short for time? skip down to the bit titled “ego death”.
“again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of god.” — matthew 19:24
there are days when i feel like i am a pressure cooker about to explode. as i am working hard to transmute my shadows into gifts, i am confronted with the fears and stories of myself. i am letting go of the old, of my patterns, behaviours and ways of thinking that are fear and scarcity based.
i know i will eventually let it go and i would love that day to be today - yet i am squirming trying to get out of my skin, trying to escape the transformation i am going through. my system is fighting the change from deep within and at the same time, i know it’s already happening.
birth is painful. and this is the birth of a new me. but to be born, i first need to die. i have died seemingly many times (whether it was destroying wealth, stripping naked or surrendering everything) and it never gets easier. our two greatest fears are the fear of death and the fear of failure. the body doesn’t like to die nor does the ego.
on tuesday, i woke up to a message from a friend that triggered me deeply. my whole body went into contraction and vincent just wanted to shout, even scream at him. luckily, i recognised it for what it was, took a deep breath and sat down to meditate.
and there i found clarity: this is another gift in disguise courtesy of life aimed at continuing my development. we get these gifts all the time and they become more powerful and frequent as we become more aware as our soul asks to progress and accelerate: life doesn’t give me what vincent wants but what vincent needs to evolve. it’s a beautiful system once we can appreciate it for what it is. until then i fight and resist it, my ego is, and that’s the battle of life we experience daily: something happens and it’s not what we want.
the timing of this gift was also impeccable: tuesday was my six month anniversary of the journey that started this newsletter. i used to call that a coincidence but when there are coincidences every day and sometimes many a day you start seeing it for what it is: divine timing - more precise than a swiss watch.
the message felt abusive even more so coming from a close friend. for the majority of the following 36 hours, i was in an internal fight, in victim mode, feeling like our relationship was unbalanced, i was not appreciated and taken advantage of - or so my ego felt. but it was a gift in disguise and there were three things to learn - all powerful and one life-transforming.
expectations vs. agreements
the two of us had made an arrangement but it was a verbal one and we did not discuss the terms in detail - given that we are friends. that was the cardinal mistake and it’s something i have done numerous times in my life. life keeps showing me what i need to see as many times until i learn from it and change.
i didn't just fail at creating a written agreement but also not discussing it properly meant, as his message revealed, that we had very different understandings. and while i was fuming i should not have been surprised. life’s message to me was loud and clear.
i should also have known better as i have worked with all my clients on what steve chandler calls “expectations vs. agreements”. you can find his 30 mins recording here. it’s a treat. one of my former clients even told me that everybody at the company now uses it and i like to think that there are a lot less misunderstandings as a result.
learning: create written agreements wherever misunderstandings could threaten the relationship. they don’t have to be formal but once it’s in black and white it will become clear quickly whether both parties are on the same page or not. a prenup also serves this purpose - though there can be different motivations for having one.
moving out of victimhood and story
next up: the message also put me into victimhood and presented to me all the stories i am still stuck in - despite all the work i have been doing. this stuff goes very deep and as i previously shared, being aware of it is a big step but it’s a tiny step compared to what is needed to move through and out of the stories. and doing so feels like dying - more on that below.
the message triggered my money story (“this is not fair”, “i am overpaying” and “i don’t have enough”) which is an expression of me living in perceived scarcity rather than abundance and having a lack of faith and trust in life and my ability to generate money at will. stories are usually not true but they have a very powerful grip on our subconscious and feel like truths to us. they keep us in bondage. this was a big anniversary present bringing to the surface a lot of what i needed to see to move out of the story of “i can’t make a mistake” (perfectionism) and the underlying belief that “no one has my back” (and hence i can’t trust).
it’s ultimately courtesy of reverberations of the divorce of my parents at age sixteen. this is not blaming my parents, they did the best they could at that time which is what we all do: doing the best we can at the time. this is about understanding where these limiting beliefs come from and i am grateful to them because they gave me exactly what i needed to unfold in the way i did which lead to these realisations and the work i am doing. just like the message from my friend or getting punched by another friend (here), it was a gift in disguise. a painful, difficult one but therefore also a powerful, a life-transforming and defining one.
all of these conditioned beliefs are holding me back to be the person i am meant to be and they needed to be there for me to become the person i am meant to be. you gotta love these paradoxes of life. both statements are true. as the gene keys beautifully convey: our shadows (contracted, limiting beliefs, trauma) are the keys to unlocking our gifts (our expansive, higher expression, the person we are meant to be/become).
the important part is that i don’t stay stuck but move out of my shadows/limiting beliefs. and that is hard. and it is the very thing i am, and i believe we all are here to do: to evolve from darkness to light. and i don’t even have to believe in any of that because when i do i can experience the result of moving from resistance, struggle and suffering into acceptance, flow and bliss. and the only way to find out is to actually do it, to live, to embody it. no thinking can get me there.
that is where trust, faith and surrender come into play. because these limiting beliefs are to the mind and my ego/psyche who i am, they feel like the truth. so to move out of them i have to not only become aware but transmute and thereby let them go. and that feels like dying. which brings me to lesson no. three, the life-transforming one:
ego death
“the gradual transformation of ancient karma is like watching a saucepan of water slowly coming to a boil — for a considerable amount of time, nothing appears to be occurring. at a certain point, however, you sense a great pressure building within the saucepan, and you see the telltale signs that something big is about to happen — vapour begins to rise, a tangible heat begins to emanate, tiny bubbles prick the surface. when the explosion finally happens, it happens all at once and appears to be unstoppable. this describes the process of the dawning of the siddhis — the higher divine consciousness hiding in your dna.” — the 32nd siddhi - veneration - the perfume of consciousness - from the gene keys
over those 36 hours, i have been moving from rage to anger, to disbelief, to peace, to acceptance, to forgiveness (both to him and myself), to gratitude, to surrender and ultimately to ego death. ego what? more on that in a minute.
what guided me - in this order - were meditation, reflection, a light mushroom journey in nature (to move into the heart), a conversation with my coach, more meditation and reflection, falling asleep to listening to my own newsletter (aka reminding myself of the learnings of my journey), a night of sleep, a morning run in nature, lying in a hammock listening to my life’s gene keys aka the map of my life, listening to my ayahuasca episodes (newsletter 36/ - 40/) where i experienced an ego death in ceremony and meditating on all of this as the sun was setting and…
coming to the realisation that all the work i have done, the journey of seven years of seeking and then working hard at embodying it for the past year is coming to a conclusion. i can keep dancing around, exploring and talking about it or i can start fully and completely embodying it. i know that this is where i am going anyway so why not do it now?
the suffering triggered by a message showed me what i no longer want and how i continue standing in my own way and that of my unfoldment. how i keep myself stuck in all kinds of, yes, deep-rooted and hard-to-let-go stories but hey, this is the very thing i have been working on so let’s get it done and over with. i would not want to let such a beautiful and divinely timed gift go to waste.
with the blessing of having a sauna, i decided to get myself into “fire” to burn and sweat out of my system what had to die today. while i was cranking up the heat and sat in the ice-cold pool in between sessions, i was feeling into how life will be once i let go of my limiting stories moving from life being about me, protecting myself, procrastinating to not make mistakes and not to risk spending money, fear of failure, etc. etc. bla bla bla, to a life of presence, love and surrender and being about that very message. the messenger and the message are the same. it’s all about being rather than talking about it.
and as i felt into the “new” surrendering me, i started experiencing feeling this newfound freedom i would be enjoying. and the more i was feeling into it, the easier it became to let go of vincent and embrace the new me. i was moving from being scared of letting go and resisting to changing to being elated, excited and deeply grateful for what is to come.
from this day onwards i am committed to be guided by trust, faith, surrender, gratitude and in service of others in whatever shape or form it takes. the construct of vincent is dying and making room for the vessel that is emptying itself so it can be the message without the need to be or achieve anything. a pure message through the absence of ego and fear.
and if life works as i understand it to, as a result, this message will reach many more people than if the message were about me. this is really my message for all of us: when i get out of my own way, when i let go of the ego, i raise my vibration and open up for divinity to flow through and i start experiencing life and the power i am in a way that no other way of being ever can.
but to experience that magic, the ego has to die. i need to move from “me” to me surrendering to being in service and life’s unfolding. and i have absolute conviction that magic unfolds from here. will i not be in the ego ever again? of course not, i will drop back into it many times, daily, as old wounds will get triggered but my commitment is to be aware and continuously move out of it by making life no longer about me. we will see how that is unfolding.
with love,
vincent
ps. the next newsletter will take a very different format - a break from my journey and an immersion into what i am seeing.
my view and me as i decided that today is the day:
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