of myself. After giving away your power to someone for extended periods of time, when those unspoken energetic bonds are broken, you’re left completely devoid and depleted, and sometimes—such as in my case—that process takes months and months to replenish. When the body no longer has the energy to replenish itself, matter begins to break down. This is how the entropic process of disease begins.

Perhaps the saddest part of this story, which is perhaps the saddest part of the present predicament of the human condition, is that beneath this tug of war, all we both really wanted was to be loved, to feel safe, and to feel secure. Amplify the microcosm of this singular relationship to the macrocosm and you have the global experience of humanity.

The second lesson I learned is that the soul ache is not a pain to be anesthetized, nor is it an adversary to be defeated. Instead, it is a compass, a north star, a spiritual device designed to course correct us so that we come into alignment with our higher self. To put it another way, the soul ache is the shadow self calling us forth from the darkness to the light.

When left unchecked, the soul ache’s purpose is to elicit a crisis of faith, underneath which is the lesson and direction to move us forward. The more we ignore the calling of the soul ache, the more we have to repeat the lesson, the more painful it becomes.

When examined, however, the soul ache is a calling to surrender more deeply in the mystery of creation, and sometimes that requires us to trust in a new direction in which the destination is not known, nor sometimes can the road even be seen. In that light, the soul ache is a catalyst for discovery—a navigation system inviting us into a deeper understanding of who we are during this brief but magical time we inhabit our physical bodies.

What it all comes down to is that life is a laboratory, a great vivarium experiment, within which all experiences are neutral. By wrapping stories around these experiences, however, we naturally inject them with an emotional quotient; therefore, it is the individual who labels and determines whether experiences are good or bad, painful or joyful. Distilled, this discernment is the journey of life.

At all times, we have the power to choose to hold on to anger, hurt, hate, and pain—or we can choose love, celebration, and joy, and to accept our experiences as lessons for our emotional evolution and spiritual growth—for it is in mastering our emotions where growth is to be found. What I am choosing to bring to this experience is the gratitude for intersecting with one of my life’s greatest soul teachers to date, for it was in her mirror that a profound awakening and life lesson was revealed to me. It is in unearthing and extricating the emotional charges from past events where we find the irons and ores of wisdom.

Like a bovine being scored with a branding iron, wounds from the past leave imprints on our soul, and sometimes like scar tissue they remain buried beneath the sands of time. When these wounds are not healed, they act as invisible tentacles reaching out from the past into our present, and even beyond into our future. In this light, the soul ache also calls us to forgiveness.

I recently heard Oprah say that forgiveness means giving up the hope that the past could be any different. That not only requires us to forgive the past, but perhaps more importantly, forgive ourselves, for as Maya Angelou said, “Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.”

What we bring from the past to the present can imprison us. What we take away from it can set us free.

***

20. One-Way Ticket: Using Travel as the Creative Process For How You Want To Live Your Life

Sunset in Anglet, France.

Prologue. A Union of the Unknown

“If you encounter any resistance, flow with it,” Step Sinatra texted me when I landed at France’s Bordeaux International Airport. “Follow the path of least resistance.” The time on my watch read 3:33pm.

After traveling from Lisbon, Portugal, I was instructed to take the TGV train south to Bayonne, where I was then to secure a taxi and take it to a small town coastal town north of Biarritz called Anglet. It was there I would find him at a small beach bar called Le Paillote Bleue.

No, this is not the start of a spy thriller. Instead, it’s a story about two men, strangers actually, taking a road trip across the French Pyrenees. It’s also a story about how a journey disguised itself—then revealed itself—as a creative process.

Seeing as you’re an astute reader, I congratulate you on asking the obvious question: Why?

The first answer is that we shared an interest in a liberated way of being—one that was based on the freedom to create our lives according to our own rules. The second is that we wanted to see if we could turn our mutual interest into a collaboration. Essentially, it was a platonic blind date for two people who shared a similar vision about the internal power of gratitude and intention to construct our external reality.

***

I was originally supposed to meet Step (short for Stephen, no relation to Frank) somewhere on the coast in Portugal, but the combination of “a hunch” and driving rains sweeping across central Europe had us meeting in Anglet, a famous surfing haunt on France’s southern Atlantic coast.

What I would soon learn is that Step Sinatra is a moving target. What I would also learn is that by most definitions, he could be labeled eccentric, but the more I came to know him, the more I realized that eccentricity is nothing more than an outsider’s perspective of an unknown way of being. Regardless of perspective, what is irrefutable is that he falls outside the bell curve of the normal, predictable life. I suppose I do as well, which is why I agreed to take a road trip with a total stranger, to an unknown destination, within an unknown time frame, with unknown results. It was an unorthodox way to meet someone to discuss a project, but not much about Step is orthodox.

***

A flight, a bus, a train, and a taxi ride later, with the Atlantic Ocean in view, a pilsner awaited me. With shoulder length hair, European flair, a scruffy beard, and standing about 6’2”, Step had a rugged, weathered air of leisure and success about him, as if he had spent time surfing the beaches of Malibu, California, or summering in Nantucket, Massachusetts. We clinked our beers to adventure, good fortune, and the unknown, then walked towards the ocean.

Out on the water, with the steely concentration of praying mantises, surfers lay in wait for transcendent waves, while on the beach sun worshippers surrendered to the waning strength of the sun—some in meditation, others in dance, and still others in joy and gratitude. With the strata of beach grass and sand in the foreground, and the ocean’s horizon receding into a flaming-scarlet sky in the background, I could not help but be moved into wonder and awe by this beautiful, unpredictable circumstance we call existence.

With all the distractions of life momentarily removed, and nothing to focus on but the waves rolling, barreling, and lapping to shore, those of us on the beach who bore witness to nature’s majesty had no choice but to be present to life’s unfolding. Since the beginning of time, for students of the mind and those interested in mastering the self, this has been the great challenge—in a world full of distractions and illusions constantly competing for our attention—to train the mind to stay in the present moment.

“Do you wanna try some Qigong?” Step asked, pulling me out of my reverie. “I do this every day. It’s all about harnessing the energy of nature, which is what my documentary Heal For Free is all about.”

Externally confident and internally self-conscious, I set about following his lead. After a Qigong session and returning to the restaurant for some olives and cheese, we headed back to our lodging where it took me nearly no time to fall into a deep, travel-weary sleep.

***

The writer Saul Bellows once said, “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”

At some point in the early hours of the morning, the subconscious roused me from my slumber to record a message. Discombobulated, but ever aware of the muse’s fickle nature, I scrambled with urgency for the notebook beside my pillow. As quickly as I could write, in the darkness of the coastal night I scribbled three messages in nearly indecipherable handwriting, the second of which, had I adhered to several days later, would have spared me great anxiety and frustration:

1. Just as a plant is in a direct energetic relationship with the sun, so too are we blooms of consciousness living in matter.

2. To travel as such is to remain open, and being open means receiving information from beyond the visible light spectrum—information that exists as frequency and manifests as synchronicities, serendipities, feelings, or instincts in one’s gut.

3. The successful traveler is like the Tao; he/she follows the path of least resistance.

When I shared this with Step the following morning, he told me he called these synchrondicities (synchronicity + serendipity). Just like ancient mariners used the stars to find destinations, Step used synchrondicities as spiritual cues to find his way.

STEP 1. TRUST

“Beyond all else, you have to trust in your body’s innate power to heal. No matter what you’re dealing with, you have to trust its intelligence. Just because your doctor tells you one thing doesn’t mean you have to listen. If your body’s instincts are sending you a message, you need to tune in to it. You need to trust that voice.”

This is not necessarily something you might expect to hear from an ex-Wall Street trader, although maybe it is—especially if five years of constant EMF radiation poisoning from the earliest models of cellphones, plus a stress-filled 24-hour lifestyle, nearly took your life. Instead you might expect this more from a Napa wine maker, which is what Step did after he walked away from Wall Street, the second excessive lifestyle choice that nearly took his life. 

“When I was lying there in the hospital bed—literally a few breaths from death—a thought popped into my head. ‘If I’m powerful enough to create my worst nightmare, couldn’t I also create my wildest dreams?’”

***

In a moment of synchrondipity the evening before my arrival, Step walked into a hotel in Anglet to inquire about two rooms. Once there, he pulled out his wooden pendulum (not a euphemism) to decipher whether the hotel was a good fit. Above an open palm, he held the pendulum on a string. If the pendulum moved in a circle to the right, green light. If it moved to the left, time to move on.

As it turns out, the woman who worked at the hotel used the same method to make decisions, thus Step befriended Sandrine, an attractive woman in her early 40s. Unbeknownst to Step at the time, the following day she would skip her plans to go surfing and instead serve as both our chauffeur and guide. This included showing us around Bayonne, waiting for us as we rented a car in Saint Jean-da-Luz, taking us to empty beaches in between, and escorting us around the seaside town where we would meet locals, savor stinky cheeses, and sample several glasses of local wines.

“Are you ready to step into the unknown?” Step asked as we slurped briny Atlantic oysters harvested earlier that day. My acquiescence heralded the start of the adventure.

With the evening’s revelries coming to a close, as the light fell from the sky and storm clouds began to surround our position, we still lacked lodging. This was quite common for Step as reservations were something he paid little mind to.

This presented us with a choice; stay in Saint Jean-da-Luz, where he had stayed a few days prior, or head towards a small unknown village 30 minutes into the countryside. After a long day of travel, I was more than ready to spend the night by the sea. Nonetheless, we said goodbye to Sandrine and headed east in our small European rental.

“I feel like some classic rock—maybe some Hendrix? What do you think?” Step said as we reached the last traffic circle at the edge of town.

I put on Little Wing and settled into my seat, grumpily suspecting it was going to be a long night. While Step was trusting we would find lodging that exceeded the seaside hotel I wanted to stay at, I imagined after endlessly trying to find adequate lodging, we’d eventually settle in a French version of a Super 8 Motel. Not more than three songs later, however, a driveway caught Step’s eye and an aggressive U-turn found us pulling into L’Auberge Basque, a Relais & Château rated hotel.

After negotiating a €300 suite down to €200, around 9:45pm we checked into a top-floor, two-room suite with a common living area. No sooner had we brought our bags into the hotel than the rain began to fall. In the following 36 hours, as we meandered across the Basque region of France, the equivalent of two months of rain would fall.

Once we settled in, we toasted over artisanal French IPAs and talked about what we had written that morning in our respective creation journals. Although I had my own version of a gratitude/intention journal, which had been a part of my daily practice since October 2010, Step called his version The G.I.F.T. (Interestingly enough, Step adopted his practice at the same time.)

“How were the best companies built?” he said. “They made complex processes simple, easy, and quick. The G.I.F.T. is a fast, easy tool to intentionally create your day while staying mindful of how you want to live your life.”

Like my own practice, The G.I.F.T was a daily written exercise that consisted of at least five things you’re grateful for and five things you intend to create. What differentiated The G.I.F.T from my practice was the addition of feeling (intending how you wanted to feel that day) and thinking (what you wanted your thoughts to be filled with all day). Each day’s exercise ended with gratitude to the Creator—or whoever or whatever the source of the energy is that’s running the show.

Step 2. FAITH

After waking up, packing up, and hitting the road, we headed east and made our way through the French countryside into the foothills of the Pyrenees. Having no idea where we were headed, we first stopped in a tiny village called Espellette. While a few aimless tourists wandered about in the rain, for the most part, the majority of the homes and businesses in the red and white Bavarian-esque village were shuttered.

Following his intuition, a few hours later we found ourselves in Lourdes, the world’s third-most important Catholic pilgrimage site after Rome and the Holy Land. Throughout 1859, it’s purported that the Virgin Mary appeared 18 times to a peasant girl (later canonized by the Catholic Church) named Bernadette Soubirous.

The town, which hosts more than 6 million visitors a year, was overrun with the devoted. It also happened that the throngs of devotees coincided with a parade that played host to military members from across the European Union. The surroundings, the location on the river, the grandiosity of The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the misting rain added a mythic, mystical feel that commanded the reverence and humility of everyone who walked before the church’s towering gothic spires.

As we made our way down the promenade away from the church, Step said, “Once you’re really sick, it’s not like getting back in shape. It’s much harder to recover your health. But there is an energy and an intelligence beyond us, and when we connect to it, it has the power to heal. Consciousness is energy, so healing is all about learning to raise our consciousness to interact with the greater levels of energy and information that exist all around us. Faith is believing in that energy or intelligence’s ability to heal us. It’s also trusting the process—trusting that there is a lesson the soul needs to learn in your sickness, after all, the universe knows more than we do.”

After Lourdes, a long day of travel found us in a small village in the Pyrenees called Saint-Savin, but seeing as they had limited lodging, we ascended further up the mountain to another small town called Arcizans-Avant. After some deliberation, we found a humble mountain lodge, told the receptionist we’d be back after dinner, and made our way to Pays La Bistro, the only restaurant open in the village. Exhausted, we had the establishment to ourselves.

In addition to being over-tired, Step was in the midst of a ‘honey hole,’ a term I deemed for his Winnie the Pooh-like addiction to honey, which might find him polishing off an entire jar in one sitting. As the honey interacted with his body’s chemistry, he commanded the kitchen and asked the chef to throw together something original for him. Between the sugar high, being exhausted, and I imagine feeling as if he needed to entertain me, he was bouncing around like Tigger, which included taking the owner’s guitar out into the rain. Towards the end of dinner, we finally began discussing business, but it was quickly interrupted by our hotel attendant bringing us our forgotten key. We would need it as the hotel would soon be locking its doors for the evening.

By the time we returned to our hotel around 10pm, I was exhausted, aggravated, and desperate to crawl into bed. I found myself thinking, Who is this guy and how am I going to work with him? Before we parted ways, however, he offered a humble apology.

“I’m really sorry for the way I behaved tonight. I hope you know that’s not me.”

In that moment of vulnerability, I thought—Oh, I know who this guy is. He’s someone who’s desperately trying to overcome himself, to master his emotions and compulsions, and when he falls from grace, there’s no one more disappointed in him than himself.

It was in that story that I recognized myself, and in seeing myself in Step, I developed a new-found compassion for him. This reconfiguration of our commingled energy would alter the course of the trip, moving us from being strangers to becoming friends. 

Step 3. RISK

I’m not sure what time it was when the banging on my door began, but it was before 7:00am.

“Wake up! We’ve got some work to do!”

I was in the midst of such a deep slumber, I thought perhaps I was dreaming.

In a short walk, we were standing beside a reservoir. From within thinly veiled cotton-swab clouds, the towering snow-capped peaks of the Pyrenees made their presence known.  Beneath them, stone houses and the stables they belonged to were scattered amongst the backdrop of a majestic verdant valley, while livestock dotted the alpine pastures.

“Take your shoes and socks off. I’m going to teach you some of the things that Heal For Free is all about—breathing, returning to nature, getting the body involved, and perhaps most important, grounding. You’re gonna be surprised—there’s actually reasons for all the crazy stuff I do.”

This too was true about Step—he did what appeared to be a lot of “crazy” things, but this was simply because he was a biohacker of 20+ years who had experimented with countless diets, supplements, therapies, and technologies to heal the body that had nearly given up on him. Despite all his experiments, he still considered nature his most powerful healing ally. I followed Step’s lead, took off my shoes and socks, and slipped my feet into the cold, wet morning grass.

“I believe nature has a remedy for everything, but you have to be become your own healer. You have to tap into that inner source and empower yourself to become that creator,” he said.

“The more in tune we are with nature, the more it communicates with us. Just watch—as we do Qigong, as we breathe more and get more into the flow—you’re going to start noticing subtle changes in your thoughts. Maybe the colors will seem slightly different too, or maybe you’ll notice nature interacting with us in different ways.”

Whether it was a suggestion or a result of becoming more present, in a few breaths I noticed, not far from my feet, two minuscule mushrooms huddled and shimmering in a soft breeze, their slight stature hidden amongst dewy blades of grass. Shortly afterwards, two birds started darting between us, while above us a Golden Eagle began performing large, lazy loops around our position.

Later that morning, when I came down to the lobby after a shower, Step had honey smeared across his nose.

“What gives, man? What’s with the honey?” I asked trying not to break out in laughter.

“Oh man, I wear breathing strips at night so I can get the most amount of oxygen possible, but when I pulled it off this morning, my skin came with it. It hurts like a mother f’er, but raw honey is great for healing cuts and wounds.”

I laughed at first, but later when he later recounted how things as such shouldn’t happen—like how he recently went skiing for the first time in 12 years, and in simply bending down to tighten his boots he mysteriously cracked three ribs—I once again had a whole new level of compassion and respect for how far he’d come since nearly dying.

***

It would become our longest day of travel yet, and because we were still a few weeks short of high season, several of the towns we planned on staying in were still boarded up. I was obnoxiously grouchy and ready to sleep anywhere, but Step pushed us onward due to a tip from my friend and mentor who told us not to miss Montségur. Having already relayed this to Step, he insisted we needed to go there, and so against my will, at 8:00pm in the cold and rain, we began climbing the narrow, winding mountain roads. It was unclear if we would encounter snow, or if anything would even be open in the alpine villages beyond.

I was on a one-way ticket to Europe, and both of us had been traveling for days before we met up, so the need for rest overtook me. In mind I thought, he doesn’t listen to me and doesn’t respect my wishes. I can’t work with this guy. This is never going to work.

The next morning, it was I who was the one who apologized for my silent but strong protest. What I was most upset about, however, was not that I was exhausted and needed rest, while he kept pushing us on. It was that I lost control of my emotions and couldn’t get myself back to a good place, even after something occurred that neither of us could have expected—we climbed high enough up the mountain that we were above the weather, making us privy to dramatic alpine meadows, sweeping vistas, and the sun setting over the Pyrenees.

After passing through several small towns that lacked lodging, around 10pm we finally landed in Bélesta, a tiny village founded in 1298. I hadn’t even noticed that the establishment was called Palais Cathare, nor had I put together the fact that the following morning we were headed to Château de Montségur, the last Cathar stronghold. Every day little synchrondicities as such appeared, all of which seemed to point to a greater hand at play.

The hard-charging type of travel we were doing required us to move closer to our edge, to surrender control, and move into the unknown. As I brushed up against my edge, what I realized was that much like love itself, the less of a grip you have upon it, the more it can breathe—and the more it can breathe, the healthier that love is—because let’s face it—the breath is life. The breath is the intersection of our humanity and divinity, or matter and consciousness.

“Risk is to go against what everyone is telling you. It’s the willingness to look like a fool while believing in yourself, and this is one of the things Wall Street taught me to develop. It’s having the courage, trust, and faith to step outside the box. For you and me, the risk is to trust in this way of living—to trust that we can consciously and intentionally create our future by gaining control over our thoughts,” he said before calling it a night.

I wasn’t ready to listen that evening, but I heard the message the next day.

Step 4. CONNECTION

While waiting for Step the following morning, I cleaned out the car. This included lemon peels and avocado rinds, date seeds, chunks of raw turmeric, pieces of rice cakes, and among other things, husks of garlic and aloe—the former of which he would eat raw in the car, the latter of which he would tear open with his teeth to ravage the gelatinous interior.

“Turmeric is good for almost everything, but it’s especially good as a second chakra booster. And aloe, well beyond sunburns, it’s has enzymes in it that are great for the stomach and intestines. And of course, lemon alkalinizes the body…” It was not out of character for him to unleash his encyclopedic knowledge of such things.

“You can see every doctor and take every pill,” he continued, “but you won’t really heal until you make a conscious connection with your Source. Otherwise, you won’t develop the cellular intelligence to harmonize the information within you that wants to self-regulate and heal you. That means you won’t heal unless you connect with yourself, the Earth, and the higher intelligence—or whatever the energy is that created us. All around us is a unified field of energy that you can consciously connect to. It’s the field that governs the laws of nature, and nature has a cure for everything.”

A short drive from our hotel found us at the base of a vertical mountain, upon which was Château de Montségur, the ruins of the last Cathar stronghold. The Cathars, a medieval sect of Gnostics, believed our divine spark could be liberated by gnosis, spiritual knowledge acquired through the direct experience of God. The Cathars were also associated with the Knights Templar, which led to speculation that they possessed the Holy Grail. It is said the Cathars worked themselves into ecstatic, religious states, which then enabled them to perform miracles. The Papacy, however, believed this was heresy.

In 1243, at the command of Pope Innocent  III, 10,000 members of the Albigensian Crusade surrounded Château de Montségur, which was being held by approximately 100 Cathar soldiers. Due to the castle’s natural defenses, the crusaders could not breach the walls, so for ten months surrounded the mountain, cutting off the Cathar’s food and water supply.

Approaching starvation and rife with disease, in March 1244, the Cathars surrendered, whereby they were presented with a choice; renounce their faith or suffer the consequences of heretics. In the ultimate act of defiance, approximately 220 Cathars refused to denounce their faith and were burned alive at the stake. In the days prior to the fortress’s fall, however, a few Cathars managed to escape, and as the legend goes, escaped with esoteric knowledge and a secret treasure, which some believe was the Holy Grail.

***

From the car to the top of the mountain was about a one-kilometer walk. The higher we climbed, the greater views we gained of the rolling hills, mountain meadows, and noble valleys carved out by glaciers over time. Below us, the livestock began to look like a colony of ants going about their intuitive business of order. In the whisper of the wind, I imagined hearing the secrets of the ages and the mysteries of time. The only other audible sounds were birds chirping and the clambering of sheep’s bells rising from the valley floor, the totality of which created a lulling, meditative effect.

When we reached the external walls of the castle’s remains, without speaking a word, Step and I instinctually retreated to our own ends of the mountain top. Step settled in to practice Qigong and I headed to the opposite corner where I dropped into a meditation—but not before pausing to take note of how the shadows of the clouds seemed to creep on puma’s paws across the contours of the mountain.

From my vantage, the lush hills that rolled into the mountains looked as if they were covered in moss. Following my sight-line up the valley to a much greater altitude, as if viewing a National Geographic episode, I watched in awe as a Griffon Vulture glided effortlessly down the valley. In a focused, almost mechanical precision, it descended the long valley with the steady grace of an approaching Airbus 380 on a windless day. In the silence and stillness, it was hard to imagine anything was amiss in the world.

Once I closed my eyes to meditate, I intentionally chose to feel what I imagined my future to be. According to the quantum model of reality, if I could connect with that feeling, I could attract my future to me—or said another way—observe matter or an event into being. In this meditative state, an unprovoked thought appeared in my mind: In the energy of spirit, all things are possible.

Upon the hallowed grounds of the Cathar stronghold, we spent at least two hours that day in our own respective worlds of quiet and stillness. Afterwards, as we began our descent, Step said, “There’s a lot of fauna here you can live off. That’s a good sign of a high-vibration, high-frequency location.”

On the way down the mountain, we spoke of the indomitable strength of the Cathar’s hearts and minds and discussed how as human beings, we can’t be afraid of the shadow self, for we both agreed it’s in the investigation of the shadow that we bring light to our life.

For me, the shadow was what I called in my book the soul ache, an intangible existential pain that seemed to arise from the void. For Step, the journey into his shadow self was returning his physical body back to health and homeostasis. While both of us performed our own daily practices, routines, and exercises to connect with the light of our own energy—all in the name of not letting the shadow be the dominant force in our life—the main practice we shared (beyond gratitude and intention) was meditation. On both of our accounts, our success required us to ongoingly let go of old, self-limiting stories that no longer served us.

As we left town, not knowing where we would be sleeping that night, Step said, “If it was fig season, we’d be stopping at all these trees.”

“We’d be figgin’ out,” I added.

An hour-and-a-half later we found our night’s accommodations at Château des Ducs de Joyeuse, a stunning 16th Century castle converted to a four-star hotel.

Step 5. INTENTION

In mid-October, seven months prior to meeting Step, I was on a trip from where I was living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico to meet a friend in Yosemite National Park. While ascending and descending mountain peaks, in the silence of my heart I was asking whatever was listening to be relieved of a burden, the healing of which would finally occur around the New Year.

While hiking through Yosemite, I asked my friend if he knew of anyone who could help me promote my book. He mentioned a podcaster named Beth Bell. In one conversation, Beth and I hit it off, and shortly afterward I was a guest on her show. A few weeks later, Beth reached out and told me she had a feeling I should meet another guest of hers named Step Sinatra. She thought we were doing similar things and that we should have a conversation.

At the same time, on the other side of the country, Step was at his family’s cabin in Vermont. It was there he suffered a pancreatic attack, the burden of which he would also not be relieved of until the New Year. It was during this time—and for the sake of this story’s Epilogue—we’ll call this the reflection, for it was in the reflection that he finally realized he had to truly change his lifestyle—the lifestyle being one that was all about him, on his own agenda, in his own way, and in his own space and time.

“I just know deep down that the way for me to completely heal is to be of service to others.” he said. “I need to change my lifestyle from one of selfishness to selflessness, so that’s my intention.”

***

After waking up in a 500-year-old castle in the small village of Couiza, then traveling to and spending time in Carcassonne—another walled-off castle and UNESCO World Heritage site once occupied by the Romans—we were on our way towards Sète, a small city on the Mediterranean.

“Everybody thinks they need to live by some prescribed way of being until they see another way,” he said during the course of our journey. “But there’s always an alternative choice—and the big word here is choice. It’s too easy to subscribe to what’s been placed in front of us, whether that’s our environment, our upbringing, our politics, and so on. All that’s irrelevant to our truth. But then the question is, what is the truth? Is it found in our cultural, economic, or religious conditioning? Or is it found in a life dictated by an inner compass—by intuition?

“This is why I like the type of travel we’re doing—because it takes you out of your comfort zone. You can’t actually see the confines of your daily environment for what it is until you’re completely removed from it. You have to get out of the matrix and prove to yourself that you can live by intention and intuition. In addition to sitting on a meditation cushion, travel is another way to get you out of your environment, out of the matrix.”

 “It’s like this,” he continued. “Everyone has a longing for a place they want to go or visit, and when you act on it, travel becomes therapy. It’s an exercise that’s gonna change your life, and most of the time you’re gonna have fun doing it. The thing is, people can’t change in their environment without an enormous amount of discipline, but before the discipline must come the awakening, for it’s in the awakening the intention is born.”

After crisscrossing the French Pyrenees for several days, as we crested a hill on the A9 freeway, we caught our first glimpse of the Mediterranean. In the exact moment, with the turquoise waters coming into view, Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones began to play. Like weary, wayward pilgrims, to see the Mediterranean was as if to gain our first glimpse of the promised land.

***

Sète did not prove to be the right space, place, or pace for Step, so after a brief pitstop in town, he asked me to look up hotels in a nearby town called Mèze. In a moment of synchondicity, I found Hôtel de la Pyramide, a hotel that for some reason didn’t show up on his phone. Sure enough, we found our Shangri-La. It was the vibe we had been looking for all along—mellow, calm, rejuvenating.

After discussing our project over dinner in town, we went back to our respective rooms where I opened my French doors and stepped out on the balcony. Two-fingers above the ocean’s horizon was not only the largest moon I had ever seen, but the largest blood-orange moon I had ever seen. Finally, the deeper stillness I had been searching for the entire trip.

While occasionally being buzzed by bats, the only sounds to be heard were frogs, crickets, a gentle breeze, and the bay’s waves lapping to shore. The intersection of my external environment, along with the gratitude I felt in my internal environment, caused two words to well up within me, the meaning of which I did not yet fully understand: Stay Open.

Having no idea whether we were leaving the next morning or taking a day of rest, I crawled into bed and fell into a deep, restorative sleep.

Step 6. REST

For no reason except that the trip was over (and I had no idea where I was going next), I awoke the following morning in the throes of anxiety. Instead of succumbing to it and allowing the angst to rule me for the entire day, I sat in a 45-minute meditation and moved into the feelings of my future. By the time I was done, I had successfully changed my state of being.

Afterward, I went for a long run followed by breakfast with Step. I was relieved to hear he wanted to take a day of rest to complete what we had started. During breakfast, we had an honest conversation about the challenges and frustrations we had with each other during our road trip, which led to an unexpectedly vulnerable exchange about the challenges each of us faced in our lives.

The discussion included a litany of wounds, how to heal them, how to surrender the stories that held us as prisoners, the roles these stories play in keeping us tethered to our known, predictable lives, and how if we are to evolve as humans and spirits, we have to release those stories. We also talked about how if we could do that for ourselves, we could take the wisdom gained and use it to be of service to others.

“When you live from the space of conscious creation, when you’re connected to the field, anything is possible. At the same time, through the energy of intention, you’re training the field to conform to your mind’s will. We’re conditioned to believe we’re at the whim of happenstance, of cause and effect, but through consciousness creation, we can actually affect the cause,” he said.

As far as I knew, this was not your average conversation between two men on a road trip—especially two men who were essentially strangers up until a few days prior.

After a slow morning, I made my way into the inner harbor of the small town of Mèze and found an outdoor café on the water. It was the first time in days I had any time to slow down, breathe, and reflect—which as a writer is essential to the recalibration of my nervous system. As I often do before I begin writing, I wrote in my gratitude/intention journal, this time adding Step’s feeling and thinking aspects of The G.I.F.T.

Right as I began to glide my pen across the paper, a ladybug—a symbol often associated with luck and living life to the fullest—landed exactly above my computer’s camera. It’s presence above the optical eye seemed to say, “Look at how the week unfolded and look around at where you are. You may not yet be exactly where you want to be in your life, but make no mistake—you’re living your dream and you’re in process. Trust the creative process.”

It was only because of the stillness and my open state of being that I heard the voice. That’s the thing about the human condition—it doesn’t matter who you are, who you aren’t, where you live, or how much money you have or don’t have. The voice only speaks in whispers, and is only heard in the stillness of an open heart. Most importantly, it is only in answering its call that one experiences true happiness.

Across the bay, with distant thunderheads gathering over the Mediterranean, I took a deep breath. As best I could, I stepped into the present moment by engaging my senses in my surroundings. I had just completed a road trip across the Pyrenees and was sitting in a tiny café on the French Mediterranean. I was writing about an unexpected road trip within the greater context of my life, in the even greater context of the mystery of life. To express these thoughts, be this writer, was the dream of my 17-year-old self, and it was only in this pause—the rest—that I realized I was awake in that dream.

Having accomplished it, it was not time to refine and expand it.

Epilogue. Making the Unknown Known

Within the construct of a road trip, two strangers engaged their consciousnesses in a dialogue with the field—known in quantum physics as the invisible realm of energy that unifies everything material. One person’s intention was to find out if he wanted to work with the other on a book project. The other person’s intention was to find the story.

***

When we first set out from the Atlantic side of France, we had no idea where we were going, and to a lesser degree, what we were looking for. What we did know was that we were not just tourists, but adventurers—psychonauts willing to venture into the unknown. To be successful required us to follow the whisper, and following the whisper required us to trust in the power of gratitude and intention to create the experiences we wanted to live. Our measure of success would not necessarily be found in a comparative ratio of good vs. bad, but in the perspective that experiences are neutral, and that it’s our consciousness that brings meaning to them. It is in this inquiry, and the lessons derived from the inquiry, that we are led into the deeper labyrinths of the self, for it’s at the core of the self where we discover the essence of our true nature.

To live a life of such conviction is to be in service to the inward journey of the self, not the outward one dictated by others. This service to the self requires trusting in experiential discoveries simply for the sake of gnosis—those kernels of truth that exist beyond the judgements and impositions of family, tribe, society, or anyone else that wants us to conform to a prescribed way of being. Such an experience requires the engagement of the mind (the brain/thinking), the body (the gut/feeling), and the spirit (the heart/listening). In my experience, when we are in such alignment, the body becomes an instrument of consciousness, and in that song, our lives become guided by something greater than the ego or individual will.

***

During my day of rest at the cafe, I thought about how throughout our journey, Step kept reiterating, “Do you still trust the process?” When I observed how this idea played out as we forged a path across France, I saw the unfolding of the process that I leapt into with blind faith.

Without an itinerary, at the start of each day neither of us knew what the day would entail. What I would discover, however, was that each day had its own rhythm, theme, and unfolding. They were:

1. Friday: Trust

2. Saturday: Faith

3. Sunday: Risk

4. Monday: Connection

5. Tuesday: Intention

6. Wednesday: Rest

In studying the order of these words, I saw how the totality of each day’s forward momentum revealed a creative process. What that looked like was first setting out from the Atlantic with the trust that we were being guided, all the while having the faith that what we needed to discover would find us. To perform such an act required a risk, a wager placed on a bet that there was this energy, spirit, or field guiding us—but to be guided, we needed to be connected to that field. When we were connected to it, we could feed it and entrain it to conform to our intentions. Intention was derived from our free will, or the choices we made along the way.

What all of this added up to was that this process was the creation. The journey, guided by our intention, only asked of us to surrender the how of how it all would unfold.

It was in the rest that I had time to reflect on the creation, and in that reflection I found gratitude for what I had created. When you feel gratitude for what is, what you have, and what you’ve created (whether manifested or not yet manifested), you’re in a state of wholeness.

Wholeness is completion, a circle, fullness, but outside of that circle are infinite expanding circles that we are constantly being called to expand into—because there are always greater degrees of wholeness and love to experience. To expand into these experiential spheres is to step over the edges of our self-imposed limitations and into the unlimited possibilities of potential. That desire to know our potential is what it means to dream, and to dream is what it means to be human.

The insight I received in looking at the order of the words that corresponded to each day of our journey was that when you have achieved what you’ve set out to create in your life, it’s once again time to dream. If dreaming is the source of creation, and creation is a never ending circle, then you simply follow that circle in reverse back to its source, starting with the reflection found in stillness.

1. Rest

2. Intention

3. Connection

4. Risk

5. Faith

6. Trust

In the rest and reflection, you have the space to create a new dream, whether that’s health, wealth, love, freedom, and so on. Once you have the dream in mind, you set the intention to live the dream, but in order to manifest the intention, you need to be connected to Source energy. There is risk inherent in moving from the dream of the mind to the first step of the journey, and that first step requires not only a faith that you are being guided by something greater, but also that you have the power to generate in your external reality what once only existed in your mind. That brand of faith requires a trust beyond our limited, human self.

When you really live in that trust, you possess a knowing, and knowing is the ultimate empowerment. Now that you’re back to the beginning of the creative process, it’s time to live the new creation that began in the mind.

And that’s where your next adventure begins.

19. The Question of Consciousness and the Unfolding of the Universe

Paris, France—May, 2019. On a sunny late-May morning in Paris, France, I found myself meandering from my hotel, through the city’s bustling boulevards, around it’s dizzying traffic circles, and along its quaint quiet rues. Lost in the revelry and awe at being in one of the world’s most beautiful and grandiose cities—not to mention being a writer and a hopeless romantic—I leisurely made my way to the Picasso Museum, fully aware of the fact that I was living in the embodied dream of my 17-year-old self.

As Parisians made their way to work and sightseers busily transitioned from one point of interest to the next, in sidewalk cafes throughout the city, locals and tourists picked apart their pain, sipped on espressos, slurped on café au laits, and smoked cigarettes—all the while playing chess, conversing with friends, looking into the eyes of lovers, scribbling into notebooks, and pounding away on keyboards in the hopes of becoming Paris’s next Proust, Camus, or Hugo. With me at the center of the mystery, all around me life was happening.

A short time later, I was once again on the move. While observing all the plaques, museums, statutes, and memorials that commemorated Paris’s most celebrated leaders, artists, writers, painters, poets, and politicians, within me arose a reductionist thought: What is it that unites all these people?

The answer that was returned to me was choice.

What future generations would celebrate about these people were the choices they made and the courage it took to make them—especially when they had no idea what the outcome would be. Instead, they operated on a feeling, a vision, an internal barometer the likes of which Bob Dylan called destiny. “Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about will come true.”

With thoughts as such ruminating in my head, I entered the Picasso museum to see a joint exhibition of Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder, two titans of 20th century art. As I eyed the works of these masters of form, dimension, and color, it dawned on me that the choices they made were not always about the subject matter, but rather informed by the empty space—or the void—in which they existed.

“Each time I begin a painting, I have the feeling of leaping into the void. I never know whether I’ll land on my feet. Only later do I evaluate the effect of my work,” Picasso said.

Perhaps this is the simplest and most profound statement about the intersection of life and art.

Trusting the Process

Every day, every minute, every second we have a choice—how to live, how to react, how to love, who to love, what to learn, where to put our focus and attention. Whether speaking about art or life, choice is the seed that sprouts the dreaming and creative process. The proper condition to make that acorn of an idea into a great oak is the courage to revisit that dream.

There’s a certain archetype that has no other choice but to be creators. These are people possessed by an other-worldly drive to express through art the feeling of what the intersection of consciousness and the physical world engenders. This is not to say that learning to trust the process and learning to trust their choices is easy. To trust this process is to trust that you will bring back something from the nothingness of where all possibilities exist. This is the process of creation, as well as the purpose of meditation—to lower the noise of the external world to uncover the truths of the internal world. For Picasso and Calder, their art was their meditation, and every time they disappeared into the void, they returned with form, lines, colors, contours, and dimension.

At some point or another all great artists have had to trust this process of losing themselves in the void, for in that merging, in that dissolving of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness, we pull into being patterns of energy that already exist. These patterns of energy and information are then processed through the physical vessel of the body and transmuted into form, ideas, creations, relationships, careers, health, etc.

To trust the process is to not know where you will end up, but rather to take the first step of a journey into the unknown. In art, this is the journey of laying the first word from pen to paper, playing the first note of what becomes a song, or sweeping the first brush stroke across a canvas. In this forward momentum of creation, an alchemy occurs that transmutes being into expression. As I said in the epilogue of my book, A Curious Year in the Great Vivarium Experiment, “The mystery conspires to support us when we’re living in our truth, and the world more than ever needs truth.”

But how do you get to that truth? The missing variable in this formula is commitment, the thread that strings together the choice to the dream.

The Intersection of Art, Life, and Expansion

What art and life have in common is that they are both processes whereby we extract form from the formless. You can’t do this without commitment, for it’s commitment—which at its root level is focus—that causes an idea to grow and expand. This is why the expression, “Where attention goes energy flows,” exists. Do you need empirical proof?

All you have to do is observe the arc of an artist’s life. Think of the young girl or boy who began sketching images in a notebook and ended their career painting on canvases that filled museum walls or the ceilings of chapels; sculptors who started with a ball of clay or a stretch of wire and ended up creating giant installations in public spaces; or writers who began observing their surroundings in the privacy of their journals and by the end of their life had produced volumes of work. So what is the reductionist thought that ties these people together? Expansion. Each artist had the courage to expand into greater aspects of themselves.

For a visual of what this means, imagine a stick figure of yourself with a balloon drawn around the head. This is ‘you’ and your limited self. Now imagine a much greater circle around the figure consuming the entire page—and imagine it’s always expanding. This is your unlimited self. The space between the limited and the unlimited is the void—it’s the unknown, unmanifested potential, the space each of us are called to expand into.

Whether you’re expanding through the choices you make that are in alignment with what Dylan called your “destiny,” or dreaming of your greater self with your eyes closed in meditation, its only by moving into those unknown spaces—spaces that most often make us uncomfortable—which is precisely the reason you should expand into them—where the new experiences exist that expands our consciousness and awareness, not to mention fuels a fuller, more interesting, more rewarding life.

The Secret They Don’t Teach You in School

The secret they don’t teach you in classrooms is that the unseen world rules the seen world.

What they also don’t teach you is that what you are seeking already exists within the void as frequencies and energetic patterns—the void being the quantum field, or the place from which all things arise. You only need to bring your consciousness to it and match the frequency of that energetic pattern to bring it into being. To achieve this is a constant process of addition and reduction, which in itself is a process of refinement. It’s for this reason that if you want to create something new in your life, you have to continue to revisit the dream with all of your being, for it’s through this process of refinement that you raise your body’s frequency to match that new future or creation.

Within this circle I spoke of earlier are infinite circles that represent greater levels of awareness and consciousness, and at all times, that circle is expanding. Just as science tells us the universe is expanding, so too is the nature of the human spirit and the collective consciousness. The choice is ours whether we want to expand with it or remain in the comfort of our known, predictable self—which keeps us in a known, predictable world. 

In those ever expanding layers of consciousness exists the future manifestations of our dreams, but for many of us, a great deal of fear exists in the dream. Why? Because to dream is to risk. The limited self says, “What if it doesn’t work?” But the unlimited self says, “But what if it does?” The latter is the voice of the 17-year-old self, the fearless voice of youth—unencumbered, unshackled, not bound by static, limitation, or barriers. If you revisit that second voice enough times, the “what if” becomes “it will” or better yet, “and so it is.”

So let’s wrap this up, shall we?

The Unfolding of the Universe and the Question of Consciousness

The universe unfolds through the question of consciousness, and seeing as I am apparently a reductionist, as far as I can tell, there are only three questions, the first of which arises in our first moment of awareness. They are:

1.     What is this? (This is human consciousness looking outward and observing the physical world)

2.     Who am I? (This is human consciousness gazing inward and looking for its relation to the physical world)

3.     Is there more? (This is the question that expands human consciousness, and consequently, the universe)

It’s my postulation that there is always more, and in that "more” a better world awaits us. But we are living in a time where we can no longer afford to be complicit and complacent. We have to consciously create that new world, and it’s up to each and every one of us to do our part to expand into it.

Six years ago, when I took off on the journey that would later become my book, while living and volunteering in India for three months, I once asked Sam LaBudde, a scientist, activist, and winner of the Goldmund Prize, how to make a difference in the world. His reply was something that has never left me, so I’m going to share it with you now.

He told me that you need to find that one thing that you absolutely, positively can’t stand about this world and do something about it—whether that’s homelessness; child abuse and the deplorable acts of removing children from their parents at the US border; poverty; human or civil rights violations; animal abuse; the destruction of the ocean and the plastic that poisons it; the destruction of the rain forests; climate change; gun control; autism; the lack of courageous leaders; the lack of compassion in the world, and so on and so on.

“If you don’t know how to do it yourself, then find someone who does and join their cause,” he added. At the time, I was volunteering for MC Mehta, perhaps the world’s most important environmental lawyer and the inspiration behind my book’s character JD Singh.

Here’s the deal folks: Humanity has been asleep at the wheel for too long. It’s time to wake up and get involved, so I am asking you to become a reductionist in your own right. Find out what that one thing is that infuriates you about this world and do something about it. If you’re afraid to step into that, ask yourself these questions: What voice will I have answered to when the future—when history—comes calling? Will it be the voice of the limited self—the one who operates out of fear and contraction? Or will it be the unlimited self—the voice of courage whose nature it is to expand into the greatest aspect of yourself?

Life is a canvas, and it’s time to paint your most beautiful picture, not only for yourself, but for the evolution of humanity. This is not a time in history to think or act small. If you don’t know what that “thing” is yet that calls you into action, I can tell you that you will find the answer in silence, stillness, and the breath.

In the inhale is the ask, in the exhale is the listen.

Find time every day to be still and stay awake to the kumbhaka, the space between the inhale and the exhale. This in-between space is the void, the place from which the universe speaks to us.

It’s also the place from which Picasso and Calder created their greatest works.

***

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18. Quantum Strings and the Victory of Awareness

Estoril, Portugal—May, 2019. As I waited for my girlfriend by the pool at the Palácio Estoril Hotel—a place where kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, dignitaries, artists, creators, and writers of all shapes and sizes have been staying since 1930—I had to take several deep breaths so as to not completely lose control of my emotions—which I was on the verge of doing for reasons that were at once incredibly simple and simultaneously complex.  

Reason 1. Quantum Strings

As we neared the Palácio Hotel in the late afternoon the previous day, at the exact moment I turned left and my line of sight beheld the royal, palatial structure, the song Raconte-Moi Une Historia by M-83 began playing. It immediately transported me to a very specific moment in Baja, Mexico, within a very sensorial experience, within a very tumultuous and fiery relationship.

But what actually had me on the verge of tears the following morning was the fact that when I hit random on a playlist of more than 200 songs, Wait by M-83 filled my headphones. This was the song I shared with my girlfriend prior to my ex-girlfriend, within a very loving and supportive relationship (I know, it’s sordid and complicated).

While yes I am a writer, and yes I am always searching for the narrative, I found it cosmically mystical that not only were these songs representative of each respective relationship, but I had never before put together the fact that they occurred back to back on the same album—in the same order of the relationships…and I’d never even listened to the album before.

At the heart of the great mystery is an impeccable sense of humor, irony, and perhaps most importantly, design.

As attendants brought cappuccinos, mimosas, and terrycloth bathrobes to guests lounging by the pool, it was as if via these songs, the higher selves of both of these women—the selves that exist outside of time and space—called out to me through time to wish me well on my journey. At the same time, it was as if my own higher self whispered, “Look how far you’ve come.”

In the transcendental moment where my past and present unexpectedly collided, through the firing and wiring of neurological networks that existed in the past, combined with a series of chemical reactions that culminated in the production of oxytocin in the present, my body produced the correlating feeling.

If that feeling had a voice, it may have said, “All there is in this life is the love you make, the love you share, and the love you leave behind. To love is to surrender to the mystery and to know that things are happening for you and not to you. If it were easy all the time, you’d never learn anything. Sometimes life is messy, and sometimes it’s beautiful, and sometimes it’s confusing and painful, but this is the human experience and this is what you signed up for. It’s via your life’s trials and tribulations you learn what it means to be human, the power of resilience, and the transformative power of love. And it’s through this inward journey of awareness—the journey into the heart of self-love—that the alchemy to transform the world occurs.”

To be human is to be complex.  

In that moment, an awareness within me shed light on how both relationships were catalysts for my soul’s journey, delivery mechanisms fueled by the accelerants of joy and suffering. The purpose of their design was to bring about growth, awakenings, expansion, and the eventual peaceful surrendering of who I was, the pain I caused, the pain I experienced, and the mistakes I had made as a result of the knowledge I lacked at those times in my life. They were aspects of the Yin and Yang, the totality of which brought me into greater degrees of wholeness and an understanding of myself that I otherwise could never have experienced. If it were not for these spiritual teachers and the lessons garnered from them, I would never have grown into the man I needed to become in order to be traveling around Portugal with the woman who I was currently with.

The songs were what I called in my book, A Curious Year in the Great Vivarium Experiment, quantum strings. Although I’ve evolved the notion since the book’s publication a year prior, the way I see it is that quantum strings are energetic threads spanning through time and space to connect the internal journey of our life. They consist of moments, experiences, interactions, or thoughts at specific times in specific places designed to rouse us out of our unconscious slumber. They do so by calling us into the present moment so we can take an inventory of who and where we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re headed. Existing as signposts, serendipities, or synchronicities in our external world, they’re created for the human mind by an intelligence greater than the human mind, and are only accessible through the awareness of—and immersion in—the present moment.

Try as you may to explain your experience of a quantum string to someone (or to relate to another person’s experience of a quantum string), because of their indelible personal nature and the fact that they exist outside of language, time, and space, when trying to communicate your experience of them to another, you can only begin to hint at their relevancy and mystical guiding force in your life. Why? Because their nature combines your past and present so you can reflect, analyze, and plot your future trajectory.

In other words, quantum strings are designed for you and only you.

Reason 2. The Victory of Awareness

On this mid-May morning in Estoril, Portugal, as I peered out through the lens of Tim Shields, a personality housed in a body—the vehicle of which provides the senses that enable me to experience and explore this physical, three-dimensional reality—at the intersection of my senses and the external world, I found myself asking: How is it that I came from such a lack and fearful mentality to now be in Portugal with such a beautiful, smart, funny, successful woman? How is it I am living my dream of traveling the world as a writer and exploring the mystery through the pen? How was it that—unbeknownst to me in the present moment—the following week I would be going on an all-expense paid, itinerary-less, work-related road trip (which would find my counterpart and I driving from the French Atlantic coast, across the Pyrenees, to the Mediterranean Sea) with a virtual stranger to write about the experience?

As far as I could tell, what had delivered me to that moment at the Palácio Hotel’s pool was a combination of two things: 1.) Relentlessly pursuing the dream of my internal world, and 2.) The letting go of the thoughts and habits that were no longer in alignment with the dream.

Beyond walking away from a high-paying corporate job and desperately trying to conform to worlds or places where I didn’t fit in, the most important aspects of the self I needed to surrender were the stunted thoughts and blocked energies that held me back from experiencing my greatest potential. At least in the present moment, I was living within the alignment of what I chose to be my life’s purpose, and in doing so, I had transformed from the person I was a decade prior, a year prior, and even a day prior into my present-perfect consciousness.

What that looked like was me being me and me doing my thing, which was the embodied evolution of the person I had been since the dream was engendered at age 17—an aspiring writer, curious about the world, and engaging myself in the mystery through the written word; trying to learn more deeply what it means to love; trying to heal my wounds so that I may be of better service to others and the world; and surrendering to, and trusting in, wherever this delivery mechanism called life was transporting me. Since my first moment of awareness, the only absolute that existed in my life was that I—whoever or whatever the consciousness of this I was—was at the center of the mystery. 

From beneath the protection of a sun umbrella, as I scanned the manicured grounds, the edges of the pristine pool, and the towering facade of the hotel, the final reason why I was fighting back tears was that for the first time in my life, a new voice had risen up in protest to overtake one of the most destructive, unconscious forces in my life. Instead of the voice (which was really a feeling) causing me to think I was an imposter at the hotel (which was nothing more than a programmed thought of lack and unworthiness, completely unfounded in reality), the voice said, “Why not me?”

The victory was in the awareness of the voice that percolated up to ask the question. “Why not me?” was the echo of the fearlessness of youth, a voice that was fueled by passion and the unencumbered connection to a dream in which there was no barriers or static. Over the course of time and life lived, however, wounds and self-doubt inflicted by self-judgement enslaved that voice. It was only in the daily, conscious revolt of meditation (which means to become familiar with, or bring awareness to) that the greater voice of the 17-year-old self who had the gumption to declare “Why not me?” rose up.

As the wind began blowing one page of my notebook over the other—one day at a time, one experience at a time, one page at a time, one word at a time—as the haunting chorus of Wait reverberated through my headphones, I hid my tears behind the tinted lenses of my sunglasses, only to taste the salty release of the lacrimal gland as it reached my lips. For most of my life I had been pushing, forcing, and fighting my way through it. The struggle was not an external one, but the adolescent punk rock-fueled fight against the fear and contraction with which the ego and the limited self sought to domineer the unlimited self.

But from what I now knew and had the tools, strength, armor, and awareness to fight back with was that the battle was against an invisible enemy whose fortress was built by one limited thought and one limited belief at a time. To conquer those self-imposed limitations was how you moved the needle and gained territory in life’s ultimate game of Risk.

To achieve things in life, you can certainly work harder. This definitely helps in some arenas, but to achieve our greatest strides as human beings requires us to surrender what no longer serves us so we can be in closer alignment to our higher self or soul’s purpose. This requires us to become an open channel for the creative energy of life to flow within and all around us. As energy beings, we can either be a conduit or an impediment of this energy, after all—we are nothing more than blooms of consciousness in physical matter.

If one were to dissect our human, physical existence down to its most elemental core, through the process of reduction, all you’d be left with is I AM, which is the further reduction of Descartes’, “I think, therefore I am.” As I said in several previous essays, including On Becoming Conscious (or) The Pylon and the Pier, my own interpretation of I AM is that it is the individual aspect of the universal consciousness waiting to be informed and directed. This is the power of freewill and the evolutionary gift of humanity.

Through my own my subjective experience of life, what I interpret reality to be is nothing more than a freestanding piece of tinfoil or a ball of Play-Doh clay. Our life is the raw materials of unmanifested potential just waiting to be shaped and formed by the courage to dream and the will to match it—the will being the energetic force behind awareness and intention.

This poses an arresting, poignant, and pivotal question: Will you intentionally create something with your ball of clay and impose your force on that sheet of tinfoil? Or will you be drifting through life unintentional, unaware, and asleep? And if you do choose to intentionally create, will it be solely for you, your tribe, and the people who think, act, and look like you? Or will it be for the greater good of humanity?

The evolution of mankind is the evolution of our thoughts.

***

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17. Everything in its Right Place

“The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact that you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not.”

-       I Am That, by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

As I flew high above the vast empty wastelands of northern Mexico’s deserts, there was nothing I could do but surrender and trust. For someone who has a secret desire to control things, I seem to have an unhealthy way of throwing myself headlong into the unknown.  

I was closing the door on an eight-month chunk of hard-expat living and learning in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; hard living not in the typical pickled-expat way that eventually leads to cirrhosis of the liver, but in a way that deeply entwines winter’s long nights and stark beauty. It is, after all, the dormant, internal functions of winter that enable spring to unfold verdant discoveries in blossoms and blooms.

High above the Earth, who I was as a man in my 40s felt no different from anyone I had been since I was 17. In my mind, I was a kid on a flight, in transition from one thing to the next, hoping the gamble would work out, and turning to the written page to navigate my way—all the while documenting the journey of my physical existence notebook after notebook. Despite the deeply-grooved tracks and well-worn neural pathways that wanted me to remain in the adolescent hopelessness of my past, or the fear and anxiety of an uncertain future, like all of my life’s greatest journeys, I sensed I was on the precipice of great adventure. 

It was in this manner I was on my way to Seattle. From there, ten days later I had a one-way ticket to New York, and from there I was headed out to parts unknown. I was betting on an opportunity falling into place that would bring me to Europe, but if that didn’t work out, I was a man without a plan, especially since my apartments in Mexico and Seattle would soon be occupied. I had other possibilities, but at the time they only existed as unmanifested potentials.

From where I was sitting that afternoon in seat 21F, my perspective afforded me the awareness that everything I had just experienced for the last eight months—the zeniths of joy and the nadirs of despair—were just external reflections of what needed to shatter within me in order to become more awakened. And by awakened, I don’t mean in the Buddha way or the millennial woke way.

I simply mean I was more free from my past.

This new found freedom was the result of sitting long enough in the fire of one of my life’s more uncomfortable incubation periods. We all pass through these anxious seasons where we find ourselves thinking, Is this it? Is this all there is? But by sitting in the fire, and consequently burning down old parts of the self that no longer served me, I was now free to step into the next evolution of my soul’s incarnate journey.

At least in the present moment, age, experience, and the passage of time demonstrated to me how each time life breaks our hearts, it’s just a reminder to take off another layer of armor, to love bigger, and to be more courageous in our vulnerability and open-heartedness. Like a hurricane wiping out a coastline, when your heart gets crushed—in whatever inevitable form that might take—eventually you have to rebuild. If you’ve gained wisdom from the storm, when it comes time to rebuild, you fortify your structure; not in a walled-off way, but in a way that provides a stronger foundation to better weather life’s next storm. It’s for this reason vulnerability and open-heartedness are critical in this moment of human evolution—because vulnerability and open-heartedness don’t build walls, they remove them.

I had a situation recently where how I was operating in the world was called into question, and this caused me to momentarily shrink in the face of my vulnerability. The passive assault on my character was at first startling and rattling, followed by aggravating and infuriating, followed by observing and pondering. In this story arch, I was strong-armed into paying closer attention to my life’s script, juxtaposing the story I had written many years ago on the cusp of being a young man versus who I had become as a man. It was in the third part of the equation—the pause (which creates the space to observe and ponder)—that I found gratitude towards this person for forcing me to look more deeply within, for it was in the mirror of their unconscious affront that I was forced to take an internal inventory. In doing so, the evidence I found in my external world only propelled me to stand more steadfast in my worth and the vision I held for my life’s journey.

What was called into question by this person—whom by the way I love, admire, and respect—was the idea of hard work, because what this person’s idea of hard work looked like was very different than mine. I eventually realized it was because my way of being in the world fell outside of her construct. Simply put, my work as an artist and a writer looked very different than how she had been spending 10-14 hours a day for the previous three months.

I could have taken offense to this lack of understanding, after all—it’s lack of understanding that’s at the root of all wars, both within and without—but instead I took it as an opportunity to get more clear on how I intend to write the next chapters of my life.

Part of the story I have been writing for most of my life, and the one I will continue to write, is that I don’t have to play by society’s rules. Why? Because I say so. But more aptly said—because I am answering to the unknown path of the calling. Critical to setting out on a path less traveled is the surrendering to, and trusting in, something greater that is guiding me, protecting me, and calling me forward. If you’re on this same path, you know it’s not an easy one.

This begs the question, what is it to trust? To me, it is to venture upon a path you cannot see, to a destination you do not know, on a journey in which you can’t rely on others to light the way. Instead, you must be your own guide by generating the light from within. To successfully tread upon this path is to trust there will be terra firma beneath every step, even when you can’t see the next one in front of you.

***

Within the spiritual and creative class (a term coined by the American economist and social scientist, Richard Florida), how I live my life is in some regards quite conventional: I am dedicated to pursuing an internal vision that I imagine to be the greatest expression of myself. Outside of these class structures, however, in life’s more prescriptive avenues, I am an anomaly. There’s a part of me that longs for that perceived stability and security found in routine and building the vaulted walls of 401(k)athedrals, but like anyone else who is living by an internal compass, I have no choice but to obey this more vociferous, more dominant aspect of the self that answers not to a boss, but to the calling.

Personally speaking, the purpose of this more dominant aspect of my self is to lead me into the caverns and underworlds of my life, to move through its uncomfortable layers, and into the places and spaces where very little light enters. Ultimately, this leads to the inner-most labyrinth of the self. Perhaps as my life progresses and I move further into this labyrinth, I will find there is no self. As a friend suggested, perhaps I am only an aspect of consciousness observing consciousness itself,

If I can bring light to those dark places, and if I can navigate my way out of the labyrinth, then I will have completed what Joseph Campbell called “The Hero’s Journey.” The purpose of this quest is to bring back meaningful knowledge, information, and wisdom acquired on the journey so that the greater good may benefit.

As a writer, this is the fulfillment of my life’s work and mission. First, my work is to overcome the fear of diving into my life’s muck and mire in search of pearls of wisdom. If I can apply this wisdom to myself, then I can share it with others. Second, my mission is to translate light, frequency, and energy into story so as to lead others to their truth. Just as each has their own path upon which to walk, this is the path of my soul’s journey into the heart of my own human healing.

The gamble I am betting the farm on is that if I can prove as a living example that the revisitation of the dreams and intentions of the internal world (i.e., directed consciousness) manifest in the outer world, then I can teach the lessons of the journey through story. The most important aspect of this story is not about the destination, as Dr. Joe Dispenza says, but about who you become in the process. If I am going to write about these truths, I need to live them.

As I said in my book, A Curious Year in the Great Vivarium Experiment, “The world changes through two things—story and consciousness.” I know from experience there is a certain strata of people who on a daily basis are undertaking this same journey of healing and soul work. They are the tides who are raising the buoys of human consciousness, first by bringing healing to themselves, then to their families, then to their work, followed by their communities. The journey into healing our unmet needs and unconscious wounds of childhood, as well as the perceived wounds inflicted upon us by others, is the most important journey (and the hardest work) any of us will ever undertake, for this is how we change the world. We don’t change the world by conquering men and women, squashing rivals and competitors, or stealing resources from far off lands. No, if we acted in more noble, more selfless ways we would find there’s plenty to go around.

We change the world by conquering the enemy within.   

The way I see it is you can look at your life in one of two ways. The first is as a series of lessons where you are the hero of a great journey, and the second is as a series of mistakes and arbitrary happenstances where you are the victim. (This has taken me a long time to learn.) Both stories are born out of the perspective and narrative we chose to weave around our life’s happenings and events. It’s from these happenings and events we build the stories of our lives, and it’s our stories that define us, for better or worse.

Personally, I think the journey of life is just a series of events and interactions designed by a higher, more knowing aspect of ourselves. The purpose of this journey is to create intersections of ideas and collisions of people who force us out of our comfort zones. It’s in the exploration of those outer, less known aspects of our being where we find the space to grow, evolve, and step into expanded versions of ourselves, that is—should we accept the challenge—rather than remain in the safe cocoon of the past and predictable known.

To accept the challenge is to step into the unknown, whether that’s moving to a different country, switching to a different career, or journeying into the very heart of love itself. No matter what facet of your existence you apply this litmus test, to not accept that challenge is to remain on a linear, predictable path—void of soul growth, expansion, love, and the greater self that calls the limited self to emergence. This is the journey of transformation, and to transform is to move or change from one state of being, form, or awareness to another. Therefore, acceptance of the challenge is to allow disorder and chaos into our life so that it may transform into grace and good fortune—all in the name of our individual and collective evolution.

***

As I step into a new adventure and close the door on eight months in Mexico, my time there was filled with as much joy, expansion, and grace as it was with uncertainty, frustration, and disorder. But I wrapped myself in the chrysalis and sat in the fire, and although you can’t witness it in my external presence, in my internal world, once again the phoenix has taken on a new form, a new being, and a new awareness.

Beyond forging a deeper trust with this internal guidance system and stepping further into the unknown, I am also stepping further into the idea of I AM. It’s my postulation that if you declare “I AM” within the alignment of your words, actions, and thoughts—or mind, body, and spirit—the universe will conform to the declaration of your courage. At least this is what I am attempting to prove to myself, and thus share with others. This is what the journey of the calling is all about, which is also at the heart of what my third book is about. When you accept the calling, you have no other choice but to follow the unknown path upon which your soul leads you.

Of course at the human level, you always have a choice. We call this free will, but if you recognize and accept that the human experience is about the evolution of the soul—that greater aspect of our self that is only limited by language—then you have to trust the personalized inner-guidance system that most often only speaks in whispers, signs, serendipities, and synchronicities. This is the path of the peaceful warrior, and the path of the greatest expression of our human selves.

Speaking of expression, perhaps the current epidemic of modernity is that the majority don’t feel free or safe to fully express themselves, whether that’s at work or in a relationship, in their religion or sexuality, in their despair or joy, or in their victories and defeats. The tragedy in this repression is that at the most elemental root of human expression is the need for connection—the need to be in communion with someone, to be understood and recognized, and to receive the validation that we are not the only one who is experiencing the inner turmoil, tumult, and confusion that arises through the human experience.

That shared internal journey of consciousness is what unites us, creates compassion—and when the physical journey ends—returns us back to unmanifested potential, the source from which all things arise. If we were all engaged in this idea, that we were all one and part of the same source energy, it’s my belief we could finally bring peace and prosperity to the entirety of this planet.

This is my declaration of I AM.

Feel free to comment below about, declare your I AM, share if you feel so inspired, or simply say hi. Also, I just began a newsletter I will send about once a month. If you’d like to receive it, please sign up at my website.

Finally, the opening quote to this essay opens the first of three parts (Spirit, Body, Mind) of my book. To learn more about my book or watch the book trailer, please visit: https://www.acuriousyear.com/.

16. On Surrender, Resilience, and Self-Love

“What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...”

-       Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

From a distance, the desert is uniform and monotonous. Up close, however, it’s hearty, resilient, and complex. What first made me fall in love with it was that much like life, the more you pay attention to it, the more it unfolds.

***

Whether it was fate, destiny, serendipity, or the product of my own creation, after one of my life’s more uncomfortable seasons, I found myself living at the edge of El Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel de Allende’s high-desert botanical garden. At 65 hectares (160 acres) and an altitude of 1900 meters (6,200 feet), it’s home to more than 100 butterfly species, 156 bird species, and 550 plant species.

How I found myself living there was that shortly after New Year’s Day, my former landlady decided to reclaim the spacious, modern loft she was renting me. With the snow birds from the north flocking in droves to central Mexico’s most artsy town, finding a comfortable place to live, without the added high-season inflation tax, was proving to be all the more challenging. Seeing as my last few months of 2018 were full of turmoil, unrest, and uncertainty, like a beaten-down pugilist, I lacked the fight to go on. When you have no more fight left in you, you have one of two choices; surrender or die. Due to my commitment to self-preservation both as a human and an organism, the latter was not an option.

Down but not out, through grace and good fortune my friend and guardian angel of San Miguel de Allende, Linda Hampton, offered me stay in the casita on her property. While it was a bit outside of town, it wasn’t exactly uncomfortable. I had my own spacious casita, access to her kitchen in a home adorned with art, three dogs to love me unconditionally, and a pool by which to lounge…What I could not have known in my moment of surrender was that my time at Casa del Linda would serve as a safe place to rehabilitate, and that the unexpected gift of the desert would be a propellant for healing and awakening.

***

Originating from the northeast corridor of the United States and having spent the previous 18 years in the Pacific Northwest, I had never experienced the terrain, climate, or energy of a high desert. The desert is a place of extremes where the temperature can swing from -1°C (30°F) before sunrise to 49°C (120°F) in the late afternoon. During the course of a day, as the sun arches from the eastern to western horizon and the corresponding light saunters across the stark, arid landscape, the desert becomes a character in a novel who evolves in unpredictable ways. To add to its mystique, when the summer rains ascend, the desert transforms from an Ansel Adams photograph into a Monet painting. It took me almost no time to realize that the energy the desert provided was an endless fountain of healing and inspiration, and that the more I visited it, the more its elegant, cooperative beauty would unfold before me.

As a writer, the greatest tool I have in my toolbox is the power of observation. Observation is not only what colors a story—it’s not only what reveals the wounds, motivations, or psychology behind a person or character’s actions—it also marks the passage of time. How? Time is the passage of weather, seasons, people, lovers, blossoms and blooms, and the emergence (and thus hibernation) of insects, amphibians, and mammals. It is further marked by the birth of children, the death of loved ones, the upheavals of political events, the revolutions that inspired them, and the social movements that push society forward. To live at the edge of a high desert botanical garden, and to be able to visit it at a whim, gave me the luxury to observe my external life and the passage of time eternal, while juxtaposing it with my internal life, and the passage of time ephemeral.

One day while traversing upon a path, I observed crickets mating, which I found to be steely, focused, and meditative, while on another day I observed butterflies mating, which I viewed as poetic, ecstatic, and majestic. Other days I observed vermillion flycatchers, curved-bill thrashers, and monarch butterflies cutting through the air in sharp angles and dramatic movements, all dancing in the embodied expression of the same energy that created me.

Over the course of three weeks, I watched a steady procession of leafcutter ants (which, in addition to being the largest and most complex animal society on Earth beyond humans, is also the only species beyond humans able to make its own food) go about their business in service of the queen. Like a well-organized army, they were ranked from the grunts, who marched in a line, sometimes carrying things 20 times their weight, to scouts who patrolled the perimeters, to the larger ants who defended their nest from foreign invaders. Observing the tiny creatures, I thought about how all of us are in service to someone or something, and how just as I am a greater intelligence marveling at the simplicity and complexity of this lower life form, so too is there probably a greater intelligence observing humans and thinking the same.

Equally as curious were the survival mechanisms cactuses had adopted to evolve over countless millennia—how many have learned to grow their roots in nutrient-lacking soil and how some, such as the garambullo, the prickly pear, or the barrel cactus, learned to grow from the cracked walls of canyons. Others, like the nopal—a staple of Mexican cuisine and whose varieties are as vast as the North America apple—have grown massive spikes due to their edible (and thus vulnerable) interior. And still others, much like some people, invite you in with their beauty, yet get too close and you receive a prickly, thorny rebuke.

The paradox of the desert is that it is at once harsh, arid, and sunbaked, while at the same time quiet, peaceful, and giving. In its understated, and perhaps under-appreciated way, it is abundant with life. If one were to look upon the desert from high above, you would see one living, breathing organism, and yet if you drilled down from the level of its flora, fauna, and aviary species—all the way down to the level of lichens, bacteria, fungus, and the corpuscle—you’d find hidden treasures and symbiotic relationships as vast as the stars. As an example, when the Spanish conquistadors appeared on the continent in the 16th century, the color red—a symbol of wealth, power, and status—was everywhere. What they soon learned from the Aztecs was the dye that created the color came from a tiny white insect called the cochineal. The cochineal lives on the pads of the prickly pear cactus, and without a trained eye, it would look like nothing more than a white blemish. When dried and crushed, the minuscule, nondescript creature produces a rich, red dye. Behind silver and gold, this dye became the area’s third largest export. By the 16th and 17th century, the result was that the cochineal launched Spain on a path towards becoming a global economic superpower, created a red craze throughout Europe, and went on to revolutionize art history.

From competition to cooperation, in the mirror of the desert I could see the entire spectrum of humanity. Simply by observing the desert, I was learning about my life, and as I did so, in the mirror of nature’s intricate beauty, the learnings of my own journey were being magnified.

***

When you close your eyes and connect into the energy of a place or space, it whispers to you. As the desert is a place full of history, lore, and the transitions of people, plants, and ideas, it has many things to share, but you must become still to hear it.

On my first day in the garden, I sat beneath the shelter of a mesquite tree and did just that—I closed my eyes, let go of all thoughts, and focused on the tingling sensation within and all around me. That sensation is the commingling of the outer and the inner—the energy that inhabits us and the field of energy in which we inhabit. This ubiquitous energy is always present and available to us; most of us just haven’t been trained to put our attention on it. As I sat there beneath that tree, the stillness enveloping me, I heard the desert whisper: How fitting it is that life has delivered you to the edge of the high desert, after all, what speaks more to resilience than that which grows in the desert?

As I continued to focus in on, and connect to, the energy around me, I expanded my own field of energy into the space around my body. In doing so, my focus was no longer on my body, but on the field of energy around it. This is, after all, the energy that holds the universe together, so logic has it that it must possess a greater degree of knowledge, information, and intelligence then I can access on my own.

As I did so, the thought entered my mind, I wire my brain for the mystical. It was peculiar because I did not think this thought, rather, it downloaded to me. Not one to doubt the information, I placed my attention within my head, purposely feeling the unification of both hemispheres of my brain fire and wire in the name of the mystical.

Curious by the information I received, I decided to play with this energy by furthering my inquiry. As I cleared all thought and moved into trance, I asked the question: What energy do I need to tune into? Whether voiced by the desert or my own subconscious, as if an echo bouncing off canyon walls only to return to its source, the answer came back to—self-love.

Dumbstruck by the reply, as soon as the thought entered my consciousness, it multiplied with the rapidity of an algal bloom. Self-love is a subject I have been pondering, working on, asking to know more intimately, and desiring to awaken to. To truly love one’s self is to accept the limitations and shortcomings of our humanity (which in certain areas of my life, I’ve been challenged to come to terms with), while stepping into and embracing the limitlessness of our divinity (which, the acceptance of this responsibility, can also be challenging by its daunting nature).

In that moment, it became my personal understanding that this is what it means to awaken to the I AM—the universal key that unlocks all doors of creation. I AM is the power of the Word merged with the power of Directed Consciousness. It is the unification and alignment of the mind, body, and spirit within the declaration of self. Stated more simply, we become the totality of what we say, think, act, and feel.

No matter your belief, we can all agree upon the limitations of language when it comes to energy and the greater mystery of the universe. As someone whose personal mission statement it is to translate light, frequency, and energy into story so as to lead others to their truth, at least in this moment of my life, my job was simply to walk around the desert, observe the mystery, let it consume me, and articulate it as best I can.

And so it was I came to a deeper understanding that to awaken to the I AM is to know that all possibilities exist as energetic potentials in an immaterial field of information called the quantum field. In the first law of thermodynamics, the total amount of energy in a closed system (in this case, let’s call this closed system the totality of all that is, both visible and invisible, material and immaterial) cannot be created nor destroyed, but it can change from one form to another. To take this one step further, in physics, through the observer effect, simply by observing something we alter it. So the I AM is the ability to alter matter/reality through consciousness simply by observing something into being. Allow me for a moment to boil this down.

If you were to remove all the elements of this complex bouillabaisse, leaving only its liquid broth, the reduction you’d be left with is the creative process. The first step of the creative process is to dream. The second step is to fill in that dream as if it were an image in a coloring book. The third step is to keep revisiting that dream, each time filling in this image more and more until, metaphorically speaking, it transforms from a 2-dimensional idea on a piece of paper into a 3-dimensional hologram. To make the leap from the coloring book to quantum physics, that hologram is the pattern of the dream that already exists (beyond the speed of light and beyond the visible light spectrum) as light and information the field. The more you revisit or observe that dream, or the pattern of the dream, the more you slow it down. As the pattern of light and information slows down below the speed of light, division and polarity occurs, which is where the dream begins to take form as matter, experiences, events, serendipities, or synchronicities. Let’s look at this another way, but before we do, it’s important to remember what Einstein said: “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.”

No matter how novel your flash of brilliance might be, when you come up with an idea, you are connecting with the energy of something that already exists in the field. The more you connect to this idea, as you observe it, circumvent it, and move through it—as you connect with the feelings of what the fruition of this idea might feel like—you begin filling in a mental image of something that already exists as a potential. The more you focus on this potential, the more you bring form to it—and the more you bring form to it, the closer it comes into existence. As an example, imagine looking up into the infinite lattice of the night sky. Then imagine that every star is an atom of potential. The more you focus in on a specific portion of the sky, as you apply your imagination and attention, you begin to cluster the atoms until all the sudden a form appears and you see Orion, Cassiopeia, Leo, Cancer, Taurus, Ursa Major and Minor, and so on and so on.

***

Although invisible to others, for months my internal world felt like dice in a Yahtzee tumbler. The challenge was not necessarily due to a broken heart or that the vulnerabilities I shared might have been exploited. That was simply a catalyst to confront the well-rooted legacy stories of my life.

For months, perhaps a year, a new self had been calling out to me, and yet I—the free-willed human being—resisted it. Resistance, whether found in an engine or the heart, is eventually going to wear down the machinery that evokes the function. If this resistance is found in the heart, the result is likely going to be lot of unnecessary pain. That pain is the result of friction caused by fear—and that brand of fear is the manifestation of our resistance to the soul’s expansion into the new, unformed edges of our being. To push outward into the unknown and often uncomfortable dimensions of the self is what it means to be initiated, and if we are paying attention, every initiation we pass awakens us to I AM.

And so in carefully observing all that the desert was reflecting back to me, I was forced to make a decision; surrender my legacy stories or remain living within the limitations of their confines and contours.

With the fervor and unconscious desperation that the cactus clings to the canyon wall, so too have I clung to my life’s legacy stories. Now it’s important to note here, dear reader, that these stories are not necessarily based in reality. Life is a series of concurrent events. Some are joyful and some are painful, thus we attach to them a corresponding emotion—and emotions carry meaning. The more we revisit these events, the more they become etched in our memories, and the more they become etched in our memories, the greater the stories we attach to them.

When we gain some distance and emotional freedom from the inciting or source incident of our pain, perspective allows us to see its service as one of life’s most important tools for awakening. Through this mirror, I realized my pain was, and has always been, the crack in which the light enters. On one hand, the awakening that commanded my attention was the fact that I was not my stories. On the other hand, the awakening that was calling me from my past to my future was that resilience is having the strength to keep going when you can’t see the road ahead. It also means having the courage to keep pushing up against those stories until—like when we confront the demons of our imagination by looking them square in the eye—the fictitious nature of that which once haunted us is revealed, thus igniting an energetic process of reverse osmosis. In the absence of the void these stories once filled, I was awakening to the I AM.

While sitting beneath that mystical mesquite tree, I felt a deeper trust than I had in a long time. In recognition of the calm within—the result of grace and the pendulum swinging from internal turmoil to a cathedral of peace—I breathed more deeply into the moment. As I released myself further into its gentle embrace, it dawned on me that peace is the alignment of our physicality with our higher-self (or soul) within the paradigm (or physical dimension) of time and space. The deeper I moved into this epiphany, the more it peeled back like the layers of a fresh artichoke waiting to be lathered in liquid butter. Similar to what I expressed in my book, once again—without doing anything but simply living, being, and showing up—an old form that no longer served me was effortlessly molting.

In the absence of that which no longer served me was my naked, liberated soul, eager to undertake the next expansive chapter of my journey, a journey whose design would take me closer to that which I desire to know greater—the source of the mystery—myself. After all, the source energy of the mystery is experiencing itself through my corporeal existence.

***

It is not only the desire, but the intrinsic nature of the soul to experience growth and expansion. These two aspects of life occur via our senses, those visceral portals through which we learn what it means to be human. In this context, life then is not only an awakening, but a remembering of who and what we are—the truth being that we are souls (or consciousness) embodied in a physical vessel, the purpose of which is to poke about the physical world classifying, dissecting, learning, and looking for clues that help us remember the singularity from which we were engendered.

As a form of energy, the power of the soul—which is the individual aspect of the universal consciousness—is that it is has been granted the autonomy to direct its energy. The byproduct of this autonomy is free will, which means that from within the physical form we have the freedom to direct this energy however we choose. The discoveries we make, as a result of the choices we take, can form the path back to eternal, divine love—the highest of all frequencies. Love heals, love forgives, love unites, and love creates oneness and wholeness.

When we are in a state of wholeness, everything we need is already within us. As we awaken to this truth, when we as a collective realize we already have at our fingertips all we need to serve, expand, and uplift the collective—when greed and the stockpiling of resources is eliminated, when we realize we all came from the same source energy—we will finally know peace on Earth. In achieving this degree of peace, the human species will evolve into something greater, and it will move into an an entirely new evolutionary period, the likes of which will seem like the science-fiction of yesteryears. In this new reality, what today might be categorized as a miracle may simply be something we take for granted as the pointed focus of the individual mind in the service of the universal conscious—or said another way—in service of our fellow men, woman, and children of Mother Earth.

In this historical evolutionary moment of becoming, like the pylon and the pier, you are being called to surrender that which no longer serves you so as to awaken to your greatest potential. This means having the courage to share the gifts with which you’ve been bestowed, and that means standing in the expression of your own truth, not in opposition—which is the device of many religions and politics—but in an addition to the whole. This will require you to be responsible for your own healing, which requires you to move beyond survival into creation.

As more and more people become responsible for their own healing, because consciousness is a wave, at some point we will reach critical mass, and the change we desire will come with increased frequency.

Then, much like the tillandsia, an airplant I observed that grows on the underside of some trees found in El Charco del Ingenio, perhaps human beings as a collective can evolve from the parasitic mindset that has grasped our species for many millennia, to an epiphytic mindset, after all—the epiphyte does not take from its host, but rather it lives in harmony with, and contributes to, the whole of its ecosystem.

Do you need help editing/writing your book? Or do you simply need a writing coach/accountability partner? And of course I’d be remiss by saying if you like the ideas in this piece, then you will like the ideas in my book. Check out the book trailer now.

15. The People Zoo (From the Book’s Soundtrack)

This is a demo from A Curious Year in the Great Vivarium Experiment’s soundtrack, written by my nephew Jack Shields. His band is called Mojave Rush and he will be releasing his debut album later this year. I like the title so I decided to call my blog People Zoo.

14. Excerpt: Chapter 9. The Indian Night

The courtyard where Thomas found himself looking back through time.

This excerpt from A Curious Year in the Great Vivarium Experiment, is from “Chapter 9. The Indian Night.” The excerpt is bookended by songs from the soundtrack to the book. The songs are A Curious Year Part I and A Curious Year Part II, both written and performed by my nephew, Jack Shields.

Just like the books begins and ends in the same place, so too does the soundtrack when played on repeat.

If you want to hear the song from the soundtrack that the name of this blog is based upon, click here.