JP‘s mission in life is to “shine a light into people that are capable of doing amazing things, hold important spaces, and transform who we are in the process.“
Please enjoy his piece (originally published on JP’s Substack, “Paving the Road“) on his upcoming Salon, “Breathing our Way Into the Unconscious Self.”
Happy Reading!
—ii Editorial
Why?
That is the question that comes to mind. Always.
The mind wants to know. The body wants to feel comfort. That’s what my teacher says. So the mind wants to know why. What is the purpose of this space that I have created? Why is it the next step in the journey of what I bring to the world?
Because it is time to do the work. So many books have been written. And read. The self help industry has been booming, giving people the hope of freedom, of well being, of feeling good. But there is a chasm between reading the stuff and actually making it part of your life, of your actions, of your relationships, and that is the place where you actually have to do the work. One thing is to read about what will make you good, another thing is to actually embody it. To make it part of your life.
Doing that is not easy. It requires commitment, and a strong willingness to become a different version of yourself. More aware of who and what you are. And that process is hard. It is hard to face yourself, your demons, your fears, and accept what you see in the mirror. It is hard to gather everything that you have gone through and actually embrace the fact that all of what you are now is a consequence of that. Of everything, both the good and the bad. And be grateful of it. Be equanimous in the presence of all that is. Of what truly is.
So that’s why I created this salon. To help you, and me, and everyone that will participate to realize that fact. To use breathwork as the means for bringing out of the unconscious what is stored deep in there and make it conscious, so that it can be looked at and worked with. As a tool of exploration.
The group of people that will participate will be a testament of the fact that you are not alone in the quest of your own understanding. It will not be easy for any of us. We all have our different demons inside, we are all crazy in some sense, and in the collective acceptance of that we can find true healing. On doing the work together. On holding space for each other. That’s why it is organized as it is, with a session of breathwork at the beginning, and then an integration part on which we will all have the opportunity to share what was brought to us. Manifest what came with words and digest it with each other, so that we can find some resolution, answers or more questions in going through the process together.
I’m convinced that in this moment of our development as a species, more than ever, we need particular techniques to help us go deeper into the discovery of who we are. Each of us. It is time to drop an atomic bomb into ourselves, and observe what remains so that we can better understand which are the behaviors and biases that were built on our way of experiencing reality because of our life experience.
Every person that will participate has a different path, each navigating this journey with a different set of expectations towards how things should be, and this place will be a pointer towards realizing that it is necessary to drop all of those expectations and leave them aside. And live from what is left. To explore who you are from the eyes of others. That is the game. That is what the internet helps us to do. To better realize that every person is also me. She may have gone through a completely different life, but at the end we are the same.
Holding the space for each other. Leaving every comparison behind, and just opening to what is there. In the moment that you compare your experience with the one of other person, you’ll have a particular expectation of what yours should have been related to that one. This salon is an invitation to leave that aside, and just be present to all of what the other person is sharing. Resonating with it, and feeling what it brings to your body. Using the tools of our modern world to connect with each other and from there just BE. Leave the mind aside, leave the thoughts aside and just filter the present moment with what is left, so that you can be present in it. Just with the gift of what is there.
They say: ‘The only way in is through’. This space is an invitation to go through. To go deep through, using the guidance of the breath. It won’t be easy, it certainly won’t be like going to the spa (well probably afterwards it may feel like that). But first, you’ve got to do the work. Only by doing it you will be able to transition from the state of acting like a robot into a state of realizing the way on which you experience life, and deciding from there. It is all about becoming more of what you always have been. Life gives an opportunity in every moment to make that transition into a more conscious being. The human body is the means by which the universe becomes conscious of itself. And now is the time for that. Welcome to the future.
The future is a place on which every one of us is awake to our true nature. Every one of us understands the mind and the ego as a servant of the true self, not as the master. ‘You’, as you have recognized yourself throughout your whole life will not be in the seat of the driver. YOU will be in the driver’s seat. You are just on the passenger seat, enjoying the ride. Your ego and mind are just the interface with which you interact with the world. And there is much more to this game than the world we see.
Why? Because I just want to help. To bring true healing from within. I have experienced in my own life how the experiences that I have gone through are stored as knots in my system, and how a practice like breathwork can be the means by which that energy is released and set free to be used in a different way. When there is an energetic pattern that is recurrent in your system, it uses energy. Probably the more biological way (I’m not an expert) to put it is that as your body encounters experiences it creates patterns of movement of energy as the means to go through those experiences, and sometimes those patterns can be so thick that they determine how we think, behave and act.
By doing work as meditation, you can start to realize those patters of movement of energy and make them conscious, which has the effect of releasing that energy and creating new and more efficient patters, not conditioned, and more connected to what is truly present right now in your interaction with reality. You’ll stop living from the past in the sense that you react to circumstances with the ways that you have always done, but open to evolve that into new ways of action that are more immediate. Less mediated by what has been, and more as a consequence of what truly is. There is the magic.
As we become more and more conscious, we evolve our capacity to be present, and I mean this in a neurological level. Our energy is freed and becomes a servant to how we can shape reality right now. With what is present now.
This salon in a step towards that direction.
Thank you for being who you are.