Reader,

The “great start” happened long ago,
in your childhood.

This was the time we all found it easy to believe we are destined for a great journey, a calling that will bring change into the world as we know it.

To start this great journey of trust, ours is to allow the vulnerability to become a searchlight, a lens through which we observe the world and all things in it.

Vulnerability is another word for allowing something to happen, to trust in the creative destiny, even if the approaching toward it hurts.

When we’re young, it’s easy to be alive in the world of exposure. It’s almost as piercing your index finger to the tip of the thorn, to rediscover you bleed, and it’s okay—a small price to pay for the adventure of the everyday, where with each breath the world opened up in front of you as fresh rose petals do in the morning light.

The world changed rapidly before our eyes, and the only focus we developed was to be able to see it. Change became the natural part of our young lives.

Accepting change came as a great start in life.

Now, when we’re grown up, we need to become serious inventors to become accustomed to the change and challenges.
An inventor is anyone who believes in the possibility of change.

The ideas of changing don’t come from nowhere.

Ideas are little surges rising from the edges of the universe, picking a host—a person, a character, an identity that could turn the surge of thought into living substance.

If the great idea has chosen you, you have a problem.
You carry a heavy burden.

Without A Witness Your Life Does Not Exist

To be aware of your creative powers is to carry a great weight.

Any talent, any ability for a deep observation is a great burden—a responsibility to transform it into a living body of work. In other words, what you started long ago through play, you must finish through serious play today.

Finishing is scary.
Why?

Because it may open the door you are not ready to go through.

This is the belief that is making us stuck in refining; that is making me stuck. I am tied to my identity and its purpose; any finishing could hurt its growth.
How wrong I am.
Obsessed with refining, I am denying myself a witness—a finished body of work.

You could lead a rich, sacred, wise life—but without a witness is does not exist, it’s looping in endless preparation.

Discovering this, I have entered the New Year.
(I have cried.)

Being tied to your work and its refinements resembles owning a great ship that is always tied to a pier, but never sails to a great distant horizon.
What a waste of a horizon.

Not finishing projects might feel comfortable and promising, but in reality, it is losing its value. My project, “Illness is a beneficial state of being,” started three years ago.
It didn’t develop far.

Why?
Because I want to be stuck; because I am so closely tied to beginnings, they feel best!
This way, you could spend a lifetime at the beginning getting nowhere. That would be a waste of life.

Projects are bound by time. Time and energy. They coexist. My project about my illness was at its highest when I was most scared of my host, my ailment. At the peak of illness, the energy was strongest—any delaying of addressing it dissolves it. The climax of my suffering was the right psychological moment aligned with the artistic need to note—to turn it into the body of work. This project can’t be finished in 10 years when I’m gonna be hopefully healthy again.

What you live at this moment is your strongest project!

Your life and all happenings, especially hardship dictates the strongest ideas that are bound to be finished within a certain timeframe when they are lived. Otherwise, the certainty of the lived philosophy dissipates—another missed horizon. When finished, your work becomes your witness.

You create the witnesses of your change.

To be great at it is not to invent a miraculous idea, but to trust your current lived person, and to transform a life experience into a finished work.
Now there’s courage!

You see, the recklessness of youth is a great preparation for later life. When we’re young, we oversee things, and with purpose; we easily get hurt, which is necessary. Vulnerability is a step forward in seeing the world through play. If only we could recognize the value of our vulnerability and play with it.

Play is what lets us finish things you see. When you play with your work, you let go of the brake. You unhook the rope and sail into the horizon.

Wouldn’t it be great to live such a courageous life?

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You know why trees are superior to humans? Trees are rooted; they don’t have the need to run away. It’s their nature to stay. And we people don’t trust the nature that is inside us. That is why humans are restless. We haste, unprepared for what is coming.

THE DREAM

Yesterday, I had that same dream.
I’m about to travel far away.

Rather than exciting, the dream echoes danger.

First, I notice I haven’t packed my suitcase, and the bus leaves in 10 minutes. I frantically search for my bathing suit, towels, and underwear. My life depends on it.

My credentials and money missing from my wallet.
I’m scanning the room with blazing eyes, but nothing. Everything’s gone.

It’s a blur.
But now I’m panicking.

The clock is ticking faster and louder.
I’m counting the minutes and my heartbeats.

Everything feels frozen. My arms are heavy; I can’t feel my legs. I want to run, but I’m stuck in the invisible quicksand. The willpower of my body — taken. But the mind still struggles.

Where’s Mom? Where did she put my bathing suits?! Maybe she knows.

The torture lasts forever.
I feel like I’m about to die.
And then, time’s up.

The bus is gone.
And everyone got on board but me.

With the bus left, so is my destiny.
I wake up in terror of the wet blanket.

“What is happening to me?”

Why am I haunted by this vision, where I have no power over anything?

Where I’m left out.

What is my subconscious revealing?

Jung once wrote, to understand our dreams is to enrich our lives1.

Our inner world is a storage of conversations we’re not ready to have with ourselves yet. So our subconscious repeatedly haunts us through dream visions.

A dream is an alarm, urging you to face your biggest fear.
And the messages from within should not be neglected.

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DISSECTING THE DREAM: DO I CARRY THE IMPORTANCE?

To arrive late in life.

My purpose, my talent, wilt on the display where everyone could see them.
But I never claimed them.

Embarrassment. Regret. Guilt.
This is the biggest fear.

My talents died of age, unused.

I often feel I have abandoned my identity as an artist, for not diligently pursuing the right art paths. Those paths the older minds built. To live under their construction would put me in a cage with a thousand bars. And I can only breathe the air of my own world. I wish I were an animal, a snow leopard, living in the vast highland. A lonely beast known as “ghost of the mountain.”

Animals have a clear purpose—to survive. Nature shifts, they respond. They don’t doubt. Snow leopard doesn’t feel guilty when he misses his prey.

We, thinkers and achievers, need research on how to live purposefully. Our purpose compounds through people, nature, places, and legacy. And if we fail in establishing this construct, we feel as if we have failed in life. This is our nature. And with every new attempt to succeed, we nurture it.

Animals live by instinct. We live with consciousness, often forgetting to trust our instincts.

And as much as I love, instinctively living in an artistic exile, I need the benefits of the world. Its guidance, people, its knowledge, its energies, even the prejudice.

This is what I want to be a part of.
My true potential still hides behind its sinister defender: Fear. From there, the doubt feeds on great power.

Doubt torments the inner world:

Do I carry the importance of being part of something bigger?

In my dream; the lost baggage, personal things, money, credentials, and finally a journey that I never took are all part of the same sensation: Urgency.

The time has come to meet yourself: what do you want, and what do you need to do to get there? Are you prepared for this great stage of life, the long trip?

The truth is this.

You already are on the longest trip of your life. And that is the journey of understanding yourself.

That is why you feel that you’re late — this journey is always in the process, it never ends. There is no finishing line.

From here comes the doubt.
“Am I important?”

Can my body carry out the weight of its mind?

To create value for the world, have faith in your importance. You are a creative string tied to the rest of the world’s web. But you’re the one who ties the thread.

You create the connection.
Your life. Your noble work. Your creation.

The biggest resentment comes from denying yourself that you have that power.

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SELF-BETRAYAL

You have the power to become anything you want.
But you don’t believe it.
To trust in your ability is a great responsibility.
You have to do something with it.

When you don’t, you betray yourself.

That’s why I dream badly.
I have exhausted myself with doubt.

I have betrayed myself, thinking I’m not important enough to have it all.
When I know I can.

I’m tired of being a sculptor of doubt.
I want to become the narrator of a great story.
Not empty words but the rhythm!

Life is a rhythm; it has a pulse.
Become devoted to that pulse.

What is the weight of your devotion?

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If you fear missing your life, don’t wait any more.
Walk toward the life that scares you. 👇

Last week I wrote,

Pain is a painkiller.

And I meant it.

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Pain travels through the body for a reason.
It wants to purge—the total awareness of being alive.

It wants to clear your being of the false followings of the desire, trapped in the illusion of comfort and mental laziness.

Think of life as a feast; it either serves or kills the body and the mind.

With harmful consumption of life offerings, the body becomes lifeless and inert for the spirit to use it.1

The ruin of the body does not happen accidentally.
It comes by our personal invitation.

And what have you been consuming lately?

Acidic foods, emotions, thoughts.
We all did.

And the universe reacts to it.

The greater force urges us, through signals of illness and pain, to redirect our attention toward more meaningful choices of life.

Any hardship forces us to reset our values, thereby strengthening our physical, mental, and spiritual being.

You have to start living attentively.

Do not feed your body and mind by chance, but with great care and attention. How do your thoughts and beliefs serve your conscious and subconscious? When you think of them as still pictures, would they be something rewarding or damaging?

You need to give attention to that question. Ignorance will set the pain in your body coming out of resentment, non-understanding, and anger.

Suffering is always provoked by your own choices. When you address it, you’ll be able to digest and set yourself free.

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TURNING HARDSHIP INTO PURPOSE

My lung illness interrupted my joy.

But then, I needed the illness, and it came to my own invitation. But you see, I was the one who craved pain, because that was the only way I could feel life.

I was angry at life.

I couldn’t understand my purpose next to the purpose of the world. I felt choked from all the people, opportunities, activities, and conversations.

I couldn’t breathe.
Then one day, I really couldn’t breathe.

My illness forced me to slow down physically. Mind followed.
But I was changed.

I lost my identity and became a stranger to myself.
The physical pain progressed to mental and spiritual layers.

My suffering peaked.
The circle of pain closed — I was ready to give in.

Right in the mental moment where everything fell apart,
I realized something.

My life became something unique.

There was this struggle in my life I couldn’t fully control, but it was mine.
The struggle belonged to me, and I can do with it what I want.

I can break the circle
and become creative.

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Redirect your pain into a meaningful creation

Imagine your life is a big blackboard of endless experiences. Everything lived is written in floating circles. Your best experiences are marked as bright, transparent colours, and the bad darker in colour.

We are living in circles.
Everything we feel we seal as a perfect round certainty.

But the loop can be broken.
When the circle breaks—new life begins.

You may never be successful in changing your personal suffering, but you can work around it. You can break the circle of pain and start digesting it by redirecting it. You can exchange the existing energy around your hardship for a meaningful creation.

You must process the discomfort the exchange brings — a certain inner exposure to yourself and possibly the world outside.
Here, let me give you an example.

Just recently, I had an art exhibition in a gallery, where I exhibited the documentation of my illness and its healing process. I never thought it would come to that.

During my lung detox, I ate raw foods only; my goal was to clean my lymph system in my lungs and body. There were days when I was experimenting with a compressed castor oil pack to my lungs, which would soften the hardened mucus and lymph. My intention was purely to heal.

But then, with time, I realized I was doing a very unique intervention on my body. Who in the world is doing this right now? I asked myself.
So I have started to take pictures and document the project.

With time, the creative process became extraordinary to me, and I wasn’t interested in healing anymore. I was interested in how I’m creating art around my illness. My breathing didn’t improve much, but my relationship with its ailment did.
I have discovered a purpose in my breathlessness.

You see,

Every healing is unique.

And you don’t know what you’ll come up with until you start working with your hardships, mental or physical.

This is how I have started to digest my suffering: not by healing it but by giving it a body, language, and a purpose.
I have redirected my pain into an artwork.

I am sick and can’t create.
So my Illness has to become an Art.

The project made me happier than I ever was when I was healthy.

Crazy, isn’t it?
But it’s true.

This is how I’ve killed my suffering.
I have changed its purpose.
And that purpose gave me new life; new ideas, new strength. Not because I am healthier now, but because I have decided to become creative with my pain.
You can do it too.

Life can become very challenging. But to find stillness in it is to observe yourself and your life closely. Suffering can’t ever be excluded from your life. And some have it really bad. But between breaths, there is truth somewhere.

Whatever it is that you’re suffering from doesn’t need to hurt you forever. You can do more than you can imagine now.

If you don’t know how or where to start, ask yourself this:
What is my struggle trying to reveal to me?

Understand this;

True reinvention often happens only when everything else falls apart.
But our destiny is to create from there, from the wound.

I am losing my shame. And I’m willing to talk about it. I don’t know if there is time now, when I don’t think about the words, and how words always belong together. Like us. We are all words. Some stronger in intention, some weaker. But we all have purpose. Isn’t that wonderful?

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Pain is a painkiller.
When digested properly.

But digestion is the end of the suffering circle, and I want to start with human consumption—the beginning of any pain.

What is making us sick?

And why do we resent suffering when it is here to favour us?

Consumption: How pain sets into our bodies

I never thought I’d be ill.

My life was a marathon of beauty, ambition, exciting events. Everything felt like a child’s play. Quick and easy. But with time, that lifestyle became a heavy curtain to something hidden—my inner world. There, I have built a dark tower of fear, trauma, and pain. It sank in. I have ignored it for too long. And then it started to intoxicate me. Pre-cancer cells. Tumor. Four respiratory chronic illnesses. My body declined. Fear and anger took over.

Where to go from there? When all I wanted was to be normal, just as I was.

“I am as I want to be, and nothing should disturb that.”

Why can’t it be as easy as it sounds?
Why do I have to become someone else, someone who is now ill?

Because our existence is not meant to be easy, but profound. We’re here to reveal many truths. That is the context of the human being. And human ignorance of the profound comes with a consequence of pain, mental or physical.

Pain is a time traveller trying to tell you something. I think of it as an express letter from above. It is a sign you’re paying attention to the wrong adorations in life, and probably for too long.

Suffering is the talk of your burdened spirit — It’s lament.

Prentice Mulford once wrote,

Sickness and pain are but efforts of the spirit to purge itself.
Spirit can’t use the body anymore as it has become too gross.

Come to think of it, the physical and mental pain sets in the body and mind, executed by despair of the spirit. Is this really possible?

Well, think of it like this;
Life is a great buffet of pleasure that serves or kills the body and the mind. Depending on what we put in it.

With harmful consumption of life offerings, the body becomes lifeless and inert for the spirit to use1. Prentice Mulford calls this state of the body ‘corporeal deadness’.

Death is but a dropping of a load by the spirit too heavy longer to be carried

Death is a relief to the spirit, Mr. Mulford continues. It is our destiny to expire, but how soon and with what burden depends on us.

The ruin of the body does not happen accidentally. It comes by our personal invitation.

What have you been gathering lately?

Think of that new couch you’ve bought that’s stealing you away from walks in nature. Think of the conversations you’re provoking that buy the assurance of your importance (all that pride). The comforting food you’re swallowing that keeps your insights tired.

We eat with our eyes, mouths, brains, and every cell in our bodies.

And the universe reacts to it.

The greater force urges us, through signals of illness and pain, to redirect our attention toward more meaningful choices of life’s buffet and, thus, a better life.

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Digestion: Pain wants to kill your attention

And believe me, you’ve been pointing in the wrong direction. Thoughts, emotions, words. We’re fixing our attention on the body and things that please. How to escape that wish?

First, we need to remember that we’re here on this Earth for only a short time. I like to think my task here is to gather some data for the real work that’s been going on in the background for ages. That is the work of the spirit, you see, an ever-increasing power2. When we forget our deep purpose, the suffering comes not as a punishment but as a call to mind.

Pain forces us to reset our values, thereby strengthening our spirit.

We battle hardships at this level of existence and consciousness, unaware that all this is just a minor preparation for a greater battle. I’m sure we have all felt it at some point. Something greater is cooking behind the sense of this life.

Maybe our only task is to remember,
” We are the growth of ages”.

We’re the force compiling throughout time.

So it's time to get serious with attentional living.
It is time to understand the pain and hardship provoked by the purging spirit.

Without the spirit, the body is only the engine, without steam to move it.

Prentice Mulford understood his task. He was living it, and his writing reveals mysticism and great powers of forgotten spiritual upbringing. The pain occurs in your life when the awareness of this truth gets lost under the trivialities of the physical experience of life.

I have revealed this truth in my illness—breathlessness. I was a great consumer of superficiality. It slowed me down and made me more focused on the unfulfilling. Now I am here, unburdening my spirit.

I’m digesting my suffering slowly.
Now, pain has become the painkiller.

I no longer need its absence, because I understand its form, its message. My body will grow old and die eventually, but my spirit will grow stronger. That certainty comes from the philosophy of endings. Something old ends, something new begins. But while we’re here, we should live great lives, and to live profoundly is to understand our hardship and turn it into a purposeful strength.

Reader,

This article was about understanding your pain. In the next article coming next week, I want to show how to digest your pain.

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Read next👇

I feel tired—but it’s okay.

My lungs ring with the phlegm that will eventually kill me.

Am I worried?

About dying—no.

About the Friday speech—yes.

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This month, I have started practicing the personal challenge I call
Kick-The-Comfort-Zone-Back-To-Its-Teeth.

Why?

Because I want to do the uncomfortable things.

More than anything,

I want to become comfortable doing the uncomfortable.

So I have joined the Toastmasters Club, where I speak in front of an audience.

Because I know this is the ticket to my happiness.

FINDING VALUE IN THE EMBARRASSMENT

To set myself free, I had to make a switch in how I perceive the uncomfortable.

Discomfort is often viewed as something we dislike doing in public or at work, but it is, in fact, necessary for our personal growth.

Because inaction (the comfortable) is paradoxically what makes us dull over the years, and thus uncomfortable.

Practicing discomfort is always in action—it makes us alive.

It declares,

“I’ve been there despite fear, I talked.”

You see, we’re not really afraid of what others might think, feel, or say about us, but rather of weaknesses they may discover.

WE’RE AFRAID OF BEING EXPOSED AS PEOPLE WHO FEAR.

That is uncomfortable, as it exposes soft spots, such as a lack of preparation, knowledge, or talent.

Why risk it?

Because most people who live their dreams are those who have done it anyway.

They have found value in the embarrassment.

Stepping out unprepared is to commit to yourself truly by saying;

I learn as I go.

There’s no real embarrassment in trying. By acting, you redefine something previously labeled as fear.

You’re the creator.

GETTING BETTER AT LIFE

We all want to become better at life.

But that is hard without exposure.

The inaction of hiding in the apartment or office comes with self-regret.

The cure?

Do not overthink, over-prepare, or glorify your next step.
Just do it.

We give too much power to the meaning of our actions—we shouldn’t.

That’s what scares us.

Thinking everything we do is extremely important—it isn’t.

But it leads to continuous discipline that will eventually build a meaningful life for us.

About my speech on Friday?

Naahh.

Not afraid anymore.

What’s the worst thing that can happen?

I can forget all the words and count all the embarrassed faces staring back at me.

I’ll stare back at them.

Then, I’ll start laughing.

Then, they’ll start laughing.

What we lack, others count.

Some may count our mistakes to feel better.

But you and I, we’re not like that.

We have come to claim our power.

And that is to decide what is uncomfortable to us.

We want to suffer quickly and get it over with.

So why not kill the boogie man with one decision?

“From now on, I’ll practice doing the uncomfortable.”

Are you with me?

Tell me, what’s one small move that could change your life?

—I go first.

I need to start giving public opinion through videos, live performances, exhibitions, writing.

—Now YOU.

Tell me in the comments, or simply DM me.

Let’s talk.

I don’t charge for anything. I just wanna meet you.

P. S. Maybe I can help.

How do you become a ‘great eye’ who sees all the vastness?
You don’t.
You swim in the dark below.
Creeping through the marine snow, harvesting the shreds of light above.
You sink deeper.
The pressure is unbearable.
Deeper still, the light is almost a gone memory.
Then you adapt.
It’s so dark out there, but in time, you master the evolutionary strategy. You become bioluminescent. You emit light from the inside.

The darkness can be undone.

Sleeping with the enemy

When the lights shut off, you have the power to become an inventor.
The one who turns hardship into a creative battle.

Think of it as,
The alchemy of switching beliefs.

You’re one belief away from what you’ve imagined as happiness.
But, scared to attend that journey.

You still make the same decisions, taking the same familiar walks.

You feel safe within, yet slowly dying.
Such life is one prolonged delay.

I feel it too.

Every time I fold back from deliberate living1.
Every time I resign from my big plan.
When illness dictates my actions.
When life becomes desperation and not exploration by my design.

At that dark hour;
I sleep with the enemy;
I gorge on a stale life and unserving beliefs.

You’ve been addicted to your past for too long. Your past is an educator, but it can’t bring you to the future. Replaying old wounds and traumas is like watching a rerun of your life—a static.

—A life that is not on the move belongs to the darkness.

But you can re-emerge.
You are one switch away from a glorious life.

Climb to the top of your suffering and turn the light on.
Embrace your luminescence and brighten the deep ocean of human possibility.

Because development sleeps in darkness.

Development sleeps in darkness

You are a developing fetus.

To fully grow, you’re protected within the initial darkness.
Think of seeds germinating beneath the levels of the earth;
Eager to surface the unknown, they sprout towards light.

Darkness is the natural path, the beginning of every life.
To be unsure of your life’s development is the path we all partake. That’s the hardship we’re living with.

In any hardship, there is a possibility for authentic development.

But you can’t just step into that realm of possibility. First, from where you stand, you must create a new reality in your mind.

That is your switch—the need to feed on deep, creative thoughts.

Creative thought is a trench in the human mind.

To access the deepest, most valuable parts of your being, you must dig a tunnel in the abyss of your mental abundance.

When broken or bitten by a larger creature,
You are still developing in the cloud of blood,
Sucking nutrition back into your organism.

You create with that blood.

You authentically stayed in your life.

In hard times, many of us will discover that we’re not broken, we’re just having a deep experience of life.

That is what imagination does for us, if we use it.
It provides answers in a most unusual way.

Everything needs its counterpart to exist, to become real.
Health needs illness, light needs darkness.

The pain you feel is the contrast to your whole recovery. It signals your next natural move—a deep dive into the abyss.

There is no real preparation for that swim, but you’re not alone.
You can always imagine you’re a fish.

And how many fish are there in the ocean?
Developing their unique resilience day by day, in the blue dark.

Knowing not where they begin or end.
All they know is to live.

And so should you.

That’s what everyone thinks now after I quit my job.

Mom. Dad. My boss. Aunt. Sister. Brother. Friends. Ex-boyfriends.

A week after quitting, I finally put my feelings into words.

“I’m on my own now.”

I am my own institution—my own protection.

Now, I’ll belong to me entirely.

I’m an absolute beginner stepping into uncertainty.

Those suspicious of my actions always track my moves, writing their notes in the dark.

They fear the three-headed monster—a laughing hyena who barks at dreams.

Monsters are interesting to the spectator but observed only from the other side of the bars.

Life is usually lived behind the safety of bars, where doubt, fear, and certainty rule.

Freedom is on the other side—in uncertainty.

It sounds crazy, right? That’s why I trust it.

“What will become of me?”

Uncertainty can’t answer that question, and that is always positive.

Let me tell you why.

If you have answers to all big questions—you’re living a predictable life.

A predictable life is a dream of those who fear.

In uncertainty,

You become the ruler of your discomfort.

That’s why I’ve quit my job.

Life is one big discomfort, but now I’ll be the boss of mine—I’ll suffer quickly.

I’ll become my own institution; my company, my advisor, my co-founder.

To some, my suffering plan might look empty and unstructured. But empty it must be. I’m filling my mold with a new opiate—freedom.

I’ll discard everything previously labeled as “safe.”

I lost faith in safety. Now, I believe in firewalking.

So, I’ll become a “Wandering Dog.”

I’ll walk through the hot desert of my life and find the real treasure.

Let me show you what I mean through a story—The Wandering Dog.

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The philosophy of the “Wandering Dog”

Persuaded by his instinct to find ancient gold, the dog hungers and thirsts while crossing the sun-baked dirt of the desert.

He hates the dirt—it’s the enemy of his reasoning. But he keeps going.

As he moves forward, he will remember less of his old life.

The anger and the want will subside.

Wandering dog changes in the body; he craves no food or water. He becomes his own source of nourishment just by persuading his mind to its satisfaction.

The dirt became his terrain.

The sun has burned his eyes, carving out the images of his beloved. He becomes more aligned with his fate—solitude. The blade of his bruised paws scrapes the sawdust of desert paths, still seeking ancient gold.

One day, the wandering dog looked behind the treacherous mountains.

Instead of gold, he found a three-headed hyena. Three heads with torn-open razor-sharp teeth looked silly to him. Demonous barking sounded like hysterical laughing. “They must be crazy,” the wandering dog smirked.

After an unsuccessful bark from hell, the hyena shut its mighty drool and stepped back from the wandering passenger.

Peacefully, the wandering dog met the myriad of calm mountains ahead.

Many years passed by.

The wandering dog became weaker and older. After years of seeking, he sat by the bush tree to rest.

The search was over.

Then, all of a sudden, he couldn’t remember what it was he wanted to find in the first place. He did, though, remember the red-squared dirt, winding pathways, the laughing three-headed hyena, and the boiling lakes reflecting the dark-blue mountains.

He felt the warming rays of the eternal sun on his face, burning the old and making space for the new.

His body decayed, but his vision was never better.

The wandering dog remembered how he lived. He always was shoulder to shoulder with the dawn, where morning dew moved the gears of the day. That participation filled his heart with joy.

He died happily under the bush tree that day.

He never found ancient gold, but he did discover that heart-centered life creates the best rewards. Only then did he know he had lived a fulfilled life.

That is how I want life to form ahead of me.

—I want to participate in uncertainty.

How do you do that?

When you’re sick but still looking at the sky.

When you’re depressed but still choose to work.

When you’re invisible but still remain loud in your heart.

Uncertainty can’t shut you down.

It can shake off the unhealthy condition you’re in—a stale, stagnant life that hasn’t seen an adventure for years.

Even when the body can’t—the mind walks. The mind goes places you can’t. This is the biggest life’s adventure. This is the philosophy of the wandering dog—you act when you think you can’t.

The secret of any creation is that it’s always possible.

You create from what you live, the good—or the bad.

Our wandering dog starves and thirsts for his good and bad, which sets him on the journey. He met the monster from the other side of the bars and faced it.

The three-headed hyena laughed at those who feared to live truly. But the wondering dog passed her trial. He was not afraid anymore. His life became more meaningful with every inch of the red desert, and he didn’t need to pursue his goal anymore.

Why?

Because he had reached his life goal: to live the best he could.

To get there, you’ll have to choose the uncertainty from time to time.

Uncertainty is a life beyond the expectations of others.

An adventure always sneaks out for those who choose uncertainty. That solely is a certainty.

So what will I do now that I’ve quit my job?

I’ll become the wandering dog.

I’ll take the leap of faith, let my mind wander, and take me places.

The safe players will sit in the first row to judge.

But I won’t care.

I’ll be smiling wildly at the upcoming sunset.

For all of you who are on a similar path

Change is always painful.

Change is scary.

Change will make you cry.

But also,

Change is natural.

Change is what you crave.

Change is your best friend because every time, it shows you what you can do.

By that rule, Change is the killer of doubt.

So whatever it is, go for it. Become the wandering dog.

If your plan falls through, you can always write about it.

Vitality is the most pleasant form of communication.

It moves the joints, legs, and speech.

You don’t have to think about how you do it.

When health is gone, it’s hard to talk to anyone.

People may be around you, but you can’t feel them like you used to.

Instead of joy, they bring memories.

The memory of who you used to be.

Illness is the cruel state of loneliness.

Being Sick

When lung illness struck, I stopped living.

I was alive, but my spirit died.

And no one came to help.

Lastly, no one can help.

Illness charges for change it offers.

It has a plan that you might not like.

She’s a vicious judge, forming the verdict.

And you’re the only accused.

Illness takes what it likes and gives back what you dislike.

You can only accept.

You're serving time—alone, in your prison cell of self-awareness.

You’ll learn to like it.

I did.

Next to humans, I was a moth on a cold night—all the lampshade was already taken.

I used to worry all the time.

Will my lungs collapse today?

But I suffered quickly.

I turned suffering into the structure.

I got tired of worrying.

I searched for pleasure in unpleasant sensations.

I found one in changing thought.

I discovered worry is always positive.

Worry is simply a signal of awareness toward something we want to change in our lives — worry is a spokesman for awareness.

If there is something I can’t change—why worry?

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Illness is your consultant, and you’re its client.

In isolation, illness teaches her benefits.

Love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you

Rainer Maria Rilke

Pain is your power.

Pain points to the depths of your humanity.

To be a human is to have one wish above all;

No matter the hardship, I want to live.

Life is precious, and there are no perfect conditions to experience it.

There is no proper way.

There is only one way. And you walk it alone.

You know you’re close to your purpose when isolation feels natural.

Isolation is an invisible room connecting you to higher wisdom.

Instead of feeling lonely, open your senses to universal juices and sip through big invisible straws.

That’s when everything starts to make sense.

You’re recreating your life—yourself.

You overcome illness when you accept the unbreakable vow with fate—you will never go back to the old.

You see, illness takes the form of deconstruction.

Healing takes form in reconstruction. This is the main benefit of illness.

Illness is a spiritual reaction—the spirit wants to construct the whole human being.

That process of recreation hurts every time.

It is something we humans are made for.

Pain, as a side effect, is proof of your aliveness.

This experience takes you to the next level of what it means to be a human.

That’s when life begins to be interesting—when you balance between hardship and life.

Illness is a form of kidnap.

—Kidnapping of what you once valued, believed in and nurtured. You’ve expired as one who lived in a certain way.

But from there, the new creation begins.

Creation without fear.

You’ve become someone new, beyond your control.

Someone who’ll learn—my greatest loss was my greatest gain.

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They say childhood ends when you realize you’re going to die.

Mine ends with a single kill.

I was twelve years old when it happened; it was summer. I couldn’t find my sister or anyone to play with that day, so I went to the forest alone.

I took Gramma’s garden scissors for protection. It was for a play. That summer, the Street Kids, my gang, fought Field Kids, the enemy who lived on the edge of a small town. We fought cherry wars. Cherries gave good blood. It felt good to spike a dozen cherries at little Tommy’s chest, who always wore white. His mother got angry a lot that summer.

But no one was out that day. Not even little Tommy The Thick Glasses.

So I walked alone.

Passing white houses with red brick rooftops. The white houses in a row made me feel safe because they all looked alike. The neat rows of houses ended at the crossway with plowed golden fields. There were two ways to go now; straight, the corn swayed in the distance. On the right, a long country road led to vast potato fields. I went forward.

I crossed the dusty pathways hidden between tall, rustling corn. My family and I used to pick corn—the job coming with the end of the summer, and I really hated it. Not to mention the scratching of corn leaves against your legs. It was too hot to wear trousers.

I must have thought about freedom when I reached the forest’s edge. I always wondered what it meant to be free. The thinned forest thickened out as I walked a little deeper. There lay the secret I always liked to discover.

The tombstones of young war heroes peeked from the muddy hollow. It rained the day before yesterday, so the grounds were still soft and absorbing. This place scared me, but I was drawn to it. I knew it was important. So, I visited from time to time.

I relaxed my hot feet in a comfortable squat while I enjoyed the silence for a while. The smell of wet moss invigorated my nostrils. There was no movement for a moment. The forest stopped breathing, and so did I. I was thinking of the graveyard at the end of a long road, right after a potato field. There was this funeral the other day, with a white child-size casket—the funeral among the four forests continents. The graveyard was surrounded by a forest on every side. I call them continents.

Before I noticed, I reached the forest’s exit.

The slight elegant movement on a grovel stole my attention — the praying mantis. She jumped to the top of the abyss of a shallow excavated trench. The local tractor must have just passed here, squishing the deep mud. She looked peaceful. I watched her in silence for a couple of minutes. I tried to gather what she was looking at. Her stillness frightened me.

Before the next thought came to my head, I cut through her body in half with garden scissors.

She breathed loud and quickly like a dying old man giving in to emphysema.

I killed her.

The acid of guilt filled my stomach. I got scared of her lamentation and ran down the country pathways toward home, trying to forget what I did.

One thing was sure. I could never go back to who I was. I killed. A small creature was dying very big. Very loud. I wasn’t ready to take responsibility for that death.

I’ve cut through the life I lived in half. 

My childhood was over—The fantasy of life without consequences died.

I learned I had the power to hurt, to change reality. My act became a symbol of strength and weakness. From then on, I would live in isolation of awareness, and I did. It took me years to realize one small death brought me up to who I am today.

The dying lamentation haunts me forever.

The praying mantis remained the symbol of youth and its hardships. Maybe this was the exact moment when I chose to be good—I chose consciousness.

Many times, I imagined what it would be like if I hadn’t taken those garden scissors.

We were small-town kids left to our own. Life was a play every day until one day, it wasn’t.

It is hard to accept that something must end so that the other can begin, especially when you’re a kid.

The Praying Mantis died so that I could become aware.

Life is sacred, but only when it’s gone.

People cry when you’re gone.

For those lost young boys sleeping under stones in the muddy hollow.

For little Ana. The girl buried in a white casket among four continents. I cried for them and the praying mantis. I cried that I didn’t see it sooner.

Life educates, but death illuminates.

After you’ve seen death, you can’t slumber through the day anymore.

Death is always about life. It’s its shadow.

Death is the lurking abyss on the edge of the forest, taking an entombment.

Death is an illumination.

Can you look her in the eye all at once and not blink?

If you lose your attention, you might miss the lesson. So start looking, or you might become the killer of your life.

The things you remember most change you. They bring a new reality.

Little crevices of the past open the gate of broken hearts and limbs. Work with them.

Work with the broken as with the sacred. Don’t deny the pain that has already settled within you.

Pain is energy. Respect that.

Sometimes, you have to kill it before it kills you.

My first killing was my transformation.

Praying Mantis departed the innocent to a greater life and a greater understanding of life.

I outgrew the fields, shrunken whispering corn leaves, and the forest of the four continents. I waved goodbye to little Tommy, Cherrie Wars, my sister, and my Street gang.

One died so the other could begin.

The memories took care of the rest.

And if it has a mind, it’s definitely a witty one.

About the latest misfortune happening in and around my apartment?

The joke’s on me.

—It all started a few weeks ago.

I noticed funny little things flying in zig-zags across my apartment—funny-looking butterflies. First, I thought nothing of them. I’d catch them between my palms and let them out.

The next day, more of the zig-zagging came along—Moths!

Pantry moths everywhere! I was furious! I totally forgot about their existence!

I’ve cleaned my cabinets, and it should be fine.

Right?

So I thought.

As the moth-havoc subsided, suddenly, it occurred to me.

The day before the moth discovery, I wrote about them.

‘We are the moths in a cold night; we seek the rings of fire to be tossed at.”

Spooky, how I summoned little critters.

And then this.

In mid-February, a week before Moth’s arrival, the heating system in my building failed, and I was freezing.

In my poem, I predicted—I’m gonna be cold.

My poem became life!

I had moths on a cold night. Thank Heavens, there was no fire purging in my apartment.

How funny is that?

The universe always listens, and sometimes too good.

—Writers, be careful what you write about.

Then something new happened.

For no reason, one usual cold afternoon, I started to think of a mouse—a mouse strolling down my fifth-floor balcony. He just popped into my head. It’s not like I wanted to think about the mouse.

Another week goes by, and guess who I see on my balcony? —A Mouse. Cute little, diseased mouse watching me through plate glass. I was distraught.

The night came—more mice came. The sound of a rustle of a thousand mice scrambled thin sheets off the rooftop. I was a frightened popsicle. The thought of moths was a comfort compared to cold and the mice taking over the building.

Three plagues in three weeks.

The cold, the moths, the mice.

The universe has a dark sense of humor.

I felt like an isolated gherkin floating a little above the bottom of a thick glass jar—pickled in my own life. Trapped!

The walls closed in on me. The space shrank, devoured by the pests surrounding me.

The panic peaked.

It was time for some answers.

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Then comes the question following anger:

What the hell does all this mean?

Did I provoke this by myself?

Maybe it was time to leave my apartment—my current life? All the signs were against my stay.

So, I started to cooperate.

Cornered by life’s obstacles, what do we do?

We tear them down, right?

Wrong.

Resistance leads to anger bundled with misinterpretation. By embracing, you create space around obstacles.

One evening, in a sea of YouTube videos, I found Eckhart Tolle1 talking about space consciousness. He says when we have a problem, we take the space from it; we isolate the problem, and it strengthens.

But when you build a space around the problem, the possibility of change opens. To create space means to step back. When you step back, you might see beyond the obvious.

Faced with three plagues, I found an opportunity to cooperate. Oh boy, did that opportunity have a face. And it wasn’t the face of a coldness, moth, or a cute mouse. It was the face of total clarity.

When we allow the obstacle to grow, it becomes an opening, a passage to something we couldn’t previously predict.

The face of a sick animal becomes benign—helpful.

Marcus Aurelius2 once said,

That which stands in the way becomes the way

Life’s push toward evolution always feels uncomfortable—it has sharp teeth.

So you better stop fighting it.

You tame the wild by allowing it to express itself in its nature.

In a simple language:

Allow the situation to evolve. Let the limitation become an opening.

As for me,

I’ve outgrown my apartment and this city.

Heck, the old version of me expired.

It is time to move on.

The radiators started working again. The moths haven’t taken over my kitchen cabinets either. A few cute mice were caught with life traps and released in an Oberwald forest.

The fear subsided. It became my blood sugar.

A new adventure awaits, and I’m ready for the ride.

Writing this feels like a declaration of that new life.

It feels good, too.

The Universe has a funny way of saying things.

We simply need to read between the plagues.

So I’m just gonna ask;

Rats, anyone?

“Grrrrrrowl!” your hunger awakes.

Time to feed the machine.

Does it bother you how much cravings shape your life?

Where your hunger goes—you go.

When your belly speaks—the mind follows in silence.

—An endless cycle. Whether you crave food, alcohol, success, or power.

You chase satisfaction.

Then what?

What happens after you satisfy your craving?

You get tired, falling under the spell of somnolence.

Congratulations.

You’re not just feeding your hunger—you’re living in your belly.

You’ve become a Human Belly.

Let’s look into it.

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The Stoic philosopher Seneca said,

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

And how do we waste it?

By feeding our cravings.

We become deaf to our true needs.

Hungry people never listen, wise Seneca said.

They jump from one hunger to the next—always getting something, never what truly benefits them.

We always want a reward.

We invent a personal reward system for surviving the meeting, the gym, the horrible day.

• If I pass the exam, I’ll eat a dozen of doughnuts.

• If I finish the deadline, I’ll drink a bottle of wine

I’ve earned it.

Or have I?

Hunger is not in your belly or mind.

Your hunger is in a memory—an old belief that needs to be wiped out.

You believe you need something because it gave you pleasure in the past.

Trusting the past, you made yourself deaf to the present need.

You stopped listening to your instinct, didn’t you?

Instinct over Craving

Instinct is quieter than desire, but it’s intense.

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the voice of your true need.

That voice is stronger than a superficial desire.

To become a good listener, you need to amplify your mindful awareness.

When hunger returns, surprise her with this thinking:

• Search beyond the obvious—When uncontrollable hunger or thirst comes,

  don’t judge it, but don’t indulge in it either.

• Play with it. Give yourself time to detect where the true hunger lies.

• Hunger is often an emotional emptiness, a lack of purpose in your daily life.

  —Hunger is a filler for your unsharpened purpose.

• Cravings manifest in our bodies but come from elsewhere. They come from mental or unfulfilled spiritual needs. These are the places you should be filling.

• Take control—Act as if you’re in control because you are! Pause and read your instincts before reacting.

Closure:

Shifting from desire (“human belly”) to instinct (“instinctual life”) is the difference between being awake and being enslaved by craving.

I’m not talking about denying your pleasures or needs.

I’m talking about tuning into what your body and mind truly need.

You can free yourself from being ruled by endless desires — from the past or the present.

My best advice to start with:

React slower to your desires — let them manifest naturally.

Most people wait for their purpose to fall from the sky.

The truth?

The purpose isn’t something waiting to be collected.

Purpose can be anything waiting to be created—by you.

And when you succeed, here’s what you get:

Your purpose is the spiritual compass guiding all your actions in the material world.

And you?

You are a tool to your purpose — a body of action.

No matter what you do in life, you seek your purpose, consciously or unconsciously.

Here’s what is valuable to observe:

Purpose has three faces.

• Face of love — unconditional love toward all known and unknown life

• Face of achievement — mastery and excellence in noble agency (career) to serve yourself and others for a better future

• Face of autonomy — living life consciously and on your own terms

Purpose has three faces but only one body.

And that body is you — the carrier.

The physical, mental, and spiritual carrier of wisdom. The trinity of the higher creation.

Finding your purpose does not feel comfortable.

It feels right.

It can be lonely or isolating.

When I was creating my purpose, it felt wet. Like sleeping with a wet blanket.

It still does.

But it’s a state of increasing calmness, bringing clarity into life.

To find your purpose, you must live your life with great trust.

Trust in everything coming your way.

If you don’t like what’s coming to you, change your thoughts.

Thoughts are the basis of our physical and mental existence—stored mental images which, if positive, highlight your purpose.

Prentice said it best;

You must fill the image of your success years before you can fill that place in reality.

Prentice Mulford

People presume things, events, friends, and lovers come to us randomly when, in fact, we create the path for them to find us.

We create them for us.

The same applies to purpose.

What you think you attract.

What you attract is what you manifest in your creation.

By that rule

You don’t find your purpose; you create it.

You are a self-build instrument — the result of your thoughts and actions. You are the creator.

To become a wealthy creator, you must become a collector of the world by becoming the world’s admirer. You admire when you observe with full attention.

All admiration is in reality study. When you admire anything beautiful and meaningful, your mind is concentrated upon it. You are quite unconsciously examining it.

Prentice Mulford

What in the world is worth examining?

• People — their experiences, ailments, dreams, and needs.

Analyse and recreate those experiences. They are arts of living. Use them as templates for your noble cause or business you’re building.

• Shapes — of all human-made and natural elements.

When observing buildings, stones, and leaves, you discover traces of our genesis and are inspired by it. Start observing!

What does that have to do with creating your purpose?

Everything.

Your purpose comes from the world to the world.

Start collecting the signs.

You might as well fall into your destined context. Isn’t that what we are all searching for?

A context that comes along with our actions. That is a success of our purpose.

So, become a great observer of the world, and you’ll find tools to create your purpose.

The purpose is a life-long creation.

So enjoy it.

The world is your blueprint.

Find wealth in details, people, their stories, shapes.

Remember,

When you truly admire, you examine; you learn. That is how purpose can find its form — through you.

Feeling close to your purpose already?

To enjoy your life is to enjoy the truth about yourself.

Ask yourself.

• What do I want?

• Am I capable of doing it?

• Will it bring me health, wealth, and joy?

To answer these questions honestly is to accept the truth. It doesn’t matter how your life looks right now. Life is a game—maybe you’re winning, and maybe you’re losing. It’s all up to you. How you see it is how it is.

You might be physically ill, poor, or chronically undetermined about your life choices. That stagnation is making you sick mentally. It makes the emotion about your state sick.

So how do you reverse your illness? (physical or environmental)

Change the truth about it.

Start with the emotion that connects how you feel about your loss.

What I’ve learned from my chronic breathlessness is not that I was obstructed but the opposite. I was, and still am, under construction. That is the truth I am willing to accept.

My illness has opened many opportunities in my living experience and pushed me to ask rare questions. Naturally, I’ve discovered rare answers.

For the first time, I became interested in my own life. The first time, I wasn’t utterly bored. That was my truth. I started to enjoy the truth about my life.

Discovery always starts within obstruction, within walls. You have to be imprisoned first before you become the seeker.

You won’t start thinking before something or someone takes away your freedom.

That is the truth.

The truth comes not from the suffering but from the lectures that suffering brings with it. The pain, breathlessness, or misfortune will turn you into the seeker if you are lucky to see the opportunity. I had that luck of seeing.

How do you influence your luck?

Leave nothing to chance. When things happen, good or bad, use them as the best possible experience.

The next unpleasant event, like loss of money, health, or job, might be your night train rushing to a new destination.

New opportunities, fortune, and higher consciousness await at the end of the dark tunnel.

The World is abundant. All you have to do is ask.

Change the course of your life story by changing how you see yourself in your life. Your truth is better than you think. A more positive definition of your current state brings hope and willingness to go on.

We all suffer.

I learned about suffering at an early age. And it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

My best advice to you:

When you’re suffering, suffer quickly.

If you feed your suffering with more suffering, you’re in prison for life.

If you let the pain go freely through your system without resentment or restraint, the learning phase will begin sooner than you think. That’s where the answers are. That’s how you find the new truth about yourself. One that changes the course of your life forever.

You must treat your fears with great respect.

Fear is your all-time companion, regulating the “blood sugar” of your life.

Thats right. Blood sugar (glucose) is the main energy source for your body’s functionality. Too high or too low glucose can cause health problems and steal energy from the body. The same goes for fear.

Fear is a constant presence in your life, like blood sugar maintaining bodily functions. Fear governs the quality of life, influencing decision-making and actions.

Just as balance is needed in your blood sugar, to balance the fear is crucial. Not having any fears keeps you unmotivated, while too much fear blocks your actions and, thus, growth and happiness.

Fear can be a powerful fuel, so start treating it with respect. Fear is the inner ticking bomb, growing louder when ignored.

Fear Holds The Potential For Change

I see it this way,

Where there is fear — there is a potential for change. Fear creates a drive to decision-making that leads to life-changing actions.

Many describe fear as a mute, sharpening inner scream blocking free creative will. When fear overtakes us in the long term, it blocks our creative actions.

For example, you have something to say, but you’re afraid of your voice. You want to change your career, but what may the world have to say about that? What if they say you’re no good?

I’ve been there. Sometimes an action leads to finding you are a sucker. So? Failure happens to everyone who takes risks.

In my book, it takes a lot of guts to make a decision and take an action, even a bad one. Bad decisions are steps in the process of making better ones.

By choosing no action at all, you choose fear. Fear then locks you in the dark. Out of any action, far from opportunities. Settled in your comfort zone, from where there’s no view—just a black curtain. I get the appeal. Safe at home, where no one sees or hears you. But we all know hiding from life becomes a great burden with time.

Trust me, it’s easier to pursue your dream and fail than not ever trying.

How To Balance Your Biggest Fears

1. Resize your fear

You don’t deal with your fear all at once — that can only backfire. Fear should be approached with small steps.

EXAMPLE:
My biggest fear in life is the waste of my talents. Just saying it out loud sounds overwhelming — look at the size of those words!

To approach my fear, I had to resize it, softening the words I described it with. Instead of “wasting my talents,” I changed it to “not using my talents enough.” This shift helped soften the fear. You have to be gentle with yourself.

By a simple wordplay, I took a great chunk of power from my fear. It’s much easier to deal with “not using my talents enough” than the overwhelming thought of “wasting my talents.” Words are incredibly powerful. We should be careful how we form our thoughts with words.

Don’t let words make your fears feel bigger than they are.

2. Start working with your fear

I was blocked for years, fearing what the world might think of me, my voice, and my creations. Fear took away my action, and I had to do something about it. I started listening to my fear and ignoring the world.

To be perfectly honest, the world doesn’t care about you or what you do. In reality, no one is looking because everyone else is battling their own fears on their fronts.

Fear of starting something new is the fear of becoming someone new. We are, in fact, addicted to our old selves — the old beliefs we have about ourselves. As a sensation, fear is trying to stop you from sinking deeper into this sleep state.

Fear is the wake-up call. It’s the drive pointing to the actions you need to take. Fear always shows you possibilities, not danger. But we often see new opportunities and the unknown as a threat because we don’t know how we’ll react or behave in future events. We don’t believe in what we don’t know.

What you need to do is ground a new belief. You need to start imagining your actions and slowly put them into life.

You want a new job but fear the live interview? Join a Toastmasters Club — where people practice public speaking and rhetoric. It’s affordable, and it’s fun.

You want to quit your job and open a coffee shop but fear bankruptcy? Seriously, what’s the worst that could happen?

Even if you lose all your savings and the business doesn’t take off, you’ll get another job. But this time, you’ll be a different person. Your experience and the new connections you’ve made will expand your horizons. Your fear will fade, and you’ll be ready to play another round. That’s the spirit!

We can’t meet our better future selves if we’re too afraid to leave our old selves behind. That is why I showed up on a page today. I have something to say, and I’m giving it my best shot.

A failure, bankruptcy, or shame is pure evidence that you’re living a full life. And trust me, if you dared once, you’d dare again. And this time, you might succeed. Listen to your fear — it’s showing you your next move.

Takeaway

• Treat Fear with Respect: Fear is a crucial part of your life, much like blood sugar is for the body. Fear governs the quality of your life, influencing your next necessary move.

• Fear is a Potential for Change: Where there’s fear, there’s an opportunity for growth. Stop avoiding fear and let it drive you to new action.

• Resize Your Fear: Take the power from your fear by changing how you describe it. Define your fear gently to make it easier to approach.

• Working with Fear: Instead of letting fear consume you, work with it. Fear is a wake-up call, pointing in a new direction where you might develop a more powerful version of yourself.

• Fear Is Showing You The Next Necessary Move: Don’t ignore it.

  Remember, It’s harder to hide from life than to actually live it.