Giving Myself The Gift Of An Open Heart

It has been a year and a half since I experienced The Mythic Voyage, a transformational workshop that aggressively cuts deep into personal belief systems to uncover contradiction, paradox and internal conflict contained in our beliefs and memories which affect every aspect of our lives. Programming we are essentially unconscious of, because it has been handed down to us by family, friends and people in a society that is largely dominated by paradoxical belief systems. I wanted to put myself through this process because I knew deep down that I was fucked up, and stuck, and that everything I had tried to create, I had sabotaged, given up on, and ultimately failed. I had spent the majority of my adult life alone, traveling from place to place, job to job, woman to woman, always chasing “the grass is greener” and never fully satisfied or at peace wherever I found myself. What eluded me most of all was having a purpose, a direction, knowing or trusting where I was navigating my life and why. I felt powerless, weak, disappointed… I was unhappy, and finally willing to admit it to myself and find the courage to ask for help. To make my happiness a priority…

Fuck, it seems so simple… to take the time in my life to sort out my own shit and figure out why I am the way I am and why I cannot seem to navigate my life in a direction which I trust will bring me happiness. And although I know that it IS ACTUALLY ALL VERY SIMPLE, I also realize that deep down I am unconscious of my own paradoxical programming, that in practice, it is impossible to navigate this path alone, to have clarity on my own belief system and subconscious barriers I have put up to protect it. Because we all know deep down that the answers to our own miseries are contained within, yet there seems to be nobody who has a clear answer how to find them and fix them.

Luckily I found TierraMitica and the work of the Big Fat Bald Greek!! A man with the biggest heart I have ever met and a man I am proud to call my trusted friend, Mikis, who has dedicated himself to researching the paradox and its affects upon human beings and helping those who choose to see themselves clearly and rid themselves of beliefs that serve to keep us from living happy lives. Essentially the more conscious we become of our belief systems and the unconscious bullshit we have been holding all these years that make us miserable, the more we can engrave and engrain conscious chosen beliefs that actually serve us. The lives that have been touched, saved and empowered by this revolutionary approach continue to grow and the work only gets more fascinating and powerful as it develops. The ultimate adventure one can undergo in their own lives, filled with magic, miracles and big beautiful vulnerable opening hearts that have finally discovered the path towards their own personal Holy Grail; Happiness!!

Yes… My life is Mythic. Because I choose for it to be so. But there are also parts of my life that I don’t seem to have so much choice over, and these, these are the parts that torment me. The parts that make me feel like shit, that make me hate myself, that make me disappoint myself. That often I don’t feel like I am a good enough man, that I am somehow incomplete or should be doing better, accomplishing more… that I’m not good enough. That I have trouble opening my heart and feeling my woman, my family, those I choose to love. That I still can’t feel what true love is. That I have been closed off from my family all these years, with barely a word spoken. That nobody I know in the world truly knows my heart and who I truly am and want to be. That I have so successfully hidden myself so deeply within a smiling facade that not even I can recognize who my true self is and even less of an idea how to let him break through and shine in this world. That I have never expressed the pain I have felt all these years, to anyone, ever. Terrified of my own truth, hiding behind a fake smile, alone… embarrassed by my own weakness. These thoughts and voices constantly urging me to be unhappy are all lies, and I’ve learned in this process that I was horribly mistaken, because what I have realized is that I am just like everyone else. And what I believe to be my weakness is actually what makes me divine, just like everyone else… my divinity IS my humanity.

It became time once again, for me to dive deeper, take my adventure to the next level. So, I gave myself the gift of participating in The Choice OS workshop, a brand new revolutionary healing workshop built upon years of research and work developed in The Mythic Voyage and without the use of Ayahuasca. I was amazed to see how far the work had advanced and how it was a thousand times more powerful without any psychotropic involved in the process. Those I participated with opened up even further and faster and we were able to dive into the work and get more out of it than any workshop previously held here. The power of symbolically showing myself that every feeling, every insight and every choice made was coming directly from me, without the need for any substance to help me open up. Together within the group and family of the workshop, I dove through layers of my psyche, expanded my understanding of my past and what created the beliefs that define my experience in this life… analyzed my own programming and discovered a power within, to choose my own programming and become the architect of my own destiny.  I discovered clarity about my life, and discovered a power within to truly choose the man I want to be.  I TORE MY HEART OPEN, and struck directly at the core of my biggest paradoxes. During the workshop, my demon, my B-personality was revealed in its entirety, the cold invincible armor I had created so many years ago to shield me from every feeling again such deep pain and terror, because in essence it has kept me all these years from truly feeling anything at all. The fake, smiling “cool guy” that everyone knows me as… the one nobody can touch… the one who lies about being proud because he cannot ever truly love himself, because he has turned off his capacity to truly love. It was both incredible to feel, and also terrifying.

Well… in every Mythic Story the hero must at some point find within himself the courage to face his greatest fears, to face the one true adversary he ever had, himself. So… I did. I wrote some letters to my family, who I had hidden myself from all these years. I let my heart bleed out all the pain that had built up for so long, spoke about my past, my true feelings, my fears, insecurities, my anger… The more I opened up the more memories came flooding back to me. The more I began to understand what had created so much paradox inside me to render me emotionally dead, disappointed, and always waging a war within myself. To feel that I had been absolutely terrified to speak my deepest truth for fear of hurting my mother, that I have been hiding a boiling anger towards her for feeling responsible for her all these years, and have sabotaged my own well being so many times, too terrified to open up and truly cut the cord of the toxic relationship we had formed over the years. I wrote to my father to describe the torment within me, the cold emotionless demon which has been strangling me all these years, because it is a demon that we share. That I made myself just like him, and never allowed myself to truly feel the pain and disappointment I have created in my own life. The self-sabotage purely because of a fear of admitting I’m human just like everyone else and not some cool invincible guy who can’t be hurt by anyone because he doesn’t allow himself to feel. Opening up and speaking my truth, fully and without fear, to open the doors so that I may finally begin a real conversation with my parents, about how we feel, the basis for a true loving relationship. That perhaps after all these years we can now get to know each other. For real this time. To say the words that have been left unsaid for so many years, to not allow fear and victim-hood to rob us of real connection, integrity and appreciation. To stop bullshitting ourselves and each other. To finally say the words “I love you” and mean it.

I also let my heart feel for the first time the love it held for a man who had chosen to raise me, to give me a home, to guide me into becoming a man, my true father, T-Jay. I made it my absolute priority to fly to Nova Scotia, immediately to see him and tell him how proud I was to be his son. To feel the nervousness inside of me stepping off the plane, the anticipation of feeling my heart opening to him, and the feeling of finally after all these years speaking these words in person, to call him dad. To embrace him and to tell him how much I love him, and how grateful I am that he chose to give a shit about me and make sure I was taken care of all those years. To show him that I have finally felt his heart, that I know he has always been there for me, despite all the time and distance that I have created between us, a truth that has finally been revealed in my heart. That he is my father and I am his son. To feel a part of him and his new family, and learn that no matter how much fear was within me and how big of wall I had put, that my family had never put up that same wall for me. I visited grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and nephews and it is the same story with all of them. Once hearts are finally broken open, true love is everywhere to be seen and felt. That they have always been there, waiting for me to see how much I am loved and missed and now that I am finally seeing clearly, there is nothing but open arms to greet me back into their embrace.

Because we are all the same… Everyone wants to love and be loved, but everyone is also harboring their own web of bullshit they must undertake to uncover. Everyone is hiding deep unconscious truths behind their own personal facades they have created because of a fear of their own humanity… that deep down everyone feels as if they are not good enough. EVERYONE! And although we may all have very different stories, when they are all laid bare in all their beautiful and tragic glory, when human beings finally allow themselves to feel the true courage to remove the mask and unveil themselves before complete strangers (the foundation of the workshop), we discover what true magic is. That we are all fucked up, we are all human, and there is absolutely nothing to be sorry for, that there are only choices to be made to open ourselves up and create real connections between ourselves and the ones we love, because in the end it is our humanity that we all share, it is our humanity which makes us divine, and it is in our humanity that we can heal old wounds that have been allowed to fester for so long. And all it takes is making a choice, to break down the invisible walls of fear between us that hold ourselves imprisoned. Because those who have hurt me are just like me, and I am no longer willing to allow myself to close my heart to anyone in my life anymore… I choose to open my heart, and I choose to feel true love.

I returned home to TierraMitica on the day of my wedding to Brielle, the woman I have chosen to be mine in this life. I watched her walk down the garden steps to join me and I felt something different towards her on this day. I could feel her heart beating, I could feel the tension within her washed away as she embraced me for the first time as her husband, I could feel her as I feel myself, feel her as a part of myself. I can feel her hopes and her dreams, now inextricably linked to me, a part of each other now that we share, and the trust she feels towards me to help her achieve and enjoy everything her beautiful little heart desires. Feeling her trust revealing herself to me fully, her fears, her insecurities, knowing that I am her absolute ally in this life and I will help her and guide her to reach her potential as the woman she has always known herself to be. Helping her to see how amazing she is, without the need to change a thing, rescuing her from the evil dragon of not being good enough and feeling together how much we deserve one another, how much we deserve to be happy. The excitement and adoration in her eyes knowing she is my wife, my lover and one day the mother of my children. My partner in this life, my woman. The greatest gift I have ever received. I made a vow that day to treasure her absolutely.

To finally feel my heart explode in true love, not only for her, but for myself as well. For I now know who I am, I now feel the man emerging inside of me. I am a man, a truly human man, with many faults and many paradoxes still remaining inside. But I have made my intention my purpose; to be happy; to be powerful; to be damn sure that I am the absolute best possible man in the world, always striving to constantly earn the trust and admiration of my beautiful Brielle, and to spend our lives together writing the most Mythic Love Story of all time. A man who can trust himself and thus knows that he deserves the trust of others. Ho Me Chi Ra Dorost Mikonad, “The Man Who Makes Everything Right”. There is no greater gift than this.

For this is pride, this is the measure of conditionality of love I feel for myself, and as it grows so grows the love I can feel for my wife, my ever expanding family and the human family I share this life with. My heart is growing bigger every day and I am feeling more and more every moment. I no longer hide behind a facade. I am Benjamin Stephenson and I am one hell of an amazing man. I have given myself the gift of the greatest woman who has ever lived, the gift of a beautiful family who loves me very much, and the gift of a Mythic Life which grows more amazing each and every day. And even more now I KNOW WHAT LOVE TRULY IS. Not just as a concept, not just a definition in my mind, but as a feeling screaming loudly and proudly within my heart. Now I know this is the source of my true strength, not a fake invincible facade, but the vulnerable beautiful and powerful divinity I share with everyone else… My humanity.

I have found the Holy Grail and it has been there all along, inside of me. The most valuable prize that every adventure ever has sought to uncover. I am a happy man… in love… in trust… and inspired to create the masterpiece of a true happily ever after.

WHAT A RIDE!!!!
~Benji