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