Being able to share a blog publication is always a great sign that I am having more time for myself. It also means I can also connect with the outside world after what has usually been an intense period of wanderlusting towards new horizons, whether they are beyond the limits of our physical body or not.
The fact of having the possibility to have someone read these few lines at this very moment is even more special to me because it had been four years (since my 9-month stay in Japan from September 2014 to July 2015) that I had not been capable of sharing much at this time of the year because of some supermassive energy vortex called Chacahua that was sucking me in. Those who have kept following my crazy adventures during all these years know almost as intimately as I do about this tiny Mexican island off the gorgeous coast of Oaxaca; It has not only bewitched my soul with her dazzling beauty but has also and especially taught me so much in terms of both my personal and collective growth through the beautiful souls I have met there. I ended up having the most amazing life in Chacahua for ten months in total (out of three six-month cycles in Mexico between December 2015 and May 2018) almost completely off the grid with not having much more than my tent pitched inside a small cabañita (hut) on the beach and a well to wash not far from it. Being in Chacahua was the end of a longer-term cycle and surely the beginning of a new one since for the first time of my adult life, I could take as much time as I wanted (or needed) to sit back, observe my life and contemplate it so that I could figure out what I really wanted (or needed) to do with it for the new upcoming cycle. Yet, this concept may sound slightly paradoxical with the idea of going with the flow and letting go of everything but after all, why would it be incompatible with the idea of knowing where we come from, where we are at and where we are going as a global direction in this existence of ours? I believe that when we are fully attuned with ourselves, hence with the true essence of our soul, it is actually possible to See the flow of how events and encounters connect to one another in the long run to take us to a very point in time and space regardless of the natural dualistic judgment (“good or bad”) with which we humans tend to perceive an experience. The problem is neither about taking the past into consideration and see how much we have listened and learnt nor about discussing future possibilities among a infinite ocean of them. The problem is that we usually get completely stuck with the past and we project ourselves way too far and too much in the future given that the Now is the only concept that truly exists in both our human and spiritual perceptions of life. In fact, there never is a “problem” unless we judge and get stuck on a situation instead of perceiving it for what it is. Yet, I am fully aware that it is very tricky not to judge because we have been trained and conditioned to do so since we were born, both directly and indirectly, through social environment (including the “marvelous” media) and to put a label on anything and anyone all the time. And at the end of the day, Chacahua (and Mexico as a whole) has allowed me to complete this process and to eventually take the time to contemplate and feel what I had achieved until then and where the cosmic winds may take me next. Not because I wanted to know what was going to happen but because I was actually very thrilled about the Unknown that was lying before my bare feet and about whatever would be waiting for me on the way. Nevertheless, when I left and said farewell to Chacahua for an indefinite amount of time in March 2018, I could not imagine that it would have almost made sense to go back there at the end of the same year, after spending some intense months in the mountains and forests of California like I much enjoyed doing the three years before. But it would have “almost” made sense just because it was on my way to Colombia . After all, when I departed from Chacahua last year, I had no clue that I may go back again to the USA later on, which was an opportunity that came to me in August for heading there in late September. Overall, I have remained open to the magic of what was meant to come to me and I realised that even though I had a new occasion to return to my beloved Mexico and Chacahua in order to close and open a new chapter of this life as I have done so many times there before, I felt that my energetical necessity of the moment was to go back to Colombia regardless of financial and/or geographical asspects. And it was not an easy decision to make. Or else, I did not even “make” anything and it turned out that it was what made more sense in order to shift cycles in the very long term and move forward in my life and my long journey around the globe. Now, one might ask why go “back” to Colombia. Well, because I had already spent two months there from July to September, close to a tiny village named Santa Elena and located at 2600 metres above sea level in the Andes, one hour away from Medellin (the second biggest city of the country after the capital Bogota). In fact, 2018 was a year of healing for me. One may argue that each and every single year is a year of healing for everyone but I still think that it becomes something much more powerful when we really put the intention to do what we really need to do in order to heal. Of course, the concept of “healing” sounds like our physical body is injured, which may be the case at some stage, but there are many types of injuries we can endure, especially when it comes to the emotional body. I (and quantum physics) believe that all our injuries have an emotional cause, mainly manifesting themselves in a subconscious pattern. This precept justifies the fact that we tend to do the same mistakes and have to learn the same lessons over and over again. Indeed, digging down the rabbit hole is something that we all have to do at some point in both our human AND spiritual experience and it just depends on how deep we are ready to go. By now, I have never felt so fit and strong and flexible in my life after doing a substantial amount of yoga, isometric strength and long stretching work on a daily basis for over a year. It is part of what the freedom of choosing this way of living has provided me with and it is not so bad considering that I am going to turn 40 in a few months. Nutrition has been a very crucial part of it as well and I can say that the freedom that I have manifesting in the last couple of years has allowed me to exercise as much as during my university years 15 years ago. The difference is that I am so much more conscious about everything I am doing. All in all, 2018 was a year of becoming even more aware of the ultimate priority I should give to my body as my very own temple and the vehicle that my soul has chosen to reincarnate on this planet so that I can fully channel whatever energies I am meant to convey and endure whatever experience I am meant to embrace for me to grasp whatever lesson I am meant to learn. As you have already surely noticed, it is more important for me to share the emotional part of my quest rather than the geographical one along with its wondrous features along the way. As a matter of fact, both concepts are inexorably undissociable in the travellers's life, which is all about the magic of parting from an old routine for good and staying abroad from an extended period of time without going back to what we used to call “home”. We then realise that Home can just be anywhere (even inside of us) and that we can create and manifest our very own reality just anywhere we fall in love with a place and its people and reciprocally. 2018 was also the year during which I crossed the most borders in my life; Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia and US. Yet, doing the same distance I did between Mexico and Costa Rica overland (8500km) with Rudy (my car) is still less than what I did when I crossed China from Tibet to Shanghai and then to Mongolia (9500km) in 2014. As always, Space and Time and especially physical borders are very relative concepts indeed. From the moment I left Northern California in early December 2017, I drove about 17000 kilometres in total all the way to Costa Rica and the only reason for which I eventually did not make it to Panama is because it is truly a huge bureaucratic gamble to sell an imported vehicle in these countries. It made much more sense and far less costly at the time to sell Rudy in Costa Rica and fly out to Medellin, Colombia from there. Overall, my second stay in Guatemala after last years's was not more exciting than the first one as it is really challenging to find authenticity in the human experience with locals in this country, far from the over-exploitation of mass tourism. My stay there (mainly in Antigua) was pretty much exclusively focused on the process of getting my back fully tattooed, which may sound slightly trivial in the first place and yet the achievement of a ten-year, long-thought project. After concluding the explosive Guatemala adventure with the strongest and deadliest eruption of the Fuego volcano in forty years, an unexpected surprise was waiting for me on the other side of the border of El Salvador. And El Salvador did not fail to stick to the true sense of its name for it “saved” me from assuming that I did not have much to do in Central America aside from geographically crossing these territories from point A to point B because they were on my way to South America. Of course, nature can be beautiful just anywhere according to the manner we are able to enjoy our silences and solitude at times or according to the souls that we are sharing these special moments with. It is all the people we meet and the smiles we bump into on our Path that define and gauge the quality of our human experience. And one does not need to travel at the other side of the world or in a supposedly utterly different culture to comprehend that even if it may help a lot and considerably accelerate the process. We can also discuss the idea that it is because we love to do something that we generate positive energies and manifest the “right” people in our lives but it is not always accurate in a sense that we could be in the most beautiful place in the world, it would not be as enjoyable as it could potentially be in we are surrounded by people who have a different energy frequency. Then, it is all about the timing of it along with synchronicity on the way. In my very own experience, El Salvador was an exception to the local masquerade of the omnipresent tourism that has destroyed the genuineness of what used to be the heart of the Mayan culture in Central America. I am certain that some fascinating local communities still exist somewhere in Central America but they are really hidden and/or forgotten and there is not much off-the-beaten track travelling that can be done there. I believe this has taken place over the last decades because it has become more accessible to travel, the countries are small and it is like a geographical funnel not only between Mexico and Colombia but also between the huge masses of land that are North and South America. Central American States are so tiny that it takes us back to the concept of “property” in Western Europe, where it is actually very challenging to find stretches of land that does not belong to anyone. In fact, when thinking about it, it is almost impossible to do it in Europe unless you go high enough in the mountains where Mother Earth takes it rights back and the climate becomes to harsh to live there. Consequently, everyone goes pretty much to the same places and it feels as if there were more people than in a bigger country because they are more concentrated in terms of density due to the limited space and possibility of movement. There is not much obvious, visible ancestral culture in El Salvador (apart from a few temples here and there in the North) and the touristy side of the country is more focused on surfing along the Pacific coast as foreigners mostly come for that reason. Nevertheless, despite the intrinsic beauty of the Pacific shore, it was further inland that I was dazzled by the pristine, virgin nature and the willingness of the locals to live in harmony with it in all its possible senses, to the point of driving through villages and barely being able to see houses since they are surrounded by all types of greenery. Most importantly, El Salvador has this reputation of so-called “dangerous” country and even though a lot of those who watch TV and the news may not go to such places, they are actually a blessing for people like me. In effect, after 6 years and 4 months travelling around the world overland and after more than 16 years since I started backpacking or vagabonding, the most interesting local people I have met actually live in these “dodgy” places such as Turkey, Iran, Russia, El Salvador, Mexico and Colombia. Not only are they some of my favourite nations and cultures in the world, where I ran into some of the most hospitable people ever, but also did I feel so much safer in these lands than what I could feel in the USA, Western Europe or even in what used to be my hometown in France where I would hardly ever walk in the streets of the city centre at night. Everything is a matter of perception. In recent years, Honduras has also gained a reputation of being one of these “unsafe” locations but again, I did not really take that into consideration before crossing its border. Sure thing was that I did not intend to stay there for the simple reason that Honduras has also become the new worldwide frenzy on the American continent for cheap scuba-diving as Thailand used to be in Asia before they ruined all the reefs by over-exploiting them. I did not want to participate in that consumerist farce and in the superficial party atmosphere that is usually affiliated to it. Then came Nicaragua, which was meant to be the actual highlight of my Central American journey and where I thought I would stay for weeks exploring the place, at least when I originally planned the trip. It was a totally different story when getting to the border since a nebulous, intense conflict had been born in the country between the people and its government and the fancy of lingering there for some time rapidly vanished. Subsequently, I ended up crossing Nicaragua in 4 days from the Honduras border to that of Costa Rica, 400 kilometres further. It was a pity because I had heard so many beautiful things about this country and it could have been a huge disappointment not to be able to travel properly there. However, to be perfectly honest, it was not a dissatisfaction at all because I did not feel that there was anything waiting for me in Nicaragua. I gladly accepted the synchronicity of not feeling welcome there and of having slipped through its numerous barricades on the road, which was quite intense at times especially in the South. Yet, I never felt in danger for locals understood it was not my war. Meanwhile, I did see beautiful landscapes on the way but nothing truly exceptional to the eyes of the experienced, off-the-beaten-track traveller. Furthermore, I do not think that any country in the world is worth 17 dollars a night per person for a shabby dormitory, which is almost as expensive as Japan and quite common along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. I then thought it would be much more interesting to travel Central America with a van in which it is possible to sleep (especially during the rainy season as camping is close to being impossible). But I have to refute this idea because again, in my humble opinion, Nicaragua and the entire Central America have been already way too much spoiled not only by mass tourism but also by the influence from the North...or from the West, depending on how you look at it. It was high time to cross the Costa Rica border and even if it is one of the most expensive countries I have ever visited, at least it did not fail its reputation of also being one of the most beautiful places in the world when it comes to its stunning scenery and biodiversity. There are still many beaches in Costa Rica that can only be reached by boat, which is quite a meaningful symbol that this country is truly a gold mine regarding its amazing wilderness and the hidden jewels that are still to be explored. This land sets one in immersion to learn the language of Nature. But only to a certain extent. It is no coincidence that, consciously and subconsciously, I have most enjoyed my time journeying in bigger countries almost all my life (Australia, India, China, Russia, Alaska, Canada, United States, Mexico) because to the exception of New Zealand and La Reunion Island (which are not “big” places by definition yet scenically spectacular in essence), they are where nature remains sovereign with greater free space, hence where it is accessible and coherent (to my experience) to connect and commune with Her. Therefore, these territories are where it is possible to encounter our very own freedom and to fully let go of the permanent conditioning and distraction that we all experience on a daily basis on different degrees and levels. Even though I somehow did enjoy my stay in Costa Rica, I did not feel like I was really at my place in Central America and spontaneously decided not to go to Panama as originally planned and to fly straight to Colombia. Consequently, the overland voyage that I have not done between Costa Rica and Colombia has become only the second section I have not explored for this round-the-world trip after Pakistan (between Iran and India) in late December 2012. Nevertheless, there happened to be an exception to the overwhelming mass tourism in Costa Rica and it was the three delightful weeks I spent at Playa Dominical as I was dealing with all the bureaucratic paperwork nonsense when trying to sell Rudy (my car) after 8 months and 6 countries of loyal company to one another. I had always felt like arriving in Colombia would be an important milestone in my journey because of being the gateway of entering the exciting, long-awaited South American adventure that I have kind of delayed for the last couple of years. I have just bought a van because I believe it is what incarnates the balance of what I need at present in my evolution after hitchhiking half the planet and suffering enough the rough experience of local transportation. I am about to get started again my long road trip around the globe, this time around South America and I truly look forward to that. The idea is first to head from Colombia to Patagonia (Southern Chile) and then back up through Argentina and Uruguay towards Brazil. Yet, I do not know much about how much time the journey is going to take as I have, in fact, never known from the very beginning when I left France in September 2012. The difference, nearly 6 years and a half later, is that I am more and more willing to finish my journey and establish my own space of tranquility, learning, sharing and healing somewhere in harmony with nature, and South America is beckoning at my soul somehow. Thank you for reading me and for being in my life. 2019, and especially its astronomical and astrological patterns, is going to be a thrilling year and I take advantage of the situation to wish you a captivating revolution around the sun in which all your dreams come true because of putting the intention to manifest them in your very own reality regardless of what people think about it. I wish you to embrace as much your human experience as your spiritual one because they are both fascinating in themselves and one cannot go without the other. I wish you to be yourself and find your true essence and to be passionate about it and to be surrounded by the people that love you unconditionally for that reason. I wish you to keep discovering the Universe both above our head as well as beneath the delusional border of our physical body. Spread the Love.
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I celebrated my fifth anniversary on the road on September 22nd 2017 in California. Five years; as I have often said in my writings (whether it comes to the blog or my books), it feels like it was both yesterday and a lifetime ago. However, I had never truly applied this concept to such extent; I can easily picture myself getting my first rides and waits on the European roads, surrounded by the chilliness and dampness of the winter looming at the horizon, with my shorter hair and glasses that I still had not lost at the time (I mean, the glasses especially of course). And it does feel as if it were yesterday indeed. Yet, it also feels as if I had experienced an entire lifetime on each and every single day of the journey, lifetimes that I have already lived sometime, somewhere, in another dimensional plane or galaxy, which have connected me with my true essence all the way to when I was still drifting in the cosmos as stardust. Because that is when everything started for each and every of us at some point. Do not worry. I am not going to intend to tell you what has taken place in my millions of lifetimes since the time (although time had not been invented by mankind yet) I was hanging around as an atom amidst Nothingness. However, I just wanted to share the idea that 2017 (a number that does not mean much but that is very useful in order to express time since we have been conditioned to believe that time is something linear) has been a truly fascinating Gregorian year in terms of re-attuning myself regarding where I come from, where I am and where I am going. Of course, we are not only talking about geography and countries here; going places in order to become free and independent has definitely been a huge part of my journey but only as a tool to achieve my personal and collective growth in an indissociable way from one another. It may sound pretty obvious that we all personally and collectively grow when travelling around but I believe it makes a substantial difference when growing becomes a priority over travelling itself. After all, I also do have to often remind myself that when I left Southern France in 2012 (after working as an English teacher and especially as a political activist for the Zeitgeist Movement in Amsterdam for a year), my only goal was to set myself far apart from materialism, consumerism and corporatism by leaving my conventional life in Europe and doing a complete hitchiking trip without money around the world in two or three years. At least, that was what I was telling people when they were asking me about the timing of it, for I had myself absolutely no clue about what was going to happen from the very moment I would set my first foot on the tarmac and start my quest. Since then, I long realised that I would not want to be that guy who would go to every single country of this planet as quickly as possible just for the sake of it because there is something about travelling that goes way beyond physical borders, whether it comes to those of a country, a culture, a language or of a human body. I closed my bank account and kept 400 Euros that I did not want to use before getting to Asia for I did not want to get stuck without money somewhere in Eastern Europe or in the Middle East. I finally managed to travel without money for eight months from France to India, but after all, the whole concept of the journey had already “failed” when I could not cross Pakistan overland (I first wanted to do it without travelling by plane at all) from Iran for geopolitical issues at the time and had to illegally sleep and play the guitar on the streets of Dubai in order to buy a plane ticket to New Delhi. Of course there are no “failures” in life and only experiences to be lived and lessons to be learnt, and it was already high time I shifted cycles for I was already so physically and psychologically exhausted; I had to accept that travelling around the world without spending any money would simply cost me my life. At the end of the day, travelling without money is surely feasible within the borders of a country but it is also simply impossible by definition since money is necessary at some stage when crossing overland borders and getting visas along the way. It may be doable to sneak through a couple of borders on the way but definitely not through forty or fifty in order to make it a round-the-world trip. Overall, I had heard about some of the rare people who had intended to have a similar experience but they ended up giving up or else being sponsored and finally spend money, but I was not interested in neither of the two. Therefore, I needed a transition that would allow me to adjust the whole concept of my journey and keep going with it in a more viable manner, whether it would come to reconnecting with myself or with the people I would bump into along my way. I had already understood that my journey was all about people and the tremendous lessons I would learn through their presence and guidance as much as they would from mine, whether it would be for the time of a glance, a smile or a lifetime and beyond. Many things have changed since I left France and I believe that despite the fact that there have been many crucial turning points taking place in the last 64 months away from what I used to call home, one of the most fundamental ones happened when I arrived in Alaska from Japan in July 2015. For the first time in years, after having travelled alone for so long, I realised that I now needed to share more on a physical level with people (not in the way you may think though). Consequently, for the last two years and a half, I have put the intention to manifest this concept in my life and, like Chris McCandless, I was meant to understand into the wild that happiness is only real when shared. However, unlike him, I was grateful to be able to cross the Teklanika River on my way back from the bus and to keep being alive on this physical plane as I can share my own story. Paradoxically (or not), it has been since then that my communication with the outside world has also been completely failing, regardless of whatever intention I have put in the process. I have just been inexorably taken into the vicious circle of being willing to share all my stories but not being able to do so because of learning and growing in the most insightful places yet the most remote ones in the meantime. Can you imagine that I spent 21 of the last 30 months isolated in nature (including 9 out of 11 in 2017) since I arrived in Alaska? What does it take to a human to be completely secluded, alone or not, and to camp and coexist with nature with just the bare necessities for such a long time? Because I am personally still having a hard time fathoming it. Yet, it has been during this time that I have grown the most and that I also could not share it with my beloved people in the outside world. Because as I mentioned in a post last year, I have spent most of this given time in what has felt like a well-advanced dream stage (like in the movie “Inception”) through which I fulfilled the goal to extract myself from any sort of conventional structure and live and travel utterly off the grid. Because it is part of my intimate convictions to believe that living in a responsible and sustainable way is one of the answers to the masquerade of our current political, societal and economic model. In fact, 2017 has helped me put the pieces of the Puzzle together; maybe not all of them and it may still be a long way to go but at least those that now allow me to perceive the bigger picture of this present incarnation on Earth and especially to understand it. When I first got to Mexico in December 2015, I had hitchhiked from Alaska to San Francisco and stayed and worked in many sustainable communities along the way. Even though I was truly emotionally exhausted from my journey (that had started three years before at the time), it took me another entire year to eventually be able to materialise the context of actually fully chilling out without having to think of where I was going to go and what I was going to do next. Overall, I had never thought that I would be capable of saying or writing that one day but I had completely lost my travelling mojo and whatever motivation to hit the road again; not because I no longer wanted to travel but because before doing so, I needed to digest all the intense emotions that had taken place into my life since the beginning of this journey, which I had never really had the opportunity to do. Subsequently, going back to Mexico and Chacahua in December 2016 and spending five months there, after experiencing the ultimate self-sufficient adventure in the North-American forests (see previous publications) has allowed me to sit back and do nothing and not worry about it for the very first time of my life. Of course, the term “nothing” does not have the connotation that one may think about in the first place simply because I still learnt a myriad of things in the meantime like I had never done before and the main difference was that I could finally process and integrate all the feelings that had taken place into my life until that very point of my existence. It does not mean that these emotions were “good” or “bad” for I have long taken anything that would come to me just as an experience as it should be; it means that I just needed to embrace and process these emotions for the very first time at long last. For instance, you have to try to understand that some events had been so intense and I had had so little time to assimilate them that I was sometimes feeling unsure about whether things like travelling without money, hiking 300km alone in the Himalayas or going to the Magic Bus in Alaska had really happened for real. I mean, I had never had the opportunity to just appreciate it for what it was because I always had to make a decision according to a situation given to me and then move on so quickly. On the other hand, everything that I have done in the last five years is absolutely surreal, especially when put together; travelling without money all the way from France to India, working as an industrial photographer in Iran, busking with my guitar in Istanbul, Dubai or China, parading as a Samurai in Japan, working as a University professor in Kathmandu, panning gold in Alaska, picking mushrooms for a living in Canada or working with some of my friends as a marijuana farm director in California, which does not even include the myriad of travel anecdotes that are affiliated to the (beautiful) madness of backpacking around the world overland for an indefinite amount of time. For a long time, I could find my salvation and the possibility to let go through the process of writing my journals (and then books by the same occasion) since I realised it had long been like a “therapy” for me, also considering that I may not have been ready to share these emotions with the outside world at least at that time. And it makes sense; I was not ready to share them because I had never taken the proper time to fully integrate them anyway. In fact, this is what my second stay in Chacahua eventually gave me the opportunity to do; to sit down and have a deep introspection about all these events, to take the time to figure out where I had been going with my life and to perceive and observe all the interconnections between each and every synchronicities that had occurred in the meantime. Since Alaska, the intention of my journey substantially changed because my personal and collective growth through my quest drastically overcame its geographical aspect for whatever it would mean and however it would impact my experience on Earth. For the very first time of my life, this life, I could have the time to write as much as I wanted, share my passions and philosophies through teaching English, French, astronomy or astrology, without any involved money and only in the context of exchange of services, to look after my body through yoga, running, swimming and other poi choreographs the way I needed them, to learn how to make handcrafts and macrame and to make my own jewelry to give to the people I love, and I could do all these things in one of the most breathtaking places that I had ever seen in 15 years of travelling. 2017 has also been a year of other wonderful achievements in terms of human experiences. Of course, there have always been outstanding human experiences at all times through my epic adventures but that year was special in a sense that I could see my father for the first time in five years (see previous post). Along with the blood family connection, I had the opportunity to also reconnect with some more cosmic family and ancestral knowledge along the way, and despite the fact that I have had more time to share with my people in the last couple of years (especially since I arrived in Chacahua), the substantial difference is that I have had some inspiring companions travelling with me most of the time. Love also played its part of the game; because this is what we all are down here to remember and do. At last, I got privileged enough to see my first total solar eclipse in my life in Oregon, USA, after having waited for that moment for 26 years, since I had started to study astronomy at the age of 12. It was well worth awaiting it and driving 30 hours in three day in order to enjoy some of the two most mind-blowing minutes in my entire life. As I wrote these few lines, I was finally about to leave Northern California and head back to my beloved Mexico. I bought a 4x4 car and a new camera, and I had never been so excited to hit the road again, which is a truly awesome feeling after nearly two years of working on reconnecting with myself and on digesting and balancing out some of these energies and emotions that I discussed before. And it takes a lot of time and dedication in order to do so. Interestingly enough, it is the first car I bought since New Zealand 2006 and the first camera since 2009. Regarding the former, it is mainly because when I started my journey, I wanted to hitchhike all the way from Alaska to Patagonia and even though I made it between Northern Alaska and San Francisco in 2015 and did a lot of hitchhiking in Mexico in the meantime as well, I had never been able to make it overland from San Francisco to Mexico City ever since. In fact, the trip from San Francisco to Mexico became even more meaningful through the idea that it was eventually extended all the way to Chacahua, my paradise island in Oaxaca, where I am now doing the proofreading of my text so that I can share it with you as soon as possible. Yet, I do not know how long I will keep Rudy, my car, because evolving and growing personally and collectively and using the spiritual tools that we run into on our respective Paths does not mean that we have to change our convictions and values; We can accept, adapt and readjust but it needs to have a balance in the long run, like everything does in this universe. I am surely not willing to give up on the way I love travelling in the longer term, which has always been about hitchhiking, camping and connecting with the locals and sharing with them in the most genuine, insightful manner as possible. During these long days being “lost” in the remote Californian forests throughout the summer and fall, I long pondered about the evolution of my journey and the actual concept of Teacher on the Road. At the end of the day, life is a different journey for each and every of us and yet, our paths and souls always cross and intertwine with each other over and over through an ocean of infinite quantum possibilities. Life is not about having principles and getting stuck with them; it is all about having values and faith that help us accept, learn and go with the flow of every single experience that comes to us on our way. Indeed, the fact of having travelled without money five years ago and of now having manifested money in my life through alternative jobs in the last couple of years does not have to be compared; they are just two very distinct experiences in themselves yet both truly amazing ones. Most importantly, my values towards money have not changed and I mostly travel in the exact same way that has allowed to get out and keep distant from my comfort zone and to remain open to the magic that have been taking place in my life ever since. Furthermore, the global concept is still also the same; striving for the ultimate freedom and independence from materialism and consumerism along with all the values attached to them. And as you already know; Love is the Answer. Overall, it is the same regarding my journey and that, I believe, of any human being on this planet; finding an equilibrium between the light and shadow that we all have within us, and embracing the short and longer-term cycles that allow us to get there. The American adventure has granted me with the possibility to observe my evolution in terms of the many sustainable communities in which I stayed and/or worked in the last four years in Japan, Alaska, Canada and Guatemala as well as those I developed and ran with some of my companions in the States and Mexico in varied contexts. Being sustainable as a community in any possible form is surely the future of humanity as a necessary evolutionary process in order to thrive but it is “only” a tool that we must learn to handle in the most efficient way as possible in order to implement a new, free educational and healthcare system for everyone. Only then will our kids become the seeds of more aware and emotionally intelligent beings that could happily and effectively co-exist with each other through unconditional love and compassion, healthy food and useful technology without neither necessarily being dependent on paper money nor be labeled as a hippie for doing so. For my part, I eventually managed to travel the overland section of the road I was missing between California and Mexico in a couple of weeks through Nevada, Utah and Arizona, and all the stunning deserts and geological wonders on the way. I am now back in Chacahua and have finally been resting and reconnecting with the peacefulness of the ocean for a while. Talking about my future possibilities at that stage would be far too speculative to be really interesting but what I know is that I am going to focus on taking a lot of time for myself in the next few weeks before hitting the road again through central America. I wish you to spend some outstanding once-in-a-lifetime moments with the people you love in the places you want to be with them. Sure thing is that one of these gorgeous places is definitely our heart and I always keep in mine all the wonderful people and places that have allowed me to get to this very point of my life. I keep telling myself that I would do exactly the same if I were to do it again; because I truly enjoyed the lessons I have had to learn until now regardless of how harsh they were and I look forward to the next ones for whatever they are. Thank you to all of you who have never ceased to believe in what I am doing and that have given me so much faith and love for five long years and so far beyond. “Like Solzhenitsyn, labouring in Vermont, I shall beaver away in exile. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, I shan't be alone.” (Timothy Cavendish in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell) Photos USA Road Trip 2017Mexico 2018: Life, love, death; these are the existential questions that we all ponder about at times, sometimes all the time. But how do we do in order to reach a inner balance and peace once and for all?
We are first to perceive and understand these concepts before silencing the mind. We all hear about the precept of letting go and when we become able to apply it in our life on a regular basis, the ultimate concept becomes letting go of letting go, which is, in other words, quite close to the idea of silencing the mind when we understand that we all already have all the Answers inside, there is no need to worry about anything and we naturally rewire our conditioned neurons to shift from fear to love. Because these are the two most fundamental ass-kicking invisible forces that rule the entire universe. Yet, it does not mean that we should completely stop thinking; it means that we should think differently considering that time is not something linear and we can just refer to the past in terms of life experience in order not to make the same mistakes over and over again, and to the future not in terms of fixed plans but in terms of a infinity of highly changeable quantum possibilities. I would not recommend to anyone to travel the way I have journeyed for the past nearly five years, but I would definitely recommend to anyone to travel. The former part of the sentence is because each and every of us has its very own karmic Path that they need to perceive and there are many ways to achieve it, and the latter part because travelling is what gives us the opportunity to finally get out of our dear comfort zone. Then, most of us inevitably get back to it (the comfort zone, although some parts of the change will remain ingrained as part of the evolution of the person) and some eventually make radical choices and changes that take them toward ultimate freedom and independence. Not everyone was born in a monastery in the midst of the Himalayas and one can do meditation and yoga as much as they want in order to thrive in the meantime but I am afraid that travelling is the only efficient way to get out of our comfort zone and finally see what lies beyond that smoke screen...and what lies beyond is usually very simple; our true essence. So why do we not all do that right away for it sounds so appealing? Well, it is because what seems so obvious in this world is not quite we are taught to think or do, and too few really take the time to delve into such things for they would feel socially excluded. Because our true essence is actually very different from what we think in the first place, which could be overwhelming at first, and this society is not suitable for people who think differently anyway. At the end of the day, I do not think that travelling a lot of countries is actually necessary to get out of our comfort zone but I would definitely recommend anyone to hit the road because our soul wants to discover, explore and grasp places and concepts through all the other souls that we run into and with whom we share along the way. Because our ultimate challenge is to defy the horizon and the Unknown that lies beyond it. It is what we are here for and to unconditionally love in the meantime in order to destroy our ego. Why shall we do such thing? Because the ego projects itself into our life as fear, control, security and stability, which is exactly the energetical opposite of what we need to free our mind and embrace the magic and the flow of the Universe. As Carlos Castaneda wrote, it is beyond the horizon that a man stops being Man. Why such an extended introduction for this first blog publication in a while? First of all, because I always write an introduction for my blog publications, which is probably some remnants from a part of what I still am as a teacher, and secondly because I guess I had to justify myself (and to myself) why I have not moved so much on a geographical level this year compared to what I had thought in the first place and thirdly, and most importantly, this introduction is quite a adequate summary of what I have been experiencing on a energetical level through the last eight months (if not for the last five years). So you might be thinking; but why is it an introduction if it summarizes what I have been doing? Should not it be a conclusion instead? Let's say that “why” is the most irrelevant question ever and yet, we all ask it all the time on different levels and degrees. Of course, it may be used for communicative, literary or introspective purpose but definitely not on a permanent basis. Because once again, we already have all the answers inside. So I guess that the answer to this question is that considering that I have well integrated the prospect of the past, the present and the future happening all at once in the Now, why should a conclusion actually be before an introduction? It is all about conditioning again for in the end, it is always all about the intention that we put in doing just everything in life, which is interconnected with just everything else, and which will always be well perceived and understood by the people who know how to listen with their heart. In effect, it would not make any sense not to share with you what I have learnt on my way (double negation) and how I have grown in the meantime. Everyone can talk about going places and even how they feel about it, and some people do it much better than I do. However, not everyone has the sensibility and/or possibility to write about what it feels to remain off the beaten tracks and far away from conventions for such a long time, and the drastic changes that it induces in one's life for good. And for my part, I would not go back to what some call “normality” or “reality” for anything in the world. Do not get me wrong; I have faced challenges that have been way bigger than what I used to have before since I have changed my life, but they relate to a different perception and understanding of time, space, reality and the universe as a whole, and freeing our mind and reaching higher realms of Consciousness through this process helps us See the world and the universe as it truly is, which is something priceless and irrevocable. In fact, this year is surely the one during which I have travelled least on a geographical level and yet, as we have already discussed the idea that the geographical aspect of the journey is just a tool (an important one though) in order to reach other realms of Consciousness, I feel that I have learnt more in the last 7 months (since I came back from the United States to Mexico last December) than in the former four years that had passed since the very beginning of this journey in September 2012. On the other hand (if there is any), it makes complete sense considering that I have long thought that the evolution of Consciousness is something truly exponential, at least for those who decided at some point to embrace their fears and to transcend collective conventions (therefore personal limitations), in order to thrive. When I went back to Chacahua, Mexico, last December, I was very aware that I was going to stay for a very long time, probably for months, since the idea was to finally rest properly and take some time to write and learn new things after years of either working or travelling or studying existential concepts. It all came together as a whole on my beloved Mexican island and even though I relatively wrote a lot, I did much less than what I wanted in the first place. I believe this is most probably because at that very moment, I had forgotten that what I wanted was not quite on the same wavelength of what I truly needed. And we also tend to forget that what we truly need is generated by the universe in order to experience specific situations and learn the lessons that are affiliated with them, close cycles and transit into new ones in the short and longer term. I eventually spent five months in Chacahua through my second six-month cycle in Mexico after that of last year. For the first time of my life, I did not have to work and generate money as a teacher so I could focus on many different things instead. Meanwhile, the fact of not moving much on a geographical level helped me reinforce my convictions of sharing sustainable development through the local community as well as our first autonomous community in Chacahua. Indeed, apart from writing and remaining utterly alone on my local friends Ana and Leo's land for months, I still spent a substantial amount of time connecting with wonderful folks (both Mexicans and foreigners) and doing some exchange of services in terms, for instance, of giving English and French classes, and receiving macrame courses in return. However, the main focus of the moment was, beyond gazing at the starry sky, colourful sunrises and sunsets, soulful moonrises, powerful waves, nesting turtles, playful dolphins or inspiring pelicans, all about developing the local community for I had the time, energy and means to do it. My beautiful friends and I spent a considerable amount of time helping building the place with local resources and setting up the permaculture garden, and overall showing the direction about how to implement a sustainable way of living even in a completely different culture. Of course, I could not feel more at the “right” place at the “right” time with the “right” people, not only because everything takes place just as it should, but also and especially because I could delve even more in concepts such as astronomy, astrology, reiki, yoga, massage, runes and shamanism in the meantime, and overall because it was a very coherent continuation with regards to me establishing a sustainable community based on natural medicine and alternative education in a not-so-distant future. It was then time to finally depart from Chacahua and Mexico in order to head towards Guatemala and pursue the course of my geographical journey. However, the main difference with what I was used to doing is that I was no longer alone (at least on the physical plane), which makes a lot of sense according to the fact of having manifested that cycle more and more throughout the last couple of years, since I had arrived in Alaska. It is all about short and much longer term cycles and our ability to shift between them, remember? In fact, I had never spent some much time with people on a regular basis than in the last few months, which is quite paradoxical to the idea that I had never felt so happy and complete on my own before. But all in all, it is only when we get to this point of having fought with our demons and feel utterly balanced that we encounter people in order to share our happiness and completeness, and not the contrary. And interestingly enough, this is also when we start learning and assimilating even more than before. When I arrived in Guatemala, I quickly realised that for the very first time of my travelling life, I did not feel quite “right” in this place. Of course, the rainy season did not help much, psychologically and physiologically speaking, and I sometimes felt that I would rather wander and camp in the sunny, gorgeous, remote Yukon forests instead like I did last year, but I also realised that I had a much more important lesson to learn in central America through this process. Not only did I not feel in synergy with the place (for example, I felt that Lake Atitlán, of which I had heard so many great things about beforehand, was beautiful but way too touristy for me) but also with the people, which was the real question mark about it since travelling is all about the people and teachers that we come across and learn from on the way. When some would recommend Lake Atitlán as a spiritual place where many courses can be taken, I have found nothing more than a “spiritual” supermarket that I have already seen too much in Asia and has never aroused my interest. Yet, there were many wonderful, insightful highlights that took place in the meantime such as these ten days spent at the Fungi Academy, nested on the gorgeous hills above the lake (I truly hope that I will get the opportunity to write a proper post about this experience at some stage), in which people's endeavour is to develop edible and medicinal mushrooms in a sustainable community context. Then, something truly amazing and unexpected happened; I managed to motivate my father to come and visit me, which we had been discussing for the last couple of years. He eventually came for a couple of weeks despite his reluctance about the rainy season and he, in fact, arrived just after my travel partners (Macarena -Argentina-, Simon and Lucas -France-) and I came back from the ascension of the Acatenango volcano on our own (two days, 3970m of altitude), which was a truly inspiring moment and my third time getting very close to angry giants of fire after La Fournaise (Reunion Island, 2003) and Tongariro National Park (New Zealand, Mordor, 2005). Gazing at Mount Fujiyama (Japan, 2015) or El Popocatepec (Mexico, 2016) were quite outstanding experiences as well but I did it from the distance whereas I hiked the other ones. My father and I have quite distinct personality styles and it would not be exaggerated to say that I have taught him more to travel than the opposite (if he ever really did). In fact, before my first backpacking travel in Thailand in 2002, he never really understood why I was about to travel because he could not even conceive of exploring the world and other cultures. Well, the great side of it is that it helped me believe in the concept of reincarnation and I am overall glad that he could change his mind in the meantime and my own journey is not alien to that. What is more, my father and I have also quite different (if not opposite) ways of travelling and I was quite concerned about meeting the “right” balance when he would come to Guatemala. Overall, I was by far the less worried of the two about his coming because I knew it would just flow the way it should, which is all about the magic of...letting go. For my part, I was taking it as a life achievement in the father-son relationship for whatever was meant to happen and it was good enough to me given that I have never been really educated as a family person. Everything went perfectly well and I even managed to have him hitch-hike and camp for the very first time of his life. He kept on saying that he was doing it because I was with him but the most important part of it is that he truly liked the concept of it. Moreover, he got along very well with my companions in the meantime and I felt delighted that he could also share and learn with some of my other beloved people for it would not have made more sense otherwise. The crew (we parted with Lucas in Antigua after of the descent of the Acatenango) and I went to explore the Northern part of Guatemala and its expensive but worthwhile archaeological wonders. Well, if you ever get there, please be aware that there are much more interesting and affordable sites than Tikal Again, it was a quite relevant context to see that Guatemala is one of these countries where tourists are treated like milk cows. It is their choice and ignorance to act as such and treat travellers this way without any differentiation whatsoever. Nevertheless, of course there are exceptions like everywhere as there are morons everywhere, for everything is a matter of balance. Also, we should not forget that people become this way because some tourists give them the opportunity to do so, directly or indirectly. They would not make foreigners pay more than the locals if some foreigners had not somewhat accepted this condition before. In the end, it is like in society; people do not take the time to think critically and independently because they would rather watch their favourite series on TV instead. So they then consume as much as they can without even pondering about the consequences of their actions. Travelling works exactly the same; people would do anything they can (and pay ten times more if needed) in order to consume the local resources regardless of consequences and get back home saying that they have done “everything” in this country, which pretty much comes to nothing if we really think about it. Overall, everything is a matter of perspective. I remember this discussion with my father, in which he was telling me that Mexico was a very religious country. It is quite a relevant instance of what is really happening because after I asked why he thought so, he replied that it is because he was taken to a church during his tour in Mexico, where people were supposedly praying all over the place. I said that it is just another of these nonsensical societal conditioning in a sense that Mexico is everything but a religious country. However, some people want my father (and millions of others) to go back to his country and tell his friends and relatives that Mexico is a religious country in order to make us believe that the post colonial judo-Christianity is still alive. There are always two parts of the story for those who want to See the truth; regarding this very example, the other side of the story is that I was personally living in Mexico City when the pope came last year. There was just nobody on site (we are talking of about 10,000 people for a city of 24 millions inhabitants) and the corporate media was so desperate about it that they made a loop montage of the most crowded places in the city to make the world believe that it was huge. And they have sadly been very good at doing that throughout the massive lie of modern mainstream history. Everything is a matter of perspective; most people consider as weird those who think and act differently, and those who think and act differently consider as weird those who are too “normal”. Yet, the world in which we are living in would not be so sick if everyone would not think and act like everyone else such as brainwashed zombies. Then, we left Guatemala and went to Belize in order to both flee from the rain and get some scuba diving in the Caribbean This was quite unexpected in the first place as well because Belize was neither on my bucket list nor on my way, and I knew it would be an expensive country in terms of what I like to do and where I like to go. Yet, I could feel right away that the local vibe was amazing and we managed to hitch-hike a lot even being the four of us with all the gear (all the rides were obviously in pick-up trucks or trucks). After that, the most magical part of the father-son journey took place; my father, Simon and I (Macarena went back to Mexico to travel with her friends there) randomly met the daughter-in-law of the owner of Glovers Atoll (a private island located in the middle of the Caribbean See, two hours away by boat from the mainland) and we found out that it would somehow cost us less money to stay on the atoll than to remain on the mainland for the last few days together. The decision was spontaneous and inexorable; we went to the island for five days until my father and I would have to make it back to Guatemala City for him to catch his flight back to France. How magical it was there; I could see the centre of the Milky Way every single day for the first time in months (even the last month of my stay in Chacahua -May- was quite overcast before the beginning of the rainy season), the moon, the moonlit, deserted, small white-sanded beaches, sunrises and sunsets, the turquoise lagoon with nurse sharks and eagle rays gliding through it. I snorkelled and dived in the open see with green turtles and barracudas, I could cook everyday and get back to my daily yoga and exercising, and the list is non-exhaustive. Unfortunately, my father could not scuba dive as we had thought in the first place but we still manage to go snorkelling and share insightful conversations together, which we had not had the opportunity to do in too many years. I guess that the point of all this is that he or I could pass away tomorrow and we would not have any regret about what we could have done and have not done together, as well as unconditionally saying “I love you” before it is too late. My father and Simon have now both gone back to France and I hence embraced a new cycle of solitude again for my last couple of weeks spent in Antigua Guatemala. Interestingly enough, the weather was absolutely stunning when my father left and I was able to gaze at the Fuego volcano every day knowing that it was erupting like crazy with the entire mountain covered in shimmering lava rivers and the air vibrating with its fury. Even the local family I was staying with told me that they had never seen it like this before. And since I was staying with a local family and enjoying the experience very much, I guess that I was therefore back to what I love most. Glovers Atoll was so magical that I decided to go back there for my last couple of weeks travelling in central America before going back to the USA for new adventures there. Have I really decided that? Well, we all have the choice to react the way we want to a specific experience given to us. However, it is scientifically proven (quantum physics) that the brain is a receptor and not a creator. I mean, even when we talk about creativity or healing, we are “just” channels of the energy that surrounds us at all times, especially available to those who have “chosen” to open new Doors of Perception. I of course believe that I have not decided anything and that I was just meant to go to this island because my father came to visit me, and since everything is intimately interconnected, I was meant to go back there as well. All in all, I think that given that Guatemala is relatively an expensive country, I would rather spend my time on a lone island in the middle of nowhere for almost the same price. I guess that this is the compromise I need in order to keep distant from my comfort zone as well as to know what I really need to keep feeling happy and complete. We should all know that on our respective Paths; what makes us happy or unhappy, because at the end of the day, the positive or negative perception of an experience only exists in our mind. Our soul and heart just perceive it as an experience for what it is and for whatever lesson we have to learn in order to move forward on the Path of Universal Consciousness. Since time is not a linear concept, the above could have been a great introduction as well finally. I leave you to think about it but please do not think too much. Keep on enjoying the privilege to be alive and able to “make decisions”. But do not forget that there is just to love and let go of letting go and nothing at all to be controlled in order to feel happy and complete. Meanwhile, I send you a universe of love and light to keep in your heart until next time, whether this next time is on this physical plane or a more astral one. So here I am in Mexico again, exactly one year after I had arrived here for the very first time, one year after having fallen in love with this fascinating culture and the wonderful people that populate it.
So time has stretched and condensed once again throughout the mind-puzzling mysteries of the perception of the space-time continuum; its short and longer-term cycles in which we keep dancing on the eternal, soulful music of the swirl of the universe. We are dancers of the cosmos whether we like it or not, and there is nothing we can do about it in the time given to us but to surrender to the magic of the Here and Now. “Stretched” because the substantial amount of time spent in the forests of North America felt like an eternity (without any negative connotation here) and “condensed” because it also feels like this cycle of my existence never really took place now I am back in Mexico. Not that I do not realize that I am back here (double negation), which actually feels very real, but what I am having a hard time to integrate is, in fact, the prospect that I have been living and/or working in nature for almost 6 months in a row, further away from civilization and technology than I could ever imagine it before embracing the experience. And then, there is Chacahua; the vortex of isolation and non-communication has become a giant galactic black hole and one might sometimes wonder whether communication that is not face to face has ever existed, which is why I happen to drop this post 3 weeks later that what I would have imagined in the first place. Travelling and quantum physics have taught me that time and space exist only if one conceives of doing so according to the brainwashing constantly operated by our current societal model. Throughout 52 months of wanderlusting on the road, I have therefore rewired my neurons to perceive these 2 concepts as very relative and subjective, and that unlike we have been conditioned to believe since we were born, there exists an infinity of actual realities according to the Paths we take at each and every moment of our lives, which intertwine in an Ocean of quantum and spiritual possibilities. I have already talked quite substantially about the Canadian mushroom-picking experience in my previous publication, and I suggest you should (re)visit it if you want to have a glimpse of the bigger picture of my time wandering in the boreal forests of Northern British Colombia, the Yukon and Haida Gwaii. It seems that I keep on manifesting exactly I want in my life; not with my ego that I have long left behind, but with my sense of intuition and connection that have been soaring throughout my long journey, especially in the last year and a half (since I had arrived in Alaska from Japan). In effect, we can assume that we usually have two inner little voices speaking to us, and the whole personal work we have to do, on our respective levels and degrees, is to become able to make the difference between that of the egoical mind and that of the heart. I have long chosen to follow the latter regardless of how people would judge me, and it seems that everything is now coming together and falling exactly into place as it just should, which is, I believe, my reward for never having lost faith in the meantime. So here I am in Chacahua again. I feel great, fit (lots of yoga, exercising and vegan/vegetarian diet throughout the summer) and definitely not as tired as I was when I arrived here for the first time last year. But I do need time to now digest and integrate just everything; not only the six months spent in the wild (which could constitute a entire book on their own for it was so intense and insightful) but also the last 52 months spent on the road after hitchhiking through gigantic stretches of land and crossing mountains, forests, tundras, deserts and oceans as a vagabond, a teacher, an artist, a healer, a writer, a photographer, a caveman, a hiker and explorer of the modern's day, most of the time far from civilization and its very limiting conventions that most people choose to follow and which I did not. I have inspired and changed the life of hundreds of people along my way, and of course, as all energies are mutual and balanced in this universe, hundreds of people have inspired and changed my existence in return. In fact, this concept is now so settled into my synaptic connections as “normality” that what most people actually call “normality” just feels like an old anomaly to me that completely disappeared from the current patterns of my life. Hitchhiking and camping my way around the world without (much) money has taken me to places where no-one had ever set foot before, and since everything and everyone is inexorably connected through the concept of universal consciousness, I believe that this concept has allowed me to surrender to the flow of the universe in terms of the folks and epic situations I have run into along the way. I now have the opportunity to step back from my long quest in order to eventually digest and assimilate all that I have done in my life so far, which constitutes a new crucial cycle of my adventure. I am now going to seize the priceless occasion to be capable of staying somewhere for an extended period of time so that I can focus on my writings, to the point of publishing some of the contents or at least share it to a much greater extend compared to what I have done until now. And the time is Now. Is it the end of Teacher of the Road? First of all, there is no end, and the end of the cycle is always synonym with the beginning of a new one, not only in a lifetime but also throughout the journey of the soul and its cycles of births and deaths. Without having to go so far (spiritually), staying in my Oaxacan paradise of Chacahua for the next few months will obviously help me recharge my batteries and provide me with the desire to integrate new stimuli and keep going with my journey (geographically) through Central America later this year. However, even though my journey is not ended yet, finishing my books constitutes the ultimate priority of the moment and a lifetime achievement in itself, and not doing it would just compromise my further personal development. For the first time in my adult life, I do not have to work in a defined structure, and, for the first time since I left France, I do have to work as an English teacher in order to generate money, which had always been a considerable part of my transitions in between journeys. In fact, as I write these lines, I cannot yet even fathom the consequences that this idea will have on my journey in terms of the burst of creativity and personal projects it is going to induce. And I do not want to fathom it for now anyway. I just want to keep on enjoying each fraction of second of my life, each singularity and synchronicity for whatever is meant to be, because the power to manifest things into our life does not make us physically immortal (unlike the soul) and does not prevent us from assuming that tomorrow does not exist. It does not make any difference in my approach to the mysteries of life and the universe. I just want to keep on surrendering to the Here and Now, to be Present in each very experience and lesson to learn that comes my way, and Mexico and its delightful, mystical energies is the perfect place for that. I am in a mental state where I cannot socialize much, for the simple, yet complex reason of feeling completely detached from absolutely everything around me. I do not blame people for not understanding what I am doing, but I do not feel like I have to justify myself either. After all, not only my way of travelling and living are unique but so is also the intellectual and spiritual knowledge I have gathered along my way. I am glad I have now become able to share the latter more openly with the people I have more recently met in Chacahua for it had not been something obvious to do in the past, maybe by antagonism not to like attracting to much attention on me...maybe because the real wisdom is about keeping humble and quiet because the one who knows that one knows Nothing. As a matter of fact, very few can really understand what it takes to spend months in nature, away from everyone and everything. After all, there is just nothing to understand; just to accept the fact that I had a career as a professional basketball coach and as a university professor, and I feel a million times happier and more complete living on the road. Yet, I keep on meeting a few outstanding people along my way as reminders that I am not quite alone, which helps me keep faith in my quest of ultimate freedom and independence from the conditioning that we suffer since we were (re) born on this planet, and that we have to get rid off at any costs. I am a spiritual warrior. I feel complete and keep on thriving. I respect life for what is given to me for my time being on this planet, and respecting life is all about fulfilling our dreams regardless of what society thinks about it. Why would I ever change this? Even though I no longer relate much to the Gregorian calendar in my own reality, 2016 was a marvelous year during which I met (or met again) amazing people whether it was in Mexico or back in Canada and the USA, and I feel truly grateful for that. Of course, I had already met amazing folks before but 2016 was truly special to me in terms of the coherence of shifting cycles and the consistency of encountering them on my way. Thank you to have always believed in me and supporting me from all the way back to the time I was stardust. Thank you to have shared wonderful moments with me on the road since I left France in September 2012, hitchhiking to the far East, as well as more recently in the secluded forest of the Yukon and California in inspiring communities. Thank you Mexico and Chacahua, for this is where 2016 had started and have ended for me, along with the magical energies of this place that had me spend the last night of the year with the most incredible crew of beautiful souls ever all the way to some cosmic hugs as the sun was looming through the mystical golden glow of the Pacific Ocean. Thank you for having me be able to share, listen, learn and teach on my way, giving me the priceless opportunity to be in love with Love at all times. I send a bunch of good vibes, and lots of love, light and hugs on your path of the universal consciousness. May you keep shining on it as I will keep shining on mine. May you fulfill your craziest dreams without drifting away from the Now. May you understand that there is everything and everyone to love and nothing to fear, and that everything will be fine as long as you keep listening to your heart. “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit.” Christopher McCandless |
Nicolas GennaJourney around the world overland since 2012. Categories
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