The juicy content and insights are in the later part, so if you have no time or patience, skip to after the picture.
I’d like to start with an apology. I feel that in the last episode, I slipped back, at least partially, into teacher mode with statements like “we are all traumatised”. While I do believe that it’s not for me to make any statements about you or people in general. I am here to share my journey with the goal that you might gain something from following it: An insight, a realisation, new ideas, something to reflect on - and not to tell you what you are or need to do. That’s your journey. I hereby reaffirm my pledge to humility - and also recognise I am human. I am learning and growing.
This is the human journey. But I have more interesting things to share. I feel that I am getting closer to cracking the code of life. This is big because that’s literally what set me off on this journey. Over the years, I felt that my understanding of what makes humans happy improved significantly but I was far from feeling that I had to key to it. Last year life showed me that knowledge and awareness are a requirement but embodiment really is the key. You gotta walk the talk.
And embodiment is hard. Embodiment meant letting go, surrender, stop wanting to plan and control life, stop believing to know what I need and let life show me what it is, be more giving, loving and sharing, stop worrying about money or the future and trust that life will bring me exactly what I need. I realised that what I have done for four decades of my life did not bring me that eternal happiness I now believe exists and so the only way to find out was to jump, to let go, trust and see where it takes me.
When I did that beautiful things started to happen. Some will sound unbelievable and others just like luck or coincidences. You don’t have to believe anything. I just invite you to see what it evokes in you. For me they have become new truths and realities and I am therefore continuing that journey which is getting more beautiful, peaceful and effortless by the minute which in turn allows me to surrender even deeper, becoming a servant of my higher self rather than staying a victim of my ego.
Let me share a few stories to illustrate what I am talking about. A few days ago I drove to a therapist called Nuno. He deserves his own newsletter and that’s for another time. On the way, I was listening to the book Satan. I think it’s the fifth time as I’m working its messages into my system. In one passage he talks about the ancient language of Aramaic which used to be as popular as English is today and Jesus apparently communicated in Aramaic especially when he was sharing wisdom with his disciples.
The author mentions that “Mecca, the holiest city in Islam, is an Aramaic word (Maccah) that means “to break through.” At that moment, I look out of my window and I see the sign for the village I am entering: “Maça” Wow. What are the chances? I didn’t even know there was a village with that name. And the timing. And the meaning: Breaking through.
Another example: I recently moved to the countryside, see picture. Before the move, I did visualisations of living in the countryside and asked for an opportunity to present itself. I hadn’t looked for properties or anything nor did I tell anybody. Within two days of doing so, a dear friend of mine pinged me and asked whether I wanted to rent their countryside property. I knew their place well but it didn’t even come to me that this might be the place for me and that it would be available.
Another thing is numbers. I constantly see number triplets like 11:11 (time) or 2,22 Euro or Bitcoin price of 17,555 or leaving a WhatsApp message of 1:11 length or 66,444 unread emails in my inbox (lots of spam, I stopped deleting emails). I get these numbers constantly and I didn't use to get anything like that before.
What I have learnt is that all the above are signs that I am in alignment with my path. It’s the universe talking to me. I know what you are thinking. And I don’t blame you. It’s hard to believe this stuff but when you experience it all the time, every day, you can’t deny it. And I realised my mind doesn’t understand life and this is how it works. Nothing is like it seems. And that’s one of the joys of the journey of awakening. I learn and witness amazing stuff. I could go on and on sharing stories about encounters and synchronicities.
So what do I do differently than before? I am increasingly quieting the left side of my brain and letting my intuition, heart, gut and deeper knowing guide me. I reduced my obsessive thinking and worrying about money and my future and my career and relationships and all the other previously seeming life construction sites and replaced them with trust, gratitude, faith and surrender. I am asking myself how can I serve and support others rather than what I want or think I need.
And the result I am experiencing speaks for itself. I feel more at peace, at ease, in flow, present, grateful and recognise the beauty of life. I stopped fighting and controlling. I see that whatever happens is in the service of me learning and growing. The more I am in this acceptance, the more life supports my journey in a gentle and empowering way.
Life is always supporting our journey but when I was in resistance or focused only on what I wanted, life would give me pain and I would be in some form of suffering with the purpose that I can recognise that I need to change, that I am off. For most of my life, I was ignorant that this is how it works. I think we as humanity are - and hence all the suffering and quest to find meaning in it. I used to think I am lucky or unlucky or it was my hard work or the lack of it that led to an outcome. While how I show up obviously influences the outcome and I might even get what we want, life has a magical way of always giving me what we need: Pain or joy.
I have countless examples, let me share two with you: When I was a startup founder in Brazil, my co-founder and I struggled to make the company work but in the end secured funding from a high-profile investor. I was like yay, we are going to make it big but the trouble started the moment we had money. We had very different ideas of how to run the business and the conflict escalated to the level that my co-founder worked hard at ousting me and I ended up leaving the company a year later. When I cleared my desk, I found that he had hidden a small sculpture of a man bowing which turned out to be Brazilian witchcraft. Yes, our separation was nasty. It was a proper divorce.
The lesson I needed to learn was that a) this work was not in alignment with my purpose and to get into alignment I needed some harsh wake-up calls in the form of betrayal and my “baby” being taken away from me. If that had not happened I would not write this newsletters because that very experience made me question everything and start seeking for the purpose of life. It was a blessing in disguise. They all are.
Everything is a gift. If I can’t see the gift then I am not looking at whatever happens in the right way. Everything that happens to us is in the purpose of unfolding of our higher self. Unhappy in the job or relationship, having trouble with money or so much you don’t know what to do with or how to invest it, keep being ousted or mobbed from jobs (like I was), and, this is going to be highly controversial but being constantly sick or suffering from a disease, it’s all in service of our soul journey. To heal, to wake up, to learn, to make changes. I will write about the disease statement another time. And about what I mean by soul journey and what the soul really is. These topics merit their own episode; or many of them. It’s a big topic.
Teaser: The soul is information in the quantum field. Science and spirituality don’t contradict each other, they are two sides of the same coin. And when we apply that to our thinking, science and they way we do things, life as we know it and our understanding of it will transform. That’s what I am working on, to support this awakening and transition. I hope to share more about the project in the near future. If this is of interest to you, hit the reply button and message me.
The other thing that I believe I needed to learn was to let go of the ego. Both my co-founder and I were stuck in it and the result was a big conflict and the company going under in the process. Our egos killed the very thing that we wanted to feed our egos on. Isn't that irconic? So at least two big lessons here. Both were necessary for my own good, growth and evolution. Many years later, I can now clearly see the gift and necessity of it. The purpose of life is about learning, growing and expanding, it’s a developmental journey. When we accept that rather than striving for outcomes like success, money, appreciation, beauty, luxury, comfort, etc. then we flow with life, it becomes a continuous experience rather than a mission to make it. It becomes effortless, not easy, but effortless.
I will keep the second example brief as I wrote about it here at the time: In 2021, I made a fortune aggressively speculating on Bitcoin and not much later I lost it all and a big part of the principle as well. And then I did the same thing again the same year. It left me with less money than when I started years ago. I created and destroyed a fortune in the process. When I look back at how it all unfolded it feels surreal. Why did I do what I did? It was plain stupid, reckless, and it was exactly what needed to happen. I didn't know any better at that time as trauma that was anchored in my body made me freeze, unable to act, when I should have sold. My reptilian mind had taken over. I needed to work and heal from that programming.
And I needed a lesson in humility, that I am here to be in service rather than hoarding money. And that my focus had to shift to the spiritual journey rather than trying to do both, get rich and enlightened ;) And this experience of loss achieved all of that beautifully and very effectively. Many things like the violent exchange with a friend (see episode below) and the learnings from it would never have happened if it had not lost that money. It was a piece in the puzzle of my unfoldment. Beautiful now that I can understand it that way.
The linearity and unfolding of life are incomprehensible for the mind and superficial cause effect logic. We can’t grasp or anticipate what will happen because of what happened. We just see it for what it is in the moment, good or bad, pleasant or painful. But it is so much more. And it always is in our highest service. Life always happens for me not to me. A beautiful parable is the following story. You can find a full version of it here. The short one is this:
A man’s horse runs away. The villagers tell him how unlucky he is. His response: Who knows what’s good or bad? The next day the horse comes back with ten wild horses. The villagers say: You were right, you are so lucky. The father: Who knows what’s good or bad? The next day the son rides one of the wild horses, falls, breaks his legs and becomes a cripple. The neighbours: You are so unlucky. The father: … The next day the army comes through the village and inscribes all able-bodied men. The neighbours: You are so lucky. The father: …
The lesson of the story: I don’t know what’s good or bad. None of us do. We just have a belief, an opinion, a view. But the magic and unfoldment of life are way beyond mental comprehension. Life doesn't unfold linearly and logically through time. And we can’t anticipate what will happen when and if. That’s just what our minds like to think and make us believe. And they do a great job at it. This illusion is thick.
As Steve Jobs famously said: You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
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