As autumn 2015 brings a cycle to it’s completion, I find myself looking back at a 10 years cycle, memories as far as my first travels on my own, backpacking into new trails that would lead me in the yet unknown and unpredictable path I am now on. Who would have known. How can we predict where we will be in a few years?
We grow up thinking we must take charge of our lives; we must stir our ship in the right direction, otherwise we may end up nowhere, behind others, or not on the right track at all. And this thought easily creates the possibilities of choosing the wrong direction … that which enhances the fear of failure, or even fear to trust the inner voice of our heart.
Like most of you, traveling or not, life always brings a series of challenges in which we gain maturity. For me, traveling has forced me to see that everything I do not know has greater impact on my life than what I think I know. By believing we know our direction, we limit the universe to unfold in different ways. Instead, I learned to peel layers off, unlearning who I thought I was. As if you can ‘unpaint’ a painting, or rewind time and untangle an event. We can say that I’ve untangled the creation of who I painted myself to be and allowed it to become a blank canvas again.
“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time”
More than one year has past since my last newsletter. It seams to be a rhythm of going deep within, allowing in time the emergence of experiential clarity.
Perhaps the reason is a sense of nostalgia setting in my awareness.
I feel to move forward, yet I am still holding back a little. I feel to take a moment and pause, look back, and get to feel one last time what was experienced. I am now in a place my soul always wanted to be. I feel like I was waiting for this moment my whole life, even though I could have never imagined neither dreamed of 10 years ago. I realized that reaching the goal isn’t as rewarding as the journey is to get to this place.
A dream isn’t as much about what you want than what you don’t want. Dreams can act as a way of avoiding dealing with the limitations you created in your life, postponing a state of freedom to sometimes in the future when this and that will happen. Therefore, the only things in the way of manifesting your dream are self-imposed limitations. Limitations can feel like fears, guilt and other emotions, external and internal structures, social environment, distances, money, time, etc. Knowing your dream can act as a compass, giving you the opportunity to find the beliefs and limitations you hold. Without seeing theses limitations, it’s impossible to remove them.
When I first left Canada on my trip to Central America, my intention was to be alone, or I shall say, with myself. What self? At the time, all I knew was who I was reflected by my friends, family and social environment … We can say that I was the result of choices I made, but looking at this another way, were all the choices I made really mine?
When you’re offered a choice, most likely you’re offered a selection of possibilities, limited to what is available, and most often than not, it doesn’t include the choice you would have made if you were empowered in creating your own path. But where do we take our inspiration then in order to create our own path?
If you are an artist (or ever tried to be) you would know it works just the same way. You can learn art history, contemporary trends, role model, and create your art, limited to the existing art genres, or you could create your own unique approach, carving your own style out of your inspiration.
At the age of 15, I was confronted to this dilemma when I was handed a pamphlet with a choice of career to invest myself into. It’s presented as if the world is opening up and you can choose your future. Instead of opening possibilities it did the precise opposite, limiting in a drastic way what I imagined the adult world to be. I naively thought that all the answers to the mysteries of the world were given to you when we pass the threshold of adulthood. I always wanted to grow up faster than I was, to become a part of the grown up people, those who gets to feast with the gods and be blessed of the wisdom of the world. Like a young native american boy waiting patiently his initiation into manhood.
But here’s the trick, it rarely comes with an Ikea step by step instructions. It comes out of your own depth, and our own depth often is where we find our deepest shadows. It comes with the willingness and courage to face the unknown within ourselves … our psyche, within the inner waters of the feminine creative energy.
Ironically, what killed my innocent dream woke an even more powerful one. If it weren’t going to be given to me then I would go out explore and conquer the truth by myself.
From that moment, I knew my only option was the path that nobody had mapped for me, that only I could create. I call this “the path of the self”. A walk only you can choose to take. You may encounter guidance along the way, but every step you make is on your own. Every step further in the unknown is a step you cannot walk back. What you may discover is a whole lot of unfounded fears and unexplored emotions, waiting to be mastered into a strength that will stabilize an inner authority, which will fulfill emotional maturity. Only then the Gods can reveal their secrets. This is where I found myself. This is my path, not only what I do with my life but what is being done through me.
It’s at the age of 21 that I left on a trip that would never end. And the end isn’t what I am seeking anymore. I will never become a final result, for every goal achieved contains another hundred new beginnings. For every intersection, each encounter, suggests a new potential direction.
10 years later, I look back and I see that the little boy inside me always knew where he was leading me. Only I was in the way.
I was seeking truth and freedom. It’s easy to say in a world where everything seems accessible. Everything seems to have been discovered, every land mapped and owned, even the stars has been named. Man has always been driven by exploration of unknown territory. Some have crossed ocean towards new land, others towards new planets or new wild environments … For me, it became an unintentional dive into the realm of the mind and body, driving my curiosity, leading me along. It all started in a meditation retreat, in which I experienced a state of dissolution of the mind-matter field of perception, a moment of total clarity, which felt like eternity, unlocking a gate to inner truth and freedom. A state of no time and space where the microcosm and macrocosm are one united field. Words can’t convey any meaningful translation.
Five years in Bali was spent deeply immersed into my own body, traveling miles of unknown territory within my own mind, body and spirit. Too long a story to share here, but if your curiosity is stirred I am sure we will meet one day.
These five years went by so fast I am still trying to make sense of all that happened. I had some of the best years of my life discovering the world of healing, meditation and the privilege of being taught by the most amazing teacher of all: nature. In 2007, Bali was a quiet island, and the energetic field of Ubud was a giant power spot and one of a few remaining sacred land. Everyday was like being in a shamanic school, living through the process rather than learning it intellectually.
My body would lead me places, reveal information, teach me how nature works. I was also trained in Craniosacral therapy and initiated into a mystery school. I studied ancient calendar system and how it closely structures and synchronizes our mind, defining our consciousness as a society. It lead me to understand our present day calendar and why we have lost track of ancient ways of connecting with the universe in and through ourselves.
In order to really learn something we must embody it’s teaching. As a part of my process, I went through intense health issues, relapses of tropical fever which resulted in strong damage on my brain, liver, kidneys and intestines, creating many allergies and ravaging my body while I searched for healing. There was a slow ongoing decay of all internal structures, flirting with death itself.
Throughout this period I underwent myriad of alternative therapies, seen many healers, doctors, and a few hospitals, and no diagnosis or healing was found. This wasn’t solely a physical condition; this was my dark night of the soul, where I lay down in the desert, and the demons come waiting for a feast. I’ve seen the causes of suffering, the pain that defined me, the inner conflict that defined my personal story, the ego structure, the forces of ill-intent, the fears of inner death. Yet the spirit of life is so strong, and by letting go of the will and attachment to survive, light emerges like the phoenix out of the ashes.
I’ve seen the 7 pillars of the underworld, holding strongly our illusionary reality in place.
There are no words to convey the dreadful experience of slowly decaying, yet not dying, able to observe every lingering aspect of suffering. The body is the visible part of a complex invisible structure. Aspects of this structure are defined by suffering and by memory, others by soul traits and qualities we have. Roots of suffering are deeply entangled into the psyche. Our body, is a mirror of our soul, a map in the discovery and remembrance of who we are. The body is a temple where all prayers and thoughts manifest. Only, when we start to look inward, it may first feel like a chaotic ravine full of echoes from a distant past.
Surfacing from this experience, every day my body is transforming, much lighter than ever before, both literally and metaphorically …
With hindsight, this was an initiation, and when I look back, I recall only the wisdom that was gained. I remember only the colour of the eye of God. A process of retrieving fragments of self. Darkness exists as an absence of light, therefore is an experience only light can allow or take away.
In the past 3 years I’ve surfaced from the dead, transformed, a new body in the making, a new mind and new neuron pathways. Coincidently, I traveled the world and met wonderful people who became friends, an extended network of beautiful people, slowly changing their own lives, and at the same time changing the collective lifestyle of our present day society, being the change they wish to see in the world.
I’ve been blessed to witness their personal growth, their courage to stop, and look within, and to hold space for many, so as others held space for me.
You can wait for a miracle that will change the world around you, or you can be that agent of change.
Only by walking your own path can you fulfill your truth. Only by being in your truth can you allow others to find their own.
Every step we make creates waves, waves that will carry on in the sea of potential.
Happiness isn’t something we find after years of effort, happiness is a choice we make out of our present circumstances.
10 years have passed, and I am again at the beginning of a new path, yet this time I know I am not the one in charge of this stream of events we call life.
“The mark you leave upon the world isn’t engraved in stone monuments, but woven into the hearts of others”
With love,
Jean-Manuel