The Courage to Live Your Gift

You are uniquely extraordinary

Every one of us is as unique as our iris - and as uniquely we are meant to express and live our lives.

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
― Pablo Picasso

Reflecting on my birthday, one thought kept returning: Despite all the difficulties (see: Why Not to Build a Village), what a blessing to be given the opportunity to build a village, a society and a place of awakening - a paradigm change in the face of global adversity. I cannot think of a more meaningful and fulfilling use of my time on this planet. It’s why I am here.

For fifteen years I chased conventional achievements like money, power, status, first as an investment banker, then as a startup founder. But I never truly cared about those things; I had simply been told that this is what a successful life looks like. Then I got kicked out of my own company.

Who am I?

It was the best thing that ever happened to me. For the first time, I stopped and asked the real questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What makes a fulfilling life? I had no answers. Most of us never do - not because the questions are unanswerable, but because we never truly ask. To truly ask means refusing to stop until you find the answer.

Instead we’re told there is no purpose, that nobody knows, that the universe was created out of nothing. These are lazy answers - the answers of people afraid to ask. And that fear steals the one thing that matters: the most fulfilling life you could live, beyond your wildest imagination.

Around that time I remembered an interview with Steve Jobs, recorded after he was fired from Apple:

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.”

That clip left a profound impression on me. What I didn’t know then is that the truth goes much deeper: you can not only build things - you can change reality itself.

Seeking Truth

So instead of starting another company, I spent a decade seeking. Retreats. Extended silence. For periods I gave up alcohol, food, sex, warm water, human connection. I spent my savings while everyone around me got rich, married, built families. Many days I thought I was going insane, wasting my life. But something kept whispering through my heart: keep going.

“Seek and you shall find.” Oh boy, did I find.

Here is what I found: you are a soul, an expression of consciousness, an expression of God. By God I don’t mean the religious, separate God. Forget everything you have been told about God. I mean the Source, the All, the Tao - everything that ever was, is, and will be. There is only one thing in this universe and that is “it”.

You can think of it as an energy, as a feeling, love. But the God that can be named is not God. It’s beyond our dualistic, rational minds. It’s beyond the material world. It cannot be explained, it can only be known through experiencing it.

In 2023, I experienced it directly. I had met God before, in ceremony - but that was still God and me. This time I experienced what every spiritual tradition has taught for thousands of years: Oneness. There is no God out there. Everything is God. You are God. We all are.

You might say: wonderful, but I still have to pay the bills, and my heart still breaks. True. Knowing you are an expression of God doesn’t make you less human - being human means experiencing yourself as human. We chose this.

Why are we playing being human?

When you are God, you can create anything, and when you can create anything, nothing is exciting anymore. So you invent a more intricate game: you enter a world and forget who you are. Life is a video game in which we’ve forgotten we’re playing.

We confuse our human selves as the real ‘us’. And what does it mean to ‘win’ a game you’ve forgotten you’re in? Exactly: to remember - while still playing - and making it the most extraordinary life - from your higher self’s, God’s perspective. You are the player, creator and observer all in one.

So if you ask: who I am, why I’m here, what the purpose of life is: I am Consciousness, here to wake up from the dream I placed myself in - and to help create heaven on earth. Because that is where we actually are. We have simply forgotten it, and in forgetting, built hell instead: wars and conflict despite all our progress and abundance.

The world is such a beautiful place. Why are we fighting?

Watch my first Neos video where we explain the mission in 3 mins:

Following Your Calling

All of this gave birth to Neos, the New Earth Operating System: a village for a new way of being - in harmony with oneself, each other, and nature. Neos is at the very beginning, and it is still a fragile flower. The perfect land found us, and Karen and I found each other as partners in this mission.

We’ve triggered the hell out of each other along the way - that, too, is part of the path of remembering. Everything, no matter how hard, especially when hard, is a gift in service of waking up to the truth and becoming a better human - one that is guided by its higher self, one’s soul, rather than its material attachments and desires.

Some assume we’re doing this to get rich, or out of hubris, or ego. So let me say plainly what Neos is: It is not about a village, a retreat centre, a farm, or off-grid resilience - though it is also all of those. At its core there is one purpose:

to remember who we truly are and create heaven on earth.

There is no greater story than you. All you are here to do is to have the courage to live it by following your heart, it already knows. Everything else is an ordinary life not worthy of your true magnificence. And with AI coming for all of us, following your heart will be the most sane choice of all. It always has been.

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