The Enlightened Idiot

 Spirituality: The Art of Losing Your Bullshit

I’m here in Ubud, where Burning Man meets Bali in ceremony and celebration — a jungle playground of ecstatic dance, cacao rituals, and tribal designer wear that looks like it was inspired from the cocktail hour set of a Mad Max movie. Everywhere you turn, someone’s rebirthing, realigning, or remembering who they were in Atlantis ,  surrounded by an army of tantric linen gods who look like they’ve descended from Mount Instagram to bless the dance floor with perfectly moisturised enlightenment.

It’s a festival paradise with a side of performance art ... sacred selfies and sandalwood smoke swirling under the banner of awakening.

And yet, beneath the drums, the crystals, the shirodhara, and the endless sound baths, the same question hums like a mosquito in meditation: what happens when you stop performing spirituality, and actually start dumping your bullshit?

Forget the incense, the earthy toned loose linens, and that smug “I’m more enlightened than you” smile.

You don’t become fucking spiritual. You’re still just human, only now with better incense and worse delusions.

That’s the ego’s final, most devious trick: convincing you that your shiny, newly awakened self is somehow above all the other lost souls still fumbling through the chaos of being human.

You’re not. 

Spirituality isn’t a lifestyle choice.

You don’t “get spiritual” like you pick up pottery or CrossFit.

There’s no enlightenment starter pack, no celestial VIP lounge where the chosen few sip matcha and compare past lives.

But we love the costume. We love being the calm one in the chaos … the one who “gets it.” We light the sage, post the quote, and call it presence.

It’s not.

It’s just your ego in designer yoga pants ,  still performing, still selling, still addicted to identity. 

The real thing doesn’t add , it takes away. It doesn’t elevate you,  it fucking dismantles you. It peels you like an onion until you’re sitting there, raw and blinking, staring at the ashes of everything you thought made you “you.” ... All your beliefs. Your opinions. Your moral superiority. All fucked off and gone.

What’s left?  ... Confusion. Silence. A fragile, flickering awareness that you’ve been full of shit this whole time , and somehow, that’s okay. Just when you think you’ve cracked enlightenment, your ego sneaks back in with a shiny badge: “Look at me, I’m spiritual now.” And off you go again ,  bowing before your own humility, secretly thinking, “I bow better than they do.”

People love to claim they’ve transcended suffering… until some twat cuts them off in traffic.

Then it’s not Namaste, it’s 'fuck you, cunt!'

That’s the game.

You win by realising there’s nothing to win. No guru. No influencer. No loose linen wrapped Bali life coach charging ten grand for a tribal “awakening” retreat has the key to your soul.

Truth isn’t a course you buy ,  it’s a demolition job you survive.

You don’t learn it. You live it. Usually while muttering, “Holy shit, I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.” 

That’s enlightenment — the freedom to not know.

If you’re lucky, the whole façade falls apart. You lose the labels, the logic, the armour. You stop trying to be “good.” You stop trying to be anything. 

And in the rubble, there’s this quiet space … empty, terrifying, magnificent. Nothing to hold onto, and somehow, everything held. 

That’s the punchline:

The nothing you’ve been avoiding was the everything you were chasing.

There’s no final version of you waiting at the end of the path.

No halo. No certificate. No chocolate watch.

Just you ...  a little softer, a little freer, a little less full of shit than yesterday.

So burn the script. Drop the robes. Let the ego collapse under the weight of its own performance. Then get up, stretch, and live the fuck out of life. Not to become enlightened ... but because you finally realise you already are.

That, my friend, is the art of losing your bullshit.

The Enlightened Idiot

I thought awakening 

would make me special.

Instead, it made me laugh 

at every version of myself

that ever tried to be.

ZP

That calm in the chaos? That’s what separates leaders from quitters.

 Entrepreneurship isn’t glamorous, it’s chaos disguised as passion.

One day you feel unstoppable, the next you’re questioning everything.

You’re juggling problems, managing pressure, and pretending you’re fine while building something that might fail tomorrow, or explode next year.

But that’s the game.

Winners don’t panic when things fall apart, they adapt and rebuild.

It’s not about avoiding the fire, it’s about learning to move through it.

Every setback sharpens your instincts.

Every challenge builds your resilience.

Humility and confidence

 "Build in the hush and let your work speak only when it has a voice of its own. Not every seed needs the sun on its first day. Let some things begin in the shade, where roots can learn their strength without the glare of eyes and the pull of hands. You do not have to post every step to prove you are moving. You do not have to explain every silence to prove you are thinking. A steady heart is louder than a loud room. A clean intention can guide you farther than a crowded calendar. Keep your plans close while they are young. Guard their breath. Give them time.

Attention is a currency; spend it where the return is growth. The timeline is not your teacher and the crowd is not your council. Choose the quieter room, the calmer pace, the deeper read. Choose to be present with the task instead of being available to every ping that wants to own your mind. What you finish in silence will outlive what you announce for applause. Let your effort be the headline in your own life. Let your focus be the shelter where your progress stands up on its own legs.

The small, repeated work that nobody claps for is the very work that builds the bridge. One page on the hard day. One session when you would rather scroll. One honest conversation with yourself about what matters. Brick by brick looks slow until a wall appears where there was only air. Patterns are your proof. Routines are your road. Keep the covenant with your mornings, your training, your study, your craft. Faithfulness does not glitter, but it does grow.

Boundaries are not walls; they are doors you learn to close behind you. Not everyone who asks for your time has earned your time. Not every invitation is an opportunity; some are a detour dressed up in praise. Learn the difference between what flatters you and what feeds you. Say no like you are saving a life, because you are saving your own life from being spent on what will not matter in a year. People who love your becoming will respect your guardrails. People who love your access more than your growth will call your clarity cold. Let them call it what they want while you call your energy home.

Humility and confidence can be close friends. Humility says, I still have much to learn. Confidence says, I am capable of learning it. You do not need the theater of certainty; you need the practice of curiosity. Ask better questions. Go slower than your ego wants and faster than your fear allows. Be a student longer than most are willing, and you will wake up one morning with a mastery that looks like magic to everyone else and like memory to you.

Care for your nervous system like it is the soil for every seed you want to grow. Rest before you are forced to rest. Eat in a way that helps your mind think clearly. Move your body to remind your spirit it has a home. Turn the volume down on voices that keep you braced for impact. Solitude is a skill. Stillness is a strength. A quiet inner world will keep your outer work steady when the winds rise and the noise tries to pull you away from yourself.

Let the seasons set your pace. There is a time to plant in the dark and trust the dark is a beginning, not an end. There is a time to prune what looks alive so that what is truly living can breathe. There is a time to harvest and share the good fruit with steady hands. Do not rush a root. Do not shame a bud. Do not hoard a bloom. Patience is not delay; it is depth. When you honor the season you are in, the next season arrives without being dragged.

Celebrate your inches, not only your miles. Keep a record of promises you kept to yourself until your confidence becomes a library you can walk into on the days you forget who you are. Let gratitude be your guard at the door of your mind, because a grateful mind is harder to bait into nonsense. Praise the quiet wins, the private breakthroughs, the moments you chose purpose over performance. These tiny lights become a constellation that guides you when the sky goes dim.

When the work is ready, it will not need a marching band. It will stand up and introduce itself. You will not have to push it into the world with begging; you will place it there with peace. The right eyes will find it because truth has a way of traveling without a ticket. Smile gently at the surprise of those who thought your silence meant stillness. You were not hiding. You were building. You were not absent. You were aligning.

Leave the noise to those who need it. Keep the nonsense at the edge of your life, where it belongs. Protect what you are making the way a lighthouse guards its flame in rough weather. And when morning finds you, let your steps arrive like dawn—quiet, certain, generous with light. You did not shout; you stayed true. You did not rush; you grew. Build in the hush, keep your peace, and rise when it is time—beautiful because you arrive without announcement, powerful because you no longer need permission."

~ Steve De'lano Garcia

The Hidden Constellation Within ~ Mapping the quiet galaxies of selfhood and freedom ~

 I have come to see solitude not as absence, but as presence. Not as lack, but as sovereignty. To dwell in my own company is to inhabit a private cosmos, a constellation of choices, rhythms, and spaces that are entirely my own. This life I live now is not a waiting room for something greater ~ it is already luminous, already abundant, already mine.

The Freedom of Choice

Each morning, I rise and step onto my treadmill, five miles of rhythm and reflection, listening to the subtle stirring of my body as it awakens. The sunlight filters through the window, painting the floor in shifting patterns. I feel the pulse of my heartbeat and the strength in my legs, a quiet reminder of all that my body can do. Later, I look out over the ridge, where the cabins I’ve built stand among swaths of creeping red thyme. Their windows catch the light of the sun, and the smell of the earth rises on the breeze. Each cabin is a vision brought to life by my own hand, a testament to my freedom to create.

Every choice, from tending the land to imagining what Sky View Ridge can become, from nourishing my body to designing my days, flows from my center. I do not compromise my rhythm, nor apologize for following curiosity. This sovereignty of choice feels like real freedom: life authored by my own hand, every page a reflection of me.

Self-Care as Sacred Practice

In this solitude, self-care is sacred. Rest is not guilt; it is permission. Nourishment is not trivial; it is ritual. I move my body because it sings for it. I stretch, breathe, and walk slowly through the morning fog, feeling dew on the thyme and the crisp air in my lungs. I fast when my body calls for it, and I eat when it calls for nourishment. Meditation is not forced ~ it is a conversation with my own being, a way to honor the quiet mind beneath the chatter.

Evenings bring their own rituals. I sit on the deck, listening to the hush that settles over the ridge, watching the sky fade from gold to deep indigo. The distant hoot of an owl, the rustle of wind through the trees, the soft hum of insects ~ it is all a symphony of presence. In solitude, I am both caretaker and companion to myself. This practice of tending my body, mind, and spirit is not indulgence ~ it is reverence.

Fertile Ground for Growth

Solitude is not empty ~ it is fertile. Freed from the constant mirroring of another’s gaze, I hear myself more clearly. Creativity stirs, dreams awaken, new directions whisper in the spaces between thought and breath. I imagine more cabins rising next year, each named for the children I love, each a home of rest, laughter, and quiet beauty. I explore new practices for health and vitality, meditating on what it means to heal, to grow, to transform. Independence is not static ~ it is movement, a field in which my imagination and spirit can wander freely, unfolding into new forms of being.

Intimacy in Freedom

Independence has deepened my understanding of intimacy ~ not just with myself, but with others. My friendships are richer, my family bonds more tender, my connection with nature profound. I honor the free will of those I love, meeting them as whole beings, not extensions of my need. True intimacy arises when two sovereign beings choose to meet without expectation, without grasping, without dependence. I love fiercely, but I love freely, knowing that our paths may diverge and intersect as they will.

I feel intimacy in the small moments too: the brush of wind on the ridge, the scent of thyme after rain, the quiet companionship of a bird alighting nearby. All of it teaches me that connection does not require possession. It requires presence.

Remembering Wholeness

The most radical truth solitude has revealed is that I am already whole. I do not need another to complete me; I am enough exactly as I am. My health journey, my spiritual practice, my land, my work, my joys and struggles ~ all of it is sufficient. Nothing is missing. This recognition transforms independence into abundance: I live from sufficiency, not from lack.

My Declaration

• I am not incomplete. I am whole.

• My life is not on pause; it unfolds fully now.

• My freedom is my inheritance, and I claim it with gratitude.

• My self-care is sacred responsibility, practiced daily.

• My intimacy is everywhere: in friendship, family, community, nature, and silence.

• I honor others as sovereign beings, free to walk their own paths, and I love them in their freedom.

• My solitude is not exile ~ it is homecoming.

A Hymn to My Life

This life I live is luminous. It is spacious. It is a hymn to sovereignty, to freedom, to care. Each day I author is a declaration: I am whole. I am free. I am radiant in my solitude. From this fullness, I meet the world ~ not with longing, but with generosity; not with need, but with love; not with absence, but with presence.

Solitude, for me, is not the absence of love ~ it is the foundation of it. It is the hidden constellation within, mapping the quiet galaxies of selfhood and freedom, lighting the sky of my own making. Here, in the gentle rhythms of my days, among the thyme, the cabins, and the ridge, I am home.

You did not come this far just to come this far—you came to make far look reachable.

 "You might not realize it, but someone out there is watching you. They see you wake up when the world is still quiet and your doubts are the loudest voice in the room. They notice how you put your feet on the floor anyway, how you make coffee and courage at the same time, how you fold your fear into your pocket and carry it without letting it steer. They have been paying attention to the way you move through heavy days with steady hands, to the way you build a life out of small choices that no one claps for, to the way you keep going when it would be easier, kinder even, to yourself to lay down and call it enough.

They see the discipline other people miss, the small rituals that look like nothing and add up to everything. They see you choosing water over numbness, choosing boundaries over pleasing, choosing a quiet night over the loud room that always leaves you empty. They notice the planner with ink-stained hope, the shoes by the door that promise a walk you do not want to take and take anyway, the halfway-open book you keep returning to because you refuse to stop learning. They notice how you keep showing up for a life that is not yet clapping for you, and how you clap for yourself in whispers.

They see the fight you rarely name. Not the glamorous kind, but the long, slow wrestle with old habits and new standards. They see you talk back to the voice that says you are not ready, not qualified, not welcome, not enough. They see you pick up the phone to make the hard call, send the email that scares you, say the no that saves you, say the yes that stretches you. They see you turn toward the thing that asks more of you and you meet it with the quiet dignity of a woman who has decided to be loyal to her future.

They see how you refuse to quit even when it feels like no one would notice if you disappeared for a while. They see you carry your grief like a bowl of water, careful not to spill it on anyone and still letting it reflect the sky. They see you sit with discomfort instead of running from it, breathe through the ache instead of bargaining with it, learn from the wound instead of becoming it. They see that you are brave, not because you never feel fear, but because you keep choosing what matters even while your hands shake.

Because of you, they believe they can do better too. You have become a living translation of the idea that change is possible. You have become a mirror that shows them a version of themselves they are ready to recognize. When they watch you carry your tired body to the work that calls your name, something in them whispers, if she can, maybe I can. When they see you draw a line in the sand and protect it, they think, maybe my peace is worth protecting too. Your life has become a letter addressed to someone you will never meet, signed in the ink of your consistency.

Your consistency is not just for you; it is a bridge for the person on the other shore. It is a light left on in the hallway for the one coming home late and afraid. It is a rhythm that steadies the breath of someone who has been holding it for years. It is the lantern in the window that says this is a safe road; I have walked it in the dark and made it through. It is the proof a stranger needed on a Tuesday night when the loneliness got loud and they almost believed their effort did not matter.

You do not see their names, but they whisper yours when they need strength. You do not hear their prayers, but you are the answer to one. You do not know their stories, but your story is the turning point in one of them. Somewhere, a woman is lacing up her shoes because your footsteps sounded like a promise. Somewhere, a girl is applying for the scholarship because your persistence made her brave. Somewhere, a mother is choosing therapy because your honesty made healing look less like failure and more like love.

The world will rarely applaud you for keeping your word to yourself, but that does not mean it is not rippling outward. The big moments get the spotlight, but the small ones move the earth. Taking a walk when you want to hide. Cooking a meal when you want to collapse. Saying sorry when it wounds your pride. Saying thank you when it costs you nothing and gives someone else a day. These threadbare choices stitch a new future, and someone is learning to sew by watching your hands.

You are proof that progress can be quiet, that strength can be gentle, that resilience can be soft-spoken and still unshakable. You are teaching someone that they do not have to roar to be heard by their own life, that they do not have to be fearless to be free, that they do not have to move fast to move forward. Your pace is permission. Your pauses are permission. Your boundaries are permission. Your continued return to the work is permission. You are giving what you did not always receive.

There is a person out there who almost quit last night and then thought of you. They remembered the way you share your truth without theatrics, the way you keep choosing better even when it is boring, the way you forgive yourself and begin again on a random Thursday. They remembered that you did not arrive—you built. They remembered that you did not escape—you healed. They remembered that there is a difference between being stuck and being planted, and they decided to water themselves one more day because you watered yourself one more day.

So do not stop now. Keep showing up for the life that fits your soul, even if it still hangs a little loose on the edges. Keep showing up for mornings that start slow and nights that end in relief. Keep showing up for the version of you who made a promise in a hard season and counted on you to keep it. Keep showing up for the scared parts, the brave parts, the tired parts, the hopeful parts. Keep showing up because you have made a habit of being faithful to your becoming.

Keep grinding, not as punishment, but as devotion. Let your effort be love in motion. Let your calendar be a map from who you were to who you are becoming. Let your routines be the quiet revolution that no one can take from you. Let your hard work be the sound of your future unclenching its fists and opening its hands. Let your discipline be the language you speak when your inspiration goes silent.

There will be days when you doubt the point of it. There will be afternoons when nothing moves and everything aches. There will be nights when your own shadow feels heavy. On those days, borrow your own evidence. Look back, not to mourn, but to measure. Count the times you chose to stay. Count the times you spoke kindly to yourself when it felt unnatural. Count the times you left the room that dimmed you and stood in a doorway that fit your light. You have given yourself proof. Let it hold you.

And when it feels like no one sees you, remember that someone does. The child at the edge of the room with wide eyes. The friend who pretends not to be watching but repeats your sentences in private. The stranger online who saves every one of your small victories for a rainy day. The future you, who is watching this moment right now from a season you cannot yet imagine, and whispering thank you for not giving up on me.

Your life is bigger than your own relief; it is a lifeline for someone you may never meet. Your staying power is a shelter. Your patience is a path. Your resilience is a recipe someone else will cook with when their cupboard looks bare. You are teaching them that the ingredients they have are enough to make something nourishing. You are teaching them that the heat of the process does not mean they are burning; it means they are becoming edible to their own hunger.

You have already become someone’s proof that it is possible. You are the before and after they hold in their heart, the testimony that requires no stage, the case study written in sweat and softness. There is a woman out there who is holding on because you did not let go, who is breathing through the worst because you breathed through yours, who is choosing the slow miracle because you refused to trade your soul for a shortcut.

So keep going. Keep the promise. Keep the pace that honors your nervous system and your dreams at the same time. Keep the door of your heart unlocked to courage and latched against what drains you. Keep the lamp lit in your window and the path clear to your porch. Keep the faith that every step counts, because the ground remembers and so do the ones watching from the shadows of their own becoming.

And when you finally arrive at the place you once prayed for, turn around. Wave to the horizon you crossed. Send a sign to the ones still coming. Let your joy be loud enough to echo, your gratitude be wide enough to hold others inside it, your presence be proof that endurance can be tender and victory can be kind. You did not come this far just to come this far—you came to make far look reachable.

Someone out there is learning how to live by the way you refuse to stop. Be stubborn with your hope. Be loyal to your daily. Be gentle with your pace. Be fierce with your boundaries. Be generous with your light. And know this, deep in your bones: every quiet step forward is a hand extended behind you.

End beautifully, the way your days end when you keep your word: You are not walking alone, even when it looks like it. Your courage keeps company. Your effort leaves breadcrumbs. Your life is a lighthouse. Keep shining. Keep going. Someone is finding their shore because you lit the way."

~ Steve De'lano Garcia