Learning to participate in life rather than trying to control it was an unexpected lesson that hit me in my late 20s. It was especially surprising since my entire life had been built on control. For over a decade, I worked in an industry where compliance, structure, precision, and risk management were the foundation of survival for my clients and me. Every variable of every outcome needed preparation and accountability. Perfectionism became a nervous system adaptation under the disguise of having a skill. Control created safety, predictability, and success seemed to be the product of that control. Or at least that is what I believed.
At the same time, I was practicing the spiritual side of things, helping people gain clarity in their own trajectories. I often joked that I was sitting in a split position like Jean-Claude Van Dam. Internally, I knew I had to choose a direction. There was no clarity, but being where I was felt like living a double life – one in the matrix where I thought I had control over the future, and the other, what my soul was calling me to do for decades – the unknown.
So when my inner world suddenly went silent one day, and all I could hear was the word “freedom,” I did not fully understand what was about to unfold. Looking back now, it felt less like a decision and more like the beginning of something so big that it made my ego tremble with undeniable terror.
I took a deep breath and watched my carefully constructed reality begin collapsing in front of my eyes. Businesses destabilized through waves of external and internal pressures within weeks, some within days. Pandemic shutdowns, unpredictability, competition, and regulatory chaos within an emerging industry. Many times, I was tempted to regain control and “fix” things, but something inside of me kept telling me to surrender.
As everything in front of my eyes was collapsing, I watched others grasp for their own reality. At least I felt like I wasn’t alone, and that brought some relief to the ego. The more pressure was applied, the more I witnessed capitalism consume people I once believed were grounded in morals. I watched relationships to money, ambition, and survival change my long-time colleagues under pressure into characters out of the Hunger Games series, and what seemed to be solid became temporary, not just for me, but for everyone with whom I walked side by side for many years. The entire structure began falling apart like a house of cards. For a while, I thought I was going crazy and that my thoughts had caused this collapse, but it was too late to grasp or understand. None of my questions mattered anymore, and the only thing I could do was let go, as per instructions that came from within.
Something seemed determined to remove every place where attachment still lived within me. Friendships and relationships shifted, and most of them completely dissolved. The biggest heartbreak was facing the fragility of my mom’s life and the terrifying confrontation with death, pain, and the impermanence of time. That period felt like prolonged, excruciating suffering to the ego stretched across invisible-to-the-eye timelines. There was no control left, no plans, and no strategy. I had zero ability to intellectually solve what was happening, and everything I cared for seemed to be eliminated from my hands one piece at a time, forcing me inward toward a center without collapsing into psychosis.
The only thing that made sense to me at the time was to go into complete solitude. I felt an overwhelming pull toward an ashram in the mountains of Costa Rica, somewhere where everything was familiar yet where I had never been before.
To be continued.