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I'm standing in the middle of the rice field with Andy next to the holy spring. White herons fly in the sunset sky. My sarong dancing in the breeze. He's surprised me with a tight embrace, and then our lips fall on each other gently without closing eyelids. Down there, I could feel him hardening. And my yoni is swelling. Meanwhile, the clouds around the sun start to clear up miraculously. So does the cloud on my heart—the last few years of being single and lonely. That kiss reminds me of Neruda's poem. "I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees. You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot stop spring from coming." It was spring of 2019. I just met Andy, an adventurous artist, with sharp piercing eyes. We hit it off right away. And after that first kiss, we went to his hotel room. I run my fingers down his spine. "You give me chills," he said, and I'm thrilled. We start traveling high and deep. We get wild in a small toilet on a shaky plane at ten thousand feet. In the lush virgin jungle among flying foxes and noisy pigs. Even under the sea. The waves hit me. I lost my snorkel and fins. I was struggling. I couldn't breathe. Andy grabs my hand and says, "Breathe, Ling, breathe." He keeps my head above water and navigates me safely to the shore. He saved me. From that moment on, I see Andy as the man who can always keep me safe and will never abandon me no matter what. It's exactly the man I've been dreaming of. So I did everything to make sure he stayed in my life. I supported him in every little thing he needs my help in to the extent of being hyperextended. But as time goes by, I realize that when I want to get closer to him, even when we're inside each other's bodies, he's saying no to me, energetically. He's always keeping me at an arm's length. And also, I feel more and more lonely, not seen, not wanted in our relationship. I keep saying yes to him in everything until one day, after feeling rejected by him again, I locked myself in his bedroom crying, and I heard him outside the bedroom running around with another girl at the party, laughing crazy and throwing her in the pool right next to me—crying in the bedroom. Almost two years since our first kiss, I finally realized that this relationship was never what I wished it could be. So I left with an empty heart that's desperate for a refill. Soon, I met Yuri on Tinder. He would spend one hour talking on the phone with me daily. He cares about me. He gives me healing recipes for my period. And unlike Andy, who says I'm just a hookup for him, Yuri says he's here for a serious relationship, even marriage. He starts to call me baby. And one day, Yuri tells me about this investment that he has been in for the last few years. And he paints a picture of me and my daughter living in our dream home if I invested. Although it seems too good to be true, and I actually never met Yuri, I choose to believe that he is sent by God to compensate me after my emotional bankruptcy with Andy. And he said he can even lend money to me. It's the first time in my life a man is trying to help me financially rather than me give them money. So I send him all my money, and I am getting a good return on investment although, you know, there are ups and downs in the stock market, which sometimes feels scary, but Yuri is always there to navigate me safely through it. You see, he is the man that keeps me safe and will never abandon me no matter what. It's exactly what I'm looking for. It was 5:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening in January 2021. A message from Yuri pops up. It's the day that we've been waiting for, that we're supposed to take our return on investment to pay for my bills. But instead, I'm getting the runaround from Yuri and the customer service in an investment company. And after the tenth call to Yuri without him picking up, I understood something. I have been the victim of a well-executed, highly orchestrated professional scam. I lost all my money that I'd ever saved. Plus the money of my clients, who invested through me because they trusted me. And now, not only penniless but also in debt—two hundred thousand dollars. My heart sinks. A chill comes up through my spine. I couldn't breathe. I'm panicking. The only person I could think of at that moment was Andy, cos last time I was drowning, he was there. He saved me. So I call him. "Andy, please come now. Please. I just lost all my money. Could you please come here and hold me?" And he said, "Ling, this is your life. It's not my life. Breathe, Ling, just breathe." He hangs up the phone. Over the next few days, as I was desperately looking online, on social media, looking for friends to come and keep me company, I saw the video of Andy with his new sexy fling. Dancing, traveling around luxury places that I wanted to visit with him while I, a few weeks after we broke up, end up in emotional and financial bankruptcy. "You are worthless. You are not wanted." These voices keep haunting me weeks after the tragedy. My therapist asked me in one session, "What is it that makes you so hooked to Yuri and Andy? Is there any story in your childhood that reminds you of this?" I looked into the well of memories. I'm five years old, and I'm crying alone on the small bed in my boarding school in China. My parents thought that was the best education I can get. Plus, you only get in because your dad works in the army. That's your privilege, Mom told me. But I hate this prison. I get bitten when I don't behave like a machine. I need some cuddles and bedtime stories from my mom when she's just five minutes away. For one day, it's Children's Day. And when my parents walk in, I'm so excited. I thought I would go home with them that day like many other kids, but as they turn quietly to leave, I can tell they're not gonna take me. I start crying like crazy. I was holding firmly onto the thigh of my mom as she's going down the stairs. And I'm dropping step by step like a fat heavy mop. Some teachers came and grabbed me and I had to watch her leave—desperately. Right there, right then, I got a belief. Everyone I love is gonna leave me. I'm worthless. I'm not wanted. But maybe, like my parents said, if I become somebody as they wish, someone might notice me, choose me, and save me from this misery. So I work hard to win any game I'm in. Although I grew up poor in a small house, sharing smelly toilets, messy kitchens with military families, I got to be that woman who makes a multi-six-figure business in just one year, empowering women in their sexuality. I transformed myself from that awkward, shy little kid to a powerful woman who speaks three languages, dances the wildest, and even gives the best blow job in the world. I am the most wealthy, well-known, and the only sexually liberated person in my whole family tree. But in the end, I still failed relationship after relationship. One abortion, one failed marriage, countless heartbreaking love stories. I became a single mom, penniless at the age of twenty-five. And after working six years, six years of working my ass off to make money, at the age of thirty-one, just when I think that I can say goodbye forever to the humiliating life in poverty, my life crashed in front of me because I invested everything in the wrong relationship again. I have dealt with many adversities in my life—sexual abuse, domestic violence—but this time, I can't do it alone anymore. For the first time in my life, I had to let go of my pride and ask for help publicly for support and money. Then I got some comments. "You were just telling you were financially free not long ago. Now you're asking us for money." "How dare you teach others on awakening and wealth and relationships when you're so fucked up." "You must be so greedy and empty. That's why you attracted such a man." You see, after all these comments, actually, I realize I'm not a victim of a fraud. I'm the fraud. Luckily there are still some friends and clients and even strangers who see me and trust me when I don't even trust myself. A lot of them are here tonight. Some of you donated money. Some of you offered me services like trauma release. Pedro, my fellow speaker, was offering me coaching to rebuild my business. Daniela was putting needles all over my body to activate my stagnant energy. And Aren, he told me, "Your next public speech is gonna be 'How I was scammed for more than half a million dollars. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.'" And Alicia. One day she told me, "Ling, all of these people love you because of who you are, not because you were successful or wealthy." This discovery liberated me. After I lost everything, I thought I need to be worthy. The unconditional love I received broke the spell of 'I'm worthless,' I'm not wanted,' or 'I need to be somebody in order to be saved.' So now, three months after the greatest happening in my life, I'm standing here to share this story. And although I'm still single, in debt, messy, I've never felt so safe, so wanted, so worthy. I learned that life is not a competition to become the strongest. Life is a penis. Sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down, but it won't stay hard forever. And we can make love to it whatever state it is in. Although the caprice of life can at any minute take away all my money, my business, the people I love, again and again, it cannot stop this swell from growing. Just like that poem said, "You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot stop spring from coming."

I'm on a plane flying to my homeland from Bali. I arrive at the airport, and it's a beautiful summer day, and I can feel the hot sun on my skin. I go straight to my mom. I give her a deep hug, and I whisper into her ear. "I'm here now, Mom. We got this." But I knew I had something to do. So I go inside, and I follow the nurse silently. We go down into the basement and, all of a sudden, it's really cold, and I'm having this shiver going up my spine. I enter a small room with dimmed lights. And the nurse—she closes the door behind me. I see my dad peacefully lying there, and I'm breaking down. I'm sobbing. I'm crying. I don't really know what to do. And then I give him a hug, but he's ice cold. That's when it hit me. He's dead. You know, my life will never be the same, but luckily my dad had been preparing me for this my entire life. I wanna tell you a little story. I was six years old, and I was alone at home cos I was a good boy. It was just after my dad's birthday. And there was lots of wrapping paper around everywhere. I grab his favorite lighter, but I want to be smart. So I grab a glass of water and place it right next to me. I take the wrapping paper, strike the lighter, and begin my ultimate experiment. Well, as you can imagine, it didn't turn out too well, and the glass of water didn't help one bit. Things get out of control immediately. There are flames everywhere. I'm running outside. I'm screaming to the neighbors, "The house is on fire. The house is on fire." Next thing you know, fire trucks, police, ambulance—blue lights everywhere. And our home . . . gone. My dad comes home first after work to this madness, and I'm getting interviewed by the police. I'm like, "I didn't do anything wrong. It wasn't me. I have nothing to do with this." I'm scared. So my dad kneels down, and he's like, "Sascha, I am so so sorry. It is my fault. I should have introduced you to fire. I should have made you aware of the danger of it." In that moment, everything shifted. I was no longer scared. I felt safe. Now looking back at this moment, I realized that he took full responsibility for my actions. There was no blame, and there was no shame. And then, a couple years ago, I asked him, and I still vividly remember like "Dad, how did you raise me the way you raised me?" "What do you mean?" "Well, I mean, did you read a bunch of books or, you know, did you ask your friends? Like, what did you actually do? I mean, you're so old. Back in the days, they wasn't even internet around. Remember those times?" And he's just like, "You know what, son. I didn't read any freaking books. We just had one single intention, just one commitment to each other. And that was to raise you with love. That's it. There was nothing more special about it. And we knew we were going to make mistakes. Like not hiding my lighter from you, but we also knew if we raised you with love, everything is going to be fine." And when he said that, I understood why I had a life like a fairy tale. His intentionality to guide and parent me through love was real. And then, just like that, things can change in a split second. My dad had a stroke. And while he was on his death bed and those three days suffering, he wasn't thinking about himself. He was giving my mom pin codes and passwords and bank account details just to make her life a little bit easier in that transition. And I'm trying to get ready to go as fast as possible back to Berlin and Germany. While I'm getting ready to fly out, my mom calls me, and she's like, "Sascha, I don't know what's going on. Dad just called me. He wants me to come back to the hospital." In that moment, I knew that he already knows he's going to die. So I sent him a voice message. "Dad, I'm on my way home. I'm almost there. I'm gonna take care of Mom, I promise you. I love you over everything. And I'm so grateful for everything you've done for me and Dad I already know. And it's okay if it's time for you to go, please don't wait for me. Like I don't want you to suffer." I hang up the phone. I break down in tears. I'm crying. And then Dave comes, and he holds me tight. Like he was basically there during my weakest moments, and Dave, I'm forever grateful for everything that you've done for me and how you've been there for me—really. And then Dave tells me about this meditation. Of course, he's a meditation master. And basically, he says, "Do this." And I do exactly what he says. I'm sitting in meditation and closing my eyes, and he wants me to visualize a staircase. I'm slowly walking up those stairs, and on the left and on the right, I see images and pictures. They're memories and moments of me and my dad. I look to the right. I see us on the slopes during winter holidays. And he was so slow it drove me fucking crazy. And then I go a few more steps up. We were playing pool. We were playing a lot of pool together, and he showed me, he taught me how to use angles to play a better game. And then later, we were in the car driving all across the countries in Europe to all my many basketball games, and he was cheering on the sidelines for me. And then he says to look up, so I look up to the top of the staircase. And I see a figure surrounded by a golden-white light. I know it's him. So I walk all the way up. I'm right in front of him. I can cry with him. I can speak with him. I can talk to him like, "Dad, I miss you. Thank you for showing me the way to choose love first and make me the man that I am today." And then, when I've expressed everything, I slowly turn around, and I walk back down those stairs all the way to the bottom to come out of my meditation. Now, this meditation, we call Stairway to Heaven, and it changed my life. It allows me to go deep into my emotions, and my feelings, and my pain and address it instead of avoiding it. And the most beautiful thing about it? I have a chance to go back up there and be with him whenever I want. Now I have one guiding question that I'm carrying with me every single day. What would my dad want for me? I know he wouldn't want me to like bathe myself in self-pity and cry all day and like stop enjoying life. I feel like that would be the opposite of honoring him for everything that he's done for me. He would want me to make an impact. He would want me to shine my light. He would want me to be that powerful man that he taught me to be by shaping me with his love. So I'm very proud because we are launching this massive meditation initiative for global impact with YogiLab to show people a way out of suffering. It's the technique of the Buddha—Vipassana meditation. And despite the fact that I lost the most important man in my life, we are going to continue to push forward with this to inspire millions of people and to shape the planet and this world with one beautiful intention. Because what my dad has shown me is that we can change someone else's life when we choose love, when we raise ourselves with love and when we take care of others and treat them with love. And for that, I will be forever grateful. Thank you, Dad.

The word ibu means mother. Being a mother is a gift. In Balinese society, being a mother means being everything. We are the house organizer, cook, nurse, babysitter for our children, nanny, even a nun who always bows and prays for the grace of the Lord for everyone's well-being and prosperity. It is a privilege being a mother in our society, but unfortunately, there wasn't enough luck for me to be a mother for my own child. I could not do what most mothers do. I was born in a jungle. I grew up in a jungle, and I live in a jungle. It wasn't a privilege for those who had financial struggles. I thought I wasn't lucky as a child who lived without my parents and moving from one place to another. I thought, Why am I not lucky? Why are my parents not around? It triggered me to attempt suicide when I was nine for the first time. The next attempt was when I was fifteen. Finally, my siblings, my parents, and I reunited. And we built a hut in the jungle again with monkeys, snakes, and all those other wild animals as part of our family. The neighbors came to my dad and wanted to buy me and my sister because they thought this was the easiest way to get money for our studies. The Universe again designed my life. I was married at a young age. I had no experience. I had not been in any relationship with men or women. I didn't know how to respond. I didn't know how to deal with this unpleasant situation I faced because no one taught me. No one showed me there were possibilities and opportunities. Again and again, I attempted suicide, but I could tell I wasn't smart enough to end my life. I always ended up in hospital. I thought the story would end when I finally got divorced, and I had to leave part of my blood, my daughter, when she was eight months old. That was the biggest pain. I found myself being a mother without part of my blood and found myself being divorced, which had been taboo in our society. I did what people do around the world at the moment, lockdown. This is my second lockdown. I told the next in the family compound, which is my mom. A mother is the key of weakness and strength. She gave me such sharp words. "Okay. If you don't want to go out, if you don't want to open the border, kill yourself inside. But before that, you will see my dead body outside." That's the moment when I promised I would open the border. I will move. I will face whatever is in front of me next, whatever comes next. I gained weight, which I had lost during the marriage—from 53 to 35. I did harm myself in the past because I didn't know where to go. I didn't know what to do. How could I know because no one taught me? But I'm glad I did. Of course, only after so many tears. When I gained weight, I was happy. But then men came by one by one and asked my price. "How much are you per night?" It was just because I was divorced. Again I didn't know how to respond. And of course, it made their partners, girlfriends, or wives afraid I was taking away their partner. A few of them even spat on me. I could not again respond to that unpleasant behavior, those actions. But one thing I could do was cry. I still had tears to help me. When I realized I was not in a healthy environment, I decided to break my mom's rule, to keep me just in the village where I couldn't deal with all the gossip and people looking me up and down. I decided to move forward. I'm glad I did, even though it was not easy for the first three years. I continued my studies in university and kept myself as busy as I could because that was the only way to be able to lay down on my bed. Otherwise, I could not stop thinking about my princess—my daughter. Can you imagine when a part of our body is separated because of a patriarchal society? My second journey began when I met many women who struggled with many different issues. Not only being divorced but having fertility issues, single moms, mothers having children with special needs, transgenders, sexual illnesses, and all those things. The more I met, the more I realized this has been happening for such a long time in my society. It has been taboo to talk about them. People always think it's a shame to talk, to share, but then I realized this needed to be shared. I brought them to sit together and to let them know they are not the only ones who struggle. Let them know there's a space for them, which I didn't get, which I didn't find. Because again, I had no opportunity to broaden my horizon in the past. The idea came to put them together and share because every time I shared my story, I found it to be a natural way of healing. And I thought if it works for me, it should work for others. That's when the idea came to create a women's center. Not only a women's center but a place where everyone can come together. The Universe knows how to lead us to start something at the right time. I ended up taking care of children and adults with special needs, which helped me to understand myself deeper and better, helped me to keep the three Ps—my passion, my patience, and perseverance and to see the results of what I'm doing, what I'm learning. I found the biggest teacher ever in my life who taught me how to be happy no matter what my situation. And again, the Universe always knows, and I think this is what I've been following in the natural way—Bali time—slowly but surely, even though many times I'm not sure. It's okay. A few years later, the women's center created more and more people willing to learn and share. And now we end up a center of community where we embrace everyone, no matter what their background, no matter where they're coming from. And what I'm doing is not something new. Instead, I'm doing CPI—Copy, Paste, Improvise. I copy and paste all those beautiful things—the heritage of our ancestors—improvise, add value, and make it joyful and meaningful in our activities. And I'm so grateful to have my family who loves me dearly, even though they don't know what led me to end up doing these things. But I believe with the three Ps, everybody is a teacher. Every place is a school and every moment is a lesson. I learned. I grew from all those people I met, from all those places I've been, and from all those unpleasant situations I went through. And again, I believe so much in nature's way and the Universe's know-how. I learned how to embrace, be a friend, and get along with pain, to help me to have forgiveness for myself and for everyone else. And this year is the biggest gift. On December 22nd, it is Mother's Day. The Universe gives me the biggest reward. She was in my family compound when she was eight months old. And after sixteen years, it's been a long journey. And I'm grateful for having family and friends and all those who struggle, those children and women in my community who stand next to me. They remind me how strong I am in my long journey of waiting. And this gift, my princess just stepped out after sixteen years in my family compound last Wednesday. This is the biggest reward to keep my three Ps—my passion, patience, and perseverance. And this also proves when you are ready, the Universe will make it happen. Trust me. And another beautiful gift I received this year is from the government being the Mother of the Year. Happy Mother's Day. Thank you.

I'm twenty-six years old. And I'm the new host of a small Swedish TV show. I'm just beginning to feel comfortable with the whole thing, like talking straight to the camera as if it was my best friend and the last couple of weeks, I'm starting to get a few really good reviews. They say that I have 'it.' I feel so good. And I feel so proud. This day a man walks into the office. I've never seen him before, but he presents himself as a producer of the Nobel Prize live event. He sits down, and he looks at me all the time when he's speaking and starts saying that it's a four-hour-long live event. I know that and all of Sweden will be watching. And then he asks me if I want to be that year's TV host. I almost start laughing because I'm so new. I've just been on television for two months. I'm a beginner. And no, I'm not ready. Absolutely not. But the producer and reporters of my small TV show—they go nuts. They're so excited because they know I will be in all the newspapers, all the magazines, and I will spread light to the tiny TV show. So I say yes to make them happy. Two months later, I'm dressed as a princess. I'm wearing a long blue silky dress, jewels, makeup, and I'm standing in the blue hall. It's the main hall of the Swedish town hall. It's a castle-like building with twenty-two-meter high ceilings, marble floors. And in just minutes, the Swedish king and queen will walk down the stairs, followed by this year's Noble Prize winners. Yeah, I'm here to guide the TV audience throughout this four-hour-long live event. And yeah, it's a huge step in my career, and it's supposed to be a moment of celebration, but I can't breathe, and I can't feel my feet. And in the next moment, I experience something I've never experienced before. It's like I contract into a small bubble. I leave my body, and suddenly I see myself from above looking down at myself at this empty shell standing on the floor. And from that moment, it feels like I'm trying to survive the evening. I'm the captain of the Titanic, but I don't know anything about boats. The next day I wake up to an article in a newspaper, and the reporter says that watching me made her so embarrassed that she needed to hide behind a pillow. And the next day, I'm on the list of the most unpopular people of Sweden. I start looking down when I meet my coworkers in the TV corridors because I can't stand meeting their eyes. But I decide that I will learn from this. I will never ever not listen to my 'no' again. So do I listen to my no from that moment? No, I don't. I say yes to having lunch when I want to eat alone. I go to parties when I would like to stay home. I stay too long in relationships. And I even say yes to impossible projects like playing a part in a theater play that requires me to travel for two hours and not getting paid, but instead needing to pay for the equipment, the rent, and no upside whatsoever and doing that for weeks until I can't stand it for one more minute and then quitting absolutely too late. It's insanity. I'm so afraid of making people disappointed that I end up with people being really disappointed and angry. To be honest, I've never been a fast learner. I've done things over and over and over until they hurt myself and others. It feels like I'm walking around in this too-tight costume. I can't breathe in my own life. It feels like I'm dying. So I leave this small TV show, and I decide that I will jump on to one-year actor training because I loved theater when I was a kid. And I'm so longing to be joyful as a kid again. And it's an incredible year—so much fun. And at the end of the year, we have a big performance. I don't know this, but there is a soap opera producer in the audience. And she calls me a few days later, and she asks me if I want to play one of the main characters in the soap opera Friends and Enemies. And I feel this instant joy like bubbling energy in my heart. Like, yes! And then crushing energy. Crushing thoughts saying, You can't do that. You're a serious journalist. Are you crazy? People will be so disappointed. So I'm struggling with this for a week. Should I choose this joy that I'm feeling or this tight costume? It feels like for me going from being a serious journalist to becoming a soap opera actress is the same thing as if I would have been a nun and then suddenly become a stripper. And I don't know if you had the experience or if you remember the experience of being a teacher's pet or an adult's favorite and at the same time feeling the weight of that and that finally messing up and disappointing them sets you free. So that's what's happening—because I chose the soap opera. Ahh! And people judged me badly. I'm not at all seen as a serious journalist anymore, but I'm free. Ten years later, I'm on vacation in the South of France with my husband and two kids. And we are walking by the ocean—glitter in the waves, a soft breeze, and these golden pink lights everywhere. And I just ask my husband to please stop. We just stand there. Me and him and our kids. I can feel it everywhere. "I want to live here. I want to move from Sweden to France." And I look at my husband, and he just nods and says, "Me too." But there is no way we can make this happen. We don't have the money. We don't have any job contacts or friends in the South of France. We have no one to pick us up if we fail. And the following two months are the most scary and challenging of my life. It feels like I'm dying and being born at the same time because people get angry, upset, disappointed. How can we be so selfish, irresponsible, and leave people behind like that? But every time I close my eyes and I think about a life in the South of France, I feel this bubbling life force running through my veins. And we take a leap of faith through the fear and with the courage of many lions. We made our way to France, and we found everything. We found a house, friends, money to survive, and so much more. I'm not married anymore. And I don't live in the South of France anymore. Huge life changes that brought up my biggest fears—the fear of being alone, the fear of feeling guilty, ashamed. But it's never been about choosing or not choosing fear to me. It's been about listening to that inner voice that speaks to me through my longing, my inspiration. And sometimes as a very clear no. My soul's voice and my soul didn't choose life to be born here on earth to play small and safe or to please others. My soul wants me to grow and to expand and, most of all, to be happy. So my soul is my wise and kind guru. Thank you.

Faced with the probability of my own death. Your face did not graze the stew of memories I needed to recollect in search of something greater than myself. No words or feelings or last goodbyes to be turned into lines of a memoir. Sunday 9th of August 2020. I'm frantically riding my Honda C70 toward my last hope—the one person that can tell me if I'm going to die soon or not. Twenty-four hours prior, my friend said to me, "There's a tsunami coming in the next week. It's heading towards Canggu. I'm packing my bags now. I'm going to Ubud. We have to go.” My mind is trying to wrap itself around the news that I'm now hearing through the mouth of my best friend. Where I come from, I do not take these things lightly. I come from a half-Japanese family, and I grew up with old magic. So unexplainable occurrences like this does not come as a surprise anymore. Growing up with old magic means when I was a kid, I wouldn't go to the doctor's. My dad would just get an energy scan on my back and tell me what's up. He'd put his hand on my shoulder and heal me. For a dinnertime topic, the one thing I've always asked my dad to repeat over and over again is his old ghost-busting stories from when he was still in university. When other kids would go up to their parents and tell them about the ghost under their bed, they would normally get "Ghosts aren't real, kid." But when I do that, I get, "Oh yeah, yeah. There's a couple in your room." Please don't ever say that. It's terrifying. And history lessons weren't as fun because on family vacations, my dad would like to take us to these old historical sites around Indonesia, and there are many. He would touch the broken stone temples and tell us of the visions he sees from days long past. Now that is a history lesson. So anyways, warning calls —they're just naturally part of my life. So my friend continued. "Daniel saw it happen." Daniel is our newly gifted friend. "He saw a giant wave crash over Canggu. It destroyed everything. And it's not just him. A couple of other Balinese girls saw it as well. They're packing their bags as we speak. Aziza, I don't think this is a drill." The next twenty-four hours was filled with turmoil. Am I gonna die? Am I gonna die? Am I gonna die? The question kept repeating itself in my head. Fate does not need to make sense for it to happen through the cracks. Even if their words mean nothing to your ears, prophecies aren't made to be easy. That evening I typed up the most ridiculous message in my family group chat. It went, "Hey guys, I might be dead in a couple of days. Something about a tsunami—11th, 15th. Okay, I need answers. Dad, do you see anything?" A couple of minutes later, my dad replies, "Nope." All Dad can see was a fire on the 11th. No tsunami, no earthquake. I'm not satisfied. So I tracked down all the other seers I knew in my life, which were actually plenty. That's when I realized that I'm a pretty odd child. That's a lie—I've known that forever. And I tried to gather up as much information as I can. So after hours and hours of frantic searching, the conclusion was inconclusive! So again, I'm on my Honda driving to my gifted friend, the woman that I'm pretty sure has the answers that I'm looking for, which is, "Am I gonna die? Is everyone I know around gonna die? What's gonna happen?" And in the midst of this frantic driving—not safe, by the way, don't do that. In the midst of this frantic driving, in the midst of my fear of my anxiety, and let's be honest, my mortality crisis, I started asking myself a couple of questions that I feel like everyone sort of does when the idea of death pops into your mind. And so I thought in the face of my death, what affairs do I need to get in order? Who do I need to call? What do I need to confess, and to whom? And when the answers arose, the sense of, I guess, calm washed over me. 'Cause I realized the answer to those three questions were nothing, no one, and nothing again. And it wasn't always this way. Backstory. As a child, I developed a problem with lying, as I think all kids do, but in my teens, it developed into something bigger cos at one point, I realized I was a full-blown compulsive liar. I think it was, in some sense, my own way of surviving my parents. Aside from them being magic, they're also Asian. So growing up with Asian parents, being somewhat culturally rebellious, you could say, yeah, a rebellious kid requires a lot of fiction at play, and it would start with just the basic things like where I've been, who I was with. And then it slowly just progressed into more frequent unnecessary lies, like what I had for lunch. I don't know why I felt the need to lie about that. "I had a steak." With what money? So I have a lot of anxiety, right? And as a person that has a lot of anxiety, trying to keep track and trying to constantly be accountable for these lies becomes just completely unbearable. I noticed a lot of my crippling anxiety stemmed from the web of lies that I've curated for absolutely no reason. And at one point, I just thought like it's enough. "I don't wanna do this anymore." And by university, it was hindering my life. I'm eighteen at university. In a new city, living my own life. I'm a teenager. I'm trying to find out who I am as a person, but anxiety kept holding me down, and it would be honestly the absolutely stupidest things. I would tell different stories to different people. I would give different details to certain events and situations. I would retell the same events in a multitude of versions. And it would be the stupidest details ever. Like, "Oh yeah, I went to a party in a pink dress." The next day it's "Oh no, that party, I was in white." It just made no sense to me. In Indo, we call it boom boo. It's just little spices just to add to my stories. But at one point, I was like, "I don't know what the fuck I'm saying anymore." And nobody does either. So anyways, all that was just completely hindering me. And I started working towards making small changes to fix it. I realized anxiety is the biggest thing right now. I need to like tone that down. What's the biggest thing? Lying. Okay. Lying was the first thing that had to go. And what that did was it took a while. But eventually, I stopped telling people what they wanted to hear. And even when it was uncomfortable, especially when it was uncomfortable. Like when my mom would call me up and ask me, "Why aren't you praying anymore? Why haven't you prayed for a while?" I would tell her what I think about Islam. When my friend calls me why I'm thirty minutes late to this meeting, instead of blaming the traffic, I tell her that I got lost on Instagram, which happens to the best of us. The point of it is I stopped being a people pleaser. And I started expressing my desires, even though I know it may hurt others, and a lot of the time it does. But on the other hand, when I find someone attractive, I will go up and tell them even if it's across the street, across the bar, my neighbor. I'm gonna go up to them and tell them, "You're attractive. You're beautiful." Sometimes it would get me numbers. So that's great. That's a good tip. But other times, it just gets a smile, and that's all good too. And when I love someone, I would always make sure that they know it and they feel it, which I think is super important. I guess I took the more tender textured road with honesty than the more comfortable one with lying. I realized I started becoming the woman I've always wanted to be. And it feels amazing. I've expressed everything I need to, to the people in my life. Like every conversation has been had. Every word has been said. Everyone I love knows that I love them. And in turn, everyone in my life knows me. Like the real me, not just some made-up version. I've been living my truth mostly—cos we all have our setbacks—for the past five years, and I have nothing to hide anymore. It's like this total weightless, unapologetic freedom. So let's go back to our story. I went to see this woman. I went to see my gifted friend, and the meeting went well. What does that even mean?! But yeah, the meeting went well. She explained to me what the prophecy meant with the tsunami that all these other people were seeing and the symbolisms behind it. And she told me that we are physically safe for now. There's more to it, but I don't have time to get into that whole story. But what I realized at that point, after she said that, after that drive, I was, "You know what? It doesn't matter anymore because come what may I know who I am. I am proud of how I've lived my life, and I'm ready when the day comes.”

Dressed in all white, sitting cross-legged on this mat, waiting for the shaman to call my name up for my fifth cup of ayahuasca - it's my fifth ayahuasca journey. Waiting. No nervousness. I did this four times already. I know what to expect. He calls me up. I pop up off my mat with this arrogance, with this lack of humility, with this overly confident asshole kind of vibe that only a native New Yorker who has a penthouse in Manhattan, fancy clothes, all the trappings of a posh life that you could have. I approached the shaman and his facilitators. He hands me the cup with two hands with all this reverence, and I look down at him. I don't even sit. I kind of bend down a little bit. I take the cup with one hand and look at him in his eyes. And he's like, "Take a second, brother, bond with the cup, set your intentions, breathe." I look at him in his eyes, and I'm like, "Cool, here we go. There you go, champ." I make my way back to my mat. Sit down. Ten minutes goes by. I feel the medicine snaking through my system. You guys know. You guys know what that feels like, right? I feel the beads of sweat. I'm like, All right, heating up a little bit. It's about to hit me. That fucking medicine hit me like Thor's hammer. Bonzai! I lay on the mat. It takes me right back to the eighteen-year-old me standing in a courtroom looking at a judge. "What? What'd you say?" "Guilty." Wrongly imprisoned at eighteen years old. Sentenced to eight years in a New York state prison. I turn around. Look at my father. See the utter look of powerlessness on his face that he can't save his boy. I see my mother, and I can just feel her heart just contract. I look at myself, the eighteen-year-old and I see him just fall to pieces. Another wave of the medicine hits me. It takes me to the nine-year-old me. Seeing my first murder and my father standing over the guy as I watched the life go out of his eyes. He said, "You see, son, that's a crackhead. Don't do drugs. Come on, let's get a hot dog." Bang! Another wave of the medicine hits me. It takes me to the twenty-one-year-old me on my 87th day straight in solitary confinement, standing at my gate, waiting for the officer to give me my lunch. And he looks at me, at my eyes. He spits in my food, says "It looks like it could use a little seasoning." I smile back at him and slap the tray back on his pants and go lie down. I won't be eating for the rest of the day. Bang! Another wave of the medicine hits me. It takes me to the twenty-seven-year-old version of myself standing over my father's lifeless body. He just died a few hours ago, and I wouldn't let the coroner come see. I wanted to see how he died. And as I looked down at him, I didn't even know what to feel. I couldn't even cry. I just looked at him. Then two days later, me walking my sister down the aisle to give her away at her own wedding. As I laid down on that mat . . . well, actually I couldn't be lying down 'cause I was purging. Everything was coming up. Everything. When there was no more liquid in my body, it was just that deep, dark black, dry heaving. I was making sounds that I did not think that I was capable of making. Getting it all into this bucket, shaking and crying and screaming. I lost my shit. That ceremony lasted till about 4.00 p.m. the next day. Just an agony. And throughout that whole experience of me seeing all of these formative events, I just asked, "Why?" Not "Why me?" Because self-pity is a luxury that I could no longer afford. I was asking, "Why? Why are you showing me this?" The medicine told me, "I'm just showing you this to show you who you became." Fast forward. I'm back in New York in my apartment. Living my life. You see, when I went to Peru, I weighed 185 pounds. I was jacked, jacked! All right? I left that retreat ten days later, weighing 165 pounds. And I realized that I lost 15 pounds of fury, not anger. Anger's too simple. Fury. Cold fury that I was ready to unleash at the drop of a dime. If you looked at me wrong, ooh! And I sat in that apartment with my expensive rugs, custom-made mirrors, sharp lights, all of that. I was like, No, you did all right for yourself, though. Fuck 'em. You're here now. None of that shit matters. Yeah. None of it matters. Until I was smoking a spliff at 11.00 a.m. on a Wednesday. I'll never forget it. My penthouse overlooked the Empire State Building. So I was looking at the Empire State Building. Looked back into these big beautiful windows, saw my rugs, my tables, my chairs, my lights. And I was like, No, you did your damn thing. You're all right. You're good, man. So I said to myself, Well, what would the twenty-three-year-old prison version of Melvin think of who I've become? So I went to him, and I was like, "What do you think?" He's like, "Oh, you're doing your thing, man. Look at you. You're on top of the world. You have everything that we wanted." Because when I was in prison, guys had pictures of women in bikinis and all of these things. Not me. I had rugs. I had flatware. I remember one of my guys walked by my cell, and he's like, "Yo, what? You gay?" And I was like, "What do you mean?" And he's like, "What's with all this shit on your wall? I was like, "No, this is all the stuff that I'm gonna have." The twenty-three-year-old version of me was very satisfied. So then I went back. So, well, let me ask the thirteen-year-old version of me. And I looked at the boy who I was, and I said, "Hey, look, this is me. Got cool dreads. Got a little beard. Got some muscles. I got cool shit." And the little boy looked at me, and he said, "But who are you?" And I was like, "I'm you. Look, we have the same scars. We look exactly the same." He said, "You're not me. You're my betrayer. What happened to our dreams? What happened to being like Indiana Jones? What happened to adventures? What happened to all of that stuff? Look at this." And I looked at my apartment, and it took me all the way back to my fifth ceremony when I was purging up all of that armor that I had on, all this bravado, all of this kind of insecurity, lack of confidence, lack of self-worth. Because to that version of myself, that's what the world taught me I was, and I needed to have these things in order to become somebody of repute. In that instance of me standing on my balcony, looking in my apartment, I shook my head, and I was like, Yeah, you did good, but we're done. This is done. Let's get outta here. Three months later, I find myself back in Peru. Invited to come and live, to study the medicine, to become initiated under their mesa, but actually to go deeper into my own journey, to see who I really am because all of those external trappings that I accumulated actually blinded me to who I really was. Those were just another form of armor to keep me from getting to my own truth. So I go into my initiation. Ten-day tobacco diet in isolation. I've done 270 days straight in isolation in prison. Ten days is nothing. I could do that on my head. What? I don't have any books either? That's fine. Don't worry about it. And I went from somebody who was the facilitator first, cleaning up your purge buckets, walking you to the bathroom, rubbing your back, holding your hair back when you were purging to holding my own retreats and operating my own mesa and pouring my own medicine. And after three years of that, I realized I put myself in another cage because you had to come to the mountain to see me. And it was quite easy for me to throw thunderbolts down from Mount Pious. "Drink clean water. Yeah, no, you shouldn't eat junk food." I grew my own food there. Right? What I realized, though, is that there was a dissonance. It's all well and good to be at a retreat or hiding out somewhere, sequestering yourself and wielding your medicine. But how effective are you wielding that medicine in the "real world?" So I found myself back in my old neighborhood in Chelsea, walking down 23rd Street, fresh off a flight, fresh from JFK, going to see a client. 'Cause, that's what I do. And there was a woman standing on the corner of 23rd and 6th Avenue, and she was asking for help. And everybody had their headphones in. People were looking at her. Thought she was homeless. Kind of ignored her. And I walked right over to her, and I said, "You need some help?" She said, "Yeah, I'm looking for Burlington Coat Factory." And I was like, "Yeah, it's right across the street. Look." And she was like, "Yeah, if I could see, I wouldn't be asking you for help. I'm blind." And I was like, "Oh, well here, come on. Let's go." So I walk her across the street. "Why are you going to Burlington Coat Factory?" "Oh, I got invited to a wedding. I want to get my niece a nice present." So I take the time to go into the store with her. We buy a nice gift, and I ask her, "Well, do you live in Selis Manor?" And she was like, "Yeah. And I was like, "Oh." She said, "How did you know?" And I was like, "Oh, I used to live right across the street in 144." And she was like, "Oh." I walk her back home. We get in front of her apartment building. And she said, "Can I touch your face? Can I see what you look like?" "Sure." I lean down. She touches me. She feels my hair. "Oh, beautiful—inside and out." "Thank you." I walked down the street. My phone goes off. It's my mom. "Hey, Mom, funniest thing just happened." "What, Mel?" So I tell her the story. And she said, "What's so funny about that?" And I was like, "That's so bizarre." And she was like, "Why, son? That's who you are." I thought that this journey was this path of spirituality. This path of oneness, this path of shamanism, mysticism, all of that. Not for me. It's just a path to remind me to remember who I really am. I've been called a lot of things in my life. A shaman, a healer, a good therapist, Hartzog, 98A3345, an asshole, nigger, piece of shit, servant, useful. But what do I call myself? I'm just Melvin, the widow's son. Thank you.

I remember the day I came out to my mother. We were both sitting across from each other at the kitchen table where we normally ate. Gravely I mentioned there was something important that I needed to tell her while struggling to hide the nervous mix of misdirected anger and anticipation pumping through my veins. "Mother, I'm an atheist," I told her. And as the words rolled down my tongue, I could feel the liberating joy that every self-respecting teenager experiences when making a stance against anything their parents stand for. Mind you, this word 'atheist' I had just heard for the first time just a few weeks earlier. And for long nights afterward, lying awake on my bed, staring at the ceiling, I kept pondering about its meaning and the implications of this word. Was there really no God? It's impossible. Especially when considering that I have never directly experienced anything remotely close to my preconceived ideas of what God looked like. And to make matters worse it wasn't the first time my parents had lied or been wrong about something. So after having survived the traumatizing truths of Santa Claus in childhood life, I didn't want to be taken for a fool anymore. You see, in my head, those who professed their religion did it because 1, they needed to be told how to behave. Otherwise, they would act like pricks. And 2, they were so afraid of their own death that this was the only way they knew how to find solace. At thirteen, I knew better than that. So I went through life thinking myself better than those around me, clutching to the identity I had crafted for myself. That of a hardened rationalist who pretended to be smart enough to understand Nietzsche's rhetoric without having picked up a single one of his books, let alone write the man's full name from memory. Now I never much believed in the Catholic view of an afterlife, but nobody ever told me about the sinking feeling in my chest that accompanied the anxiety-inducing thoughts of my own death. Scared as I was of my own questions, I kept burying them deep inside me because I was an atheist, dang it. And life is hard. Everything is meaningless. The cake is a lie, and I better man up, put a fake smile on my face, and pretend to be happy with it all. Sure, I was terrified of dying, but at least I didn't need no holy text to tell me that killing was wrong. That is obvious. Was there anybody who really needed a reminder of that? To cope with the fact that this was going to be the only life that I would ever get to live, I got fixated with the idea that pleasure was a real way to really experience life. Flirting, drinking, inhaling, ingesting, and snorting my way through countless sleepless nights and increasingly disgusting hangovers. After a while, once I got bored of this, a friend introduced me to yoga, and I was like, Huh, this is easy. I can do it. I got it. So I started practicing every now and then, and man, I started feeling so good about myself. So blessed and in touch with a universe that surrounded me while smoking the second joint of the day. Sometimes the third one, if it was a lucky day—just before midday so my girlfriend wouldn't see me high when she came back home from work. Man, how I wish somebody had told me earlier that spirituality would feel so great. And so easy. All I had to do was sit there for a while and relax. Then try not to fart too loud during downward dog. Why did I ever want to be an atheist in the first place? I even had a Buddha on my arm that I'm sure brought me this much closer to enlightenment. Until one night dancing with my girlfriend in one of her favorite bars. To be honest, at that moment, I thought I was hypnotizing her with my sexy Latino movements, but I must have been doing something pretty wrong because instead, she grabbed my arm and asked, "What's wrong?" "What do you mean what's wrong? Nothing's wrong? I'm just dancing." But she just made a funny face. "What do you mean with the funny face? You're funny." But at the same time, inside my head, alarms were going off. Not just because she was giving me that witchy stare that women do every time they know something's up. But because right there, I knew that no matter how much I said I loved her, my words would be forever hollow if I didn't confess the secret I had been keeping from her. Still not believing what I was about to do, I turn around and look at her as I'm standing at the edge of a cliff with my foot ready to jump. "I slept with someone else," but the music was too loud, and she didn't hear. So she asked, "What?" "I said I slept with someone else." Later that same night, sitting in the bed we shared listening to her sobbing, I kept searching inside me for something, anything that would help me figure it out, what the heck was wrong with me. I was supposed to have no need for a god that judged my actions, no need for an external law that condemned me to hell if I did wrong. I was supposed to be a good man for the simple fact that I knew what good looked like. And instead, here I was. Nothing but an asshole willing to trade yet another one of my values for a two-minute fuck. To say that I was ashamed says nothing about the repulsion I felt when thinking about who I had become because the whole time I knew, I knew what I had to do, but I always had a good excuse not to do so. Things were either too hard, too tasty, or too cheap for me not to indulge in them and, in the process of doing so, I churn myself into my own biggest lie. Now I must say I was hopeful because, despite the fact that I was not proud of the things I had done, in knowing that I had stood up for something that at least for once I stood up for something that I believed to be holy, I could see a faint glimmer of the real being that couldn't wait to surface inside of me. Now, it wasn't easy. You see for a long time afterward, a terrible guilt and self-doubt kept creeping on me. I felt unsure that I would ever be able to trust myself again, but by keeping tiny promises, simple things that I knew, hopefully, that I wouldn't fail and be able to do every single day. Slowly I regained my confidence, the confidence that I had lost. And thanks to this, I finally realized that I was not defined by the things that I had done in the past but by the actions that I was committing in the present moment. Along the way, I realized the importance of living in something bigger than my ego. You see, it's not easy to be truthful. It's not easy to be yourself. It takes an incredible amount of courage and an almost masochistic willingness to face your most painful fears. I am hopeful, though. I mean, I'm happy actually because today I can say that my words are no longer hollow. Now, instead, thanks to everything I've done since that day, they're filled with love. And through that, I've regained my faith because now I am convinced that inside me lies everything I'll ever need to be my best self, the real self. If I'm only there being honest. Thank you.

So I would like to share a story with you today about power. And this what you can see - it's not that I'm nervous. It's because my yoni is on fire. But it hasn't been like that always. So I let her now speak. When I was twenty-two, I ended up in Nepal meeting a guru. I was innocently devoted and dedicated to be the pure tool for good, so I could serve and heal, and I would say, to save this world. How dangerous that can be. So the first day I arrived there, I was taken to his room. And first, his assistant said, "You need to be cleared, so you can work with him." And how was that? I was put onto the bed. He had his hands choking my neck, and he fucked me like a rabbit. I didn't know what to do. I didn't have anyone there. And no one actually knew where I was because I was told to not say where this sacred pilgrimage would take place. During that month, as much as I had experienced this hardcore abuse, rape, control, and manipulation, in the same time, I had experienced the beauty of the stupa and the people praying there, living in the Buddhist temple, hearing the sound of the gongs. So it was confusing to me. I went back to Czech. I made it home, but I was destroyed. And there was a moment which was, for me, was the turning point, when I saw another sister was beaten. When another sister was yelled at. When another sister was disempowered. And so I knew in the moment when I was facing death, after not sleeping the whole night as I was cleaning his flat, and I was driving back to my unit, and I fell asleep, and I woke up, and the truck was in front of me. I knew I will either die or I have to get out. It wasn't easy, but I came out. I fell into a deep depression. I really didn't want to be there. I was devastated. And in that time, I received a blessing from my father, picking me up from my room, looking in my eyes and saying, "I don't know what's happening. I don't know what you need to change but change it. And remember, you are my daughter, and we will never give up." So in the new year under the stars, I said, "Okay, I want to know what a life is. I want to live." And I set myself on a really profound journey. Little did I know what was ahead of me. So not like most people coming here to Bali. With a divine orchestration and profound synchronicities, I came here actually to forget about spirituality. Such a cosmic joke. And I came to study traditional Balinese dance. My child's dream was to just dance. And so I did, and I fulfilled my dream. I danced in a concert in Surabaya. National TV was there. I was in the newspapers. I danced in the exhibition, and I was dancing as a Czech woman traditional Balinese dance. And then I was even initiated by the priest in a small village, close to the waterfall, to that sacred dance to be the vessel for the divine to transmit its message to the tribe. So then I said, "Okay." In another new year, I said, "I want to know what spirituality is. Show me." In a week I met my teacher. And a few months later, I went to my first yoga teacher training. I was doing yoga from four o'clock in the morning. I was eating just raw food, and I was surrounded by epic, amazing human beings who didn't punish me, who weren't screaming at me, who weren't abusing me, who were showering me with so much love. And I don't know what the space was in that, you know, divine constellation. But there was one night when in the Anahata Resort, I went down to my room and I just laid down and boom, suddenly I entered the space, the dimension, where I knew myself in all there is. And I knew myself as that profound nothing. And then coming back, I witnessed the formation of this beautiful body. Like, wow, such a miracle. And I took that breath, and here I was again. But different. Something had changed. I didn't have any clue what just happened. I went back up to have dinner, and I was speaking to one of my teachers, Simon, and I was, you know, trying to put it into words, and he was just looking at me. And I just knew in that moment that he can't meet me there. So from that moment, I was on a high-speed road, like really, really high speed, like the speed of light. And I was like, where is that fan? Like when you're in front of the fan, and everything is shredding away. So I was healing. I was healing, and I was healing. And I just had this love pulsing inside of me. And I didn't have any clue, you know, what to do with it. But then I put it into creating the retreats because I just so felt I wanted to give it to others. Like I wanted others to experience that. So I created the conditions. I created a project called Your Life. So retreats with raw food, yoga, and different healing modalities as I had experienced that magic or miracle through me. Later on, I created a company, which was and still is devoted and dedicated to serve high vibrational plants to bring the health and wealth back into our bodies; to bring back that power into our hands so we can raise and remember that grace. And I saw like, you know, I'm on the purpose. I have nailed it. But there was that like, "Hey, but what about your sexuality?" You know what I'm speaking about? Right? So I dived in. I dived fully with the desire and knowing that I can, you know, experience myself through another and with the desire that I can experience the good with another. So not just that I could, you know, orgasm by myself, I could like pleasure myself, but then to really surrender into the hands of another. So, tick! And little I knew that later on, I will meet another guru, and little I knew that that would be the big initiation to really own and claim that divine power, that holy spirit, THE self, or whatever name you want to put on it as me in all its versions. And really receive myself, receive myself fully with all its shadows, with all its light and turn in to that family inside of me, to that holy child, which is quite epic, bringing me all the way here. Same as that orgasmic place, and the presence through which I can deliver this. And so the last thing. I just saw this quote, and I had to write it down, and it says, "Buddhatvam Yosityonisamasritam." I don't know if I have written it right. It means "Enlightenment is in your yoni." Or like enlightenment is in your sexual organ. So it doesn't matter if it is the yoni or the penis. But I want to inspire you to really dig in. To come down. So then you can REALLY rise up. Thank you.

I hear his footsteps going down, down, down the stairs. The front door opens and closes, and I'm alone. Holy crap. I can't do this, but I can't do that either. It was 2010, and I had just asked my husband for a divorce. I thought I'd feel free once I told him. In reality, I was freaking terrified because I had never been alone. Instead, I had spent my life building my cage and squeezing myself inside of it. I had hushed the whispers that said, "This isn't it. You don't fit. You're made for something more." And when I ignited the affair that burned down my marriage, I thought I'd burnt down the cage with it. I thought my time in the cage is done, but I couldn't have been more wrong. And I tumbled into the next relationship. And once again, the cage appeared, and that cycle repeated over and over because, I'm just gonna be real right now, I was not a fast learner. And with every relationship, that cage was getting smaller and tighter and more impossible to exist within until a pivotal relationship born out of a swipe right on Tinder. We fell instantly in love. I loved him. He loved me. We were each other's one. We declared our love to everybody that we knew. Got Facebook official. And six weeks later, it was me that was being asked to walk down those stairs and out that door. And that was the pain that saw me bawling my eyes out on a table after a chi energy release massage, where all the ghosts of my relationships past had revealed themselves to me in a vision. I realized, "It's me. I'm doing this to myself. I'm trying to play all these roles, and they're not working out for me. And I'm just the good girl. And I'm trying so hard to look good enough, to feel good enough, to be good enough." My healer friend, who essentially is my Yoda, was holding me in her arms, and the pain was so much. It was the lowest point of my life. And I was desperate to get out of that cage. I want to ask you something. Have you ever been presented with something that in the past, you just would've said "Absolutely hell no, no way" to, but right now feels like the perfect solution? Yeah. That's where I was at. So when my Yoda mentioned ayahuasca, I didn't ask too many questions. I just said yes. And what opened up for me in that moment was my rebel side. What if I did something that back in 2014 would be a radical action for a regular person to take? What if I took on that ayahuasca journey? What if I decided that all of that societal conditioning was just a bunch of BS and that trying to live an appropriate life is just the cage that we put ourselves in? Because really, I mean, who really wants to live an appropriate life, right? Like, ugh! And yet, we're all so busy trying to be appropriate. So I really only had the very vaguest of ideas of what I was getting myself into. I had heard that you needed to dress all in white. And as the taxi pulled up to the ceremonial space, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, I'm gonna be with my people. Finally, I'm gonna feel like I belong. And I walked into that space in all my new whites, and everybody else was just dressed in normal clothes. And I realized in that moment, here I am again, just trying to fit in, just trying to be appropriate. Well, I just had that one outfit, and it was a weekend-long thing. So I really just had to style it out. And that was Rebel Initiation Round One. But the ayahuasca journey? That was pure love. I was a baby held in my mother's arms, and I felt so safe, and I felt so beautiful. And I felt so connected. And I cried for all the parts of myself that had forgotten how to love. And I knew what I had to do. Over the next eight months, I gave up my addiction to people-pleasing. I let go of being the good girl. I stopped laying myself out on the sacrificial altar of somebody else's desires. And I gathered all the fractured parts of myself back together and loved them into feeling worthy. And then, as Yoda's do, my Yoda reappeared to help me unlock the last door to the last cage. She showed me that I needed to stop being a servant to a corporate agenda. That I needed to become the queen and put on my freaking crown. And I needed to leave my old job and my old life behind. Through all of this, I have learned, or I have created, in fact, some personal truths. I am here to be a rebel. I am here to be a queen. I did not come here to live in a cage and be dulled down. I came here to command, and we have all been fed a lie that if we play by the rules, we'll be taken care of. But in my experience, it's when I don't play by the rules that love, passion, vibrancy, and luxury become available to me. Thank you.

I was born in a small village about one hour west from here in the shadow of Batukaru Mountain. There were no cars, no electricity, and one transistor radio. I'm not one hundred years old. You know that! I'm still young. Every day I would sit around in the morning when my mom cooked. I just loved it, you know, because I knew she was gonna need something from me. Sure enough, "Hey Made, can you take the salt and then get some eggs from the neighbor." This is the moment that I was waiting for. I ran out the door and came back with the eggs. This is the barter system that we have in Bali. You know, I just love that feeling. You barter for something, and everybody in a whole village knows what we have. At twelve years old, my dad called me in. Wow, this is a little bit serious, I thought, you know. And then I sat next to him, and he said, "Made, if you wanna be somebody, you need to get out from this village, and then come back again when the wind blows in this direction." I was confused. You know life in the village was so damn good. Why does he want me to go out? Well, I followed his directions literally. In 1996, I found myself halfway around the world in San Francisco—the city I only saw when I was watching Hollywood movies. I was in awe. Oh my God, you know. This could not be more different than where I grew up. It was such a contrast. I'll just give you an example. My friend told me, "If you get in an accident, do not admit it's your fault because you will be libeled for it." What? In Bali, if you fall in somebody's house, you would find the host and say, "Oh, I'm sorry. That was my fault. I didn't see the hole." It was so different, but hey, I needed to learn. And the other thing is that I needed to call my friends to see them, and I needed to come on time. That was a new concept. In Bali, you just show up in somebody else's house, and they have all the time for you. And they even give you coffee. Well, life is not black and white like that. You know, in Bali, we call it robineda, which is the duality. And I got lucky when I was in the United States. I worked for Outward Bound. I worked at a lot of different things. I just learned everything. I even skied. Can you believe a Balinese skier?! In the United States? I was telemarketing. People said, "That person is from Bali." But I'm not a dancer, sorry. So I got lucky to meet two of my mentors in the United States. The first one was Yvon Chouinard at the company that I worked at for nine years. What I learned from him was, "Hold your vision and your mission." Up to this date, the most profitable company in the United States, and still owned privately. The second mentor that I met was Richard Strozzi-Heckler, and I had the privilege to be uchi deshi, meaning that I lived with him like an intern. So he taught me aikido and somatics. From aikido, I really learned how to take care of others with dignity. From aikido, I learned how to fall, get up, move on, roll, get up, move on. From somatics, I learned how to really know myself. From somatics, I learned really just knowing myself that I didn't know before. And from both of those, Richard always said, "If you wanna change yourself, change your practice." This is what he said . . . "To remember, move one hundred times. To get it in your muscle memory, one thousand times. To embody it, ten thousand times." So think about it, one, two, three, four, and so on. After a few years in the United States, I felt not lonely, but just felt a kind of loneliness. You know, I grew up with such a different way of life. And for the first time, I saw Bali from a different perspective. The community, the dancing, the ceremonies that I took for granted when I was in Bali. I missed them so much. And I told myself, One day when I'm back in Bali, when that wind blows me back to Bali, I will take care of you, Bali. Of course, at the beginning of 2010, I found myself back in Bali. My experiences in the United States proved to be valuable. I ended up with job here as a guest liaison, as a somatic coach, and teaching aikido in one of the healing centers here in Bali. In those four years that I worked over there, I met one of the most talented plant-based chefs in Bali or probably in Indonesia, chef Made Runatha. One day he asked me, "Hey, Janur, do you wanna open a restaurant with me?" And I said, "A restaurant?" I'd never run a restaurant before, you know, and I Googled it. It has an 80% failure, you know. Do I wanna put myself though that? But I remember when I was working at Howard Bond, one of my mentors said, "When you do something, think about these four things—learning, earning, sharing, and fun." Hmm. I'd never done this before. Well, I guess I can learn it. So I said, "Sure. Why not?" So then Moksa Plant-Based Permaculture Garden was born. I knew nothing about restaurants, knew nothing about permaculture, but what I learned from permaculture is that inside of a problem, there is a solution. That's one of the principles from permaculture that I really took to heart. Moksa was thriving until COVID-19 hit. I sat in my home. My wife Hilary was in the United States at the time. (Hi, hon, love you long time!) So she was stuck in the United States with my kids. I found myself sipping a glass of wine. What should I do? I want to help my family in my village. And then I remembered inside of the crisis, there is an opportunity. What is the crisis that we are facing right now? Number one is COVID-19. Because of COVID-19 in Bali, we need rice. If we have rice, salt, and pepper, we live forever. Yeah. That's Bali. The second one. Plastic, plastic, plastic. That's the environment. The third one is like this. When there is a disaster, people bring what we call disaster relief—one hand on the bottom and one hand on the top. I really wanna bring this hand together. In Bollywood, we call it tatvamasi. You as me, me as you. The giver becomes a receiver. The receiver becomes a giver. So we all have an equal feeling what I call dignity. So I thought to myself, I'm just gonna go to the village. I called the village leader and the youth leader. And I talked, and I presented my idea of exchanging plastic for rice. And then they loved it. And they said, "When should we start?" I said, "Tomorrow." "What?" "Hey, we are not waiting for an auspicious day to pick up plastic. Tomorrow is a good day," I said. "We don't need to wait for the full moon or the new moon. Tomorrow. If there is plastic tomorrow, there is rice tomorrow," I said. "Oh, Janur is crazy. He's been Americanized." But hey, it's good to be crazy. So the next day, they picked up the plastic in two days. In my village there's only sixty households, which is two hundred and forty people. We collected five hundred kilos of plastic—a half-ton. I was so happy. Oh, my program is great. You know, I got all of this and then, Oh no. If in my village, this small village, I can pick up this much plastic, what about a bigger village? What about around Bali? If this thing works in my village, it's got to work in a different village. And I started the system. How I'm gonna bring it out and all of that, with the help of volunteers—dedicated volunteers—with me, and my wife's support which was really just relentless. Now the plastic exchange is spreading like wildfire. Two hundred villages. One hundred and thirty tons of plastic has been collected. Thirty-five tons of rice has been distributed, and about four thousand five hundred households have been helped. So really, the core of Plastic Exchange is three—dignity, prosperity, environment. The mission is to empower Balinese people to prosper through the barter system by collecting non-organic stuff. And we give them rice. Assisting them for now. I remember Richard said, "To get it in your muscle memory, one thousand times, to make it embodied, ten thousand times." I want my people here in Bali, stop doing this, but do this now. One, two . . . sooner or later, it's gonna be ten thousand times, and it'll become embodied. That's my hope. We can do this. All of you here have been donating to Plastic Exchange, supporting me. Now, here, we can do this for our self-worth, for our dignity, prosperity, and the environment. In Bali, we believe in reincarnation. We're born again because we have work to do. Moksartham Jagadhita ya ca iti Dharma. It means There is liberation in this world when you do your work, when you do Dharma, and you wanna be one with the creation, and then you're not born again. This place we call Maya Pada—the place of illusion. We do our work to reach Moksha. My dad is my hero. He pushed me out of my comfort zone. "Get out and come back," he said. Dad, I'll stay here in the world to do my work until I see you in heaven. Thank you.