People sometimes ask me why I left to India. Why not the Caribbean or some other exotic place? The truth is I chose for the Caribbean and spent 3 years of my life there. Sometimes the universe just turns the other way…
To cut a very long story short, I was involved in a very successful company and we were offered a tantalising amount of money by a bigger company who wanted to buy us out. I was not interested in the money but was very interested in the opportunity to become a digital nomad. We came to an agreement I could go anywhere I wanted and would be paid a hefty monthly sum to stay in touch and continue supporting our product.
That was a dream coming true. I left with my girlfriend to Grenada, one of the most Southern Islands of the Caribbean, home to the authentic Rastafarian. Jah man, we rented a 2500$/month villa right on a beach and lived the luxury Caribbean live.
We were both scuba divers and we decided to get ourselves a land rover and a boat to explore the pristine water life. This soon turned out into a dive centre with all needed equipment for +10 persons. We had our own air compressor, we made underwater movies, we just had everything we could dream off.
What goes up, must come down :-)
And then something unforeseen happened, my girlfriend just went off with one of this beautiful Rastafarian brothers. Suddenly I was all alone on off the most beautiful spots on this planet. My dream scattered in pieces, nothing made sense anymore. The only words coming out of my girlfriend were ‘he used magic on me, I don’t understand’.
I am not the type that gives up easily and she would come back to me and then back to him and back to me etc. The kind of situation that cannot go on forever. I wanted her to make a choice, I sent her to him and if she wouldn’t be back at 18:00, that would be the end. She left saying she would end the relation with him and come back.
At 17:40, 20 minutes before decision-time, I could feel she was still there and that she wouldn’t come back. I remember going totally nuts, the only image in my mind was her. I screamed her name repeatedly and hysterically, louder and louder.
At 18:00 precise, I went out to the beach and sat down, a serene calmth came over me and everything felt different. Peaceful. My awareness was very high. My perception was crisp clear. I was experiencing a state as my ‘I’ was just a witness of something utterly beautiful, something I never perceived before. It is very difficult to describe but I was very aware I was in a state of enlightenment and didn’t want to get out of that state.
My girlfriend returned 5 minutes later. My hysterical screaming from a distance of 5km had caused a very strong mental call and she had to return.
Slowly I lost my enlightened state like wakening up from a dream and not being able to enter the dream again.
The experience I had is not so uncommon. In India, it is called a Satori, a glimpse of enlightenment. It is in no way helpful on the path to enlightenment as the glimpse makes you reach out for it, makes you want it and that’s a catch 22, you should be free of desires at the very least.
So now you know why I left to India. Paradise is not what I thought it was, a luxury villa on a Caribbean beach. Paradise is a state of mind. Lesson learned.
Big Hug,
Bub
What an amazing story and a more amazing lesson for all of us. Inner happiness is the only way, material stuff doesn't lead to happiness at all.
Words can't quite put into words what I felt when I read your story. I think I now know why you are who you are...having hit that pivotal moment is so gut wrenching that you reach a level so deep within yourself that it literally gives you that glimpse of truism and clarity. You really have to hit that shocking point in life that knocks you down to a place never seen before. To me that is connecting to you inner being. It is always there but rarely touched.
My feeling is that life is a path toward living but also learning, through ups and downs, with happiness and sometimes the deepest pains ever imaginable. It is not to hurt us but to teach up what really matters. We would never be able to appreciate what we have if not for experiencing total pain to gauge from. I've also been to that rock bottom place but I think it has made me more real and more loving. My appreciation would not have been to where it is today without that pain.
I have always told you @bubke that you are really an honest and true person. I knew it from the start and now I know why. I really appreciate your ability to share such a painful but poignant moment in your life. I think it is one of the reasons you are so grounded today. Wishing you and your family happiness and love. Please take care!!! .....Cabbagepatch!
A very personal and powerful story.
Yes life is what you make of it and the trials and tribulations are an essential part of life. It is actually these times where we have the most opportunity for growth and thus is a blessings!
Great to see you are living a great life now and evolved from this experience. Moments of "enlightenment" even if temporary are very powerful.
Blessings~*~
Thanks @quinneaker, I appreciate the insight. Every crisis is an opportunity to grow, love crises are the best :-)
Hahaha yea thats for sure!
What a honest en open story! I could feel what you described , i hope everything turned out for you well, and you live your life with total content :)
Thanks @vee2180, no Steemit content but total content life, yes :-). Much love.
You nearly broke my heart reading your story!
How amazing that you had such an enlightening moment after just screaming and letting it all out, and then she came back, feeling the energy. Powerful stuff!
Just goes to show that paradise is feeling loved and sharing and loosing that makes life seem meaningless. If everyone met their perfect partner the world would be so different!
Thanks for sharing such a personal story with a powerful message.
Thanks for your beautiful comment @michellecarter. You know about these energies, you deal with them every day. I was always sceptic toward distant healing but it is clear you can have influence from a distance, i gave my own example here, no better proof to myself, i have to change my attituted towards this :-)
Feeling loved, yes, love is the energy we need the most, no doubt, pure divinity, sending some!
You're welcome @bubke, it was a beautiful post and experience you shared and yes that was a powerful moment of energy working for you so I do feel that you sharing this here and my comment was a message from the universe for you to believe more! Once we open up to believing or being more open to believing then more and more examples of how this is working for us are shown to us.
I think when you believe more then you will feel it more too and that is when the energy becomes more powerful when the feelings are so strong that we can't not believe, (although the mind can still butt in and try and get us to doubt what we're feeling sometimes! :) )
Thanks for you beautiful love energy, I can feel it flowing from you and through your posts. If everyone felt love and integrity then we would have quite a different humanity! Sending love back :)
Wow this stirred some emotion and brought up some memories of my own. A very wise punchline indeed. You can be happy anywhere. Even prison. You can miserable anywhere even paradise. There is a saying I just heard the other day. I may have read it in one of our posts. But I think it was something like, "you can glimpse heaven while backing away from hell."
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, you remind me of something. A few years ago we had a situation with a Turkish enlightened soul here in India. He was facing 10 years because of carrying something to smoke. We set up a huge action with website etc. to get him a good lawyer but court takes time in India and he was in jail for more than a year. I will never, never forget how he - in jail - still had this shiny holy aura all around him, nothing can break the true hapiness coming from the inside, so true.
Wow @bub what a heartbreaker of a story! but with a wise punchline... paradise is indeed a state of mind, yea great realisations!!! Thanks for sharing this very personal story!
Personal story indeed :-) It is so long ago i don't mind. I must say i even enjoy writing some personal stuff out, never did that, it heals :-) Thanks for your upvote and nice comment Alex.
Wow. I think I heard your pain all the way from where I am in the future. But what an amazing story. Confused though. She returned and it worked out in the end?
You know what it made me think of. Screaming in itself is a wonderful release. On occasion (in the car while driving) my girls and I have had scream feats. The quiet you feel after such a release is a bit otherworldly. With the amount of emotion you had behind yours I bet the feeling and experience after was profound.
Have you ever had another glimps?
Hope you can handle the answer to your first question, she got pregnant from him and he got shot in a drugs deal.
Now for the 2nd question, did you ever hear about the Osho dynamic meditation? It's a sequence of rapid breathing, conscious catharsis, hammering your energy centers, silence and celebration. In the early Osho days, the conscious catharsis was a true catharsis, you could scream your heart out, the effect of this meditation is very strong. When I left for India, I went straight to the Osho ashram in Puna trying to get more glimpses doing this and a zillion other medidations but as I said in the post, experiencing 1 satori is contra-productive on the path because you long too much for it. I never had another glimps. Thanks for your beautiful comment @icmultitudes
Hi @bubke,
Glad to see you a re writing again. Such a story, I can relate to some of it.
I had one of those moments once this year. It was very strong and its profound effects lasted me for about a week. I felt so light as if I was skipping on clouds. It felt so peaceful and safe. I felt that everything was in order as it should be and that I can trust and let go completely to this powerful euphoric and peaceful sensation.
Getting out of it was so unpleasant, like coming back from heaven to earth. I got severely depressed after that for a week as well, longing to have those feelings back again.
I was hesitant to ask the same question that @icmultitudes asked, but I am glad he did and you answered.
In a way, I was relieved to know that she didn't come back for good. I couldn't imagine her to be the woman you fell in love and have your beautiful children with. If she would be affected by some Caribbean magic so easily, then your togetherness magic was not very strong from her side.
Thank you for sharing your personal story with us.
Hug :D
Ha @theleapingkoala, sharing personal stories, that's what we do here eh :-) Thanks for your beautiful comment, nice to hear you had a similar experience. I was always very convinced that any relation can work and that is all a matter of looking into yourself. I always ended up with long relations for that reason. It was an old rastafarian on this Caribbean island who pointed me to the fact that my last 2 relations were with the same astrological type and advised me to change that. That's what i did and oh my God, was that a good choice :-) Much love, i am a bit less active lately, some work in the queue and family time also very imortant for me.
That is very interesting to hear. Changing the astrological type! Never thought of it, but I find it fascinating and a great news that it worked for you.
I have the same convictions about relationships, but I found it takes 2 with the same conviction to work it, otherwise it doesn't.
Happy to hear from you and hope things gets easier for you soon ;)
Big hug :D
Ahh, @bubke, nice of you to warn me about the answer. That is indeed very unpleasant. All in all I have had a very protected life so far :).
And no. No experience with meditation Osho or otherwise. At times I think I have stumbled upon meditation by accident, but it has never been a practice.
You are a treasure who keeps revealing more and more gold Bub, so glad to be on this train with you.
Beautiful story @bubke. I had to read it twice because the emotional impact it had on me.
Paradise is a state of consciousness and so, therefore, heaven is inside us all the time.
Thank you for sharing your story with us!
That first picture tho' 😁
Ha @szuri, always nice to hear you. It's funny how Steemit seems to draw out this kind of personal stories while you are addressing this massive public. It's what i like to read myself so it's a 'give what you want' thing i guess. It's also what i like when reading your posts, i am not speaking about the color challenges which i don't even look at anymore after having seen a thousand or more, hope you don't mind :-) Super hug.
Haha! I don't mind at all :) Some of my commentators told me I am too grim and I tried to fix this. I was experimenting and failed miserably 😁
Lake Titicaca.....Nicaragua! Aqua! For my bunghole....
nice style, not being all analytical and all < ;)
Seeing your name here turns a smile on my face, warrior :-) Nice to meet you here on the battlefield :-) Following you as i am curious about your analytical level...
OMG man ! Your life story is better than the Pirates of the Caribbean movies ! This was an amazing article to read honestly, even thought it was hard for you at that time, just know that people would do anything to go through such an amazing experience.
If i can be honest, i would do the impossible to get your amazing experience. I have friends working for 10 years on that, hours every day, you are truly blessed, believe me.
I read the article, not the comment section.. so it explains why not Caribbean but it doesn't explain why India specifically? there are other choices like Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, Vatican City etc which are famous places for spirituality for big religions, then why specifically India?
Always nice to see a more thoughtfull comment :-) I was in India before i left to the Caribbean, spent some time in ashram there so all spirituality was kind of connected to India for me, i was still young then. I would still make the same choice because Hinduism embraces all other religions. Thanks for engaging.
That's a heart wrenching kind of experience, I'm glad it could catapault you to new heights. Those glimpses may create a kind of desire for "that which cannot be desired" but they also give you new perspective, it's much easier to find a place that you have already been.
Your experience is quite similar to one of the characters in my short stories collection, one of the few not directly based off my own experience, although not that far off, really.
Oh ... wow ...
That's mostly how i feel reading your posts, "Wow... way above my head" :-)
You are a very kind, encouraging person @bubke! 🌻❤️😊
Thanks for sharing your story. I couldn't agree more, "Paradise is a state of mind."
BTW... love the photo you posted of yourself! :)
It is the ultimate yoga to get your hair in the air :-). I guess you could take it one step further and support your partner with it :-)
hahah! :) acroyoga is the best. :) Have you tried it?
Woah. I need to read this again, that's really something.
Nice to meet you, i just had to reread your little one-liner 5 times, anti-Keynesian - what a word, phew, you got my attention, will follow you :-)
Everyone of us has our own journey in life, just go on and be strong. Power!
Thanks for sharing your experience! Upvoted to you! Bless
Thanks @kumikocaro, returned blessings!
Thanks for all your arduous work, here's a bunch of token of appreciation!
Truly inspiring. I enjoyed reading about your journey and moment of enlightenment. :)
Thanks for sharing your amazing story!