The first step to finding home Francis A November 24, 2014 4025 Text to Audio Player My Transformation The path of self-transformation is one that must be chosen. Most people don’t throw away everything they have and run off to the mountains in another hemisphere to make that change. I literally did this and I believe that after growing up and living in the US that reflecting back after so much time here in Argentina I will be able to help others to see what is important for their own self-transformations. Everyone has a life story, I hope that sharing mine might help you find your own. At the end of 2012 I had everything that was desirable as a part of “The American Dream”. I had a long-term girlfriend who I was living with. I had trained and developed myself as a very good triathlete. My goal was to do triathlons professionally and it appeared that I would succeed at this since I had sponsors and was winning small amounts of money racing. I was a nutrition and fitness consultant and was making $100/hour. Everything was looking very promising from the perspective of American culture. Today I write to you from a quiet mountain town in Argentina. All is quiet here except for the birds and the breeze. I live in a tiny house made of half adobe clay and half wood. It was built about 50 years ago and the technology in the house is roughly from the same era. I have no luxuries except hot water and a laptop. I wash clothes by hand. I cook every meal and clean dishes by hand. The heat is sweltering inside, the cold is inescapable. But what I have here is so far greater than all of my past luxuries that I simply don’t care for them anymore. My name is Francis and I am sharing this story with you because I know so many people who want to make a change in their lives. I know many who need and look for an inner change in their lives but simply don’t do it. They don’t because they don’t know what to do, they are scared, or they don’t know what the change would be for them. I am telling my story here to inspire those who are ready for a big life change to take the first step. I know that there are others like me who want to move forward in life and need to see the possibility of doing this in order to make the first step in their story. That is why I am writing to you here. Doing what is best for you is easier when you have seen someone else do it first. The Feeling that Changed Everything I still do not know what exactly happened on December 21st 2012. It was the middle of the day and I was doing my usual routine. I suddenly felt something snap my attention into the present. I looked around the room and realized today was 12/21/2012. “I guess we are still alive” I said to myself. But something felt different. Things didn’t look the same way for some reason. I couldn’t tell what was happening at the time, but on that day I would come to begin a new path of my life that would change who I was very quickly and permanently. For those who have read my previous articles, my 25th birthday was on January 23rd 2013. I believe this may have just been the final development of the brain as I described in those articles. All that was different from this point on was that I felt different. No one else noticed anything but I could feel it. I had a deep gut feeling that something (or everything) in my life was very very wrong and needed to be corrected immediately. This was not really something new to me. I have survived many tragedies and abuses in my life and been through countless unresolved conflicts and struggles. During college I began to just shrug off these feelings and got used to the idea that life is just fucked up and bad. I had always wanted to feel at peace, like life was good and worth living, but had given up on trying to realize this for myself. I had seen life as something to be suffered and survived through in order to maximize how much pleasure I can have. I believed that if others said I was great it made me great and so I spent all of my time either finding someway to indulge in some physical sensation or doing something to show others that I was superior to them. These words are true, but I have changed so much I had almost forgotten what it was like back then. This gut feeling was different from my usual depressed mood. It felt like it was telling me that there was something wrong with me and that I needed to act immediately to fix it. I felt there was something wrong with who I was and what I valued in life. I did everything to try to distract myself from this but it was blaring and intense at all times of day. I would do my normal routine, go to work, go workout, and all the time I would be questioning: “why am I doing this, why am I doing this, why am I doing this?” In a short time I submitted to begin making the changes I had always known I needed to make but never had. In the first months of 2013 I began studying spirituality and discovered immense scientific evidence proving reincarnation (links provided at bottom). Having a background in reading scientific journals and medical studies made it much easier to interpret and validate what I found. I discovered other scientific phenomena relating to thoughts and how they influence the material environment. Having been a materialistic atheist my whole life I suddenly became so absorbed in learning about this new subject that I could not do anything else. The gut feeling guided me and I knew I was going in the right direction even if I had to make some sacrifices. In March of 2013 I quit my job and triathlons. In April I broke up with my girlfriend. I considered these changes small at the time. Small because the feeling was a little bit less, but still very intense. I researched and found enormous amounts of information that changed my total perception of life and our world. I discovered that our entire society was totally corrupt and run by people who want to kill the citizens that they govern. When I discovered that FEMA camps were real I wasted little time in researching countries to move to. After a month of nothing but researching this I calculated that the place I am currently in would be the best and safest place under the greatest number of circumstances. Having no family made this whole process much easier. However I had not planned for this well, I did not speak Spanish, I didn’t know anyone in Argentina. But I knew I had to go. I knew that going was a better option than staying and so I left. Finding my home The first thing I noticed in the initial weeks of living 12,000 kilometers from Texas was that all of my issues followed me. All of the people and situations I was running into were similar to what I had faced in the States. This showed me that there is an obvious connection between a person’s emotional state and their external circumstances. This was the first of thousands of lessons I would learn over the course of the following 15+ months. After the first 2 months I was renting my own place in the beauty and tranquility of the mountains. Just what I was always looking for, Peace. Unfortunately only the externals were peaceful. Internally I was tormented by every painful emotion one could imagine. I was angry at people from my past. I was scared for my life because I believed there would be some earthly cataclysm that would kill us all. I had almost no money because I believed the economy would collapse “any minute now” and was constantly getting lucky in making ends meet. After enough ‘coincidences’ I have to admit that I no longer believe luck exists. The first months were brutal. My mind ran in multiple directions constantly. This was exacerbated by several untreated problems I had from my childhood. I had post traumatic stress from living in a place where I suffered years of physical abuse. I was severely anxious and would fluxuate between rage and terror fairly quickly. I had long term depression for many years that caused me to not really care for myself in a balanced way and made it difficult to enjoy anything. I spent lots of time in nature. I began meditating every day. More than anything else, I spent much time in self-reflection. Questioning who am I, what am I, what is the universe, etc. This process was not fun or easy. In fact it was agony. The only thing that kept me going was my immovable goal of having inner peace permanently. I knew I was far from it, but it didn’t change my goal. I could see myself gradually getting better so I knew that if I just dug in and kept going I would find it eventually. It was during this time I invented the method I described in my articles on: How to live what you believe in. Using this method is like walking to a distant goal. My goal was peace. I was in agony. And all I did was slow down my thoughts and reactions and shift them more towards a peaceful alternative when I could think of one. Every challenge I faced was faced one at a time. I always knew two things. I knew what the end goal was (to be at peace) and I knew the next step I had to take to get there. I always knew the next belief or behavior that I would have to change to move closer, I never knew much more than that. It was like driving from New York to LA in the dark. I could go the whole way with just headlights seeing one piece of road at a time. We all know the one thing we should do. Start doing it now and when you are doing it you will see the next thing come automatically. You don’t have to do this, but if you don’t do it you will stay right in the same place until you choose to move forward. I had a recurring dream that I was backpacking through some remote land. As I walked miles and miles I became more surrounded by dense trees, high hills to climb, and thick jungle. In the dream I suddenly look around and realize that I am going the wrong way and have to turn around to go all the way back to where I started from in order to get to where I want to go. This was how it felt to live like this every day. Like I was cutting through dense jungles and marshes to eventually come out of it and move closer to my goal. I knew I didn’t have to keep going, but I would stay in the same place if I stopped. And I certainly wasn’t going to go back. There was only one way to get out, keep going. For me the process of change started externally. I was able to control my reactions to other people and situations more and more. Eventually my beliefs changed as I observed reality for what it was. The most common problem I had was when I observed reality and argued in my head that it should be some other way. This thought caused me immeasurable pain and suffering. I believed I had some superior knowledge of how people should behave. How the universe should be and from this I told myself I was right and everyone else had it wrong. This Should belief basically breaks down to rejection of reality, meaning it is insanse. And yet I faced this belief in almost every part of my psyche on every subject and every person. There was nothing that was just OK the way it was. It took determination and conditioning, but over time I was able to simply enjoy things the way they were more and more often. I did this by changing one behavior or belief at a time and repeatedly doing them to condition them into my normal everyday personality. With any habit it starts out hard and gets progressively easier the more you do it. Over time my inner hell became an inner heaven. I realized that my whole life and everything that exists always and only happens in the present moment. If I want to feel well and be at peace I can only have that right now. It is true there will be future moments, but when those come I will still only experience them when they are now. I can also choose to think about things and situations and in this way it is like I am leaving the present moment for some imagined moment. I am thinking about a situation and living it as if it was really happening right now. I would recommend to you that when you are in a comfortable place but find yourself caught in a painful experience, ask yourself if those thoughts are in the future or the past. It is fine to plan for the future and learn from the past, but that is really all they are good for. To experience imagined situations throughout the day makes it seem like the past or future is more relevant than it really is. It makes the now seem less important even though it is all you will ever have. To live in the present means you are aware of your perceptions and senses equally with your thinking. Your thinking becomes more like a good tool that makes decisions for you. It no longer controls your emotions and overpowers your behavior. In fact the ancient Egyptians categorized thought as a sense, just like hearing or vision. I end my story happily. Knowing that I have found my home in the most unlikely place. I followed what I knew was right even though it seemed like I was throwing away my whole life. The truth is, I had never known what life was until now. I lost nothing and gained myself. I don’t know what caused the feeling I had in the beginning. It doesn’t matter that much to me anymore. I believe that many people have to go through certain experiences to move forward in the development of their conscience. I know I did what was right for me. Life could not have more opportunities for me than it does now. Knowing who you are and why you live the way you live isn’t just a good idea or something to spend a week of vacation thinking about. Who you are defines your whole life and affects future lives. If you don’t know who you are, or if you are wrong about who you are, what kind of a life do you think you will have? These are questions to ask yourself often. Never stop seeking answers within yourself. I encourage you to ask yourself if there is anything you know you should do but don’t do. Start with one thing and master it until it becomes easy. Then move to another and another. Continue going deeper until you too have found your home. More Info: Institute for the Integration of Science, Intuition and Spirit Spiritual science research foundation Well-known scientist studying every day telepathy: https://www.sheldrake.org/ Japanese scientist who discovered the effects of thought on water: https://www.masaru-emoto.net/ sex việt