My story

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The final truth of life was always there. I walked right passed it every day, like walking passed an old sign forgotten by the side of the road.

It was there in the smallest things and in the largest. Subtle and yet powerful, it is present in every moment of our lives, right beneath the surface.

I don’t know if I can open your eyes to it. I think the way it works is you can only do it yourself. Instead, let me tell you the story of what happened to me when I finally saw it.

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Written version:

I can’t say I was having a good run of life when this foundational truth came to me. I had been through all kinds of hell, up to that point: a deeply scarred childhood, severe health issues, failed relationships, fights, confusion, an unstable home.

Even when I tried to move on, to look to the future, a past like that tends to pull you down. The result of it was a chaotic life, isolationism, a failed marriage, a career I could barely handle.

When I wasn’t chasing my own tail running life in a kind of crisis-management mode, I was knee-deep in any sort of relief I could find: drugs, sex, games, you name it.

I knew I couldn’t keep at it forever, that it would eventually consume me, but it didn’t feel like much of a choice. Yet, even feeling choiceless, there was always a part of me looking to something else, hoping for some kind of deeper meaning from life.

I wonder if it was that part that invited this final truth or if it’s more like an uninvited guest that shows up for dinner and pulls a winning lottery ticket out of their pocket with your name on it.

When this truth came to me, it didn’t come as a word, a thought or a realization. If it had, my mind would have eventually swept it aside, like so many other thoughts I forget about.

Instead, it came as an experience, a living thing which was so tremendously powerful that it knocked me out of my entire pattern.

It started off in a small way. I began to notice the presence of some kind of empty space hiding behind thought, behind regular life, just right beneath the surface.

It didn’t feel important, but it felt so different from everything else that it made me curious, so I began paying attention to it.

As I was doing so, I noticed that it had a strange kind of magnetic pull. It drew my attention in. This felt interesting, so I let it happen. I said a kind of “yes” to it and when I did, something began to accelerate.

That small, empty space I had noticed suddenly became vast and pulled my attention in much deeper. I felt more focused than I had ever been in my life. It was almost intoxicating, so I stayed with it.

It kept growing as I did and it wasn’t long before the speed at which it was expanding became so terrifying that I was silenced in awe. I thought it would break my mind because it wasn’t just the space growing – it was my attention, my focus. That magnetism kept pulling at it, expanding beyond anything I thought possible.

And then suddenly, there came a singular moment right at the end that was like a pure lightning strike.

When it hit me, it destroyed past, future, time itself and left me as this kind of present-awareness only. In doing so, it so deeply removed all the hardship from my troubled past that there was not a single trace to be found.

It shot me out of my body, out of my personhood. It revealed that before all of this ever happened, before my entire life happened, there was a kind of “presence” there, and it led me to it.

I became that “presence”. I felt light, calm, like the great weight of history had been lifted.

All the sorrow I used to feel was gone. All the anxiety I felt about the future, done. Any kind of fear you can imagine, big or small, not even there.

That mode of being, that complete awareness I can only describe through metaphor:

It was like I had been on a long car drive and, somehow, forgot that this entire life of mine, this “me”, was just the car. I was really the driver inside, which is that “presence”.

And now, finally, for whatever reason, the driver pulled over, stepped out of the car, stretched his legs and the full majesty of life revealed itself, right by the side of the road.

It was subtle at first, like the very first glimpse of mountains behind trees, or how you start to hear the pleasant flow of water from a stream nearby.

You don’t know when it happens but suddenly you feel part of it, part of that nature and you have a sense of growing into it, of awakening to the fact that you were always all of it, not just that car by the side of the road.

When you become that full majesty of life, it is such a total experience that I can’t really describe it. You can call it a timeless state, boundless, eternal, light, beautiful but all your words will fall short of the thing itself.

After that experience, when I came back to my senses in the physical world, something had deeply changed. I walked outside and picked up a small pebble, of all things, from between the roots of an old tree.

I wish I could show you what looked back at me from that pebble: the grace and reverance of a kind of endless sacred, immeasurably rich with potential, even in that one humble thing.

I could have stayed there with that pebble in my hand for the rest of my life and would have been the happiest for it, but I let go of it, willingly and with no regret. Even that greatness was not needed. Nothing was needed because all conflict within me had been resolved. Inside and out, the world was new.

For the past few years, that experience has brought me a great peace of mind.

It gave me an incredible resilience against sorrow and left me the ability to step out of myself, just like out of that car, whenever life takes a wrong turn. All it takes is one glimpse of that majesty beyond to heal my wounds, resolve my hurts and give me renewed vitality for life.

It allows me to reach a certain kind of wisdom which I regularly use to make life better. Whenever I get a bit lost, I simply tap into it and it comes to me as such a clarifying experience that it doesn’t just “solve” my problems, it destroys the very illusion of them.

I’d like to share with you a few curious things from that wisdom, which you might find interesting:

No matter your background or tradition, this experience doesn’t challenge any beliefs you already have. In fact, in a strange way, it shows you that everything you’ve been told is true.

In another way, it reveals to you that all of those things you’ve been told or know, all of those thoughts, ideas and truths are like waves that crash upon the shore of the experience itself.

By its very nature, it belongs to no religion, for any particular ritual is not divinity itself, merely a part of it, an expression of it.

It belongs to no language, for in all its might, language is like a rudderless boat that sinks in the ocean of that paradox. To tell you the truth, the more you speak of it, the bigger a liar it makes of you.

It is quite beyond the realm of regular human experience and because of that, all of our tools, including language, are not well suited to probe it.

The best one can hope for is to simply experience it, to be in its presence with every ounce of one’s senses and enjoy the benefits, much like how we can enjoy sunlight on a beautiful day without needing to put a word to it.

In a strange way, this experience isn’t something of the realm of time and anchored in it you become aware of how the linearity of time only exists as a projection of our mind. In fact, a lot of the things our minds usefully keep separate, such as time and space, begin to “meld” there into something else, something that feels complete.

I know that in a way, these are just words to you, but to me, they are a small reflection of an experience that can do so much more, even practically, in day to day life.

What it did to me is that it took the troubled man that I was, trapped in a small town and the prisons of his own making and set him free, turned him into an explorer of the world. Since then, I have travelled thousands of KMs, seen 12 countries and lived in 7 of them, months at a time, just for the joy of experiencing life in all its different colors.

That would have been enough, but it did so much more. It made peace between all my conflicting desires which opened me up to meeting the love of my life and others I now deeply cherish.

It’s how I finally accepted myself. It’s what gave me the confidence to bravely see the world and have the lightness in my step to enjoy it, no matter what comes or goes.

And finally…if I had done none of this and just stayed there, next to that tree, holding that pebble or letting it drop, I could have lived in a happiness just as radiant and full. That’s the kind of freedom it gives you.

Of course, if you happen to believe me, the next logical question is: Can I show you how to have this experience yourself, can I teach it to you or guide you to it?

I really wish I could. Can you imagine the kind of world that would make, when for most of us, many of our troubles and sorrows would simply vanish into thin air?

But the truth is, I can’t. You have to find your own way out, just like I did. It’s so deeply personal that no one can take the steps for you.

All I can do is encourage you, keep you company, if you enjoy it, but you have to have the experience yourself. Anything else is just words and will not do.

I wish I could give it to you, but it’s not mine to give at all. It belongs to all of us already, like a birthright. It has always been there and it will always be there, waiting for you to claim it, just like I did.

Until then, let me offer you this instead: bring your life to me. Let me talk to you about it and about my own.

Let me see if I can at least pull from that wisdom and give you the kind of mobility you need to make your life lighter and more enjoyable. That’s plenty enough for most of us.

At least I can put this new intuition to good use and point things out to you in a very different light. Even that might help a great deal.

And who knows? It might be just what you’ve been waiting for to have the experience yourself and reclaim a kind of power that has always been yours.