We
live in an unfair world. For the most part, the dice are thrown at birth. If
you are raised in an upper-middle class family in Silicon Valley, your chance
of professional and financial success are a million times higher than if you
were born into a broken family with an alcoholic father in Cameroon. I have
traveled to over 50 countries in the world and I can see how determining the
environment we are raised in is.
All
leaders understand that an organization is far more successful when its members
believe they are treated fairly and that the system is a meritocracy, where
progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class privilege or
wealth. Many good leaders strive to create order from the natural chaos of
life, and ensure that group members are rewarded according to their actual
contribution, themselves included. Unfortunately; many leaders in all branches
of society are only making the pretense of justice through sophisticated
manipulations and dissimulations, while continuing to follow purely selfish
desires. This is why people are more and more disillusioned with politics as
they see more and more clearly through the web of lies of leading political
parties. But this trend is encompassing all fields of society.
I
have had extensive experience with the US legal system and I can only see there
the law of the fittest and not the law of justice. People are being fooled by the
illusion of fairness in the legal system because laws appear to be neutral and
impartial. However, people interpreting the laws are subjective and can easily
fall into diverse manipulation, corruption or weakness of character. Most
people that have had to endure the US legal system realize that the system
itself composed of judges, lawyers and specialists was a more redoubtable
adversary than the foe they intended to protect themselves from. I may sound
harsh with the US legal system but it is actually better than many legal
systems throughout the world that are even far more corrupt.
Following
the same train of thoughts, many people, mostly atheists, are arguing that if
God was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, justice and love as all religions
claim, then why would the world carry so much pain? We can witness so many real
stories where “the good” are abused by “the bad” or where “the cheaters” win
over the principled ones. This goes against everything we read or watched as a
kid. We get to realize we were led to believe in justice so that we could
better manipulated but that it is mostly an illusion.
However;
there are many people that came from horrendous childhood environments and
managed to overcome their challenging background to achieve extraordinary
success. Motivational speakers abound in citing examples from famous people
overcoming early struggles. Though they
are a minority, I personally know people who endured the worst possible
childhood and who were later on able to raise on top of their field. But if we
look at these outliers, these same people had some extraordinary talent that
made possible for them to create new opportunities in their life. So to an
extent, they were gifted with some good cards despite their environment. So
even this argument is more the exception that confirms the rule that we do not
live in a fair environment.
We
make the mistake to equate financial & professional success as the ultimate
goal in life. However, if we dive deeper within, we realize that genuine happiness
is really what we are after. We only want to be successful as far as we think
it is going to make us happy. We all know financially and professionally
successful people that are miserable and ordinary people that live a truly
happy life. So it appears that happiness may be far less dependent on external
situations than we may think.
I
can see in my meditation that behind the background of emotions we got to
experience every day such as excitement, sadness, joy or disappointment, we can
find another dimension of self, the one that is beyond the roles we play
everyday. When we commune with our inner self, and we touch our core, what do
we find there? Peace or torment.
Torment
has many characteristics. It feels like something is missing, that we are out
of integrity, we cannot sit still as a result and we are looking for ways to
distract ourselves. Judgment towards others or self-hatred which is really the
same thing, restlessness, shame, the desire to hide our shameful self by
projecting a new persona, identification with negative emotions, feeling split
and divided, the feeling unworthy of love, alone and disconnected are all
attributes of this state. Actually; many successful people are tormented. Their
professional activity or financial success may be simply a coping mechanism for
hiding their unhealed traumas or not a direct creative expression of their
being.
Peace,
on the opposite, comes with the alignment of our personality with our higher
self. In that state, we feel love effortlessly by the simple act of being
alive. We feel complete, and we may be alone without feeling lonely. We have
desires without compulsive needs. We have faith in our future, and we are
grateful of the lessons learned even if they were painful. We feel guided and
protected. We stay the same authentic person in all situations. We are able to
be fully present. Our activities are a natural and direct expression of our
being and not an escape.
Genuine
and lasting happiness comes mostly from our inner-self and it will determine if
we experience torment or peace. This is where divine justice lies. When life
brings us joy, we can simply rejoice in it but as life brings us suffering, we
have the choice of using this hardship and learning from it. We can then get
more loving, compassionate, pure and wise. The conscious experience of
suffering can help us narrow the gap between our personality and our spirit, to
live a more authentic life and experience inner peace as a result.
One year ago, I lost the woman I loved which compounded the loss of my 2 children 2 years prior. This brought very deep torment to my soul. I struggled with guilt, sadness, betrayal, disappointment, bitterness, discouragement, and depression. I used the very same tools that I am practicing daily on my healing clients, to heal myself. These tools include: inner work, introspection, conscious somatic experience of negative emotions, learning the lessons, surrounding the hurt aspects with unconditional love & presence, taking responsibility and initiating the appropriate actions.
During
the past year, my external situation did not change. However; I am now feeling
very different. I am finally AT PEACE. I realize this is the most important
thing. This makes me believe that divine justice does exist because there is
always a way to make a profit from suffering that comes our way. We are not
choosing suffering consciously (though it can be argued that our higher self
does) but when tragedy strikes, we still have a choice to look for the hidden
gift. The fact that the painful external situation that revealed the inner
struggle or unhealed traumas (the loss of love or children in my case) is not
changing despite a drastic improved inner state is not a contradiction with the
law of attraction because we live in an abundant universe. The law of
attraction needs to respect the free will and the point of attraction of all
parties involved. So, for example, if one has been alienated from his children,
a loving stepchild may appear. Or if the former beloved does not come back to
your life, an even more beautiful love will manifest. This is why it is so
important not to be fixated on the outcome, but instead to follow one’s heart
and surrender to spirit. Human justice may be imperfect so take refuge in
divine justice, and inner peace becomes our ultimate reward. Help yourself, and
God will help you.
It is very clear to me that I entered a new phase of my life. I have stripped away many false identities and personalities. Over the past couple of months, a new first name kept popping up intuitively for me. First, I dismissed it and did not make too much of it. Then, as it kept coming back, I started to consider it. The direction of my new life appeared more clearly to me and it became evident I had to carry a first name that is more aligned with the new energies I am meant to bring forth. So this is it. I will change my first name from Ale to Vaillant when I turn 45 on June 20th.
A similar event happened to me when I turned 26. I had just integrated the biggest trauma of my childhood, and my focus and desire turned into external physical manifestation. I was provided intuitively the new first name Ale. Ale has the same pronunciation in French than “Allez” which means “Go for it”. It facilitates the transfer from thought to action, and helped me going from a dreamer and explorer to a doer. During that time, I built a healthcare and a software company in the Silicon Valley, ran a non-profit organization, had 2 children in a 15 year marriage and was Vice Consul of Monaco for 7 years.
In my early twenties, I became fascinated with numerology. While I do not rely on divination arts such as astrology, tarot, human design, numerology or palmistry to make my decisions, I have always been impressed with the insights provided by them, and they offer a great validation tool to what we already feel intuitively. So I looked at the numerology meaning of the different names and what I found sealed my decision!
I was born Alexandre. In Chaldean name numerology, its destiny number is a 4. 4s are influenced by Uranus that bring sudden and unexpected events in a mysterious way. During my childhood, my family life was quite unstable with many moves and the divorce of my parents when I was 10. I joined a cult when I was 20 (left when I was 23), got married the first time when I was 21 and emigrated to the US on my own when I was 22. I actually did not take my career seriously until I turned 26. 4s are known to plan the foundation of the future with weird ideas. They are practical persons that believe in individualism, tolerance and originality. This is very consistent with my youth. I was quite individualistic and distrusted groups because of my enmeshment fears. I was very practical with my schoolwork always striving to be the best and I was an idealist at the same time with a sincere desire to change the world. I showed a secretive nature displayed unexpected behavior to others as 4s typically do during this phase of my life.
As I turned 26, after a deep spiritual experience, I decided to name myself Ale. In Chaldean name numerology, its destiny number is a 9. 9s are ruled by Mars, which brings courage, aggression and humanitarian endeavors. 9s are risk takers, lead by positive example, are fighters that eventually become successful by grit, strong will and determination. 9s unfortunately experience many quarrels and strife in their home life. This was quite consistent with this phase of my life. I built a non-profit what became the largest French speaking networking organization in the Silicon Valley and helped many in the process. Then I founded my own company that kept growing despite so many obstacles I had to face along the way. My hard work, determination and perseverance made me prevail against all odds every time. I was married and divorced twice during that time, and my marriages were marked with many conflicts and drama though there was also a lot of positive coming out of them.
In Chaldean name numerology, Vaillant destiny number is a 6. 6s are ruled by Venus, the planet of love, romance, beauty, art and truth. They strongly trust in truth, justice and humanity. They are born teachers and healers. It also symbolizes unconditional love, home and hearth, loving relationships of every kind and deep compassion bordering on empathy. This is again very consistent to what I am feeling internally or what I am aspiring to. The Mars energy helped me achieve many external goals but left many of my relationships in shambles. I know I am meant to heal these relationships. I feel the thirst in my soul for the 6 energy, and we will see what comes out of it 🙂
According to Teal, I have spent most of my past incarnations as a female (and she has spent most of her past incarnations as a male) and this resonates with me. My astrology south node is in Cancer and I was a whiny kid that was shamed a lot for crying easily. I was raised in a culture and time where real men are tough and do not show emotions. So I had to repress many of the feminine energies in me to eventually become the alpha male that I became in my thirties. It was important for my soul to acquire this Mars energy in this lifetime however Venus energy feels more like home to me. I want to be a man that can integrate and welcome the more feminine qualities of nurturing, empathy, spontaneity and unconditional love. By harmonizing the Yin and the Yang in me, I will eventually be able to recreate this harmonious union of the feminine and masculine in my personal life, which is something I have failed to do up to this point.
What I feel intuitively as I enter this new cycle of life, and become Vaillant, I will become relationship-focused rather than action-focused. I will probably spend more time in Europe as its culture is more focused on relations. I want my life to be more about helping people, enjoying deeper connection with others, experiencing harmony in my home and relationships. I am getting to understand that ultimate happiness comes from sharing your inner light and joy with others, from helping others to reconnect with the love of their soul, from appreciating beauty around us and the simple things of life, to love God and to love each other.
Since I have been a teenager, one of my favorite song has been the “businessman blues” from Michel Berger. It was made popular internationally by Celine Dion and I would like to share it with you here. Here are the lyrics translated in English that express so well the transition from 9 to 6 energies.
The businessman’s blues
I’m successful in business
I’m successful in love
I often change of secretary
My office is at the top of a tower
From there I contemplate the whole city
From there I control my universe
I spend half my life in the air
Between New York and Singapour
I always travel in first class
I have my secondary residence
In all the Hiltons of the Earth
I can’t stand poverty
At least, are you happy?
I’m not happy but I look like it
I lost my sense of humor
Since I have a business sense
I have succeeded and I am proud of it
In fact, I only have a single regret
I am not doing what I wanted to do
What do you want my friend
In life we do what we can
Not what we want…
I wanted to be an artist
To be able to play my act
When the plane lands on the runway
In Rotterdam or in Rio
I wanted to be a singer
To be able to scream who I am
I wanted to be a writer
To be able to create my life (bis)
I wanted to be an actor
To change skin everyday
And to be able to think I am handsome
On a big colored screen (bis)
I wanted to be an artist
To make a new world
To be able to be an anarchist
And live like a millionaire (bis)
I wanted to be an artist
To be able to say why I exist
Is your name energy aligned to who you truly are? Who do you want to become and which name resonates with you? Would you like to empower yourself to create your own destiny?
It has become clear to me that the events of the past couple of years were meant to get me to step into my authenticity. Most of us are suffering from attachment traumas because our caregivers were not able to give us the unconditional love, reflection, emotional support, attention and availability that we needed to develop into emotionally secure human being. Why? Simply because they suffered the same traumas, and what is not healed is passed on to the next generation. These attachment traumas convert into the belief that something is wrong with us and that we are not lovable (core shame). As a result, we create masks in order to get the love that we desperately need. I have seen this subconscious pattern clearly in my love relationships over a 20-year period. The enmeshment trauma with my mum combined with the absence of my dad has created the unconscious belief that I can only be loved for what I do, the role I play and not for who I am. In this configuration, to be needed is to be loved while too much neediness is putting my inner child in a panic as it reminds this immature self of the pressure it could not handle. So here is my pattern. I fall in love with a woman, and I seduce her by projecting the image of the type of man that she wants. One was in an abusive relationship, so I became her savior. Another one was in deep spiritual search, so I became a spiritual guide. Another one was in search of financial security and status so I became a provider, a successful executive or a vice-consul. Another one needed constant external emotional regulation so I became a full-time caretaker. The trick worked in getting the woman I fell for, but there are consequences. As time passes, my partner gets to see the other parts of me and feels duped. By that time, she is however attached and committed to make the relationship work, especially as she struggles with her own abandonment traumas. Frequent arguments and constant drama are the mark of such relationships as my partner is in love with someone she is incompatible with. Her whole focus becomes about fixing me to become the person I was when I was courting her. This triggers my shame and I respond by pointing her own flaws, which triggers in turn her own shame. In my attempts to get my love relationship to work, I developed impressive skills in holding a container for someone I am not compatible with. This is truly exhausting. Stepping into authenticity, being completely open about who I am with the belief that I am lovable the way I am, is the better alternative.
To be authentic, we first have to know who we are. I am a Gemini man who is known to be the most complex sign of the zodiac. To make the matter harder, this is also a mutable sign. Now that I am in my 40s, I feel I can better define the core of who I am, and I am going to make my best attempt to describe it. I invite every one of you to do the same exercise.
Who am I?
I am curious, smart, adventurous, responsible, positive, high-energy, a free spirit, driven, loyal, flexible, resilient, complex, eccentric, daring, resourceful, spiritual, creative, perseverant, intense, self-reliant and introspective. I am a spiritual warrior, a magician, a lover and a leader. On the negative, I can be stubborn, willful and uncompromising when I have made up my mind. I am afraid of boredom. I have several splits: warm, loving and generous vs cold-hearted, kind & sweet vs insensitive, very social vs solitary, deeply intimate vs emotionally unavailable. I do not smoke, rarely drink, do not drink coffee, never take medication unless seriously sick, I am a vegetarian and believe in a healthy lifestyle. I value financial security and believe in living within your means. I believe in fairness, justice and reciprocity.
Relationships
I love women and I am a sexual being. I love physical touch but I love connecting just as much through deep, introspective and interesting conversations. Sex is only appealing to me when it comes with a love connection. I love to love and to feel loved. I am very cuddly as I go to sleep and wake up in the morning but I will pull away in my sleep during the night. I love women who have embraced their darkness, sexuality and authenticity but can also be kind, motherly and protective. I love their purity of heart, spontaneity and sensitivity. I am into witches and artists. I am slightly love avoidant so I need someone who has the capacity to handle my coming and going with minimum anxiety. I am an alpha and I do not mind sharing the lead with a powerful woman as long as there is respect, reciprocity and no double standard. I enjoy nurturing from women tremendously. I like to be needed but not smothered. The times I have been the happiest in my life have been in an intimate relationship so love relationships are very important to me.
In friendship, I am loyal and I rely on my personal interactions with a person rather than other people’s opinions. I like people who are vulnerable, authentic and share their feelings openly. I prefer one-on-ones to group interactions, as I like to go deep. I like kind, complex and secure individuals where silence is just as comfortable as conversation. The security to care for each other in difficult times is important to me.
I love my teenage children, want to earn back their love to reconnect with them.
I am comfortable around crowds and I am expert at networking though I prefer more intimate gatherings.
Career
I am an entrepreneur and a problem solver. I love starting new ventures from scratch. I need to use my mental capacities to make a difference in people’s lives. I enjoy financial independence through real estate or business. I like stretching myself and taking risk. I need an interesting career project that is outside my relationship. I like to have control over my own time. I love working from inspiration. I transform the suffering I went through, to help others going through the same ordeal using my life experience. I like philanthropic work especially for more difficult environments such as jail, hospice, orphanage, parental alienation and ritual abuse. I love that feeling to know I have made a difference in someone’s life. I want to be liked and respected in the community for my contribution. I need significance, not only vicariously by association but also for my own contribution. I like teaching, and having a leadership role.
Hobbies
My favorite sport is tennis and I like playing it competitively. I enjoy skiing, scuba diving, biking, hiking, camping, going to the gym and running. Though I love going to the beach, I enjoy the mountains even more. I like watching movies that are meaningful, documentaries and French movies. I like going out to restaurants and performances with my loved ones. My favorite music is transcendental, 80s pop, French and classical. I like a nice comfortable & beautiful home. I like community living for the emotional support, company, and convenience but I need to have enough one-on-one time with my beloved. I love traveling and exploring new exotic places. I like inviting people over for dinner and company. I enjoy cooking food for others as long as it is not everyday and an expectation. I like organizing weekend get-outs and vacation for my loved ones. I love the outdoors.
Inner life
Meaning is important to me. I want the feeling that I have an impact and that my life is meaningful. I want a purposeful life that improves the quality of many lives. I want to live a heart-centered life. I want to awaken my subtle senses and feel so much more about life, people, animals and plants. I want to be healthy, be physically active and pain free. I like to do process work with people, to bring them to a space of new realizations and change their lives. I like process work too when I am able to get new release or understanding. I believe in balance, and in a life with eyes on the sky with feet planted solidly on the ground. I enjoy shamanic work, and accessing higher awareness to improve my life. I enjoy writing about my inner life and new understanding. My life is driven by the pursuit of happiness which is best achieved by living a heart-centered life that translates into sharing love and caring for each other, a deep connection with our Creator, simplicity, abundance and contemplation.
What a freedom and liberation to be open about who we truly are! No more need for manipulation. We stop sending mixed signals. People can decide on their own if we are the type of person they would like to know better. We prefer being alone (but not lonely) than to spend time with incompatible people. Despite all our personal flaws, we still believe we are lovable just the way we are. We create a life that feels good because it is full of the people and the things we love. We become trustworthy as we connect deeper to our core. We empower ourselves to attract into our life what we value most. Our inner peace is less disturbed by external situations, obstacles and tragedies.
Come play with me and take some time to share with the rest of us who you are too!
I went back to “grandmother” last week. I am not talking about my grandmother who just turned 101-year-old, but the plant medicine administered by the shamans more commonly called Ayahuasca. Some centers in Costa Rica can actually administer it in a completely legal way. It always amazes me that some of the most toxic and addictive pharmaceutical drugs are administered completely legally in the US while the most healing and non addictive drugs such as Ayahuasca are banned. Though it was beneficial in so many ways, my last Ayahuasca journey 3 month ago had been painful however I knew I had to come back. When I went last time, I was stuck and quite desperate. This time however, I felt pretty good, having a sense of direction and making good progress on my life current challenges. But just like we should not wait for a health collapse to start exercising or eat healthy good, it is also wise to go to “grandmother” before we hit bottom.
This time, I did not have any particular intention besides coming closer to living my life with an open heart in a state of spontaneity. This has been a conscious goal of mine for at least 20 years. I feel I have made so much progress towards that goal however the destination still seems so far. I felt both anxious and in a state of acceptance before meeting “grandmother”. As we grow wiser, the fear does not disappear. Instead, we learn to speak with it so that it does not freeze us into inaction. There were just 3 of us for this ceremony, one community member and a Yoga teacher from Drake Bay, Costa Rica. We were brought to a new beautiful location with a river and abundant fruit trees. We had a couple of hours to chill out before darkness. After exploring the property, I used this opportunity to take a nap. This is when I realized I was under more pressure that I was willing to accept. After I woke up, I chatted with the shaman who shared with me his own journey in finding God. He does not see himself anymore as a separate individuality who has to control his life to make things happen. He sees himself as one of the arms of the divine, and in this new perspective and identity, synchronicity is abundant as a more universal and larger “he” is working towards the fulfillment of his mission. As we were talking after dark, I noticed the beautiful fireflies or lightning bugs that were flying around us. The shaman asked if I wanted to see one closer. He made a few steps, took one in his hands and showed it to me. The firefly was completely at peace and seemed to enjoy for me to look at it so closely. There was instinctive trust between it and the shaman, and with me vicariously. After about 2 minutes after I had all the time to contemplate the two light dots on its dots, it went back to its business flying away into the dark.
It was now time. The shaman called me to take in the magical drink. The taste is quite awful. Despite this, I declined his offer of getting honey to sweeten the bitter potion. It never takes me very much to start on my shamanic journey. The fact that I always choose to fast for at least 2 days before the medicine could be a factor. Within 5 minutes, my heartbeat had accelerated and my body felt the need to dance, sing and move. The shaman gave me a maracas to beat with the music. It felt good to be able to express the energy this way, as I know that when the energy gets stuck, confusion and purging are next. I felt the need to be active with my body for about 30 minutes until “grandmother” called me back to my inner world as I was entering the psychedelic part of the journey.
This was only my third time doing Ayahuasca. I had done it for the first time 5 years ago. During this first journey, I was first called to a high definition, high-tech fractal space. The sharp and very colorful beings that appeared were frightening as I felt I could not trust them. They initially appears as predators to me. It was so scary that I became afraid of death and leaving my body. During my second journey, I saw them again. I was not as afraid however still chose to ignore them. In this last journey, we were able to establish a more trusting connection as I started to accept that they might be benevolent beings from a higher dimension. They felt like doctors from the future. They took me in what seemed like a spaceship for treatment and were quite busy. Their physical appearance seemed like high technology, very colorful, robotic flamingos. As I warmed up to them, I even entertained the fact that I could be one of them on a visit to Earth. They recommended to me to keep coming every 3 month for a check-up as it is critical that I keep working on my heart connection, as I will inevitably gather heart blocks and hindrances during the normal course of my life at this stage of my evolution on Earth. My heart is the receptor that makes it possible to listen to the truth from higher dimensions, and live in harmony with the laws of this universe. During this journey, I identify this truth as Christ Consciousness. They went on explaining to me that the Lord left his Kingdom to our care, and only by staying connected to our heart, can we administer his territory (Earth) according his Loving and Conscious Will.
I was then brought in the current state of the world. I was sent in the immense heartless gearing of a production factory. It felt like animal farming but for humans. It was all about production, power, control, profit with no consideration for human feelings and happiness. Facing the actual reality of the matrix and new world order was incredibly brutal for my conscience under Ayahuasca. As Teal’s husband, I became interested to better understand SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse) and the abominable treatments she went through in her childhood in order to become a more supportive husband. Before I knew her, I was aware of conspiracy theories like most of us but I felt powerless to do anything about it. The information on the Internet seemed sensational, contradictory in nature and not very scientific. I felt I could not verify the veracity of one perspective against the other, so I let go and just went after my own business dealing with things I was actually in control of, which was my work, my relationship and diverse activities that increased my quality of life. A turn around of my thinking happened when I read Breaking the Chain from Svali, a former Illuminati trainer. It was so similar in many ways to what I heard from Teal direct cult experience that I knew she was telling the truth. Two other books from former president models Cathy O’Brien and Brice Taylor Trance:Formation of America and Thanks for the memories confirmed to me the corruption and moral depravity of our world leaders, and that the situation is much worse that I had initially envisioned. Most of what we are taught or hold for true are sadly just lies and manipulation. History is teaching us that we defeated the Nazis. They have actually won as their most lethal weapon Mind Control has infiltrated all parts of society that has money and power: politics, large corporations, media networks, music & sports industry all over the world. Actually, the top German experts in mind control such as Josef Mengele were placed in top US universities in complete secrecy to continue their research. The new world order is already in place as the elite realized it was much easier to control the masses when they are ignorant to what is exactly going on. The creation of superhuman slaves through trauma based mind control and dissociation is the covert tool for the elite to lead society in any way they chose to. Presidential elections are decided in advance or when they are not, they make sure to control both candidates that are presented to the people. This was the case in the USA with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and it was again the case in France with Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. National elections are nothing but a puppet show designed to distract the masses to what is really going on. The actual world leaders are not the ones that are fed to us by the media. These leaders are just corrupt puppets that have already sold their soul to the devil through criminal activities, sex deviance and various addictions. The world as we know it is actually governed by black lodges that act in complete secrecy to feed demonic or low astral entities that have cut themselves from the Source. As a result, their only way to sustain themselves is through manipulation and stealing energy from beings who are still connected with their heart with the divinity, basically people like us. “Grandmother” showed me more clearly the covert ways of how we all get corrupted. I am going to give you some examples. Being vegan is quite inconvenient in our society, so we develop the taste and the craving for unethical food that require the systematic murder of our animal friends. These foods are heavily advertised through the mainstream media. By buying and eating this food, we become the partner in crime of the elite so now we have to defend them to cover our own shame. Let’s look at another form of insidious corruption. We work hard to develop skills and abilities to get us ahead and create a better world together. During our progression, we reach a spot where we get closer to a leader that we used to admire. As we get to know him personally, we realize then his level of moral depravity and we feel disillusioned and helpless. We exchange then our sincere desire to do good for the world and our longing for a merciful God for the vanity of belonging with the “big boys”. There is then no turning back as our thirst for power and security make us then commit some actions that if revealed would make us lose everything. As we get corrupted, we become easily controlled and manipulated. This is one of the reasons why the leading politicians are such sex addicts. They had to corrupt themselves to such an extent to get to the top that sexual deviance is used to sedate them as their conscience that is tormenting them. At least this is true for the ones that are not completely disconnected and dead inside. Many facets of society are conducive to traumas that promote disconnection and selfishness so that, we, the masses are more easily manipulated. There is only one escape from this somber reality. It is the connection to our own heart. Purity, personal integrity and self-discipline, the antithesis of corruption, is what keeps this heart link alive. At that phase on my shamanic journey, I see the voice of the Lord (Christ Consciousness) on the other end of my heart. This is the inner guidance and connection we desperately need not to give in the manipulation and venality of our leadership. In their gloomy reality, everything is transactional. People’s value is judged according a hierarchy, as they hold no value in themselves. It is a predatory environment based on exploiting rather than taking care. It is a world full of backstabbing, lies, manipulation, betrayal, selfishness and apathy. To realize the split in oneself between the two realities of our heart and disconnected mind is the first step towards healing, and loosening the grip with our own demons. How we spend our time, what we buy, who we connect with will strengthen or weaken the parts of this polarity. Become a vegetarian, avoid watching TV and mainstream media, develop authentic heart-based relationships, maintain a healthy balance in your life between work, family & friends, be kind with all living beings, buy an electric car with solar panels on your roof, honor the word you gave, be congruent with your value system in all of your relationships, and build a trusting connection with the divinity. These are some practical steps we can take to do our part in this confusing world to slowly develop an internal frame of reference when faced with the brutality of the truth regarding the world elite.
During that night with “grandmother”, I was brought many times to my wife. I felt so much love towards her that the words are lacking to express this ecstatic feeling. As a species, I saw how our need to attach is so critically important. Our society and even the spiritual field is so much about developing independence however it is unnatural. This is why understanding attachment theory is such an important key in one’s personal healing and in explaining most personality disorders. Attaching to someone we love is so critical and healthy to our personal development. This is another reason why I am excited to facilitate our next singles retreat in July, and catalyze people in finding new love. Relationships are hard but there is nothing else in life that can bring the same level of contentment and fulfillment. I could see at a deeper level my absolute terror for aloneness, and accept it as something healthy. We have been shamed for wanting intimate connection as it makes us look needy, weak and dependent while this is our birthright. It is also natural to be frightened to attach as it is so painful to lose the connection once the relationship breaks. This is why I want to educate people to recognize a match when they find one and then to empower them with tools to help grow the relationship and avoid rupture. There is something truly sacred when two people commit to each other. Only a life with love is worth living. I was shown how when a woman marries a man, she gives herself to him and to that extent, he becomes her owner. However, this is ownership in the sense of nurturing and taking care in the same way Teal & I feel responsible for the land we own at Philia with all the trees, plants, animals and bugs. We will not kill even a snake or a scorpion on our property. We are not speaking here of ownership the way that the corrupt elite think of, as their understanding of ownership is nothing but exploitation. The millions of mind controlled slaves today in the world can attest to this fact.
During this new experience with Ayahuasca, I developed a new relationship with purging. Purging is used by Ayahuasca as a purification mechanism. Let’s agree to call demon, a repressed and unhealthy attachment, belief, negative emotion or fear that is here to repress a sense of lack we have within ourselves. As we experience resistance to let go of our inner demons, Ayahuasca would sometimes attach them to our own fluid to purge both at the same time. This process is painful but salutary. 3 months ago, I did so much purging that I was really not looking forward to it again. Fortunately, this time, purging was only required on two occasions. The first one was related to the culpability around my children. Interestingly enough, I thought I was exempt of culpability as I hold consciously the belief that I always do my best so if it could have been better, it would have been. Actually, Ayahuasca made me realize that I was deeply repressing the culpability of losing my children. It was difficult to accept so “grandmother” had to get me to expel it physically. It felt such a relief once this energy was out of me. The second one was related to an action that I had taken that I knew was not in the interest of a loved one while it made financially sense. The mind had fortunately won and I was full of remorse. I had to suffer the potential consequence of damaging a very important connection for a monetary gain and realized deeply that it was not worth it. I made the decision to come clean to the person, take full responsibility for my decision and openly communicate about the shadow that had taken a hold of me. I ended up doing this a couple of days later and the person, while dissatisfied, did not hold a grudge as he felt I was sincere with my regrets. “Grandmother” challenged me throughout the night with some of my beliefs and actions. She would tell me “we can do this the easy way or the hard way”. This time, she only had to do it twice the hard way, which is something I am very thankful for. I developed a new understand regarding our relationships with demons. Demons are not able to have a hold on us unless we repress feelings or emotions. Denial is a necessary condition for demons. I got to understand better why Teal is so open with her emotions when sometimes it does not show her in the best light. By being authentic on how she truly feels, even if it can be frown upon as a spiritual teacher, she makes herself less vulnerable to these demonic entities. I am also trying to be more open about my own struggles so that many will follow, and together we can be more authentic and accelerate our path of healing and learning. The most deviant men today are often the ones that are looked with the highest regards: our presidents, heads of religious institutions or non-profit organizations, artists or sports idols. The books I mentioned above will make you realize this fact. They appear saintly for the media but participate in the worst perversions behind closed doors. Many people have become experts in projecting an appearance they give that have nothing to do with reality. As we come closer to seeing reality, the level of manipulation is such that we can feel lost in believing in anything or anyone anymore. In fact, when an action is made and tries to solicit positive attention, it is already suspicious. Productive narcissism as defined by Ross Rosenberg in the Human Magnet Syndrome is still narcissism. It is enough for our intentions, thoughts and deeds to be known by the divinity. Ultimately, as we need to cross over death, this is the only authority we will have to respond anyway.
I am currently counseling a business executive in developing a truly connecting and intimate relationship with his new partner. Despite his best intention, he is unable to feel into her, see her and understand her, which activate many insecurities in her and lead to conflict. He sees her as emotionally unstable and acting out for no valid reason. He thought I would help him to fix her so he became surprised when I confronted him that most of the work would have to get him to reconnect to his heart. When I talked to him, I felt true compassion, as I understand the struggle and suffering to go through to bring back to life our inner child. Unfortunately, in the business world, we are often rewarded to develop a sociopathic behavior. 10 years ago, I remember telling a new older executive I hired for my company that I was proud that I had never fired anyone in my company. He made fun of me and told me that he is going to get me tougher. Two years later, I had to go through a downturn and had to fire almost half of the company. He congratulated me for my “progress” and expediency. As a business executive, we need to make many decisions that impact people life and families. With the goal to succeed in a highly competitive environment, we do not give ourselves the time to feel and evaluate the consequence of our decisions on our employees’ emotional life. As a consequence, we learn to feel less & less. After 20 or 30 years in a position with responsibility, we have develop the capacity to disconnect so much that we have become incapable to develop a truly intimate and connecting relationship. We start treating our significant other like an employee as we start optimizing the home life in the same way as our office life. The irony is that most of our professional success is driven by the desire to be loved, admired and respected by our loved ones. It often leads us to a place where we are wealthier but actually alone. I am spending now a lot of my time undoing what I thought was useful to my career. I want to tell the younger generation that it was not worth it. Money & power is never worth selling your soul to the devil and disconnecting with your inner child. Do not compromise your personal integrity for short-term financial gains. It is however easier said than done and the temptations are plenty.
“Grandmother” brought to me a new understanding about people suffering with borderline personality disorder (BPD). This disorder comes often hand in hand with people who went through very severe abuse or have complex PTSD. These people do not have the means to cope with life. Borderline individuals are the psychological equivalent of third-degree burn patient. They simply have, so to speak, no emotional skin. For this reason, the slightest touch or movement can create immense suffering for the borderline. Yet, on the other hand, life is movement so they find themselves in permanent pain and crisis. I was shown that if everyone would lose their capacity to cope just like the borderline, then the world would rapidly become a better place. By coping, the rest of us are actually enabling and feeding the dysfunctionality of this world. Every day, we keep accepting the unacceptable: killing our animal friends for food when it is absolutely unnecessary, keeping our corrupt leaders unaccountable for their crimes, exploiting and polluting our earth for profit, ignoring the abuse of minorities as long as we are not part of it. What would happen if we were to become physically incapable to participate to all of this wrongdoing? A similar analogy can be made of autistic children who from a spiritual perspective are refusing to engage in our 3D reality as a wake-up call.
During the night, “grandmother” kept revisiting with me all these various topics, going deeper every time. At dawn however I shed my first tears as I felt fully the pain of separation with my two children, my little ones that will always be my babies. They are the flesh of my flesh (“la chair de ma chair” in French). It is so hard to feel alienated by them as I have not had contact for about a year. I am then shown the suffering of cows that are separated from their calves at birth for the dairy industry. The cows are then made to produce milk in an industrial way as they are in distress wondering what happened to their babies. The male baby calves are actually brought to a horrible death by the meat industry. The agony of the mother crying for her babies goes in the milk and the cheese that you eat everyday. As I relate to this suffering, I decide to let go of dairy products. It is not an easy for a French man as we are so attached to our cheese. I decide to use the natural cultural temptation of my body preferences and associate it with the future reconnection with my children. Every time I say no to dairy products, I connect with the suffering of these poor cows longing for their babies, which I connect with my own loss. This loss though uncomfortable is a way I can connect today with my children and send them my love on the inner planes. It does not matter how much it hurts, I make the commitment that I would rather be connected and be in pain rather than disconnected. I do not want to contribute more to the world misery. I still hold so much grief for losing my children. I realize however that I will be their caretaker for the rest of my life whether they accept it or not in this dimension. They live in me just as I live in them whether they are denying this reality presently. This is why it feels so ridiculous that they are currently made to believe they have no father or being assigned substitute fathers. Fortunately or unfortunately, the connection between biological parents and children can never be erased. I experience then compassion for my own parents and while I have diverging views with them, I promise to give an honest shot at loving them. I do not have to make what they have done OK to love them. I can love them even though I disapprove of many of their actions. The fact is they need peace and appreciation like anyone of us. If our children keep evolving and raise their standards for parenting, they will probably find that many of our behaviors were abusive. It is not always easy to love our parents especially if one of our parents keeps hurting us. However by being at war with them, we only are getting at war with ourselves. It is a difficult balance to achieve and only within the deepest places of our heart, can we know if it is best for us to maintain distance or develop a closer connection with them at a given time. Suddenly, I start breaking down as I relive the double abandonment from my mother and father when I was 11 year old. I am disappointed as I thought I had already worked through this trauma 5 years ago. Obviously, there was still much more to release as I now sob uncontrollably. “Grandmother” then shows me that my subconscious mind used my own children to re-experience the pain of this double abandonment. My daughter was the first one to disconnect with me. This feels like my mother who left me behind to live a new life as she is in too much pain. Then 6 months later, my son decides to stop all communication with me. This is a remembrance of my father who gives up on me, as he feels overwhelmed by the pressure he is under. I am called to apologize on this blog to my own children that I used them subconsciously to heal traumas from my own childhood. I want to tell them that the horrible experiences they had to go through are not their fault. This is not their pain. It is their mum and dad’s pains that were replayed subconsciously. It is unfair and cruel to them. This is why it is so important we do everything we can to heal emotionally before we have children. I have failed in this instance as I could not prevent the ordeal and tragedy my children had to go through. After I was able to fully relive this trauma, I hope they will feel more invited to reconnect with me as they could see I come more from a place to add to their lives instead of repeating the hurt from my past. In the meantime, I want them to know that they have teaching me unconditional love like no one before as I patiently wait for our reconnection. Papa thinks of you everyday and has never abandoned you.
And you “Grandmother”, I thank you for revealing to me so many insights that help me to become a better and more connected man. Your wisdom is grounded in simplicity, truth and heart connection. Thank you for guiding my steps. I will finish this blog with some humor from our friend JP Sears’ video “If Trump drank Ayahuasca”
Yesterday, we went hiking with the family and visited an aviary with birds from all over the world. I had decided to organize some fun family time as I understood how important is “together time” for Winter, Teal and our extended family. Teal and I travel often and I have many activities and responsibilities that occupy my time and I recognized I was not present enough to my stepson and members of the extended community such as Graciela. As we were about to start on our day trip, Winter started to act out and refused to come. A couple of years ago, if it had been my children, I will have raised my voice and coerced them into getting into the car, shutting their feelings as I felt I knew better what was right for them. Fortunately, Teal knows better and she took the time to engage a dialog with her son. She got him to a point to express his discomfort. And as we were driving to the mountain, he started to give us to our awe a remarkable speech on the power of the attachment theory with the words of a 7 year old. He expressed how his heart was starting to feel distrust as people acting as nannies would come in and out of his life. He felt very connected to a community member that last year for a variety of reason had to leave us temporarily and as a result he is now feeling a resistance to get close again to new caretakers as he feels they would leave and the pain of separation would be too great to handle. He explained in a remarkably clear way for a 7 year old what he needed to feel very close to this individual again. She felt so moved by his words that she started shedding tears. I used this opportunity to ask Winter about our own personal connection and with his hands, he showed me the separation between him and I which was significant. He basically said that I was around but not really there. His statement moved me deeply too. He is right that I am not really present to him as a stepdad as I have not made it a priority and often find myself delegating his caretaking to other members of the community. We talked and we decided together to spend at least once a week some time just the two of us so that we can truly connect and feel closer to one another.
As we drove back in the evening, I told Teal that I felt a heavy heart and would love to do a process with her on it, before working on the computer. I had pain in my upper neck, which was an indication I was repressing emotions. Teal helped me work through some triggers and did some body work on me. Her hands are truly magical as her extra sensory gifts showed her visually the stuck energy in my body. At that point, she felt I was ready for an authentic talk. She confronted me that while we spent the day together, she felt I was not really engaged and present with the rest of them. It was hard to hear at first as I had organized the full day to make it fun for everyone, and it felt like all of us had a good time. I reviewed then the day in my mind and could see her perspective. I had spent the day a lot in my own mind. I did not make particular efforts to engage with anyone. I found myself a couple of times alone during the activities as I was either before or behind our small group. I asked to read my book in the car instead of going to the store shopping for clothes for Winter. I started to feel bad. I tried to do the right thing by organizing a fun family day but I had failed. I had been physically present but not emotional present to the family. As a result, my wife was actually starving of connection after a day dedicated to spending time together as a family! I pushed my projects aside that evening and made sure all my attention and focus would be on her and us.
Teal was right. I was acting as a human doing and not a human being, and I was making them feel while I was with them that I did not want to be there and that I would rather work on my projects. I became conscious that I had the same pattern with my previous family. I would go on hikes, often leading the way in the front of everyone, not curious about my children inner world, feelings, endeavors, content with a shallow connection while this would our only day off in a busy Silicon Valley work week. Shortly after Alina and I separated, I tried to make the time spent with my children special, and I would organize special trips, time with friends or activities during the time I had them. They however complained to me that what they really wanted was to connect to me instead of always being distracted. I felt unappreciated as I felt I was really trying to make our time together special. I was making them feel that they were not enough by themselves for themselves and that I had to always add more stimulation to make the time spent with them acceptable. This was not my conscious intent. This was more my own projection. I felt subconsciously I was not good enough that they would enjoy spending time with me without additional entertainment. People around me often feel that I would rather do something else than truly being and connecting with them. Despite my 25 years on the spiritual path, I felt disabled in my connection abilities. I was feeling powerless to create the very feelings in myself and others that are so important to me.
As I went deeper into my process with the support of Teal, I realized the trauma was coming from dad side. His mother would rarely visit him when he was a child. He subconsciously felt she would rather not be with him as she felt shame for the relationship that had given birth to him. Their infrequent meeting was more a painful reminder that there was something wrong and bad with him. My grandmother always lived in her own world too and always had difficulty connecting with family members at a deeper level while appearing as a socialite to the outside world. She had a sister called Tati Jojo who was very kind to us, and we developed a much deeper relationship with her, and this created some jealousy on my grandmother side as she could not understand why my sister and I felt closer to Tati Jojo than her as she was not aware of her relating pattern. We are dealing here with generational trauma. My grandmother mother died when she was 11. Her father quickly remarried. The new wife did not like her and her sister. They were kicked out of the house and had to start working at the post office in their early teens to sustain themselves. Then, 50 years later, my parents divorced when I was 10. My sister and I stayed initially with my father but because of the insecurity of my stepmother and the codependency of my father, I was sent back to be with my mother while I had asked my dad to stay with him. Again, I felt powerless not to repeat the same pattern. My son was 11 when Alina and I separated. While I did everything on my end to fight for an integrated family structure after the divorce, my children were taught to hate my new wife while they never met her, and from their perspective, they felt abandoned by a dad that would choose another woman over them. Any family trauma that is not healed, repeats from generation to generation, often in a tragic way.
After my parents divorced, some of the most painful time I experienced was the time spent with my father. During that time, I felt invisible. Though the times we would spend together were rare, he was not emotionally present to me. It felt like he would rather do something else and be somewhere else. I felt non-existent, small and unworthy of love. He often had hurtful comments or clumsy gifts that made me feel worse about myself. From his perspective, he felt he was making efforts trying to be a good father while still acting from his hurt inner child not very differently to what I am doing today with my closed ones. I understand that he often thinks of me and believes he loves me however his actions more often than not send a different message. He is not an abusive man. He is actually doing what he can but because of his own upbringing, he has incapacity to connect and make other people feel special because deep inside, he feels very unworthy. And I have to accept that he is a mirror of me. My father would often tell me that he and his parents were proud of my school results. As a result, I felt I could only be valued for my successes and external accomplishment not for who I am. I learned that people did not have a real desire to connect to me. I always strived to be the best at school so that I would have a chance to be loved. I became a human doing, and experienced for most of my adulthood relationships that were conditional in nature as a result.
Then Teal brought me to a visualization of the type of father that I really wanted as a child. This father would be fully present to me, he would be a teacher full of wisdom about life and relationships. When we would interact, he would focus and empathically listen to me, he would show concern, have the sincere desire to know me deep inside. He would be excited to spend time with me. I would always be on his mind. He would show small gestures of love making me feel important. He would act as a protector when necessary and always be available for me when I need it. He would encourage me, help me overcome my fears, have a sympathetic ear, and show both strength and vulnerability. As I contemplate who my inner child really wanted as a father, I come to realize the brutal truth that in my present life, I often act more like my father than being the man my inner child has been starving for. From this painful awareness, I feel a sincere desire to change. I understand that to truly heal my life, my relationships, it is time to give my inner child what I always wanted and give it to the closest people of my life. For you Winter, I want you to feel that I enjoy spending time and connecting with you, that you are important to me, that I will be careful with your heart and not pull away, that I am interested to understand and see the unique being that you are. For you Teal, I want you to feel that I would rather be with you than doing anything else in the world, that you are my top priority. I want to make you feel safe, cared for, cherished and adored. I want you to feel that I am an expert of you and always care about your best interest. I want to be your anchor, strength and stability even during the storms of life. I want to share the same qualities to my extended family. As I heal, I sincerely hope that my own children will feel the call of my heart and will consider reconnecting with me as they feel I could improve their lives and support them authentically instead of being a liability.
I remember that in the past I have tried to bring these higher masculine qualities however I am now realizing that I attempted to do so while repressing my inner child. Now, I am committed to bring these qualities within me while staying present to my inner child. My man self not only need to take care of my loved ones but also to my hurt little boy, as he is being reflected externally. This is why relationships are such an accelerated track for expansion. And by living a life with the spiritual catalyst, all my shadows appear clearly and there is nowhere to hide as everything is reflected and amplified.
In my life, I have been a human doing more than a human being and it is not a surprise I spent 20 years in the Silicon Valley where a regular work week is 70 hours without counting the side projects to get ahead. As a human doing, how we feel about ourselves is only connected to our accomplishments. We received compliments as a child only when we achieved something special externally. This is true to me and also to Teal’s childhood. This style of parenting is very common and well regarded in society. While it is better than emotional neglect, most people do not realize the amount of damage done by this parenting style. To be worthy of love, children learn to behave a certain way and accomplish certain results otherwise love is removed. They learn they do not have an intrinsic value. Unfortunately, everyone knows that the satisfaction derived by accomplishments is always short lived. When I was 20, after I entered one of the top engineering schools of France after national competitive exams, my joy only lasted a couple of weeks and quickly turn into depression as I lost the escape mechanism for my own inner void and childhood trauma. Teal told me yesterday that a happy wife will mean much more to me than any of my accomplishments in terms of personal happiness. She is so right. As we grow older, our joy comes more and more from simple pleasure of connecting and relating instead of our past achievements. As a human doing, we develop an addiction to cross as many items from our list in order to feel fulfilled for the day instead of feeling how we have impacted each other lives for the better. As a human doing, failure to perform means worthlessness and that we are undeserving of love.
I can see how this pattern has affected most of my relationships. Every time I have fallen in love, the first couple of months are heavenly. There is no time, just the pleasure to connect with one another. A day feels like a couple of minutes. Then the intensity of the infatuation subsides, and a covert subconscious belief comes in. It makes me feel that unless I am able to have achievements, she will leave me because I am not good enough on my own. So I pull away to focus on my activities in order keep the love I cannot afford to lose. By pulling away, I bring dissatisfaction to my mate that starts pulling away to protect herself emotionally and my very fear of the lost love becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. She feels abandoned, not good enough for who she is and her own insecurity is brought up. She feels unloved and unworthy at her turn. Inevitably, she detaches to make me feel the way I make her feel and the relationship becomes rocky. I become alone in my accomplishments and do not understand why love is going away while I am working so hard, and do so much for my wife and the family. This is the tragedy of the human doing.
Instead, by focusing on our children feelings, values, efforts, how they treat other people, we show them we truly care for who they are, and not only have concerns about their results. Let’s leave that for the corporate world. Transactional relationships may be OK for the business world however they are toxic for family relationships as we need to instill unconditional love to our children to create the new earth. We will then raise children with less fear of failure that are free to experiment and discover their unique gifts, as their self-esteem is not in danger when they do not perform according expectation. We may fear that this attitude may make them under achievers however by doing so, we focus on the very underlying conditions of success and we make them connect to their individual talent derived directly from their inner child. Movement, spontaneity and creativity are natural in children, not apathy. Inactivity and aloofness are the mark of trauma not of a healthy emotional upbringing. Our children can achieve success in two different ways. One will be a direct expression of their being, happiness and creativity, and will often translate in fulfilling and meaningful careers. Other will achieve success at the price of intense inner struggles, coping mechanisms, misery along the way often followed by a crash, realizing later in life that they hate their job and their lives. They will often fool people on the outside as everyone think they are successful. These two categories of success can be observed in all walks of life, especially with top athletes. The human doing is the personality than has repressed the human being or the inner child, the seat of the soul with all its creative, expressive and intuitive abilities. Our human doing has done enough damage shutting down our inner child. It is time to have our human doing serve our human being for a truly meaningful and satisfying life.
Do you want to be a human doing or a human being? What do you want your children to become?
This morning when I woke up, I felt some intense and dark heavy energy. For the last 6 years, meditation has been my refuge when I was faced with challenging emotions. For this reason, I put on my favorite meditation music, sat and started to listen to my internal world. I have verified what Teal teaches, which is that strong emotional triggers can be used as a rope to get deep within yourself and to get unique insights about the healing that needs to be brought forth. Often the strong energy of the trigger will bring on an altered state of consciousness. In this altered state of consciousness, you can see yourself from a higher perspective.
The first energy I felt was connected to the loss of my two children that I have not been able to talk with for almost a year now. A wave of shame ensued. How bad do you have to be if your own children aged 11 and 13 refuse to have any contact with you? At a conscious level, I can understand the psychological dynamics at play. I intellectually understand that because of the many complex aspects involved in this situation I should not be so hard on myself. However I find that my inner child is unable to separate from the deep shame created by this separation.
In my coaching role over the years, I have worked with many people that have daddy issues. Some of them had the most horrible fathers but the children were still trying to have a relationship with their father. They were doing this despite an obvious lack of reciprocity. I am not saying I was the perfect father as I can see that I have made many mistakes along the way as a father. I did what I could with what I knew at the time. Losing all contact with both of my children (like I never existed for them in the first place) feels utterly unfair and cruel. It feels so painful.
At this time during my meditation, I remembered my talk with my friend Avtar in Atenas, Costa Rica. He was telling me that I was making the pain worse by creating a story about the situation that would make me feel worse and solicit other people’s support. I challenged him. I told him that there is a part of us that requires validation, care and concern when we are confronting pain and suffering. Dismissing and discounting the part of us that is suffering is even more damaging. I shared my personal experience with him that I had become an expert at coping. Earlier in my life, I developed the ability to perform & function no matter what the circumstance. I had created a spiritual personality that could always see the silver lining in everything and even convince myself that situations that are traumatic are “all perfect”. While this is true from a higher dimensional perspective, it was only after being with Teal that I realized that I was bypassing and that I had repressed a lot of traumas this way. As a result, they kept manifesting externally. This is exactly what happened with the loss of my children.
My spiritual personality had shut down my inner child and left me disconnected. I had lost my spontaneity and my aliveness. Avtar and I agreed that it is important to avoid the two extremes of identifying with the story around the pain and repressing it. There is always a higher alternative which is to fully experience the energy around the trigger without a story and let this energy runs its course without resistance within ourselves.
As I reflected back on our conversation, I let myself fully experience the pain without identification or without the need to create a story around my pain. I went to a higher perspective and saw that I was continuously creating and emitting the energy of loss in my life. I dove into the energy of loss and I saw my life from this perspective. I re-experienced the loss of intimate partners that I was so close to. I felt their betrayal. I felt the pain of losing my stepson. I felt the pain of losing most of my friends who cut all contact with me after I made the decision to leave the cult I was a member of when I was 23. I felt the pain of losing my own children after a horrendous court battle. I felt the pain of suffering the betrayal of colleagues and employees that I worked with so closely for a long time. I have a self-concept that I am a good guy however all these events seem to show a different story. They show a herd of people angry with me, seeing me as an awful person. I acknowledged this fact and sank into the deep shame underneath all these events.
In the meditation, I was brought back to my parents and I was shown their shame. Shamanism teaches us that we inherit all of the unresolved issues of our parents through our genes. My mother lost her own mother when she was 3 years old after a neighbor had reported the abuse of the new stepfather. She became a foster child raised by an old lady. She was taught to shower in the dark because her own nudity was considered shameful. She was forbidden to turn on the light to do her homework so as to not waste the money of her caretaker. She was instructed to use worn ugly clothes in order to not attract the envy and the negative attention of people that were paying for her upbringing through subsidies with their tax money. My mother’s first love died in his early twenties from terminal illness.
My father’s story is also built upon shame. Unbeknownst to him (until he was in his sixties), his mother became pregnant with him after a love affair with a Nazi officer during the Second World War. She moved away and managed to hide the truth of the situation. However in order to avoid a possible punishment, she gave her son away to an old lady in the countryside. She would send her money, and rarely would visit. Though she loved him, she was incapable of hiding her own feelings of shame about this liaison from her son. It was only after getting more stable in her life and marrying the man that I thought was my grandfather that she took her son back. He was 10 years old. At that time, he hardly knew any French and was acting more like a wild animal than a boy of his age. Considering their background, my parents did relatively well. However, all of the shame they were not able to transform was passed to my sister and to myself.
For this incarnation, I chose to be the son of two parents who were struggling with huge shame issues. During this meditation, I saw my soul contract with shame. 4 years ago, during a spiritual experience, I saw how earth was a prison planet. I saw a vision that we were all souls that had deviated from the divine plan. I saw that from our own freewill, we started to hurt other beings in the universe and as a result, were brought to earth to re-learn the consequences of our actions to become benevolent again. From this perspective, we are like fallen angels using earth as our purgatory. Our sense of guilt has brought us to our human experience.
For a couple of years, I volunteered in jail as a chaplain to provide spiritual guidance to inmates. I realized that most convicts carry an immense amount of guilt and this is how they become a match to the experience of jail. There are a lot of people that have committed much worse actions that walk freely in the world today. If they experience no guilt, they would not end up in jail. This is why someone like Doc (Teal’s abuser) is still walking freely today. In this new meditation I saw how shame, even more than guilt, was the energy that was attaching us to earth. It is acting just like the force of gravity.
In the spiritual community, people see Love as being the opposite of Fear. From this new perspective, I could see how all fears stem from shame. When I am jealous, I feel ashamed about not being good enough for my partner. When I am afraid to do public speaking, I am ashamed to look like a fool. When I am afraid to lose my job, I am ashamed that I cannot support myself or ashamed of the disapproval of my supervisor. Most conflicts in relationship emerge from shame as well. We are desperately trying to make each other wrong so that we can be good. This is a deep realization I had with Teal a couple of weeks ago and now, we decided to practice owning our shame consciously rather than deflecting it in order to avoid conflict escalation.
I recently read the excellent book of Ross Rosenberg called ‘The Human Magnet Syndrome: Why We Love People Who Hurt Us’. He describes the codependent, narcissistic and borderline personality disorders and how they play out in relationship dynamics. As a result of reading this book, I realized that all personality disorders live within us in various degrees because they are the direct result of emotional abuse or neglect that took place in our childhood. From that perspective, there is no mental illness but only traumas that have not been released or integrated. When I realized this true cause of personality disorders, I began to see that these personality disorders all come from the shame we acquired in the face of trauma.
As a child, if something bad happens to us, we need to create meaning to deal with the suffering and most of time the meaning we create is that we are bad and this is why we deserve to get into painful experiences. The personality disorder we will develop will depend upon our degree of powerlessness in face of trauma and our own predisposition for coping. Of the three types, the codependent is the least powerless. While still raised in an environment where their emotional needs cannot be met, they are able to somehow affect the response of their caretakers. For example, a child like myself could have felt powerless with his mom’s mood swings, emotional unavailability and dark suicidal thoughts however he may have been able to get his mom’s attention by crying to evoke her pity at the very least. Codependents learn to control other people through various emotional manipulation strategies because they are not able to meet their emotional needs directly.
The codependent has a desperate need to appear to be the good guy to cover up his own inner shame. The two other disorders (Narcissists and Borderlines) develop from complete and utter powerlessness to create any needed emotional reactions from their early caretakers and they will split into 2 groups. The first group develops the ability to shut down their feelings as a coping mechanism to cover their own shame. These people can end up being narcissists, sociopaths or psychopaths. They become unable to feel. They replay their own inner drama externally, often by creating great pain around them. More often than not, men will adopt this coping mechanism because they are head centered. When the individual is unable to stop feeling as a coping mechanism, they will most likely develop borderline personality disorder. This often translates into self-injury, self-hate, suicidal tendencies and emotional deregulation. Women who are more heart centered are most likely to develop this personality disorder. This personality type creates a lot of turmoil around them however they are creating a living hell for themselves more so than for anyone else.
Some of the descriptions of these personality types may appear extreme, however we should consider that each one of us demonstrates some of these traits depending on the amount of unresolved trauma we experienced. And you will always find shame at the core of each dysfunction. Skilled therapists are reluctant to use these labels (narcissist or borderline) because they know their clients will automatically feel shame as a result of being put into that box, which would make the therapy unproductive. These terms are only useful when used from the point of view of self-observation and accessing the wealth of knowledge and tools available around them. They are not useful as a shaming mechanism.
Today, I did an exercise where I listed all the things I am ashamed of. To my surprise, there was over one hundred items in this list! It felt like I was finally being authentic and it helped me release a very heavy emotional burden that I felt I have been carrying for a very long time. I am only sharing with you a few of them because I am too ashamed of the rest 😉
I am ashamed that I have been such a terrible father that my children have chosen not to have a relationship with me
I am ashamed that I am so unattuned that people sometimes see me as dangerous
I feel ashamed of my heavy French accent after 20 years in the US
I am ashamed that I trigger my significant other often
I feel ashamed that I am not valuable enough to my father that he decided not to go to my wedding with Teal
…
This exercise helped me so much that I would like to invite you to share your own shame list with all of us in the comments below. We should consider that most institutionalized religions and most social organizations are anchored in shame. I am finding that one of the fastest ways to advance on the path of liberation is to become consciously aware of your shame.
I never took drugs or spiritual medicine outside of a safe shamanic container. A good friend and roommate of mine first introduced me to medicine work when I was 26. At the time, I took LSD and it completely shattered my reality. It short cut my mind and gave me an insight into the truth of spiritual reality, love, consciousness, my own life and my ultimate purpose. What I especially loved about it is that it gave me a direct access to reality, what people call God or Source and the truth of who I am. Because of this experience, I developed a lot of respect for medicinal plants and would commonly recommend to seekers who feel stuck or who have minds that get on the way on their heart. Because many of these substances are illegal in the US, I found in my early thirties a completely safe and legal way to bring altered states of consciousness using holotropic breathwork. As a psychotherapist, Grof was involved in earlier tests on the therapeutic potential of LSD. When psychedelics were peremptorily banned in the 1960s, Grof developed holotropic breathing as a means of simulating the psychedelic experience of LSD without the drug itself. I found an excellent facilitator where I lived in San Francisco at the time: Todd Zimmerman. Todd taught one of our best workshop to date at Philia from March 11th to 18th 2017. While breathwork does not provide the psychedelic elements that you may found with substances, it does bring altered states of consciousness, visions into the subconscious, deep emotional release and inner journeying. Another benefit is that one is able to bring much more memory from the journey as this is a body centered experience.
After I started dating Teal, I decided not to do medicine work. First, she was not that comfortable with shamanic medicine because it is bringing very high intensity emotions and could prevent people from feeling fully day-to-day reality that now become dependent of substances to get a high. The cult that abused her used breathwork as a way to program her as well so she was not open to try it at the time. However, after she had a private breathwork session with Todd at Philia, she changed her mind completely on this practice and stated this was the single best healing modality I had introduced to her. From my perspective, the states of consciousness brought by these shamanic processes are just guides to show your potential and bring you back into alignment with your higher purpose. They give you a window into the actual emotional truth of where you stand in order for you to take adjustments or changes to live your life at a higher level. They are a sacred tool that should not be used for recreational purpose. And many who have not treated them with respect have been burned. I was comfortable stopping medicine work at the time too because I felt that Teal was acting as my medicine as she continued to shake my reality, not letting me believe my own lies and challenge my perception while our love story provided so much movement that any increased stimulation felt unnecessary.
After we decided the move to Costa Rica, I become very busy with all the logistics and ensuring that Philia would be a success from the get go. As a problem solver, I threw myself in this endeavor fully while I started to pay less attention to my relationship with Teal. Teal started to feel more and more uneasy. She started to express a lot of discontent that I could not understand. From my perspective, we were living on a magical property in beautiful Costa Rica, with our family and friends, starting a retreat center to heal people, a common dream we shared. Our relationship continued to deteriorate to a point that Teal & I started to feel hopeless. After almost two years, I felt I needed to go on a shamanic journey to get out of the dead end I found myself. We had received an application through Philia of a local Ayahuasca shaman so I invited him and his wife to meet with Teal & I. Teal instantly connected with him and felt guided to take this journey too but the shaman recommended that we do it on different days as some of our struggles related to our relationship. She had decided to go one day before. When she came back, she had difficulty walking, crashed with the intensity of everything she saw but relieved in many ways. We only had one hour together before I had to leave to my own journey. I remember her eyes full of love as she saw through her third eye what Ayahuasca would teach me by crashing me too. However, she was not allowed to share anything yet about her own experience and what would unfold for me.
Four other friends decided to join me for this Ayahuasca journey. For three of them, it was the first time taking it. It was only my second time. I had taken it previously 6 years ago with a Hispanic group and it had been a hard but very important learning experience. While I was the last one to take a cup of the sacred mixture early evening, I was the first to feel the effect of the sacred mixture and started to vomit only after a couple of minutes while it was only the first round even though I had fasted the last two days. The rest of the group took three turns and a friend even had four rounds and hardly felt anything. There is a saying that Ayahuasca always gives you what you need. Every person experience of Ayahuasca is unique. I started to purge heavily and hallucinate. My head was buzzing in an uncomfortable way. The surrounding shamanic music and the Costa Rica constant background of secators were being amplified to a state of discomfort. I was able not to go into panic, simply allowing the various fears to run their course while enduring the physical, emotional and mental pain of the experience. Teal had recommended me not to resist the place where Ayahuasca wanted to bring me. It took me two hours of torment & confusion to finally get to that place while the Shaman and his friend were attentive to all my needs while I was expressing distress as continued to purged. But when Ayahuasca came to finally take me, it hit me hard. An immense grief took possession of every cell of my body and I started sobbing uncontrollably. I saw my children. At that time, I had not seen them for a year (and it was at the court) and I have not talked to them for nine months as they refused to have any connection with me. Losing one’s children is probably one of most brutal experience one could ever experience. All this time, I had blocked the grief and the pain of this loss. I stayed in this grief space for about 14 hours simply feeling and sobbing. It was emotional painful however the release felt good too. I had told Teal & Mark (Teal’s ex husband) a week before that collapsing emotionally served no purpose. I realized that I was completely wrong as the crashing I was experiencing was healing me. I had so much grief accumulated in my body that I had become fully toxic to my extra sensory wife and I was more often than not choosing to dismiss her instead of acknowledging her distress or worse deflect my pain back to her. During the journey, I realized that at the same time I was grieving my children, my inner child was also grieving the fact that he did not have parents that were emotionally present to him. I was also grieving the fact that my personality had abandoned my inner child at a very early age that I had to be strong and to deal with childhood trauma on my own as I became a parentified child. I remembered myself not crying at all after the divorce of my parents when I was eleven, or my mother telling me that only me was capable of taking myself of the anxiety attacks I was susceptible as a young teenager. I remember learning to deal with my emotional pain alone because no one could be present with me during these times. I realized I had been abusing my inner child for over 40 years too. As is the case for development trauma, I gave myself the right to adopt new parents that could be fully present to my emotional needs. I saw clearly my coping mechanism to disconnect under pressure in order to do what I have to do. This state of disconnection had only increased Teal’s torment about our relationship. As this happened, the intentional community became more weary which increased the pressure on me and consequently on Teal which created a vicious circle. This vicious cycle was exacerbated as Teal’s outburst would make me shut down even further. I realized I needed more support from the team through a reliable management layer so that I could be the nurturing and attentive husband that my wife deserves. I saw my tendency to assume that something is wrong with her or try to fix her instead of acknowledging my responsibility in her distressed state. Regrets came through. I felt my lack of compassion towards her while holding her to very high personal behavioral standards that are not aligned to the extreme childhood traumas she endured. I also remember how Teal had shared with me so many words of wisdom or accurate explanation of what she and I were going through that I had completely dismissed. I saw clearly my resistance to her. As I suffered in the hands of a megalomaniac guru between 20 and 23 year old, I have used my logical mind as my safeguard and I have refused to take anyone on faith since. I have a need to understand to an extreme, and assume a position that other people are wrong unless they can prove me otherwise, which is a stress on relationships. I also saw my tendency to discount and dismiss other people. From four in the morning to noon, I continued to sob and experience my irrepressible grief. During that time, neither the shaman nor any of my friends came to support me. Because I was in an altered state of consciousness, I was as incapable as an infant to express the emotional need that I needed someone to hold my hand and to be present emotionally with me in this process. I had finally realized my need to feel supported and cherished by others instead of making it on my own, which I had done all my life. This time spent alone in my own torment seemed to feel like an eternity. I knew that I needed to have someone next to me and care for me to heal my development trauma to always do it on my own. Before that time, I did not really understand Teal’s words that the only way to heal from a development trauma is to meet the need that was not met in the first place. I had involuntarily inflicted a lot of pain on her through the trips to California I had to take from professional obligations last year not fully understanding her separation anxiety and not realizing that these separations were re-traumatizing to her as I thought she would simply get used to them as I felt I was doing the right and responsible thing. During these eight excruciable hours, I had to taste my own medicine and I had to deal with grief and isolation combined, and undergo the same ordeal that I had prescribed Teal a year ago. I stayed there for hours that seemed like months waiting to be liberated. While this was pure torture, I felt intuitively that this experience was brought to me so that I could feel her pain, which was one of the intentions I had set for this journey. All of my friends were done with their journey by early morning. They chatted, exchanged jokes and went for a nearby hike to a waterfall while I stayed suspended in limbo waiting, not knowing when I would be freed. Finally, around noon, the shaman came to me. I found the strength to make him understand that I need to feel his love and care as I finally get him to hold my hand. He gave me his unconditional presence but then start sharing with me some positive spiritual principles such as “there is only light and love”. This hurt me as I felt he did not see me or wanted to be with me in my pain. I start talking to him painfully to explain my need not to receive spiritual bypassing and I only wanted him to stay with me in my grief without trying to change or fix anything. I wanted to be loved unconditionally by him through his full presence, I wanted my deep sadness acknowledged, I wanted his empathy and compassion on how cruel the situation with my children had been. He got it. According the law of attraction, the painful reflection I am getting in my life is perfect but it is heartless and not conducive to healing when people reflect that high level abstract truth. Only a human perspective that is full of empathy, concern and compassion with all its raw emotions may bring healing. I only managed to start walking around 2 PM, about 20 hours after the start of the ceremony. The shaman brought me to walk into the river close to the property. He looked at me in the eyes and thanked me for the words I had shared with him. It really felt he brought a new understanding to support people even more deeply into their shamanic journeys. We looked at each other in the eyes and connected with profound love & respect. It is ironic that I managed to teach a Shaman a truth that I have been resisting so much to learn from Teal as my spiritual journey before her had been mostly about positive focus, spiritual bypassing and avoiding pain through filters and manipulating reality through my mind.
When I came back home, it felt good to be back and reconnecting with my beloved wife and share our mutual realizations from the journey. As I was now more aware that I have been disconnected, we decided that I should open to the community and ask for their help to provide their candid feedback if they find me insensitive so that I can be more aware of some of my coping mechanism to build a sincere desire for change. Unfortunately, it did not go as well as I expected. Eric shared his frustration that he is not yet in the place to help me because of accumulated resentment. The next morning, when we stopped by Graciela’s house, she announced that she is done with me that she is tired of getting hurt and does not want to support our relationship anymore without explaining what it meant in actual terms. Graciela’s face was marked with shock, anger and pain as she expressed her feelings. I was in disbelief not understanding how she could have built so much resentment and not even noticing it. This situation became unbearable for Teal as she was now put in the position to choose between her husband and best friend. Five members of the community spent the full day working on my difficult personality. I felt humiliated. This felt so unfair that everyone seemed to see that I was the only guilty one, but fault of another alternative I had to swallow to a full day of painful feedback, horrified by the picture held about me.
While I was hopeful that the Ayahuasca would heal Teal & I relationship, the opposite seemed to be happening. All the accumulated resentment built by the custody court case and my company transition that had translated into Teal’s worst possible nightmare were now all in the open and put considerable stress into our relationship. Over the next following days, some difficult arguments took place that made me feel more and more powerless, not really understanding the animosity towards me while I felt I did the best I could do every step of the way, always convinced I was doing the right thing.
Graciela had to withdraw for a couple of days from Teal & I to deal with the intensity of her emotions towards me. Graciela is a very conscious young woman fully committed to her personal development. Though it was clear my insensitivities and disconnection was a big part of the blow-up, she was able to acknowledge her own shadow and childhood traumas that I reflected back to her. She came to me with a pure and beautiful spirit of resolution. She had decided to come to me with an offering that will help me open my heart. Graciela is a woman working with Kambo and suggested she could help me through this modality to open my heart and let go of my protective narcissistic bubble. While my ego had resistance as I had to admit my own flaws, I know her ability and gift as a facilitator and decided to accept her present, especially that I was feeling again at a loss to create a beautiful relationship with the woman of my dreams. It would be a series a three sessions. Because of my schedule, we spread it out over a period of weeks.
The day before the first Kambo ceremony that I scheduled with Graciela, Teal was quite busy during the day and I was looking forward to reconnect with her in the evening. Unfortunately, when she came, Teal was very irritated towards me and I became the target of her anger and resentment. Our discussion went quickly downhill from there, so much that I asked her to practice silence together until we were able to express words that were conducive to resolution. Ten minutes of painful silence followed. Teal felt very resentful of two traumatic events that happened to us in 2016 when I had to make some difficult decisions that made her suffer though I stayed convinced this was the right decision. I started to explain to her the conundrum that I faced by using a simple example as the two other situations were too painful for a construction discussion. We brought a beautiful chime from Park City and Teal had hung it outside below our bedroom at Philia as it looked great there. Unfortunately, Costa Rica can have very windy nights and the chime would wake me up at night. I asked her if we could hang it somewhere else but she felt rightly so that was the best place for it. She suggested to tie it at night with a ribbon but I told it was unnecessary as I did not want to impose on her to do this every night as I felt she has way more important things to do. This example illustrated perfectly my coping strategy. I lived all my life as there is only two ways to deal with an unpleasant situation: you either cope by making the thing you do not like OK, or I change externally. Overtime, I managed to educate my willpower and endurance to such a degree that coping is typically my favorite option as I take the burden upon myself and do not need to create a conflict, however often at the expense of parts of myself. Also, to compensate for the fact that I can be more flexible on many small things, I developed a very strong core that is unmovable. Therefore, I would take sometimes a very strong stand and be extremely stubborn about it no matter what is the consequence to keep some form of identity. All of my life, I basically only gave myself two options. Either I cope by repressing my own needs and wants, or bulldoze my needs over others, which then forces me to cope to not care about the resentment of others. It never occurred to me before that there could be a third solution where I could consider a solution where both my needs and the other person needs would be addressed at the same time! It seemed obvious however it never occurred to me until that discussion with Teal. I suddenly realized how much damage this limited belief had done to my life and people close to me. That night, Teal actually put a ribbon around the chime and both of our needs were met easily. We practiced a role-play where we went back to the events where I imposed my needs over her, with this time the desire to consider both of us at the same time. To my surprise, this was actually possible but now it stopped building resentment and built trust instead as I actually showed genuine concern for her best interests. When a need conflict happens, the partners would need to express both of their needs and wants in a vulnerable way and start exploring out a solution together that could work for both. This may seem simple but I had never done this before. It was only either suppressing my needs or discounting the ones of others. It was always a lose-lose. Also, I realized that I used my spiritual practice all of my life to cope. I had become a master at filtering and altering reality, creating positive meaning to painful situations in order to feel better. This pattern runs in my family. My grandmother who is soon 101 year old is the happiest in her nursery home. She is surrounded by people who are dying, miserable and in pain most of the time and she only sees the positive. My father has no real relationship with his children, and a difficult marriage with heavy resentment but thinks his wife is too perfect. By being in denial, and making a painful and unacceptable situation OK, we actually make change impossible. Our filters will stop making reality painful, however unfortunately we then become enablers of very dysfunctional patterns and the repressed negative emotions find their reflection in the immediate environment. If a wife copes with the abuse of her husband, she accepts it and do not then try to change an ugly reality. By coping, adapting to our circumstances and to our world, we actually make things worse instead of better as we allow the dysfunction to continue. This intense realization had come just before the first Kambo ceremony just as the frog had started working on me.
I am now in front of Graciela before we start the Kambo ceremony. She asks me if I have an intention. Kambo is a hard process as the frog poison you absorb makes you vomit and purge in the most unpleasant ways. I call Kambo a mini Ayahuasca as it makes you purge in the same way but the journey lasts only one hour instead of a full night. These are medicines that are hard to get addicted to, as the purging is so unpleasant. I really did not feel at that moment to go through this experience again. I then looked at my present life and I realized the horror of my situation. The 3 people I love the most in this world resent me also the most also: my wife Teal and my 2 children from my previous marriage. I have had a disgruntled wife telling me she is not happy. I had the same situation in my previous marriage. I can feel the love nevertheless of Teal and my two children. I realize in this moment that I could not have dreamt of a more perfect wife. Even in my wildest dreams, I could not have wished for someone like Teal who is so spiritual, smart, beautiful, creative with a grand purpose. My children are also great kids: smart, gifted in so many ways with a big heart. At that moment, I decide to dedicate my Kambo session with Graciela to Love. I am doing this to bring back the flow of Love in my life for these 3 people. In this space, I can finally let go of my fear, take a leap of faith, as I have known for a long time that a life without Love is not worth living. Graciela now asks me to drink 1.5 liters of water. This is not easy and I feel bloated by the water. She then proceeds to burn my skin with a small wooden skin on my heart shakra where she decided to apply the Kambo. While unpleasant, this pain is nothing in comparison to the emotional pain I have just contemplated. She now spread the frog poison on my burns. After less than a minute, my heart starts beating intensely. I see the fear in some of my thoughts that my heart would stop beating. I let go of the resistance. I start vomiting, mostly water, as I fasted in the morning. It feels awful and deeply humbling as I keep purging. Fortunately, after only a couple of minutes, I vomit a core belief from my childhood called “Personne ne n’aime” which means “no one loves me”. It is hard to explain but it feels like this French sentence was physical and I actually spit out from my body at that time. I reflect and see the truth of this statement. I do not mean to put my parents under the bus as they did what they could with what they had. My father did not have parents until he was 10 year old and my mother lost her mum when she was 3 and she does not even remember any contact with her father. Because of their own family traumas, they simply could not give me what I was longing so much for, because they never received it in the first place: love, closeness and nurturing. The belief that “no one loves me” crystallized the harsh reality of how I was feeling as a child and stayed with me for almost the next 40 years. Core beliefs are so strong that your whole reality will actually get organized around them and create misery when it is a limited belief like this one. Following Teal’s core teaching, I stayed with the feeling, became fully present to my inner child holding this belief and validated him. I realized that even my external and worldly success was simply a coping mechanism for the fact I did not think I could be loved for who I was, and only performance could give me love. When I was six, my father gave me money as I brought back straight As from school. Therefore, I thought that if I were a good enough student, I would have love. At age 20, I passed the exam of one of the best school of France but crashed a couple of months after the admission when I realized that this accomplishment would not give me what I was so desperately looking without knowing: love. As a result, I joined a spiritual group, which ended up being a cult a couple of months later as I was desperately trying to find a way out of my emotional torment. I thought this spiritual group was everything I had always looked for. However, I left disillusioned 3 years later after realizing all the corruption and abuse orchestrated from the leader. I had been used and not loved. At 26, I entered a 15-year relationship & marriage, which brought two wonderful children in a course for status, success and money in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, when we mutually decided to part, I was ostracized by my ex wife and her parents and lost my children as a result. At that moment, I saw that my marriage had been more a contract based on mutual benefits than a relationship based on real love. In order for me to heal the child that believes that no one loves him, I need to give him what he truly wants: Love & Appreciation. Even at Philia, I had created a situation where team members would resent me because of my domineering attitudes that were focused on execution rather than connection. I also made it OK for people to resent me as long as they do their job. I have watched Teal do the opposite, something spending up to a full day to solve a problem with a person. I thought initially it was a complete waste of time not realizing she was working on alignment, and once people are fully aligned they will go the extra mile, be proactive and amaze you with the quality of their work. I made a commitment at that moment that it was not OK for me to be resented anymore. I had to stop this especially that our retreat center is based on connection. I felt I understood authenticity for the first time. I cannot be authentic by coping or imposing my needs above others. Instead, I need to focus on a third alternative that can only come through when I interiorize the other person needs. I saw the community too. I saw clearly in my medicine journey that one of our team members with responsibilities had been resentful towards me. To heal my inner child, I became apparent to me I had to stop making it OK for me to be resented. I put my life savings in this property and enormous efforts both for the move and property. I have not done that to get people to resent me. It felt very unfair. While I understood I created this situation to prove the belief “no one loves me”, I had to put a clear stop to this to start healing this destructive belief. I decided to meet with this person the same day. It did not matter anymore how long it would take to solve our difference and I made the commitment to live an environment where I am liked instead of feared. I can still be true to my own needs and their needs at the same time. I committed to do what it takes for people to like me. I have had the attitude that I do not care what people think about it as long as things get done.
Ten days have passed and it is now the time for the second Kambo with Graciela. The positions of the burns are typically intuitively felt by the shaman just before the ceremony. But the night before, I had woken up Teal by talking in my sleep saying very clearly “6 points in the palindrome”. While I did not this before, a palindrome is a word that reads the same backward and forward such as “madam”. While at breakfast, we felt intuitively that it is a message for the Kambo ceremony as “points” are another word for the burn marks used to absorb the frog medicine. Graciela does a Google and tells us that “eye” is the only body part that is a palindrome. This discovery triggers me. After I started dating Teal, I had told her I did not need to take Kambo because she was my medicine. While this is true, the other reason I did not want to do Kambo because it makes marks on the body and all my life, I have been uncomfortable with anything that alters the original nature of the body. Now, they are talking about a burning stick in the eye! Teal asked me to think what it would really mean. I feel intuitively that it must be the third eye however I am thinking that the last thing I want to do is to have burn marks on my forehead especially that I am an important upcoming business meeting in the US. I start to complaint, revolt and state clearly that I do not want to do it. Teal looks at it and she starts experiencing genuine sadness and she shed a couple of tears. She said “How ironic” as, in the same token, I would rather look good than love her. Over the last previous days, we had a couple of arguments where I deflected my shame into her and made her feel like the one with problems while I was actually the one creating the trigger in the first place. During these times, I had chosen to defend my self-concept and look good instead of seeing the truth. I started to feel her pain, disappointment and sadness about me. At that moment, I remember the time where I would have given everything just for the opportunity to have a date with her. I reminded myself of my commitment to remove any wall that stands between me and her, and my promise to her that as long as I can breath, I will always choose to love her. Her Love had defeated me and I accepted reluctantly to get Kambo from my forehead as I reminded myself that my relationship with her is to me so much more important than looking good. I started thinking about wearing a hat, or put my hair in front of the marks to get more comfortable about the idea and get into acceptance with this higher guidance. She re-assures me that she can make them look good. An hour later, I am laying down ready for the application of Kambo, I remind myself of my intention “I want to see” focusing on my 3rd eye chakra. Six burns are applied on my forehead. Shortly after, I experience a faster heartbeat, and I start to emit some tones to clear energy in my throat chakra that is between my heart and third eye. The medicine takes much more time to work on me than the previous session. It took at least ten minutes before the need to purge. Teal is in the room typing on her computer writing her next Ask Teal episode. I reach out to her in a vulnerable to stop doing it, as I really need her undivided attention. This is ironic too as I am typically the one absorbed on my computer tuning other people out. A vision starts coming through. My consciousness becomes Teal as a child on a table. I am in the process of being tortured by Doc. He shows absolutely no empathy like he is working on a robot. I experience unbearable pain. On the other side of Doc comes the spirit of Teal’s mother. She does not see Teal’s pain and push it back onto her not understanding why her daughter is acting so uncontrollably and wondering what is wrong with her. She gets angry with her. Back on the table, I feel like I am made to swallow my own vomit. I am in pain as I purge but I realize suddenly that I am so lucky that I am able to scream or vomit. It feels like such a good release and I receive the loving attention of both Teal and Graciela in the room. When Teal was tortured, she did not have the luxury of any form of release. Doc would put something in her mouth to prevent her from screaming. The torture experienced felt so much more horrific when there is not even a possibility to release and to witness the complete emotional disconnection from Doc. I am now transported into a different mindscape that I see is connected to a vision I had 5 years previously during a breathwork facilitated by Todd Zimmerman (Todd came to Philia from March 11th to 18th 2017). At that time, five years ago, one of the women breathing in the room was reliving a rape she had experienced as a teenager. She yelled from such a profound part of her being that it started to affect me and I relived intuitively a sensation of a past life where I was a father where my father got raped and I made it worse through my own behavior. Now, under Kambo, what was an alluring feeling 5 years ago during that breathwork session appears as a very clear past life in high definition. We are back in time and I am a spiritual teacher in India with an important following. I am a scholar, I hold an impressive spiritual knowledge of the scriptures. I think I know everything, and I have always a response to any of my followers’ questions. My ego is huge and I am full of myself. I am respected and feared, and some of my domineering and inflexible attitudes create antagonism too. Through unfortunate circumstances, my only daughter gets raped by some of my enemies as they try to hurt me through her. I see myself being furious at my daughter telling her how she brought ridicule and dishonor onto our family and my reputation. I shun her and punish her. I make it all her fault. Because of my hardness, cold and cruel behavior, she commits suicide and dies. When my followers inquiry about this tragic event, I tell them with utter certainty as someone believing his own lies, that a life had come where she would awaken so she decided to take the opportunity and exit her body. Deep down, I know I am the one responsible for the death of my only daughter because I kept spreading shame on her open wound. During that life, I never let myself experience consciously the responsibility for her death. From that point on, I went downhill and created a lot of damage among my followers. I see how my cult experience in this life was a direct consequence of this karma. I see clearly who is the reincarnation of my daughter in this life. I experience sincere regrets towards this person and I got to better understand her antagonistic behavior towards me that never seemed to make sense. I experience a desire to make it better, and can now more easily let go of her behavior that I judged as unfair. I understand that lack of empathy is the most dangerous thing of the world. If every one of us could feel each other pain, the world would be so different. Family quarrels, work oppression, crime, wars would end immediately. I decide to make a total commitment to allow myself to feel. I realize that I used the tools of self-development and spirituality to make myself comfortable and avoid pain no matter what are the circumstances and I became a “master coper” as a result. I now consciously choose to feel in full awareness even if it involves pain in order to become fully alive.
It has become clear to me that the events of the past couple of years were meant to get me to step into my authenticity. Most of us are suffering from attachment traumas because our caregivers were not able to give us the unconditional love, reflection, emotional support, attention and availability that we needed to develop into emotionally secure human being. Why? Simply because they suffered the same traumas, and what is not healed is passed on to the next generation. These attachment traumas convert into the belief that something is wrong with us and that we are not lovable (core shame). As a result, we create masks in order to get the love that we desperately need. I have seen this subconscious pattern clearly in my love relationships over a 20-year period. The enmeshment trauma with my mum combined with the absence of my dad has created the unconscious belief that I can only be loved for what I do, the role I play and not for who I am. In this configuration, to be needed is to be loved while too much neediness is putting my inner child in a panic as it reminds this immature self of the pressure it could not handle. So here is my pattern. I fall in love with a woman, and I seduce her by projecting the image of the type of man that she wants. One was in an abusive relationship, so I became her savior. Another one was in deep spiritual search, so I became a spiritual guide. Another one was in search of financial security and status so I became a provider, a successful executive or a vice-consul. Another one needed constant external emotional regulation so I became a full-time caretaker. The trick worked in getting the woman I fell for, but there are consequences. As time passes, my partner gets to see the other parts of me and feels duped. By that time, she is however attached and committed to make the relationship work, especially as she struggles with her own abandonment traumas. Frequent arguments and constant drama are the mark of such relationships as my partner is in love with someone she is incompatible with. Her whole focus becomes about fixing me to become the person I was when I was courting her. This triggers my shame and I respond by pointing her own flaws, which triggers in turn her own shame. In my attempts to get my love relationship to work, I developed impressive skills in holding a container for someone I am not compatible with. This is truly exhausting. Stepping into authenticity, being completely open about who I am with the belief that I am lovable the way I am, is the better alternative.
