The Karmic balance first ever submission of anything in my life

A love story,

perhaps not the best ever written, but definitely the best ever lived. 

A story of how after 6 months of paid but unemployed covid isolation, Meditation, Vitamin C and a final month of space and serotonin self therapy were the final ingredients to a hard won actual recipe for happiness in a, some may say crazy, experiment to hack himself happy .

The pinnacle of an epic years long journey of reunited love and total transformation of body, circumstance and spirit in a complete reinvention of self. 

A most tragically beautiful dichotomous journey in sex, joy, exhilaration, passion and pain. In the headiest most ecstatic highs of true love and joy and in the most crushing depths of fear, anxiety and self doubt, a soul enslaved by alcohol addiction would claw itself free from its jailers bonds and rise up from those torturous depths to summon the shattered pieces of his identity together and journey back towards his own personal paradise, only to be greeted with the treacherous reality of a perfect life... in a sober mind. 

And that’s how I got here. 

Well. 

Kinda. 

Buut more about that later. Right now - this is my book. I have started. I am a writer. Oh god it's going to be so terrible. And that’s great!! I’d love to have written terrible book. It's a book!!! That’s a few iterations from ok. And I’m ok having written an O.K book. Fuck me don’t let that shit come outa your mouth again. No, I just need one person to say it's great. Just one. Kyle wont read it. Mom will just get annoyed with it. Barbaras heard the whole damned thing a million times by now. 

But you did it, after years of people….. occasionally suggesting it … you did it. 

More importantly though is how you got here! You did it buddy! It worked! You hacked yourself happy. How am I so sure? How do I know? BECAUSE I’M WRITING THE GOD DAMNED BOOK. 

DUH. 

Ovias 

Ok so this thing right, what’s this thing about. 

Ooooooo.

Well ok, It's about a lot of things. So Many goodies. 

First, Man.Wow . Talk about EEEEEpic love story. Reunited lovers , 12 years apart, meet up again and boom, Instantaneously they're getting married and he’s moving across the world for her. 

Yeahhhh, ok seems a bit blasé and done right? 

Yeah yeah, Ok. Let's add some places right, ha ,hmmmm. YES. Africa to Amsterdam.

Hmmmm… Ok but we’re going a Bit Wilbur Smithy here...

Ok, ok. Then there’s this 

Complete reinvention of life, rediscovery of self. Lost 40kilo thingy. 

Dude you lost the 40k by accident while you were hooked on pills and booze..

OH that’s another one! Reinvention of self + Alcoholism!?

Okaaaayyyy… mayyyybe we’re going somewhere. Continue. 

Ok lets do it like this. 

Man 

Man cool, man interesting 

Watchit buddy 

Ok ok 

Man interesting 

? 

Ok ok, 

Man 

Man interesting, have interesting life but man in trouble. Alcohol. Man loving. man in pain. Man Meet Girl. Old flame. Ex fiancé. 

Crazy big giant fall in love, give everything up, move to Amsterdam thingy 

Also. girl Eastblok - say hilarious shit all time 

Man battle with alcohol - almost loses life - rebuilds identity. Girl save mans life. 

Man go 2019 brand new person brand new life. Man SOOO Happy but man have no peace. No purpose. Man reinvent self at same time as Destroy himself. Chaos story of Perfection and destruction Man not fixed what broken inside. No Alcohol to fix. Man no know how fix. 

Man have reality of his dreams. Man happy not man not at peace . Man get depressed. Man get fired 

HEEEEEEEEY CORONA 

MAN take amphetamines 

Wait wait, amphetamines? 

Yes Man go add clinic now man take amphetamines. 

Make add go bye bye 

Man feel good. Man go journey find himself 

Man smoke mariuana 

SEX 

Man brain on fire. No used marijuana, no used add meds. 

Man discover male multiple orgasms 

Man stop marijuana. 

Man feel better but man feel strange. 

Man read 12 rules to life 

Man read mood cure. 

Man start regime of diet , exercise, sunlight, vitamin and amino acid supplementation ..

Man struggle with dosage and stumble through trial and error . A dopamine story. 

Man feel great! 

Man try find himself. 

Man can no find himself. 

Man go surgery. 

Man go recovery 

Man go marijuana. 

Man go meditation. 

Man go god. 

Man find final key to recipe. 

Man find vitamin c! 

Man find truth, peace love and acceptance. 

Man write book. 

OK. That's it. Sounds pretty good. 

Lets go. 

As he skipped along the pavement under the blue blue skies on this gorgeous late Autumn Afternoon.

A refreshing  cold breeze  blew over him as he bonded with  Stans soul over the the gaping expanse of the African continent,

He had come to learn through his path to enlightenment that a soul can repay you your karma 10  fold without your physical involvement. 

He'd also started to pick up that that physical presence would normally then have to rectify the balance by putting the soul's physical person through a RoughnShitty tough time. 

If you're ever going through a tough time, hang your hat on this idea, maybe it'll get you through

Your soul is feeding someone in need, someone that helped you, someone you love. 

Look after yourself, your body and your mind and keep up your energy. 

Someone else   needs it.

He stopped for a moment to take in the simple beauty of the quiet suburban streets, red, orange and brown leaves painted the skies around him.

He thanked the cosmos for the new tagline it had gifted him. 

His shows why, his claim,  his stamp of Authority, 

"Coz where I been... You ain't never gonna go kid" 

He hadn't even  been looking for it. 

He had to actively manage his happiness, disconnect from the euphoria. He had gotten good at it. 

He felt so good it hurt, this much happy this quickly was heavy. 

As he breathed deep and slow, recalling the never ending flow of ideas

the key to which  he had  come to realise was not to chase every idea, not to force any concept, apply the utmost patience and mediate, the next moves would unfold so softly, wonderfully, like massive cards to the deck of life.

The universe would tell him when a concept needed to bubble, when it needed to be closed. When he needed to take risks. Growing with each iteration exponentially.  If this was all in 1 week. Imagine a month, a year. 20.... 

As he returned home to his sweetheart and her ever happy little jump up kisses.

He decided to try a thought experiment.

"Can I go SuperSaiyan?"It would make great content for his new found energy.

" Can I  ingrain the  idea and energy of, DragonBallZ SuperSaiyan , into my head  with meditation and EDM? " he thought

As he lay, meditating he would play the soundtrack of this nifty little, EDM, pump up beat, SuperSaiyan music video.

It worked quicker than he had expected, he felt himself imagine his own energy into existence,

It flowed and raged and swirled through him gloriously, it expanded and grew and filled. 

Just as it was about to overwhelm him he disconnected from it all. The energy around him, he absorbed it, centred it in  a swirling ball of Happy fizz pop crackles, Rainbows  on roses and whiskers on kittens, his soul had a mainline to mother earth and she was  Mary fuckin Poppins. 

He slowly centred himself, gazed upon the world map in front of him.

He had tried to go SuperSaiyan, 

He slowly rose, realising it hadn't worked.

He already was super Saiyan 

He had become a guru

I'd just woken up, drained after this crazy week. I haven't been following the recipe, so absorbed in the writing and the transformation. Obsessed with the story of my own life. My brain running at a million miles an hour, throwing great idea after great idea at me. It started with the C.V, finding a creative way to truly and openly capture my career into 2 pages of real yet compelling narrative. 

This was a breakthrough for me. 

As I read my powerfully worded narrative I looked at myself and thought, holy shit... is that me?

and fuelled by a heady afterglow of repetitive breakthroughs and the ongoing discovery of meditation,  heavily stoned one evening when I read the  newly crafted, clever backwards pitch letter out loud, and I read my own description of myself :

//A story of how I’d combine those skills and education and go from scraping crusty leftovers in Johannesburg to blue suits and chauffeured limousines in Seoul to the love my life here in Amsterdam.// 

And in my late night stoned state HOLY SHIT  did my brain lap that up.

The signal amplification effects of marijuana made each individual component of this concept each the more rewarding. 

First there's the cool story line, any stoner that's ever watched a movie can attest to how much more WOAH DUDE a plot twist is on weed. Granted I don't really get stoned anymore, more like under the influence. 

Nevertheless it still sounded Way cooler to my stoner brain that it was in reality. 

Then

There's the fact that I wrote it. 

Then there's the fact that I figured it out, deconstructed and understood the  last 15 years of my professional life. 

That it was potentially the key to getting a job, and out of this rut. 

That I'd produced something good, career wise, for the first time in months. 

All of those multiplied, stacked, and then- to the power of weed. Together with the fact that I did it all in stoned and meditated truth, writing nothing that felt at all false. 

And 

BOOOM

Holy shit Did I buy my own dog food. 

Wow, this singular concept was so supremely delicious to my brain that, like a starved toddler at fat camp, being served a triple chocolate Sundae with all the trimmings, dipped in butter, and fried in cuddles, it would be worshipped as the holy grail of anything it had ever eaten before. I would use this to go on to find my purpose. When my partner didn't share the biggest moment of my life. It could have broken me. 

3am:

Anti Climax

// she was asleep, I took this massive moment, with tears of joy streaming down my face to a sleeping Barbara at 3am

"MymmHyhmm" 

In response to his earth-shattering event

MymmHyhmm!??????

What the hell do you mean mmMM Hhmm?

So I've got my hands gripped on her arms, and I'm sort of,  staring at her with this, sort of, intense, fiery dismay,  in such  a crumbling and impassioned disbelief,  anchored though by the weirdest feeling of cuteness. Cuteness!!?? So cute that my caterpillar eyebrows almost slid off my face.

 (I've looked into this, there is no word in English for the feeling you get when you see something cute.   how tragically bizarre??!

 "In Japan somethin is cute when it is  helpless ".... )

So there I was desperately resisting the urge to,

shake. 

poor.

HELPLESS.

Barbara.

into. 

MY. 

NEW. 

NIRVANA. So that she may one again bask in all that is me and the universe because I am it, it is me and we are one, Simunye. 

GENUINELY concerned that something is wrong with her, because How she could she not see  what was happening  to me??,   pleading urgently,   hacking and spluttering and wailing, with torrents  of tears just absolutely   streaming down my face, I PLEADED with her

" dont you see baby? Don't you see how big this? Its my purpose ?!"

"Do you not see! Do you not see what has happened to me?!  Do you not see? why don't you see? Why aren't you more excited? Why baby? WHY!?

As she visibly  scraped together what must have by  now been the very last  vestiges of her good will,  summoning  the last of her energy and doing  her absolute best to participate in my emancipation, With that that same ,heave and slump, of an aging runner trying to make the comrades cut off for their last ever race,

 she manages to rise and mumble 

….

"I see you are excited " 

….

Before slumping back into her semi conscious purgatory. 

What?!!! Noooo!no no nooo. No Baby I'm not excited. I found my purpose!I my purpose, my love. I know what I'm doing to do with my life! This big. It's so big. SO big. Do you see!? Isn't it great! Isn't it amazing?!!! Why don't you understand?!

With a sweetly dazed smile, she summons enough lucidity to gently eek out :  

"I'm sorry baby, I know you are excited, but for me… is obvious you will do that. "

……. Oooovias. … eh…. Haha. Ne?

Staring back with this furiously confused look of incredulous yet, frustratingly devine bemusement , and with my caterpillars firmly at forty five, I gather my wits and, like scolded puppy, I quietly sigh 

"oh."

 "ok. "

"Its late."

I'm sorry…."

"Ok Google.  All lights  off."

"CHECK OUT THIS REGGAE POP STATION ON YOUTUBE MUSIC" , blurts google.

I remember walking down the kitchen hall in slight slow motion,  disappointed but not hurt or angry , with this weird sense of disconnection I thought" oh well, guess that's the end of that relationship " and head to roll a smoke... 

Barely had the tobacco hit the paper before I laughed and smiled To myself about how good she is for me, how she's about reality not concepts . how she's not easily impressed and how she doesn't buy my Bullshit, which is great because If she did, then so would I...

And then I  would then be  I'd be truly and utterly doomed. 

 ALL of my perspective had  changed, none of  my reality. Barbara on the other hand, None of her perspective  but ALL of her reality had changed and that reality was "now I'm awake"   and that could have easily lead to a system shocking poes klap but instead, Like a golden haired godchild agreeing to a ,not altogether agreed upon or understood, but thoroughly accepted, instruction. I got the sweetest little, mmM Hmm. Thank you God for my sweet little mmmhhhhmmm and my placid little observer life companion that keeps ON  taking the OMGODS AND HOLY SHITS . THANK YOU.

Lesson:

I can honestly tell you that my total reaction to this confusing let down if VERY  different  to how I normally work.  Or at least used to 3 months ago.

The biggest moment of my life had just hit me and my closest person, my rock , my everything , my partner my best friend,  didn't get it, even seemed vaguely disinterested. In my moment of pure truth my brain did those  calculations ….

and despite my world rocking joy and complete  and total infatuation with,  and immovable dedication  to, my  life long bond girl gift from God . My brain  still fed me the line

" and that's the end of that relationship." 

It also fed me the feeling 

" and you don't have to bargain with this thought. It's undeniable so dont even bother giving it a second thought" 

I can tell you with all honesty  that 3 months ago that moment of disconnection would have rocked me to my core. It's the kind of feeling  I'm used to I would have ruminated, bubbled and stewed.  I would have tried to apply all my good will to logic my way peacefully out of the situation but my brain would have ceaselessly chucked my disenfranchised pain at me until I solved that problem and that the problem was Barbara.

What happened though? All of 20 seconds passed before i it fed me:

This is what she's about

This is what you're about

Here are her realities in your little  revolution AND the REST of the shit she's put up with  the past WEEK. 

Here's how  badly it could have gone but didn't. 

Here's some gratitude for that. 

Here's why you should thank your lucky stars.

Here's why it's hilarious!

Here's a smile,  a chuckle, a warm feeling and a story for your book!

Peace motherfucker. 

All in under a minute?

Because I trained for it to. 

Me.

I hacked it. 

Changed it. 

Physiologically.

How? 

The repeated practice of meditation, empathy and gratitude. The science is there, there are real physical changes to the brain.

Recent studies have proven in a  8 week trial of meditation just 15 minutes  a day there was an actual thickening of the brain.

"include the ventral and dorsal medial pre-frontal cortex. These areas are involved in feelings of reward (the reward when stress is removed), morality, interpersonal bonding and positive social interactions, and the ability to understand what other people are thinking or feeling"

That's why that moment in my life is now a cute story, which to me makes it another blessing to me. And so my cycle of happiness repeats.

And that's a story of how, 

if you practice compassion for the plight of your partner  and gratitude daily, for ANYTHING, no matter  how seemingly meaningless or mundane,

it could be for how tasty oreos are,

for clump free body glitter, 

for the warmth of your partners body as you fall asleep.  Absolutely ANYTHING.  

You can make a biological impact on yourself and how your brain processes your life. This will alter your perspective and you'll begin to think and act in a more positive way without trying.

This will in turn lead to positive improvements in your  day to day reality which will lead to more positive emotions and you'll begin to auger up exponentially. 

If you want to be strong:  Lift weights

If you want to be happy:  Lift your mind - meditation and gratitude.