Our roars of awakening
We can experience our roar of awakening from our conditioned and dreaming life in many different ways. Still, once this has happened, it is usually impossible to go back because awakening is not a point in time but a forward and upward (I like to call this a forupward) evolving process of our consciousness.
Awakening can birth out from different places such as deep pain, heartbreak, loss, love, or simply our innate divine will.
2008: my very first awakening steamed from feeling not enough and too skinny for too long. The shame ran through my veins so long, until a certain point where I had enough. I remembered reaching a tipping point that unravelled such a powerful anger energy I could use for my self-transformation. So, after years of feeling weak and skinny, I turned toward body transformation as many guys do. I was convinced that I would internally feel strong and confident if I were looking muscular and strong. Time and experiences proved me wrong, and that is perfectly fine. It is part of the journey. We all have to start somewhere with the cards we were dealt with.
Naturally, my self-transformation journey started with my body transformation. I never, and still don't, liked and connected with the spirit of the gyms you can find everywhere. The No Pain No Gain spirit or the "300" type of movie spirit never sounded right to my body. It was not out of fear or laziness, but out of feeling like it was a self-inflicted punishment and proving something to someone else more than any smart and efficient workout. After some research, I was so lucky to find this french guy called Olivier Lafay, a philosopher by training who created a bodyweight method for naturally developing and transforming your body. His method is just incredible. In less than 3 months, my body transformed in such a way that my family barely recognised me at that time. So, in a way, my initial mission was accomplished. I found a way and made it happen. What is even more interesting is the philosophy and human knowledge that Olivier brings in his books that I could summarise: your body transformation comes with your mind (and life) transformation. Nutrition, psychology, philosophy, emotions and traumas were topics daily spoken in the community of O. Lafay. How cool and unique is that? For me, it opened a new world, my inner world, the world of feelings, emotions, shadows, disowned selves. It opened a world of challenging questions about why am I feeling like this today, why am I reacting like that.
During all my diving into all these new fascinating topics, the most important teaching was the realisation that the sentence "this is who I am", that most of us will throw left and right when we are triggered, utterly lost its sense and power over me. There is no such thing carved in the marble "this is who I am". First of all, our sense of IAmNess evolves daily, but most importantly, our sense of IAmNess is built upon conditioned foundations imposed on us by our lineage, parents, education, society, and culture.
When we understand and see that, a new horizon arises, it means that we can change. There is a choice to be made.
When we don't know we are victim, but when we know we become responsible.
2010: making the choice to understand my conditioning was my second awakening. At the same timing, I encountered Ashtanga Yoga and Martial Arts with Wing Chun and Kali. Both providing much more than a physical journey in their paradoxical teachings around groundedness and flow. Masculine and feminine energy at play. Kali, which I fell in love with, brought me to Singapore in 2011, where I encountered modern Buddhism teachings from different lineages and teachers.
2016: my third awakening landed from another dimension, not from my mind but my heart. I was struck and ready to experience a massive heart opening when falling in love with a woman. A part of me knew the challenges I would encounter, and another part of me recognised the situation as the most profound gateway to a deeper awakening and transformations. It didn't deceive me at all, even though the relationship came to an end. During a 3 years time, I travelled down my cave of darkness throughout a massive healing work with regression work, emotional work, shadow work, men's work and men's group. I promise you I had such an emotional hangover in 2020.
Remember that a masculine oriented person grows through challenges, not by potato-couching, whilst it can be sometimes necessary to wisely rest when chosen from a conscious place.
2021: As I am writing this, I am in the middle of another awakening imbued by life and death awareness. I've been deeply fascinated and scared by death for as long as I can remember. My God form (it's a specific practice I learned with John Wineland) is Anubis, the Lord of Death in Ancient Egyptian mythology. A few years ago, I created a blog to talk about death, it was called Death's Notes, and its possible adjacent topics; I participated in Death Cafe's meetings, which I am quite missing and would recommend attending. The movement started in London. Different people are joining together to share their experiences about death. Anything. Truly humbling and opening. And scary. During the circuit breaker, I was grateful to have more personal time to read. And this is how I started this book, The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski (The cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and pioneer behind the compassionate care movement shares an inspiring exploration of the lessons dying has to offer about living a fulfilling life.) An eye and heart opener book full of transformative gems distilled with compassion and wisdom through each of the pages. Reading the hundreds of stories of people at their approaching death never failed to touch my heart profoundly and brings me more joy about being alive. Each page tears me up and reminds me that each day is not guaranteed and is an opportunity to let go of my self-judgments and resentments for a more fulfilling live. There is an intellectual consensus understanding we all have about this last sentence, yet, few of us really live; there is another dimension of understanding into our body, our bones and flesh that feels different and empowering to live more fully and open.
Whatever your roar of awakening is, follow it's path as it is showing you what you are probably down here to experience. If we can stop closing our mind and open it to the possibility of something else without coming to any conclusion first, great roars are awaiting for us.
