Story time : Read this if you are experiencing existential dread
This is a stream of consciousness and it’s a bit long. It’s designed to help you if you meet a wall of confusion or loss. Get a cup of tea to sip on.
I write this at 4am, rudely awoken by insomnia and a burst of energy running through me.
I’ve been living 2 months in a city I left a decade’s worth of emotional baggage in. The face-anvil of realization did not hold land gently. I was slammed into the awareness of having lived most of my time there believing I had constantly failed at whatever I did. I became numb to this of course, and associated the emotions of that time subconsciously as caused by this city.
So of course, I didn’t feel good about coming back, and simply thought it was the city I wanted to avoid, because it is a LOUD, CONCRETE, POLLUTED CITY and I like living in lush nature with wide spaces between homes, rather than packed noisy cement electro-shock therapy toy-towns.
My personal vision of hell.
It was nearly 7 years ago I threw an entire life into a one of those flaming barrels you see homeless people gathered around in movies. I was married, had 7 animals and a career I was mostly proud of in the video game and VR world. I had a few critically acclaimed award winners and some of the games I helped make, made a lot of money.
I became able to ‘firefight’ a project, meaning to take a group of people or game looking dire, and transforming the team and eventually the game into something they could be proud of.
Before I left that life, I was building up the courage to start a game company that was entirely built around healing mental health challenges. Not obvious in-your-face ‘healing’ games, but carefully designed traditional games that have clear resulting benefits to mental health.
Think the essence of joy which Super Mario naturally emanates, and tuning its design and art chemistry around delight and uplifting potential moments depression.
This vision was brewed in me when I was 12. I wrote it like a manifesto in one of the only homework assignments I got graded highly in. In fact, the only thing I received a ‘commendation’ for, which was essentially a very official version of a gold star. Looking back, I’m pretty sure that whole piece was written through 12 year old me unknowingly channeling future me.
Anyway, 2014 is when I decided it was time to wake it up. VR was evidentially a media to activate a person’s emotional senses in the deepest way I was yet to experience. Have you ever considered you could feel genuine fear to step into a digital hole? You will know that fear in a VR display. Meaning the opposing experiences can be true as well.
Finally; a tool existed to bring my dream to potent reality. One thing I didn’t know back then; I was a vision and direction guy; I was not a CEO guy. Starting companies require CEOs, or equivalent. People who can talk to business folks and focus on that ball.
Sure; I learned some of that in the Hollywood parts of my old workspaces, but it wasn’t where my heart was, and I’d had enough of compromising my path. Funny how both the Hollywood life and marriage echoed each other there.
Super Mario Galaxy by Nintendo.
My team had another ‘healing app’ vision cooking too, but we paused it to take on commercial work so the lights could stay on.
It was when the second Spider-Man VR experience was exiting prototype the cascade of my life implosions began. Time was up.
An unhappy marriage rapidly unraveled to free both its miserable captives.
Three tiny beings dear to me died in close timing, while my immediate family was having serious health scares. I was overweight, depressed and my mental integrity was collapsing to the point where my management temperament was blatantly suffering (sincerest apologies to all who were on the firey end of that).
I realized I was barely hanging on, and was doing so due to an unknown addiction to the act of suffering, fixing, proving and hoping for better.
You know that male thing where fear of failure keeps us in a pattern of doing something that’s inherently bad for us, but we are convinced we can fix it and all will be well? Yeah. Wiser parts of me under the hood concluded it was time to stop doing that.
Unrecognizable, unhappy game developer me, probably in 2017.
With the stopping of the doing of ‘that’, I finally accepted the marriage’s death, left the job, and abandoned the VR mental health gaming co project (temporarily?), and the vision of kids playing Super Mario Galaxy homages that cured depression.
Compelled by a bucket-list I’d ignored for years, I flew to Peru and my new life began.
I loved Macchu Picchu, but there’s so much epicness in Peru that it won’t likely be your favorite spot to visit.
Today is over 6 years later. The breakup was in late 2017. The leaving and full separation happened in May of 2018.
I had no idea what was next for me and felt deeply lost for the first 8 months. As far as work and purpose was concerned, I was lost.
It took maybe 6 months of travel, visiting healers and learning about emotional health for my own needs before I saw possibilities for what I was going to do, or be, next.
Nowhere on my list of ‘things to do now that I’m single again and able to travel’ was, ‘learn how to perform energy healing’, or ‘get good at psychic stuff’.
Nowhere on my post game-designer-life-bingo-card was, ‘take plant medicine a lot’, or ‘host workshops about dealing with spirit possession at ayahuasca retreats’. I definitely did not expect, plan or predict becoming a psychic teacher, or shamanic techniques practitioner.
Turns out that cascade of curveballs led me to feel most fulfilled I would feel, and interactions in sharing this stuff has made others also very fulfilled indeed.
I’ve loved (mostly) every second of it, and it’s been continually surprising, non-linear, unpredictable and was a pretty chaotic birth.
Me teaching intuitive development at an Ayahuasca retreat with Light Portal Team in Tulum, Mexico, in 2022
Today, I’m writing this as I feel I’ve returned to that spot of unknowing from when I was freshly post-married.
My reason for writing this is…
…to help myself reflect into clarity, as it can grant a perspective shift when we’re in a low place
…to create something that may help another who stumbles upon it.
My initial vision for my travels was to heal and not let my heart close up for a future relationship.
That was it.
The other part of the vision was general bucket list stuff like seeing Machu Picchu, visiting Egypt, seeing Bali, Thailand, visiting my parent’s home country of Lebanon, visiting Sedona, and finally experiencing Hawaii. I also managed to squeeze in trips to Mount Shasta, New Mexico, Glastonbury, Avebury and other places I didn’t have on my list, yet somehow newly felt a strong pull to see.
I utterly adored every one of those places, and the people and experiences I had there did more for me than I could have dreamed.
Following my inspiration led to everything I need.
One example of how following inspiration led me to my needs…
Peru!
Peru turned out to be a lot more than Machu Picchu. Shockingly, I found out a group of friends were traveling on the same path and timeframe as me. A nice coincidence.
Once they left, I was figuring out what else to do. Through a chance encounter and recommendation, I befriended an Aussie medicine woman, one Jaime Amadio, who would be the first major stop in my healing journey; where I could begin to shed the grief of divorce and a dead dream.
She introduced me to the emotional benefits and ceremony of the plant known as San Pedro - real name “Wachuma" / Huachuma”.
Huachuma is known to specifically help with matters of the heart, which I did not know prior. The grief I held in my heart was backed up from years of having to hold it together in the marriage and be strong for my then partner out of a male “you suffer first, while I hold it together. I’ll suffer after you’re better”, obligation. A noble idea on paper. A shit-show on the body.
Peru’s natural beauty is utterly bonkers.
I had little concept of any of this during the marriage, but sadly it turns out that my body was keeping record of everything I was trying to pause dealing with.
San Pedro / Wachuma thankfully decided that instead of taking me on a nose dive into the depths of my delicious suffering, it would bring me to feel more love.
The set of seven plant journeys Jaime allowed me to finally free up a nice chunk of the grief I collected, thanks to the help through connecting with all the love in and around me.
Somehow connecting with all that love was enough to remind me that crying was healthy, life was worth living and I had not just encountered a bitter end, but a new beginning. Love truly is the ultimate healer, and was certainly that for me at that time.
Having Jaime’s warm, down-to-Earth, and hilarious personality was a big help. The group of great people she curated for that retreat was probably more healing than the medicine itself.
I hadn’t laughed that heavily, or met such a consistently wonderful group of people in years. If the Amazonians ever discover a plant that can make you laugh for 5 hours straight, I’m positive that it will eclipse Ayahusaca in popularity very quickly. Not just for enjoyment, but for simply how healing that is.
Anyway, I followed my inspiration. I went to Peru. Peru changed me profoundly.
When I was back in L.A., I started finally closing as all the loops I left open, with an eyeball to never return.
Following my inspiration continued to bring big rewards and I am convinced this is a consistently great strategy to employ in self-discovery and evolution.
The important bit to convey, is that the journey I went on which at first seemed frivolous or gratuitous, was deeply transformational.
Following inspiration is not celebrated or encouraged in our productivity culture world, and I encourage you to open up to that concept if you are feeling stuck or lost. It’s also scary for many people.
Whether I acknowledged it at the time or not (I didn’t), I was following inspiration where the only ‘solid ground’ I had was uncertainty.
To many, this will seem irresponsible and selfish. I was fortunate that in the divorce, I abandoned responsibilities and felt free to do this. I regret nothing and I realize this idea is not an easy one for those with families or similar to undertake.
In this scenario, I only have an idea I’m not sharing from experience (my disclaimer) : If you can create a system of great support for your partner so you can do some self discovery in this way, it may be worth considering this plan. Ultimately, you’ll show up as a more aligned you, theoretically, a better partner… or friend for them when you return.
This was my home for a week and I learned I’m happy to wake up early when the ocean is 20 feet from my bed.
This was the most rewarding strategy and decision I made for the beginning of the next stage of my life.
Firstly, following inspiration with reckless abandon is and was liberating as fuck; a great medicine for someone in a dynamic of feeling trapped; i.e., a marriage which becomes loveless and a vehicle of obligation and recycling of old trauma.
For me, it became an unexpected process of refinement of meeting a realer version of myself through who I was deep down, executed as the journey of who I wanted to become… through unbecoming who I was.
The experiences I had, the many friendships made and the few lost all were major beats in a story of choosing the parts of me I wanted to expand and diminishing the parts of me I’d taken on for the approval of others.
I wanted to explore the limitations of humanity, probably as a response to decades - not just the marriage - of feeling trapped and helpless in a prison of my beliefs and ‘shoulds’.
I pursued exactly that. I drank it in. I learned about it from multiple angles. I explored it and then some. I met geniuses making healing tech banned in the U.S and people who could heal years old ailments in a matter of minutes using only the energy they can push through from their mind and body into mine.
Guy Hariman - A great inventor of healing tech, former Steve Jobs team-mate and genuinely lovely and warm human being. Rest in peace brother.
Which brings me to today.
Today, my feeling of uncertainty is my meeting a wall in my path and the path not feeling like it’s giving me much joy anymore. The wall has been there many months and I’ve felt stuck.
I love what I do, but a hollowness has emerged in it. Have I forgotten why I fell into this path? To heal, then to share what I learned.
Why did I start this? To expand my limits.
Why did I do that? To prove something to myself. That I could be free. That I could author my life. The believed antidote to feeling trapped.
What happens when I have nothing to prove anymore? Is that ego trap healed? Maybe I need to find a new why. What is that new why? How do I find it?
Follow my inspiration again.
My why is still to help others re-learn how to love themselves, and have a shitload of fun doing it.
Why? Because seeing suffering causes me to suffer.
How do they do that? By being able to experience themselves fully.
How do I help them get there? I utilize practical teachings from mysticism and the many ways it stretches us is a great gateway to enhance that.
Sometimes, a little pause for self-inquiry is all you need.
Confusion and loss inspired me to write this. Writing this out has helped me see I’m back on that journey of step-by-step discovery while needing to accept uncertainty again.
As long as I listen and take moves based on my inspirations, I’ll find my path of certainty again - whether its temporary or otherwise. And being attached to certainty will pull me away from it. Quite the dance.
What I am certain of, is what will come next is something I love even more than what I love now.
May this story help you if you meet confusion or loss.
May you find your version of paradise, whether it’s internal or external