Day 389 - The 3 big gateways of my life's most transformational year

I'm reflecting on this past year, the darkness I endured and the 3 gateways that took me out of it and propelled me into a completely new life and world view.

My three gateways represented in pictures.

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Hi beloved fellow human and friend,

It’s been a while.

I hope you’re doing well and can enjoy these special days. And if you’re not, I hope that whatever you are going through is still serving you in some way. 💜

Today is the winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere, the real end and beginning of the yearly cycle around our sun. Today we’re the farthest away from the light and warmth of the sun. A new cycle begins, and we start moving towards the light again.

As this year cycle comes to an end, I’ve started reflecting on the year that has passed for me.

Just like earth and the sun, I feel that I am now starting to move towards brighter days as well.

Finding myself now on the other side of a very intense and tough transition period for the past 1-2 years, I feel so much compassion for myself. To the extent where I from time to time burst into heavy crying thinking of all the pain that the little boy inside of me had to experience and endure this past year.

I feel so much sorrow and compassion for him.

A close friend recently advised me that if we feel compassion, it means that there is forgiveness. That felt comforting.

It’s been the darkest period of my life so far.

High pressure, loss and grieving of lifelong dreams and hopes as well as of the best years of my life, burn-out, depression, betrayal and heart-break - several kinds and over and over again.

I’ve had a massive weight of failing expectations, crushed hopes and dreams and heart-ache on my shoulders, and my status quo has been a low, heavy energy. I can sense how strained my emotional body is. It desperately needs rest.

But in a way, loosing all of these things I have held on to also set me free…

Our identity, hopes and dreams, however wonderful and inspiring, can still be burdens that limit us, weigh us down or hold us back. This is something you feel very clearly when you loose them. I’ve never felt as free as I did this year.

I can see more clearly now how that period of darkness was like fertile soil making my light grow even brighter. I feel it. I feel closer to myself, closer to whatever source my being and life comes from.

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It’s been a big transformational year for me. Probably biggest to date of my 38 years.

End of December last year I left the life I had lived for the past six years and the safe harbor of my community and did a spiritual solo journey to Northern India.

During my journey this past year, there were three massive gateways that all had a noticeable before and after effect on me.

The first one was my 200h yoga training in the Himalayan mountains and the time there after sitting by the Ganga river in Rishikesh, which has become one of my favorite places on earth.

I still remember my first meeting with “Mother Ganga”. It felt like stepping into the holiest and largest of cathedrals - I was struck by instant awe and reverence. Read about it in my post from Day 36

The time in Northern India helped me reconnect with myself and my spirit again, and I don’t think I have ever felt as much love in my body. It was incredibly healing.

Up in the mountains at the yoga ashram where I did my 200h yoga training. This was on my graduation day.

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The second gateway was my ISTA training on Bali later in the spring, which was the most sacred but also the most challenging - and rewarding - experience so far in my life. It’s an immersive week-long training in the crossroads of spirituality, shamanism and sexuality, by facilitators of a quality I had never even witnessed before.

I was exhausted already after day 1, and every day felt like going back into “the ring” of an emotional boxing fight. My literal experience was that I felt things being touched that had laid still so deep inside of me they had never been touched before.

I experienced the energy of them going from stuck to moving around inside of me (really I did feel this), loosening up and towards the end of the week my body felt like a completely clear channel. I felt a type of connection to humanity and human suffering where I felt all of it, but it didn’t burden me, I observed it with deep, deep compassion and love, and it just flowed through me instead of rooting inside of me. It was like I was tapped into a new sense that I hadn’t had access to before. It was a profoundly spiritual experience.

I deeply felt the oneness and connection to all life, and it was like my own life and identity was less present, together with all of its pains and worries. My ability to feel what other people were feeling and the voice of my own intuition was higher than ever before. In many of the workshops I was able to completely let go of my mind’s need to control and observed myself being guided and moved in every movement. A complete surrender and trust in my own body and its connection to something bigger than myself. I felt “tapped in”, completely clear and at full peace and trust.

These are things I think it’s hard for anyone to believe or relate to if you have not experienced it. To me, it opened up a completely new world, and ultimately made this life experience so much richer, meaningful and more exciting.

The training also gave me a feeling I had only touched upon once before, after my Mankind Project training a few years ago. It’s hard to describe, but it’s a feeling of “standing in my power”.

But what does that even mean?

Ok, let’s try to put some words to it. Because this is big. And this is the place I now aspire to live life from, every day.

The biggest identifier is that it’s a completely fearless state. I can literally feel the energy flowing through me, fueling me. It’s a sensation where my entire body is buzzing and is fully alive. My back automatically strong and straight and my being tall. It feels like being tapped into something so real, authentic and pure that nothing that is not pure or true can take hold. It’s a kind of rush where I feel such immense power and strength. And there is little if no barrier between my inner reality and truth, to what comes out through my mouth. Many times by now I have observed myself answering a question without thinking and with such wise words that I am myself surprised, and it resonates as truth in my entire body.

In these states, my integrity is through the roof and it is crystal clear to me what the right thing to do or say is in every moment. And there is zero hesitation. It’s an incredibly embodied state and experience in the sense that the bodily sensations are so strong and the urge to do something or say something does not unfold as sequential words in my mind, but rather appear as an instant deep knowing from somewhere around my solar plexus (that’s why I think it is different and deeper than gut feeling/intuition). And most of the time it does not go via my mind before it is being expressed through me. It is such an unusual thing to not act or express from the mind, that it sometimes can feel like it’s not really me doing it, but rather something that comes through me.

I’m sharing a bit about the experience of the training at the time just after I had it, towards the end of the post of day 123.

This is me walking to a session in the morning sometime mid-week on campus at the training in Bali.

The day after the training, I went to a waterfall deep into the dense jungle and felt a connection to our earth that I am not even able to put words to here.

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The third gateway was this summer at Ängsbacka, where I spent two full months living in a community of 300 volunteers in the wild forests and fields of deep Sweden. I spent so much time outside that my hair almost turned white and my skin was darker than it ever has been.

I tried to summarize the place and experience in my letter on day 252.

Ängsbacka is where I felt that I was out of the darkness and through to the other side. When I left Ängsbacka that summer, I felt as if I was taking my first steps into my new life, as this new version of me. This was in a way the biggest and final gate.

I just re-read my post from 5 weeks into the experience and it touched me deeply again.

Here’s an excerpt from it:

“I am growing closer and closer to a balanced equilibrium.

The dance between the masculine and the feminine within me is moving towards harmony.

And I realize that this is where our power hides and waits for us.

I once had an Ayahuasca shaman tell me that once I find balance between the masculine and feminine within me, I will be like a lazer in this world, completely unstoppable.

I feel that.

I can now feel my inner power more. I am standing in it. I can feel it growing.

I have no home, no job, no material possessions, no status, nothing externally to validate my worth in this world, yet I have never felt more powerful and valuable.

This is huge.

I am arriving at a place in this life where I need nothing outside of myself to feel safe, valuable, powerful and loved. These past weeks have proven it for me.”

My beautiful and absolutely magical time at Ängsbacka was the first time in years that I felt all the weight and pain being removed from my shoulders.

I was mirrored in my power and my greatness (we all have greatness within us) over and over. I had moment after moment, experience after experience, of mystical transcendence and dissolving connection. I lived fully with my heart open and at the center, feeling everything. I have so much gratitude to one special person that I owe so much of this magic and healing to. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. 🙏

As I tried to explain in the excerpt above, this summer also showed me how much I have changed and grown, and how differently I feel and view life today.

The biggest and most valuable and important change is that I have learnt to fully trust life. Stepping into the unknown as fully as I did, leaving everything about my life and self behind for good, I had no other option. I was forced to trust. Trust that as long as I am in connection with my heart, and follow its whispers, everything will not only be okay, but it will be even better than what I can imagine today. And the conviction that this is the only way where I will end up where I am supposed to end up.

This trust has given me new levels of presence in my life, and that presence gives me peace and joy. Because my mind is no longer pre-occupied (as much) with worrying, concerning or planning for the future. Because today I live with the realization and insight that today’s version of me really has no idea what the future version of me wants or is supposed to do in this world. So why bother thinking so much about it?

Somehow my heart can sense the direction towards what the deep longing of my soul knows. And has always known.

All I need to do is to listen, and follow its whispers…

Thank you so much for reading and following my journey. Truly. Thank you. I am not sure why but it means the world to me that I can share and that there are people wanting to listen.

Blessings to your heart,

🫶

Philip