You’ve done the work. That’s the problem.
You have read the books. You have sat in ceremony, or therapy, or both. You can name your patterns with impressive precision. Then an old name lights up your phone, and your body answers before you do. Same reaction, better vocabulary.
Nobody warns you about this stage. You are not lost. You found too much. Seeking became escape with better branding.
I call it insight hoarding because I did it for thirty years: new teachers, new frameworks, new countries, new explanations. My life stayed largely the same, just better explained. What finally moved was not another insight. It was small, real, slightly inconvenient action, done without demanding results.
The Gita calls it karma yoga. The twelve steps taught me the same thing in plainer clothes. Underneath the action, something older held it together: devotion. Not intensity. Gravity. I am a Catholic who prays with a Hindu heart, and I stopped apologizing for it. You do not have to abandon your tradition to recognize God in another.
Who writes this
I am in my late fifties. I spent three decades running large industrial projects across the world, which is a way of saying I was paid well to be useful and spent my private hours trying to figure out why that was not enough. I trained as a psychotherapist and went deep into psychedelic work, not as a practitioner but as a man who needed to understand what was happening to him. I was raised Catholic in Colombia. I pray now with a Hindu devotion that became, over years, the center of my life rather than a supplement to it. These essays are a record of what actually occurred. Every story is true. I keep my name private. I hide nothing else.
What this is (and what it isn’t)
This is not a program. There are no steps to follow. I am not a teacher, and I am not here to coach you. If you want a method with guarantees, this is not for you.
What you will find here, every week, is one essay of testimony: the reality of trauma, the trap of seeking, action without guarantees, devotion, and God recognized across traditions. One man going first and writing down what is true.
The man my wife and children live with today is not the man they lived with before. That is the only scoreboard I trust.
Why subscribe?
The weekly essay is free. This publication is made possible by a small group of readers who choose to support it.
At $6 a month or $60 a year, paid readers buy this work the one thing it cannot run without: the time to research, write, and answer. They also keep it independent, beholden to no advertiser and no algorithm. In return:
The Monthly Deep Dive: one exclusive essay each month that goes further than the free list, into the places testimony gets uncomfortable.
The Full Archive: every piece of testimony ever published here.
The knowledge that you are keeping the weekly essay free for everyone who needs it and cannot pay.
The weekly essay stays free either way, and free readers are equally valued here. If paying for this work ever feels like something you want to do, the door is open. If it never does, you are welcome for as long as these essays give you something.
