Eckhart Tolle famously quipped, “It is impossible for anyone to act beyond their current level of consciousness.” Like a clock wound to move in a certain direction, people tend to continue down the same path indefinitely, due to their upbringing, personality, and experiences. When that path is wise and wholesome, the process is known as a “virtuous cycle.” On the other hand, when that path is ill-advised or misguided, the process is known as a “vicious cycle.” People entrapped in vicious cycles exhibit no inkling or ability to change, barring some transformative life experience. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, they may reach a point where a compelling, grace-filled experience is the only thing that can alter their life for the better.

This week, I reached out to my friend and Campus Pastor at Garden City Church, Gabriel Rodriguez. Gabriel was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and moved to New Jersey at 9 years old, overstaying a tourist visa on a trip to visit his father. Gabriel’s childhood, ridden with trauma, fear, and bad influences, led him down a delinquent path of drugs, crime, and violence. However, one day, while in a Central Ohio jail, just moments away from being deported and separated from his son, Gabriel said a prayer that would change the course of his life.

The following is the account of a live 3-hour interview conducted in person. I hope you find Gabriel’s story as raw, fascinating, and inspirational as I did. You can find him on Instagram @GabrielN_Rodriguez

[For more, see the complete archive of interviews.]

Tell the people about yourself.

My name is Gabriel Rodriguez. I’m 32 years old. I’m originally from Caracas, Venezuela. Both of my parents are Venezuelan. I came to the US in December of 1999. I have three kids. My oldest, Gabriel Romeo, is 15 years old. My second oldest, David Miguel, is 13 years old. And my youngest, Grace Valerie Joy, is 8 months.

I currently work for CoverMyMeds as an Account Coordinator. There is a process called prior authorization for people trying to get their medication covered by insurance. We are basically the middlemen who make sure the pharmacy, the doctor, and the insurance company are handling their side of the paperwork. I volunteer as the Campus Pastor for my church, Garden City Church. One of my main roles it to offer pastoral support to the youth, young adults, family ministry, and Sunday volunteers.

What was Venezuela like growing up?

The first thing that comes to mind is the weather. We didn’t get snow in Venezuela where I lived. You would never really see people wearing jackets. I remember my mom and dad had a good-sized apartment with four bedrooms, a kitchen, and two restrooms. I believe we lived on the 19^th floor. I remember there was a lot of traffic. I remember traveling in the city to my grandparents’ house, mostly by train. We would also sometimes take the bus.

There was this big plaza in the city. People would just go and sit and there were stores around—people selling churros and ice cream cones. It was a pretty city. Just thinking about the people and the community brings me joy.

How was your family dynamic?

I have very few memories of us all—me, my two brothers, mom, and dad—in the same house or in the same room doing the same activity. During those years, it was normal for my dad to be gone on business trips to the US, Brazil, or other parts of Venezuela. My parents’ relationship was shaky at times. I remember times where they would argue. I think the main reason was money-related. I remember my mom would go out partying or hanging out with friends, and she would leave me at the house by myself and leave my brother at my grandparents’. Eventually, my mom started dating somebody else, and my dad got word of it in the US. At that point, the separation happened, and I believe that’s when my dad decided to stay in New Jersey.

I dealt with a lot of fear when I was little—fear of the dark, fear of being alone, fear of ghosts. My house would get pretty dark and I would not leave my room because I was afraid. I remember being home for hours and hours by myself. We had a chair in the apartment right next to the door. When you got out of the apartment, there was a big hallway with doors to other apartments on the same floor. And I would just in that chair with the door open, crying and looking at the elevator, hoping that my mom would come home. I don’t know if I thought that crying would make her come back sooner, but I just remember this fear of being by myself. 

There were times my mom would drop me off at my grandma’s house, which was her mom’s house. We had like five aunts that lived there—all my mom’s sisters—along with their kids. My brother Israel, who was a year and a half older than me, lived there for a large part of his childhood and basically grew up there. In fact, all of my three brothers grew up at different grandparents’ houses. I was the only one who grew up with my parents. And so I always felt like the outsider when I went to visit my grandma’s house.

I don’t know if they were necessarily treating me like an outsider. Maybe it had to do with how I was acting. I would cry for my mom. I used to pee the bed. So I don’t know if it was what I did that upset them and made me feel like I was rejected. Or if I was rejected from the outset and that made me act the way I did. One good thing I can say about being at my grandma’s house is that I wasn’t alone.

It sounds like you had a really tough childhood.

When you say that, I think of people who had a really tough childhood and mine doesn’t sound so bad. But then I can compare myself to other people who had very good ones, and I think mine wasn’t so great. So I think I’m somewhere in the middle in the sense that it wasn’t a normal childhood, but it also wasn’t the worst childhood either.

Your dad settled in New Jersey, and you eventually went to live with him. How did that happen?

When me and my brother came to the US, it was for vacation. It was like a Christmas gift. We came on December 25, 1999. The plan was to only be here for a month. We were going to spend a week or two in New Jersey, four days in San Francisco, then spend the rest of the time in New Jersey. It was an exciting time. Before the trip, I remember me and Israel sitting on the balcony where my grandma used to live watching airplanes and dreaming about what it would be like in the US. We didn’t have a picture of America like I feel other nationalities have. I think we just thought about snow. As kids, we were excited to travel in an airplane and see the snow.

Nobody knew this, but in the back of my mind, I was excited to go to the US because I knew I wasn’t going to be alone the whole time. I knew I wouldn’t be left at my house by myself. I knew I wouldn’t be crying for my mom or dad to come. I knew my brother was always going to be there with me. My brother was the guy, if I ever needed anything. There was a release of peace and joy that I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

We flew by ourselves. I think I was nine and my brother was ten. During the flight, the flight attendants came to us and asked us if we wanted to fly the plane. They brought us into the cabin where the pilots were and they let us sit on the seats next to the pilot. They basically just said, “Don’t touch anything.” It was a really cool experience. The airplane landed in New York but we were staying in New Jersey.

What was it like when you got there? 

My dad was renting a room in a house. The houses in New Jersey were like three floors, and each floor was like a whole ‘nother apartment. There was one queen bed and two twin mattresses on the floor. Sometimes we would hang out in the room or go to the backyard. But usually we went with my dad to the office where he was working. We did touristy stuff. We visited Manhattan. We got on ferries. We made friends. It was a good time. In San Francisco, the streets were like mountains — high and deep and all of that. I remember seeing transgender people for the first time. And then there’s this soup in San Francisco where the bowl is made of bread.

It was time to go back, and in that whole month we never saw snow. Literally, tomorrow we’re going back. And on the forecast, it said it was going to snow on the day that we’re leaving. We came to America to see snow. We’re like “We’re so close. We have to stay tomorrow to see the snow.” So basically we just begged my dad to stay so we can see the snow. The idea was “Okay, you guys can stay. I’ll pay for the fee for missing the flight. And then you guys can go back.”

We saw snow. We liked it. We played with it. I think we went sledding. And we just decided that we liked it in the US and wanted to stay. At this time, my parents were going through a divorce. In the back of my mind—and I didn’t tell my brother this—but the thought in the back of my mind was, “I don’t want to go back to Venezuela and be alone.” So my dad said, “Call your mom. And if she’s okay with it, you can stay.” We called our mom and told her “We want to stay here.” My mom was a teacher. She appreciated education. One of the things we told my mom was that the schools were great. I remember telling her that the books and education were free. And my mom was okay with it.

So you guys overstayed your visa.

Yes—we were only supposed to be here for thirty days. But it was probably God’s grace, to be honest. Eventually, my mom came back to the Lord and got serious with God. I didn’t tell you this, but my dad was a pastor in Venezuela before moving to the US. I grew up as a Christian. My mom and dad were Christian. Who knows if us being there would have made it harder for her to come back to the Lord. The pressure of having two kids. The shame, the disappointment, having to hide, having to deal with an emotional child who is now seeing his mom in a new relationship.

Looking back, everything that happened was very unreasonable. For my brother to want to stay in the US to live in one small room when he had a good life back in Venezuela. He loved his family back home. That wasn’t my case. I didn’t have a family back home that I loved. All I had were my brothers and parents, who I never saw. And for my mom to have been able to say, “Yes.” The reason I think it had to be God is because her ending was better. If her ending was worse, then I couldn’t go back and look at all these little things that happened and say, “That was God,” because her ending was worse. But the fact that her ending was better has to make me think that there was a purpose for all these areas that had a question mark, with the question, “Why did this unreasonable thing happen?”

What was your experience like in school?

In New Jerseys the schools are by numbers. They have names, but they also have numbers. So school number three, school number six, etc. I think we went to school three or four our first year. The cool part about New Jersey is that there are so many Spanish people that every single grade is divided into “bilinguals” and “regulars.” The bilingual class is the class they would speak both English and Spanish, but mostly Spanish. So it was mostly for kids who didn’t know English and needed help with that transition. Many of our books were in Spanish, and some were in English. In the regular class, they just spoke English.

There was always bullying from the regular students to the bilingual students. They always felt better than us. So I experienced a good amount of bullying. They got it back from me eventually, but it affected me for sure. You feel the rejection. You feel less than. You feel like you didn’t receive the same treatment as everybody else. And you eventually start looking down on yourself.

I moved to Ohio when I was 15. During my 6 years in New Jersey, I didn’t learn any English. None. Zero. I don’t know how I ever passed the part in English—they probably just didn’t want to fail me, but there was enough in Spanish that I could get by. I had no structure of studying or doing homework. I think I remember studying one time my entire childhood. I remember failing spelling test after spelling test after spelling test, but they still passed me. And then I failed 6^th grade. After I failed 6^th grade, I was hurt that my friends moved on and I got left behind, but I had no distractions. I was so motivated I made the honor roll. It was never that I wasn’t smart, but I didn’t have any focus or structure.  

What prompted you to learn English in Ohio?

No one spoke Spanish in Ohio. In New Jersey, everyone spoke Spanish. The stores, the buses, the teachers, the police, the firefighters, little league baseball, soccer— all the kids and all the parents in my world spoke Spanish. So I had to learn English to survive. I would be in the classroom lost, not knowing what they were saying. During the first year, I started dating a girl, and I think it really helped me get more comfortable speaking the language. By my second year in Ohio, people were telling me my English was getting better and I was losing my accent.

Back to New Jersey. I know you started getting into trouble from a young age.

I was probably 12 or 13 in New Jersey. Like I said, between bilingual and regulars, there was always that bullying, that tension. Here and there, there would be fights between these two groups. Even if they weren’t part of an organized group, you would know it was a bilingual fighting somebody from a regular class.

Eventually, we got this guy who was new at the school. His name was Frank. He was short and stocky. On the first day of school, he came wearing a yellow shit, and on top of it was a green shirt, with a bandana. He was a bilingual, so he was a part of our group. He heard that someone from the regular class was making fun of his clothing. Frank said, “Okay, we’re going to fight after school.” We had never seen this. It was just so unusual for us. We were like, “This dude is crazy.”

And so we all meet up after school, and they got into a fight and Frank beat him up. That was cool, because it was like a good record for the bilingual class. And Frank was loyal. Frank was going to stick with his people that he started with. So after a while, he started becoming very popular because he would fight anybody, and he was a good fighter. So he started gaining respect, and people wanted to be a part of his group. So basically from the first day of Frank’s class, he taught us that you need to gain people’s respect by fighting.

And from that day on, that was everybody’s response to everything. Our group response was, “You look at me the wrong way, you say the wrong thing, and we’re just going to fight.” And so I learned that respect was based on fear. And so it wasn’t too long after that, we had a small group of people, just a handful of us—my brother, a guy that we call our cousin, Frank, and Frank’s older brother. We would just sit outside my friend’s house by the stairs and hang out every day. And one day, we just decided we should make a gang. We were going to put a name on it and be an organized gang. Everybody else was going to know that this was our gang.

Were there specific gang activities you participated in? 

We didn’t do a whole lot, but we went to parties together. We all wore black at times and took pictures. At one point, we started doing graffiti. There was a big gang in West New York. And that big gang was on Street 60. And so the name of the gang was 60^th. Probably everybody in that gang was a regular. But one day we thought, “We’re in a gang. We need to make ourselves noticeable to people.” So me and another friend rode our bikes to the high school. There was like a bridge in the high school from one building to another, and under the bridge everybody hanged out there for lunch. And so me and my boy drove our bicycles over to that bridge, and on that wall where everybody hanged out we wrote Eff 60^th, but like the full word F. And we put the name of our gang on the bottom of that.

By the next day everybody knew there was another gang out there that is dissing this big gang. And that just started fights. Eventually, stuff got crazy, but at the beginning—we were young—it was just fistfights. This was all in New Jersey. And we were anywhere from 13 to 15. Right after we moved to Ohio, literally a couple months later, we started hearing stories about people getting stabbed. Big fights with baseball bats. Guns. Machetes. Crazy stuff started to happen. Drug dealing. 

It sounds like you got out just in the nick of time. What informed the decision to move?

My dad moved us to Ohio because he knew me and my brother were getting into a lot of trouble. Eventually, we started drinking, getting into more fights, etc. The Ohio option came because my brother used to go visit there. He fell in love with some girl, and he told my dad that Ohio was great. Based on all the trouble we were getting into in New Jersey, my dad said, “We should probably move to Ohio, and take these kids out of this crazy place, because they’re either going to go to jail or end up dead.”

He was right. We probably would have been dead or in jail. I think I eventually would have killed someone or they would have killed me. Not because I was a big dawg, but just because of that environment and the pressure of just being there.

Did things get better in Ohio?

No, they didn’t. A lot of my main crew, like Frank, came to move with me. Frank’s dad lived in Ohio. When my people found out we were moving, they decided to move, too. And other friends from New Jersey would visit. In New Jersey, I would walk six blocks down to my friend’s house and party every weekend. When we moved to Ohio and Ohio doesn’t have freaking sidewalks, it was like, “Man, this place is crazy!” I automatically thought, “If I’m going to have any fun in Ohio, I need to have a fake ID.” Because, to my understanding, the only fun thing to do was go to clubs. I didn’t know enough people to go to parties or anything like that. So I got a fake ID, and I started hanging out with an older crew.

Car racing was our big thing. And eventually we got into car theft, like taking the whole vehicle. We all owned Hondas or Acuras. I got my first car at 16. We would go steal other Hondas or Acuras to take the parts of the car—rims, seats, engines, transmissions, bumpers. Anything we felt like we wanted to take for our cars. One time I stole an Acura that had leather seats, and I took the leathers seats and put them on my Honda. Another time, I saw a Honda with rims that I liked, so I stole the car and took the rims. We would drive the stolen car to an apartment complex, find an empty garage space, take the rims off, and leave the car. Eventually, they would find the car without the rims.

I would break into cars every week. Steal the radios. Steal the speakers. I was still 16 at the time. I would have a new radio for my car weekly or biweekly. I would change it because I got bored of it or I found a cooler one. I would have 5, 10, 15 radios in my trunk at a time. Everything I didn’t use I would sell—speakers, radios, rims, etc.

What about school? It doesn’t sound like you were an A student.

In high school, I would skip school all the time. Since my dad didn’t know English, I would be the one that had to fill out all the paperwork for the school, and I would put my email and phone number. And so any time the school wanted to contact my dad, they would actually be contacting me. I remember there was a month I literally went to school for two days. So what I did not to fail was fake doctor notes. And I would just make up all the work on my own time.

Somehow, I found a way to pass, but I eventually dropped out. I was 17 or 18. And I continued to live that lifestyle. Partying, drinking, drugs—mostly just weed. I eventually came to realize that the group we were hanging out with in Ohio was big into drugs. By the grace of God, I never got too fully into it even though we had the resources. But my brother did. I’m talking about blocks of cocaine. I remember seeing big blocks of cocaine.

I remember one time we opened a block of cocaine that was branded by the cartel. And the brand that this block of cocaine had was the sign of a lady’s restroom. I remember looking at it and thinking, “Man, I didn’t know that the cartels brand their blocks of cocaine.” I remember looking at big bags of Crystal Meth and me not knowing what they were. They said, “Don’t touch it with your bare hands because it can get you so high it’ll kill you.” And there were these big black bags with pounds and pounds of weed.

Where was your dad during all of this?

I was living with my dad, so I didn’t have to pay rent. My dad was a cool dad, but there was no life structure. There was nobody sitting down with me giving me any life advice about careers, the future, wise decisions. My dad was busy with his own life. He was a salesman. That’s not an easy job. He had his own struggles trying to provide for us. I think he felt bad that we didn’t have a mother who was there to raise us because he mentioned it a few times. 

I met you 13 years ago at a church. You were 18 or 19 at the time. How did you end up at a church of all places?

I hit bottom when my dad had a stroke in 2008. For me, my dad was basically my world. I loved my dad. That’s basically when I became homeless. That’s when I got hooked on weed. Not like an addiction, but just an escape. I started smoking weed every day, literally all day long. We would go to bed high and my friend would literally wake me up with a blunt in his hand. I’m not going to lie, it was amazing. I remember thinking back on that time, “Wow, that was amazing.” He would already smoke half of it and was like, “Here’s your half.”

My dad had to spend many weeks in the hospital and learn how to walk again, talk again, and just do life. I don’t remember if we got kicked out of my dad’s apartment or I thought, “I can’t stay there by myself.” I was still afraid of darkness, afraid of being alone, from my childhood. So I would just crash at people’s houses. At one point, I was living in an attic on Sullivant on the West Side. One weekend, I threw a party at that house, and some money got stolen from the owner of the house, and then I got kicked out. I slept in my car a few times and just crashed at friends’ houses. And then I lost the car, too, because I wasted the money my dad and I had saved up and couldn’t make the payments.

For a time, the mother of my boys let me stay at their place. I don’t remember how long I lived there. I walked everywhere. I didn’t really have a consistent base of food. I was still getting high. I actually got enrolled back in high school. And I started going back to school, but it just wasn’t the same—who I used to be in high school before and who I was now. And so I dropped out again. I dropped out of high school two times. But the second time, I think not having a car was also a factor. I had to walk two miles there and two miles back. And being an illegal immigrant, I realized that it didn’t matter if I finished high school.

You felt that there would be no opportunity, and it didn’t matter whether you made wise decisions or not.

That’s why I was so happy when President Obama came out with the DREAM Act, because I remember I couldn’t even dream. I remember writing a letter to immigration that my lawyer asked me to write when I was applying. I remember telling them that most people dream about taking a vacation once a year. And they will plan it and think about what they want to do. And I was thinking, “I can never dream of taking a vacation, because I can’t even pick the job I want.” As an illegal immigrant, you don’t plan your life. You take what is given to you. So if $15 an hour is all that is given to you, then that’s all you have.

Being undocumented for so long and with the crimes you were involved in, did you ever get in trouble with the law?

With my dad having a stroke, me being homeless and being on drugs every day, I eventually got caught by the police with three warrants. I was in a stolen vehicle with a minor. We were both drunk and high at the time. I was already 18. I think I had weed on us. And I gave the cop a fake name, because I knew I had three warrants. But they found out that I had given them a fake name, which was a whole ‘nother charge.

And so now I’m on my way to jail as an adult. And the first thing I do when I get there is pray. Like I said, my dad was a pastor and I grew up as a Christian. I didn’t have the connection that God and Jesus were the same. Or that Jesus was the Son of God, or anything like that. But I had some understanding that there was a God. One thing about jail is you automatically go into this stage of hopelessness. You’re in the cop car looking out the window, thinking, “Man, I just messed up. I don’t know when I’m going to see the outside world again.” You’re basically at the mercy of the law. You don’t know if your family knows that you’re there and if you’re ever going to be able to contact them. And time goes by very slow in jail.

So I’m in jail and I didn’t know when I was going to get out. On day four, I’m just sitting there and they call my name. Totally unexpected. I don’t know what’s happening with my case. I don’t know when I’m going to court. They call my name and hand me the clothes I had on the day I got arrested. They put me in this other room where people started getting released, and started getting back the possessions they had on them on the day they got arrested.

In the other room, everybody who was American was let out of the room. And they left all the Spanish people in the room. And so we immediately knew. They left all the Spanish people in the room because they were about to deport us. I remember everybody was just laughing, “They’re going to deport us. No big deal. I’ll jump the border as soon as they drop me off.” This whole time I’m thinking, “I came in an airplane. I did not jump a fence. I did not cross the desert. I’m from Venezuela. Mexico is far from Venezuela. And I’m too much of a coward to go through a desert. I’m never going to come back. If I get deported, I’m never going to come back.”

You hadn’t been to Venezuela in ten years, and here you are thinking you’re about to get deported.

I had one son. He was a year old. And I thought to myself, “I’m never going to see my son again.” And in that moment, I decided to pray. And with the weight of repentance, I did this next action. I had a hoodie with a big skeleton and a hat that I had stolen from a car. As a way of me saying, “I’m done with this lifestyle,” I took the hat off and I took the hoodie off, and I threw them on the floor. And I did all of this before praying. I didn’t know the Bible said anything about repenting. This was just an action that came naturally, “I’m done with this lifestyle.”

And I closed my eyes and I prayed. And my prayer was, “God, if you take me out of this place, I will stop trying to sell drugs. And I will be the father you want me to be.” As I was praying, as soon as I opened my eyes, I realized I spoke with someone. This never happened to me in my life. I told you I prayed immediately when I got to jail, but that was the first time that I prayed and I knew that I was talking to God. Like he heard me. Like me talking to you right now—I know you’re hearing me. It was even more real than talking to you. It couldn’t have been more than three minutes, bro. After that prayer, they opened the door, and they called my name: Gabriel Rodriguez!

What was going through your mind in that moment?

Based on the situation, based on the setting, my response should have been fear. I’m the first one to go out with immigration. But instead I just had peace. The officer took me out of the room. And as they’re handing me the belongings and the things I had in my pocket that day, the Sheriff says, “You’re a lucky guy.” I said, “Thank you, sir.” He said, “There’s a Hilliard police officer here to pick you up because you have court.” And so I realized there was a police officer right behind me who was from Hilliard. He wasn’t a Sheriff—he had a blue uniform on.

And the Sheriff asked the Hilliard cop, “Can you wait five more minutes? Immigration is running late.” The Hilliard cop tells the Sheriff, “No, the judge is waiting for him, and I need to take him.” So the cop takes me to Hilliard. I get to Hilliard. My brother and my dad are there. I call my attorney. I’m like, “I got court in Hilliard.” He said, “Tell the judge that you want your case transferred to Columbus. Once your case gets to Columbus, I’ll make sure it gets to a judge-friend of mine, and we’ll take care of it.”

I remember being scared because this dude doesn’t know that I almost got deported. I didn’t know what the judge was going to say. I let the court know I want my case transferred to Columbus, but I still had to appear. The judge asked me two questions: Do you go to school? And Do you work? I said “Yes” to both of them, and they were both a lie. I just dropped out of school a couple months before that and I just lost my job at Donatos because I was in jail for four days. So the judge looks at me after those answers, “What are you doing in my court? Get out of here.”

So hitting rock bottom and having that divine encounter in jail motivated you to make the change. Did your transformation take place instantly or was it a process?

As soon as I got out, I was still homeless. I lost my job. I had no money. I was the only one paying for the apartment where me and my dad were staying. I ended up moving in with my friend, who was a big drug dealer. That’s when I realized just how much drugs we had. Many times I was in rooms where we were counting thousands of dollars. The most I saw at once was $150,000. I was still using drugs, smoking weed, and drinking.

One night I used acid for the first time. During my trip, I found myself in a closet with all the lights off crying. I remember calling my brother telling him how I was feeling. After that trip and all of that, I’m like, “Okay, I need to get back to God.” I started becoming a better dad. My deal with God was “If you take me out of this place, I’ll become a better dad.”

So now I’m praying and asking for help, trying to figure out how to get my life together. I need a job. I need a car. I need to get out of this house because it’s full of drugs. Eventually, God provides a car. There was this guy who owed my dad like $300. He didn’t have the money to pay my dad, but he had a ’92 Ford. My dad was like, “Hey. I got a car. Do you want it?” I’m like “Absolutely! That’s an answered prayer.”

I had a friend who worked at CiCi’s pizza. I called her and she gave me a job. For the house, there was this apartment complex that was getting renewed because it was in a bad area. It had a bad rep to it. And it was giving this special where you get three months of rent for free with $100 deposit. That’s a deal. So we’re like “Okay.” So we thought, “By the fourth month by the time I have to pay rent, I’ll have enough money saved up to pay rent.” But I was working part-time at CiCi’s making $250 a week. It wasn’t enough for rent, just to keep the bills paid.

What happened after the 3-month promotion elapsed?

Things were tight, and so I still tried to hustle some illegal stuff. Illegal stuff never worked for me. One day, I come home from work, and my dad tells me, “Hey, the people from the apartment complex came and said that we owe $1500 worth of rent. They say if we don’t have it by tomorrow, we have three days to move out.”

As I’m getting ready to shower, I prayed, “God, if you take me out of this one, I will…” And I stop. I thought to myself, “God ain’t stupid. That’s the thing you said in jail. God did his part to get you out of jail, but you didn’t do your part. You tried to go back and hustle.”

I showered normally. There wasn’t anything magical about the moment. It wasn’t like jail where I felt like someone heard me. This time, I thought “Whether you take me out of this one or not, I’m going to try you fully.” In my mind, I had tried everything and nothing worked. And if God was not real and this didn’t work, then I’m still going to deal with the consequences of being kicked out. But if God is real and he answers my prayer, then he’s going to take me out of this one.

And so the next day came, and the guy from the apartment complex didn’t come to pick up the money. Three days later, and the guy hasn’t come to pick up the money. A week later, still no guy. A month passed, three months, six months, 12 months—we stayed in that apartment complex for 19 months for free! There weren’t people to do maintenance in the apartment — check the basement, check the air conditioning, stuff like that. But they never sent anyone to pick up the money. By week one after that prayer, I was like, “Okay God, I know you’re real, because this guy never came.”

So after the first week, I was already deciding what it was going to look like to try God fully. And that was, “Stop doing what is bad. Read your Bible. And go to church.” I remember calling my mom and saying, “Mom, I’m making this decision. I’m going to start reading the Bible, but I don’t understand it.” She said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to send you this Bible you can understand.” And then sent me a Spanish Bible with a simple translation. Kind of like the NIV. That was the beginning of me giving my life to God. I remember just praying in my room, telling him, “I’m going to stop drinking. I’m going to stop smoking. I’m going to stop partying and stealing.”

The hardest area for me was sexual. But I remember saying, “If you help me, I’ll do it.” Now I’m thinking, “I’m going to go to church. I’m going to try it fully. I’m going to stop doing all this stupid stuff.” A year or two ago, I had visited Potter’s House with the mother of my kids because my aunt went there. When I went back again, it was the first time where I’ve ever been in a church and felt, “This is home. This is where I need to be.”

How did your relationship with God grow?  

I got more involved in church and started experiencing God for myself. There was this hunger in me to show people that God was real, and it came from reading the Bible. It came from reading the Old Testament. I didn’t start in the New Testament. I started with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, Joseph, Ruth, Samson—those stories from the Old Testament that will increase your faith. There was something in me that just believed God for supernatural stuff. And there was something in me that wanted to show people that God was real.

You are a pastor at Garden City Church on the West Side of Columbus. How did you come into that role?

One of the first things I started doing was homeless ministry. I got involved with the Young Adult Ministry at Potter’s House. Then I got involved with the Youth Ministry. Eventually, I became an elder at Potter’s House. I must have been 29 or 30 years old. Then we started a Healing and Deliverance Ministry at Potter’s House, which is insane, because that wasn’t something Potter’s House really leaned into in the past. And we would have people come every Sunday to get demons cast out and prayer for healing. So we did that for about 6-9 months before Covid hit.

By that time, I’m married to my wife Kelcie. During Covid, we felt in our hearts that our friend, Pastor Gerald, needed to start a church. And we basically just told him, “If you ever start a church, we’ll move with you. We’ll go to your church.” In the summer of 2020, Pastor Gerald started Garden City Church. And I preached every Sunday during the first three months. 

Can you talk about your experience at the Dream Center?

In 2021, I started working for the Columbus Dream Center. The mission of the Family Ministry was to provide a space for kids to have lunch, do homework, get tutoring, and have Wi-Fi connection during Covid when the schools closed down. As Assistant Director of that division, part of my role was to provide spiritual insight to the leadership. And so I worked there for a year. And then I worked for Rock City Church for about 6 months with the prison ministry.

Finally, because of working for all these ministries—Potter’s House, Dream Center, Rock City Church—I didn’t have an official position at Garden City right away, because I didn’t know if I was going to stay. I had an offer to be the Young Adult Pastor at Potter’s House. Once I decided I’m going to stay at Garden City and I’m not going to work with these other churches, that’s when we started asking, “What role can Gabriel take at the church?” And that eventually led me to my current role as Campus Pastor, where I support the youth, young adults, family ministry, and church volunteers.

You have two teenage sons. Last year, you became a girl dad. How has being a father changed you?  

I honestly think that my life calling is to be a father. I think that God called me to serve my kids. Being a father is great. If it changed me, it made me more mature. I think about my kids daily. I have a strong desire to help them in life, to succeed in life, to give them everything that wasn’t provided to me, both in knowledge, presence, and material stuff — probably in that order. And also to provide them spiritual insight that wasn’t provided to me. And so I have a strong desire for my kids to know God. I love my kids.

Do you plan to go back to Venezuela to visit?

I don’t know. My mom passed away in October of last year. And I feel like I don’t have anything to go back to Venezuela for. I do have this sense that God has some type of calling on my life to Venezuela, but I don’t know what that is yet.

This is the rapid-fire round. I’m going to ask you several questions in quick succession. You can limit your answers to no more than a few words or sentences.

Favorite hobby?

Video games.

Favorite city?

LA. Second to that, Chicago.

Favorite verse in the Bible?

Man, that changes. I’ll say the first one that my mom gave me. Joshua 1:8-9, which is “Keep this book of the law always on your lips. Meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God will be with you everywhere you go.”

Pet peeve?

Bad customer service and people with no common sense.

Hidden talent?

Sadly, I don’t know that I have one. I speak Spanish?

Ideal vacation? 

Los Angeles. Two weeks in Los Angeles or three. At a nice house in front of the beach with my wife and kids. And if I can bring Samson [his Yorkie] that would be cool.

Thing you are most proud of?

Having my kids with me now and all of my accomplishments in life. I shouldn’t be where I’m at in my life.

First word that comes to mind when you see pineapple on a pizza?

Gross.

What would you say to a younger version of yourself?

Believe in Jesus. Give your life to him.

Where do you envision yourself in 5 years?

That is hard for me to answer. It’s hard for me to answer because I’m in a place where I want to do God’s will, and I don’t know what that is right now. I don’t know if that’s with Garden City or if that’s being a pastor somewhere else. I want to do ministry. I want to be able to preach the Word.

[You can follow me on Twitter @creatorvilla.] Today I want to share a short clip I transcribed in which navy seal and motivational speaker David Goggins discusses his relationship to drugs and alcohol. Goggins knows a lot about sobriety as someone who went through hell week training three times and routinely competes in ultramarathons and other excruciating athletic events. For Goggins, sobriety is about staying in control of his mind and living authentically. To be sure, this is not a knock on anyone or any lifestyle, just one man’s perspective that I found thought-provoking.

I want to make sure that every single thing I feel is real. I want no masking. I want nothing to mask my ability to feel fear and to overcome fear, whatever it may be.

David Goggins

Transcript:

Interviewer: And I know one thing that, —we spoke about it before [we were on] camera. To most of the world, you’re super clean. You’ve never done drugs. You’ve never had alcohol. You don’t drink alcohol.

Goggins: I’ve tasted alcohol, but no, I’m not a drinker.

Interviewer: Do you think that has to do with your father who used to drink a lot?

Goggins: It’s probably due to him, but it’s also due to—at a young age, I realized that I had a very weak mind, a very weak mind. And I want nothing to interfere with my own thought process. A lot of people before they go on stage, they get a little bit tipsy, get a little buzz. Maybe smoke a little something, do a little something.

I want to make sure that every single thing I feel is real. I want no masking. I want nothing to mask my ability to feel fear and to overcome fear, whatever it may be.

I’m not saying people who drink or do these different things are trying to hide. Some people just do it. For me, I think it’s almost a masking agent, so then your mind doesn’t have to work as hard. That means I’m losing.

The scars on our brain are a reminder that our past is real but it’s up to us to grind those scars down into a fine powder until they no longer affect the outcome of our life.

Any year the word “pandemic” is among the most popular search terms in Google, you know you’re in for a ride. If you’re like most people, the word itself is synonymous with some special challenge or circumstance you’ve had to endure. Many people have gotten sick. Many people have died. And an even great number have been compelled to make unwanted lifestyles changes. I have a few friends who entered the year physically and mentally unscathed, but they are the exception to the rule. The rule is that pandemics suck, and it takes special coping skills to make it out on top.

This week, I brought in my guy and newlywed, Chase Ridgway, to serenade us with his wisdom on the theme. Chase is the ultimate insider. He graduated from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, with his Bachelor’s degree in Nursing. Chase worked in a pressure cooker environment for four years in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit [ICU] at Ohio State Wexner. Chase also recently spent a few months on assignment to a unit that treated a number of Covid 19-positive patients. Due to his background and even-tempered personality, our interviewee is uniquely qualified to address the topic of stress management amidst a global pandemic. Never at a loss for words, I hope you find Chase’s experiences and reflections, taken from a 90-minute in-person interview, to be exquisitely practical, eye-opening, and down-to earth. FYI, I defined a few medical terms in brackets to save you time and give your thumb a break from all that scrolling.

Tell the people about yourself. 

My name is Chase Ridgway. I’ve been a nurse for five years. I spent my first four years in the ICU before transitioning over to endoscopy [procedures to look inside the body’s digestive system]. I am also currently taking classes to become a Family Nurse Practitioner.

As far as my personal life goes, I am recently married and the proud father of a black and white greyhound named Franny, and two black cats, Arnold and Mena. In my free time, I like woodworking, lifting weights, yoga, biking, boxing, and frequently hiking with my wife and family. I try to maintain an active lifestyle to stay healthy first and foremost, and to make sure what I preach and what I practice are one and the same.

What informed your interest in the medical field?

It was a family thing. My sister, my cousin, and my aunts were nurses. They liked their jobs. I’m also a people person. I knew I wanted to do something that involved people. Nursing is also a pretty steady occupation. You are never going to run out of people to treat. In fact, the healthcare profession is actually gaining patients.

I was also a heavy kid growing up. I had a really cool pediatrician, Dr. Heiny, who helped me get on the right path. Dr. Heiny didn’t ignore me and talk to my parents. He was very personable, very friendly, and talked to me on my level. He was also very upfront with me about losing weight, and told me very plainly in middle school that I was prediabetic, and without lifestyle changes, I could develop type-2 diabetes. To help combat this eventuality, Dr. Heiny made getting healthy into a point system and a game. He had me participate me in Weight Watchers and count the calories of everything that went into my body. He also suggested trying out sports to see what I liked. This led me to volunteer to play football in middle school, which along with many years of baseball, helped me trim down about 90 lbs from my freshman to senior year of high school. My background explains part of my interest in bariatric care [management of obesity] to this day.

How did you start out working in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit? Was your temperament a factor in the decision?

I knew it is what I wanted to do straight out of college. I thought the intense stuff would be the most interesting, and I thought it would give me the opportunity to help the largest number of people. In reality, it was mostly about managing preventable conditions. A lot of people were chronically ill. Some had done permanent damage to their bodies. I watched the health of a lot of our patients deteriorate. This led me to want to shift to primary care to focus on the prevention side. People in hospitals often need band-aid care. We fix them up so they can return home and go about their lives. As a Nurse Practitioner, I want to help fight health issues before they develop and prevent these terrible conditions that people get admitted to the ICU for. It starts early, by being proactive and with the proper education.

I am generally a calm guy, but the stress of the ICU will take its toll on anyone. There were a lot of sad cases of drug abuse and overdose that were very difficult to manage. We also had cases where a single sick patient might have 10-12 different medications running through their IVs. Family members would often ask questions that nobody could be sure of. And about once a month, one of my patients would pass away. I was also working nights. I would typically work 7 PM to 7 AM, several days a week, and pick up a lot of overtime. On days I worked, I would sleep from 9 AM to 4 PM. I barely saw anyone, and when I did see someone, I would lose sleep. Whenever I had several days off in row, I would typically sacrifice two of them just flipping back to a normal sleep schedule.

My first few months in ICU were rough. I had a hard time going to sleep, thinking of everything that happened that day and playing out different scenarios in my head to make sure I was prepared. I got better at stress management over time, but it’s something you have to constantly stay on top of in that environment. ICU was intense, and it was fun. I liked it, and I learned a lot, but I knew it wasn’t something I could continue for life. Around year three, I could sense that it was time for a change.

What’s the most chaotic situation you’ve ever had to deal with? 

We once had a patient who had just suffered a heart attack. He was in cardiac arrest and came to our catheter lab to receive treatment. By that time, he had already been unresponsive for a couple hours. His blood pressure was very low and his organs were starting to shut down, and began doing CPR and giving meds. It was basically I and a few nurses running a code [trying to save a dying person], and we were fortunately able to get him back. The patient had a bunch of occlusions in his heart and was admitted from the cath lab to the ICU floor. He had like 20 family members with him, and they all wanted answers. They stayed up all night in the waiting room because they didn’t know if he would make it to the next morning.

The patient wasn’t showing any signs of life neurologically. His lab values from his blood showed massive organ breakdown and death. His family was camped out, praying, hoping for the best. They wanted to wait until his daughter could come see him before he passed. And so we spent the whole night trying to keep him alive long enough for his daughter to say goodbye. As for the doctor, he was sitting outside his room the entire time, ordering meds and directing us what to do. The patient’s electrolytes would get out of whack, and we’d have to correct it or he would go into cardiac arrest again. He needed blood drawn every hour and meds every 20 to 30 minutes. He had 5 or 6 IV drips going. Three of them are called vasopressors to help keep his blood pressure high enough.

It was a chaotic situation. I would go out and talk with the whole family as often as I could, every 2 or 3 hours, to give them updates. One thing they talk about is not giving false hope but remaining positive, which is not easy to do. It’s hard to tell the truth and be honest about his condition and not inspire false hope. “He’s still fighting, and he’s not doing any better.” You try to ride the line and be as respectful as you can.

The man wasn’t in good shape, but he made it through my shift. We stabilized him long enough so his daughter could some see him the next day. When I came back the next night, he was gone. The family decided to reverse his code to DNR [do not resuscitate], and turned off all the medication. It was a tough situation for everyone. I’ve had a lot of patients in critical care, but he was one of the most difficult to keep alive, and one of the most emotionally taxing to take care of.

How do you stay calm under pressure? Is there a special motto or breathing technique or prayer or meditation that you resort to?

I’ve always been a guy who doesn’t overreact to things. Some of it is built into my personality. I can’t say that I have a special secret or mantra, but I have learned from working in ICU that work stress isn’t worth bringing home. Don’t worry about anything you can’t control. I don’t think about it or dwell on it. At the end of the day, it’s a choice. I know it’s not always easy to do, but knowing that is what makes the difference for me.

My calmness also comes from being sure that I am in the right place doing the right thing with my life and that I have the right knowledge to help. I gave it my all in my schooling and in my training and I felt like as long as I kept learning and getting better, I could remain calm in every situation. Listen to those who know best in an area, and you can feel confident enough about what you’re doing to experience that same effect. Knowledge is key here, as is the ability to keep learning and listening.

I’ll add that physical activity is the number one way for me to de-stress in the moment. Early in my career, like I said, I was very stressed out. During the first few months, I’d be so keyed up from work that I would come home and work myself out to exhaustion and hope to be able to fall asleep after that. I would get home at 7 AM and wouldn’t go to bed until 1 PM, because I was so focused trying to remember everything and make sure I did the very best I could. I eventually got better at the work-life balance, but it wasn’t always easy.

Music is another big one. I rarely ever drive in complete silence. Music and comedy, but between the three, physical activity for me is king. They were also pretty big on deep breathing in my undergraduate program. Whenever you can, take a moment to deep breath, focus, and try to process as much stressful input as you can.

Based on your reflections, it sounds like there is a lot of grace built into our biology. In a word, physical and emotional health is capable of changing for the better.

Health outcomes can always be improved with diet, exercise, and stress management. Even in cases where permanent damage has taken place, lifestyle changes can help prevent the situation from getting worse. Take diabetes, for example. The pancreas is no longer able to secrete its own insulin after irreversible damage has occurred. However, diabetics who make lifestyle changes will likely need less insulin, lose weight, and generally feel better. Immune function may go up. Fatigue may go down. It’s not a cure all, but it makes a huge difference. And that is a kind of grace.

Hypertension [high blood pressure] is another example. Depending on the cause, hypertension can be reversible. Salt intake. Fat intake. Caffein intake. Weight. Stress. And some people also have other conditions that influence it and need managed. You should always first develop a plan of treatment with your doctor, but generally anyone can improve their health at least a small amount with lifestyle changes. The goal is to get your body working better, feeling better, and hopefully living longer.

The sicker and more out of shape you get, the harder it becomes to reverse health outcomes. If you’re immobile, for example, or if you’re very old. It is always best to make lifestyle changes as soon as you can wherever you are.    

How has the pandemic influenced the healthcare industry, in general, and your occupation, in particular? 

Healthcare has become a lot more careful about what visitors they let in and who is being treated where. They’re a lot more careful about making sure employees call off when they’re sick. I know a lot of nurses who are workaholics and would come in no matter what. With Covid, they realize their health can deteriorate if they put extra stress on themselves, and they also run the risk of getting their coworkers and patients sick.

I also see a lot more people doing touch point cleaning in and around our work stations. As a nurse, we wear a lot more PPE [personal protective equipment]. Masks. Gloves. Eye shields. For example, we all wear N-95s or respirators whenever administering an upper endoscopy to patients. These tests look for infections, inflammation, ulcers, genetic diseases, things like that. And we have all our patients get tested for Covid before entering our unit.

You recently got assigned to a unit that saw a number of Covid-19 patients. What was it like working in that environment?

It was an in-patient Covid overflow unit. About fourteen of us from endoscopy received this assignment. The unit was created because Covid cases were rising and they were trying to isolate Covid patients on the units these people came from. It was difficult for everyone. I was gone from in-patient nursing [overnight care] for about a year, and some had been gone even longer. And so we were all worried about patient safety and making sure we were back to being competent and patients were getting appropriate care. It was dicey at first. I oriented for about two weeks, and there was the option to orient for even longer for those who needed it.

We took care of patients who had tested negative and others who ended up testing positive. It was a brain and spinal hospital, so a lot of people had neurological issues. Some patients had liver disease and some were there for surgeries. Time management was the biggest thing. It’s a skill that often gets lost in the moment. In endoscopy, we would hyper focus on one patient whereas on this unit were taking care of 3 or 4 patients at a time and needed to divide that time adequately to care for each patient. In this way, it resembled the ICU.

A few weeks ago you received a vaccine. How did that go?

Healthcare workers were one of the first populations to get offered the vaccine. It wasn’t required, and some were hesitant, but most went ahead and got it. A few weeks ago, I got my second dose of the Moderna vaccine, which consisted of two shots four weeks apart from each other. My only symptom after the first shot was a sore arm. It felt just like a flu shot. People who had got it before me said the second one was pretty rough, at least rougher than the first. After my second shot, I felt very fatigued. I had body aches and nausea. Not everyone experiences these symptoms. They say two thirds of all people don’t feel anything beyond a sore arm.

To my mind, it’s well worth it. If you do contract the virus, there’s a less likelihood of developing severe symptoms. However, it’s still unclear if you can spread it after you get the vaccine. People still need to be careful, wear masks, and take all the other precautions.

What’s the most challenging part of working in healthcare? 

It’s very physically exhausting. You’re constantly in motion, gathering resources, going from room to room to take care of different patients. It’s not an easy job. Some patients are less appreciative of your help than others, which can be frustrating.

What about the most rewarding? 

Making a positive impact in the lives of others. Helping people get home and live healthier lives and hopefully not have to come see us again. The job can be demanding, the job can be stressful, but I know the work we do is meaningful. And, in spite of everything, there have been very few days where I didn’t feel like going in.

How does your current job in endoscopy compare to working in the ICU and the Covid Unit?

Endoscopy is all out-patient, so people generally go home the same day. There are 30-40 employees on any given day, and we see anywhere from 60-80 patients in a day. It’s a very high-functioning environment, and we get each patient in and out of the hospital within a couple hours. Each procedure lasts anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or more, and they take place in any one of 9 procedure rooms. I prefer endoscopy not because it’s low pressure but because we deal with one patient at a time. This allows us to get know that individual a little bit and fully focus on what we’re doing. We also have a good camaraderie among the staff, as we take care of the same patient in different phases. There are also fewer life or death situations, and so that helps with the stress. The biggest difference I find is I’m physically but not mentally exhausted at the end of the day.

The flexibility is one of the things I appreciate the most about nursing. There’s opportunity to try something new if you get bored or unhappy where you’re at, no matter where that may be.

You’re currently in school. Tell us more about the endgame you have in mind.    

My end goal is to become a Family Nurse Practitioner. FNPs can prescribe medication, examine patients, diagnose and treat conditions, whether that be with medication or other kinds of interventions. A typical visit covers a lot of what you would have done during a normal doctor’s appointment. Eventually I’d like to specialize in bariatric care, preferably with kids, or diabetes, or maybe become a general practitioner who sees patients of all different kinds in an out-patient setting. I’ve got about a year and a couple months left of the 3-year program. OSU Wexner has a full-time work, part-time study program where they offer tuition assistance.

I’m currently taking around 9 credits. We’re learning assessment techniques and pharmacology, where you learn about all the different drugs to prescribe and their various contraindications [reasons not to prescribe a medication]. It can be stressful to work full time and do school, but I feel like with the time management and study skills I’ve acquired, it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be.

Your wife is also a nurse. How has being married to someone in the same field influenced your life? 

I think being married to someone in the same field makes it easier to destress, especially for people with stressful occupations. Megan works with cardiac patients at Nationwide in the ICU, and I’ve already said a lot about the challenges of working in that environment. It helps to connect with someone of similar interests or work because you have shared experiences, and communication become that much easier.

Healthcare, in general, is a specialized thing where there is a lot of intimacy between patients and coworkers and everyone involved because it’s the work of improving lives and providing the best possible care. Healthcare is a lot different from other fields. There’s a very real healthcare community, and it helps to have someone who is a part of that and can relate to that. When my wife and I first met, we were both on the night shift, which helped us connect and made it a lot easier on our relationship. Megan is currently studying to be a CRNA [certified registered nurse anesthetist], and so were both doing the work-study thing and can relate to each other’s experiences in a big way.

What advice would you give someone who came to you for help with stress management and emotional control?

The key is to take a minute and think about all the resources you have, whether that’s knowledge, giftings, skills, or people. My ability to stay calm and in control, in my relationships, work, and the goals I’m working toward, is about having confidence in those resources. It’s also important to have good coping skills to destress, and to find activities or hobbies that have a relaxing effect on the mind. Stress management, like good health, is all about prevention. You don’t want to wait until you’re in an emotional crisis to act. You want to take steps now to set yourself up for success in the future.

Boundaries are also important. Don’t pull yourself in too many directions. Don’t get too emotionally involved with your work. Don’t take things personally. And don’t dwell on negative experiences. I know that’s easier said than done, but it’s a skill that can be developed. I made the choice to sacrifice social time, and time spent on hobbies, to dedicate to being a full-time nurse and student. My lifestyle works for me, but everyone should weigh their emotional health and well-being before taking on any new commitments. Think about the sacrifice that will be involved and whether you will be able to follow through. And remember, you can still be happy while you make sacrifices to pursue your goals and ambitions.

They say success in nursing is as much about taking care of yourself as it is taking care of patients. The same applies to other areas of life. Self-care is important because it affects your outlook on life, how others see you, how you see yourself, and how you interact with the people around you. If you’re not allowing yourself time and space to decompress and relax, whatever that looks like for you, then you’re setting yourself up for failure.

You have the last word. 

Wear your masks. Stay away from people when you can, and be safe when you can’t. Also, maintain communication with the ones you love. Don’t take for granted the time you get to spend with them because tomorrow’s not promised.

Do you value your dreams? I’m not talking about your life goals and aspirations—which are extremely important—I’m talking about the artistic production of your subconscious mind after you fall asleep. In this article, I want to push back against the notion that dreams are meaningless, forgettable phenomenon, and share some pro tips for using them to promote physical and emotional healing via dream therapy.

The view that dreams represent no more than random electrical activity could only be proposed by people who have never remembered any of their emotionally significant ones. Most normal people are generally able to see the relevance of at least some of their nocturnal dramas. As stated above, while dreaming, the limbic region will usually be highly active. If we are dreaming about something unpleasant or threatening, this can be associated with feelings of anger which go with fight, the anxiety associated with flight, or the despair associated with freezing.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain”

Have you ever noticed that dreams almost always carry an emotional charge? And I’m talking about the dreams that you remember. We all dream whether or not we remember. Dreams are an attempt by the subconscious mind to process our lived experiences. This is partially why sleep is so vital. When we don’t get adequate sleep, we are deprived of the healing power of dreams.

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.

Austrian Neurologist Sigmund Freud

Dream therapy is a healing modality dedicated to dream exploration and analysis. The idea is that by consciously remembering, writing down, and analyzing our dreams we can gain valuable insight into the emotional and physical stressors of our lives, thereby enabling us to better address unresolved issues. It helps to keep a journal or notepad close to the bed for this purpose because many dreams are forgotten after going back to sleep or proceeding with the day. There are also dream journal smart phone apps expressly for this purpose. If you don’t currently remember your dreams, start paying attention. Many people, including myself, have found that when they start paying attention to their dreams they are able to remember them with greater frequency.

People will often report that with this additional focus on dreams, their dream life becomes more active, emotionally alive, and vivid.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain.”

In “The Hidden Psychology of Pain” Australian psychologist James Alexander dedicated chapter 11 to the “Healing Power of Dreams.” In it, he talks about how we dream during the REM stage (rapid eye-movement) and how this stage is crucial for mental health and cognition. People deprived of REM sleep due to lack of sleep, drug use, etc. exhibit deterioration in cognitive and emotional faculties. Mindbody doctors, like James Alexander, routinely promote dream awareness to resolve the emotional issues that lie at the heart of physical pain and ailments.

It may be that as we become more conscious of what is going on in our dream state, the emotional pressure that can drive chronic pain is finding another outlet for expression.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain”

Alexander also dedicates a section of chapter 11 to “dream seeding.” Dream seeding is when we consciously bring unresolved issues to our mind before bed that we want our subconscious mind to work on as we sleep. We don’t try to solve the issues ourselves—we simply bring them to the fore.

[Dream seeding] is not so much telling your unconscious how to end a dream (resulting in a preferred outcome, or resolution), but is more about setting up the conditions for the dream to allow your natural healing capacities to come to the fore. Our mind/brain has an incredibly creative capacity for working out answers to emotional problems without our deliberate instruction. When preparing for bed, you can start the dream-seeding process by choosing to think about the situation or person, the place or incident which you feel is still unfinished or disturbing within you. There is no need to script or dictate what will happen in the dream, but you can think about key elements which you feel are highly relevant. Get a sense of what elements are the most important—people, places, situations, the time in your life, etc.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain

Another term for dream seeding is dream incubation. Dream incubation famously has been used not only for healing, but for problem-solving. Here is a fascinating excerpt on dream incubation from Wikipedia (link).

In a study at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Deirdre Barret had her students focus on a problem, such as an unsolved homework assignment or other objective problem, before going to sleep each night for a week. She found that it was certainly possible to come up with novel solutions in dreams that were both satisfactory to the dreamer and rated as objectively solving the problem by an outside observer. In her study, two-thirds of participants had dreams that addressed their chosen problem and one-third reached some form of solution within their dreams.

Chapter 11 is rather lengthy and insightful. If you want to read more about the connection between the mind, emotions, and physical health, I recommend grabbing a copy of The Hidden Psychology of Pain. It is a massive book (~500 pages) written for non-experts that I have benefited extensively from over the years. Here are a couple more memorable quotes that shed insight on dream therapy for those just getting started.

You may need to think creatively about the symbolism inherent in your dreams. Some of your dreams will be quite literal, but many will be symbolic representations of other experiences which may or may not be readily apparent. Try to look for what the dream is representing, and use the emotions which are generated in the dreams as a clue. . .

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain”

When embarking on this process, it may also be that your dreams become more threatening or disturbing. With the help of the questions posed in the last chapter, there is a good chance that you are becoming more aware of past hurts and repressed emotions.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain”

My primary motivation for dream therapy is physical and emotional healing. If that weren’t enough, Psych Central identified 7 benefits of the discipline: 1) conscious and subconscious balancing; 2) insight into mood; 3) exploring symbolism; 4) sparks creativity; 5) addressing chronic nightmares; 6) positive self-care ritual; and 7) internal conflict awareness (link).

Take that for what it’s worth.

[You can follow me on Twitter @creatorvilla.] Sometimes the emotional scars of living become so wrapped up in our identity that we cannot conceptualize life without them. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to process emotional trauma. In fact, I would say this is one of the great challenges of life that all must face sooner or later. Make no mistake—I’m talking about death, divorce, injury, disease, abuse, a breakup, and you can fill in the blank. Nothing can eradicate the pain of loss, but wisdom can be the difference between staying stuck in the past for a lifetime and finding the strength to move forward after a period of grief.

I’ve transcribed a poignant clip in which former US Navy Seal Jocko Willink addresses the topic of emotional pain in a way that only he can. (You may remember him from his July 4 feature last month on discipline equals freedom.) In the clip, Willink responds to a man who wrote-in about losing a child—obviously one of the worst traumas anyone could ever go through. However, much of Willink’s insight into pain has universal application. For example, Willink analogizes pain to waves, and I cannot think of a better metaphor. No matter how absolute and all-encompassing pain may feel at times, it is not the absolute truth. It is a wave—a true but partial expression of the sum total of who we are.

I’ve never experienced the loss of a child, and I can’t imagine how difficult that is. But one thing I do know from experience—the more courage with which I “ride the wave” of whatever it is I’m going through, the faster it tends to let up. And what emerges from that process is a stronger, more compassionate version of myself.

Transcript:

My wife and I suffered three weeks of turmoil, which included losing a child. How do I expedite that moment when we pick up ourselves–basically how to push through?

So the pain that’s going to come, it’s going to come in waves. At first, you won’t even notice that they’re waves because all the waves are going to be so close together, it’s going to feel like you are drowning in sorrow. You’re not going to get any air, and you’re not going to be able to escape that sadness.

That’s what the waves feel like at first. And then at some point there’s going to be a little break, just a little break. Just a little bit of light in the darkness. Something is going to make you smile. Something is going to make you laugh. Something is going to show you just a little bit of light.

And then another wave of pain is going to come back again, and it’s going to be strong, and you won’t have any control over it. All of a sudden, you’re going to be just crying uncontrollable. You won’t be able to say, “No, no. I’m in the light now. I’m smiling right now. I’m not going to go back there.” No, you’re not going to be able to control it, and that’s scary. You’re at the mercy of this ocean of sorrow.

But don’t let that scare you. Don’t let that scare you ’cause I’m telling you that that wave is going to subside again, and this is going to go on. It’s going to go on, and the waves–they will become weaker. And what you need to realize is just because the waves are becoming weaker, this doesn’t mean that you love your child less or you miss them less or that you aren’t crushed at their passing. It just means that you’re starting to be able to deal with it, which is what you’re supposed to do.

When you feel a little bit of a break, what you can do is you can row the boat. You can row the boat, and what I mean by that is start doing something productive to get your mind moving forward. Let’s sort out the drawers in the bedroom. Let’s vacuum. Let’s do something productive. If there’s something that distracts you, that’s fine. Do it. Let there be some calm in the water.

As the calm comes, also you’re going to find moments where it’s like you can have things that are going to bring all of the waves. And that’s OK, too. Bring on the waves. Go look at the pictures. Write down the memories. Read the letters. Read the notes. Read the emails. Remember, and then there’s that standard service. You’re going to do the memorial. You’re going to do the burial.

And when that’s over, let a little bit of more time go by. Give yourself another week of washing around. Of feeling that sorrow. Of letting the waves toss you around in the ocean.

But after another week, what you do is you go and you write a letter. You write a letter to your child, and you explain to them–explain to them how much they mean to you. Explain to them how heartbroken you are that they are gone, and then explain to them why you are going to carry on. And explain to them how in losing them, you have learned without a shred of doubt, how truly precious life is. And that they have taught you the immeasurable value of your own life and your family’s life.

And explain to them that you know. That you know that they loved you, and that you know that they would want more than anything for you to be happy and productive and impactful in the world. And explain in that letter, what you will do to make them proud by how you live your life.

Then take that letter, go to their grave, and read it to them. Then cry and kiss their soul. Tell them that you will see them on the other side. Then go–live your life. And those waves are still going to come, and there’s going to be pain, and there’s still going to be sorrow, but you go and live your life. Live it well. And make them proud.

Sammy Rangel’s life gave him every reason to be angry, bitter and resentful. And for a long time, that’s exactly what he was. Physically and sexually abused as a child, Rangel ran away from home at age 11 and joined the Maniac Latin Disciples. He spent years engulfed in a life of violent crime, lengthy prison sentences, drug abuse, and promiscuity. Rangel took the first step toward transforming his life with the help of a prison drug rehabilitation program and soon after his release started working for a Safe Streets Outreach Program in Wisconsin. In 2011, he co-founded Life After Hate, a non-profit whose mission is to help people leave hate groups. He is the author of Fourbears: Myths of Forgiveness. According to its description on Amazon, the book is “a graphically illustrated guide from tortured child, to remorseless beast, to healing and change.”

I first heard Rangel’s Ted Talk over a year ago. It was powerful and inspired me to stop making excuses in life. There are a few mottos I like to repeat. One of them is, “If he can do it, I can do it, too.” Other people’s testimonies can sometimes help us recognize that many of our limitations are self-imposed. If Sammy Rangel, who was barely given a puncher’s chance, found the strength to move forward in life, what’s holding you and me back?

Recently, I stumbled across the same video and was surprised to find that there was no transcript or subtitles available. The talk is 22 minutes long and is a lot longer than most content of its kind on this site. That said, I was willing to spend hours transcribing it because I believe it is a message that can help people heal. Resentment, they say, is like drinking a poisoned cup and waiting for the other person to die. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is strength. It makes life better every single time.

Keep reading, and I’m confident you will get something out of Sammy’s testimony.

What I have learned is although the details of our lives may be different. The underlying process of getting stuck or suffering in our parts of life is the same for all of us. We do not have to be victims of our experiences or in the way that we tell our stories. But interestingly enough, stories are the only way out. And it is us who create those stories. We hold the power to change our stories and what they represent. I invite all of you to consider if it would serve you well to create a new story and a new path. And to please remember that the things that held you down will one day hold you up.

Sammy Rangel

Transcript:

Today what I’m going to share with you is a difficult story for me to talk about, and it may be difficult for you to hear. I was 41 years old when I discovered that my mother had killed my brother Renee. I was sitting in my office waiting to see the next patient. I had about 3 minutes before that appointment started. And when I read the article and this news came to me–it said that my mother had beaten my brother with a Tonka truck when he was 20 months old. At that time, that article was dated January 5 of 1969 and my mother would have been about 5 months pregnant with me. The email went on to say that my brother had died at 19 as a result of his injuries. He had permanent brain damage, partial paralysis down the side of his body, and the article said that he was losing consciousness and bleeding out of different places from his body. As I was sitting there, what I imagined myself–what I wanted to do, what I knew I was capable of, was getting up, taking off my suit coat, walking to my car, finding where I knew my mother would be, and taking her life.

At this stage in my life I had obviously overcome a lot of the abuse, a lot of the neglect and torture that she had put me through, but for some reason I was more angry at this than anything I had experienced previously. And it became quite apparent that at some point, my family had conspired to keep this secret from me over 41 years. It was just a twist of fate that I was able to discover this news. So I knew I had about those 3 minutes to pull myself together because I knew then, even though I wanted to, I was not going to get up, I was not going to drive toward where my mother was out, and I was not going to kill her. What I was going to do was pull myself together so that I could meet my responsibility to the next patient coming into my office. But in those 3 minutes I relived quite a bit of what she had done to me.

I was 3 years-old when my mother left me and my sister with her brother. And I can remember him motioning to me to come to him through a mirror that laid or rested on his bedroom doorway. When he was calling me in, I knew I didn’t want to go in there, but I felt powerless. And so I found myself next to the bed. He was naked. He was fat. He was ugly to me. And behind him I saw my sister crying. And even though I shouldn’t have understood what was happening, I did understand what was happening. And he pulled me on to the bed, and at that point my sister tried to defend me. She was just a couple years older than me at that time. And I remember him threatening her, that if she didn’t shut up that he would kill us both. And then he raped me. On the same night that he raped my sister.

Eventually we told my mother what had happened to us at the hands of her brother, and she did worse than nothing about it. She continued to make us show this man affection and respect. We had to spend time with him. We had to sit on his lap. We had to kiss him on the cheek when we greeted him. And this happened over many years. When I got that message, I realized that my mother had picked up with me where she had left off with my brother.

By the time I was 8 years old I had already tried to kill myself for the first time. Oftentimes, I wasn’t allowed to eat. I wasn’t allowed to sleep. I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom. And I had other siblings, and quite often the beatings I was taking could be happening right here and my siblings could be watching TV, or playing, or talking as if nothing was going on a few feet from them. The scars you see on my head are not from other men, are not from the streets. These are scars I [have] because as they would cut my head open with objects, as they were hitting me, I didn’t get to go to the hospital to have stitches or to get my broken bones fixed.

A part of the abuse was deep humiliation. A part of her cruelty included not being able to use the bathroom. And I would often have to walk around in my underwear in front of my siblings and family because she didn’t want me to be able to sneak food into my mouth or into the bathroom or into the basement when I went to go do chores. And so there was no hiding the fact that eventually if I needed to go to the bathroom and they wouldn’t let me, I would eventually sh*t and p*ss on myself. And if I did that, she would often make me take my underwear off and put them in my mouth, and then put her hand over my mouth so that I couldn’t throw-up, I couldn’t spit it out. And if I had the nerve to throw up, she would punish me even more.

I reached a turning point at 11, just after my birthday. I remember on this occasion I had snuck out of the room. I used to have to kneel next to her bed, and I remember crawling very quietly on the pattern on the floor that I discovered wouldn’t creek as loud as I snuck out in the middle of the night. And I found myself back in the room standing over her with a knife. And I was debating killing her, but there were 2 reasons that I remember that prevented that. One, I was afraid. I don’t think I was born to kill. And the other is I loved my mother deeply despite all that abuse, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that. And so I made a choice. I made a choice to leave. To run away. And that was a pretty big event because as a result of the abuse, I had no friends. I had no sleep-overs. I had no one in the community that I could go to. I was going into a completely unknown, unfamiliar, isolated space in the world.

And it didn’t take long. Within that first year, I was having sex. I was drinking. I was smoking. I was doing cocaine. I was in a gang. I was violent and aggressive, carrying weapons. I had dropped out of school and right before I turned 12, me and my 11-year old girlfriend buried our first child together. When we went to the hospital while she was in labor, they put me in a room by myself. And eventually a doctor opened the door and he rolled in a table, like a medical table, and on this table was a blue napkin that looked a lot like a tablecloth. And there was something underneath there. And then he left and he closed the door behind him. I had a feeling that I knew what was under there, but your mind can’t quite grasp it just yet. And eventually I got up and I lifted the paper towel and there was my dead son. He had been dead 2 days before she gave birth to him, and so his body was already starting to decompose. He was green and black and other colors that nobody should have to see on a baby. And his head was like a balloon filled water, it was just lop-sided and laying on the table. And there was no one there to talk to me about that or to process that or to make sense for me.

And I walked out of that hospital and I remember feeling less like a runaway and more like a throwaway. I felt that no one would be there to help me process or to understand my life or these experiences. And I remember moving from being scared to being angry. And I expressed that anger through violence. I escalated the type of violence. Before I was fighting but it was more defensive, now I’m choosing to be aggressive. Now I’m choosing to start fights. Initially when I went to the streets I remember there was a situation where a man asked me to participate in a murder. As he was killing someone he asked me to finish. And I couldn’t bring myself to that. But now after this situation, I felt like I wanted to kill, I felt like I wanted to hurt someone. And I remember me and my friend, we picked a homeless person–an innocent victim–and we beat him up and I tried to kill him that day. He had done nothing to us but it was my expression.

Eventually, that led me to going to prison as an adult at the age of 17 years old. And I was sent to prison not for the crime I actually committed but because of how terrible a teenager I was before I became an adult because the crime they sent me to prison for was usually considered a minor crime but technically it was enough to send me away. And I ended up in a maximum-security prison because I was fighting all the time, I was talking crap all the time. I had no problem cussing you out or trying to pick a fight. For the record, I wasn’t a very good fighter, but I was wiling to fight.

This prison that I walked into had a pretty hostile climate. I walked into racial tension between the whites and the blacks. And very soon after arriving there, a race riot kicked off. And it was the white against the blacks, and as a minority I had to side with the blacks if I was going to join the fighting. And we were quite outnumbered. There was about 10 of us willing to fight and about 30 of the men that we were going to be fighting. And we knew it was clear which side you were on. I myself had 2 knives in my hand, and the whites were armed with knives and spears and metal chairs and mop ringers–you name it, anything that could hurt or maim you. And the order was given to start fighting.

As we started fighting and we’re all trying to kill each other at this point, a guard came in much like on a cat-walk [a runway or ramp] like you see up here. And from above he started shooting and when he shot, everyone ran. But unfortunately my position–my escape was between the whites and the door out. And so my back was against the wall. And eventually the guard who came in to start shooting left again, and that signaled another round of fighting. And those white men came to get me–I’m doing my best to fend them off. An acquaintance–if you can call another person in prison such a thing–saw that I was isolated and cut off, and he joined the fight to help protect me and to help me find a way out. And at that point, that guard came back in and another shot rang out.

I looked to the side and I saw my friend who had joined was shot in his side–had a rather large hole. He was laying on the ground, the whites ran back to their cells. And I remember the guard yelling at me that if I were to touch him, he would shoot me too. But at this point, I had no fear, I had no sense of danger. My friend was screaming, and the ironic thing is that I have two knives in my hand, and I’m looking at a group of men who are armed. And yet they shot him because he was black. I grabbed my friend and I dragged him 150 cells to the other side of the building that I was in. And it was immediately apparent that the guards were not going to allow me or him to go to the hospital. No one in, no one out is what they said. And I asked several times and when it was clear that there were going to allow him to die, I started fighting with the guards. And then other people came out to help me, and we eventually took over that cell hall and took the keys from the guards and we forced our way to the hospital that was in the prison. By that time, my friend had already passed away.

I spent the next 28 months in segregation and isolation for that but because of my courage, or my role, in that prison riot. I started to gain more respect and more power through my gang. Almost immediately from the hall 28 months after spending that much time in the hall, I was released to society. I remember going in as a street punk, a kid who was just loud-mouthed and willing to fight to now I’m still loud-mouthed and willing to fight, but now I have power, now I have authority, and now I have embraced hate, not just anger. And when I embraced hate I was willing to kill for any reason. And I’ve always said, I had more animal in me than human at that time.

So it’s no surprise that just a few months later I was on my way back to prison in another state for even more violent crimes. As a gang leader at this point walking into that prison, I was able to take over and take control of prisons rather easily. I was able to have guards beat up or inmates beat up. I had access to resources that others would find hard to get. And eventually that led to me more encounters, and while I was in that prison system I beat up 4 more guards. And I spent approximately 5 years out of the 7 that I stayed there in segregation and I was transferred 17 times.

And what was ironic to me was that on one of these occasions, a man had said he felt he was in danger for his life because of my presence. And so they came and got me in the middle of the night and put me on the bus and were transferring me to another prison. And when I got to that prison and as I’m walking off, the security staff recognized me and then told the bus driver and their staff “This man cannot come here. We’re not equipped to take him here.” It is one thing to be locked up for many years, and it’s another years to be kicked out of the well completely. When a man is rejected even from prison, where is there left go? And so it was a deeply shaming and humiliating experience in many ways.

At some point, I was forced into a treatment. And at this point, I thought I could go into this treatment, outsmart myself, and outsmart the people there who were meant to give me help. I was willing to play the game because I was willing to fight for the carrot on the end of the stick, which was an earlier release than if I didn’t do the prison program. So I said, “I’ll go there, I’ll play this game.”

In the process of treatment, I remember my counselor asking me in front of my peers to talk about my mother. This struck me as very odd, I had not talked about my mother since I ran away from home, and had no desire to. And he pressed me, and when he asked me to do that, almost with the first word came the tears. I described all that abuse, all that neglect, all of the times she made me go to school smelling like urine, all of the times she had pulled patches out of my hair, all of the times she had left wide open gashes and cuts on my body. I had no problem expressing that.

And then he did something very strange. He took a chair, and he put it in front of me. And he told me to imagine that my mother was sitting in that chair. He said “What would you say to her if she was sitting here?” I was like I don’t want to talk to her. And he pressed me, and as I thought about what I would say, I remember saying “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us? Why did you do these things?” But of course no answer came.

And then he pressed me further. He asked me to sit in the chair. I had no desire to sit in that chair. Did not want to empathize. Did not want to understand her perspective. I wanted to hate her and blame her. And I felt wholeheartedly justified in that stance, in that position, because much of what she had done was unforgivable if you asked me. But I did. I looked back at my chair, and I racked my brain what would she say. The only thing I could come up with was “I’m sorry.” Here I am in my late 20s still trying to see her as a human being underneath all that hate. Then he asked me to go back to my chair, and he asked me how I was feeling. And I expressed all those feelings of being a victim, being abandoned. Being brutalized, being unloved, unseen, invisible to her and to everyone else in the world.

And my turning point came with this next question: “Sammy, have you ever hurt anyone the way your mother has hurt you?” Since then my life has been one long apology. To my victims. To my siblings. To my children who I had abandoned at this point. Including my enemies that I felt had deserved whatever I did to them. And as you can see, getting to this point is still very difficult to talk about. I didn’t want to mess up my final point, so if you bear with me I’d like to read it to you to make sure that it comes across clear. I feel that this is the most important part of this message:

What I have learned is although the details of our lives may be different. The underlying process of getting stuck or suffering in our parts of life is the same for all of us. We do not have to be victims of our experiences or in the way that we tell our stories. But interestingly enough, stories are the only way out. And it is us who create those stories. We hold the power to change our stories and what they represent. I invite all of you to consider if it would serve you well to create a new story and a new path. And to please remember that the things that held you down will one day hold you up. Thank you.

Today’s post is a contribution from my friend Souad Tello, who is a Syrian refugee currently living in Turkey. Recently, she shared with me a poignant poem she wrote in Arabic with themes of love, loss, heartbreak, separation, and nostalgia. I liked the poem so much that I translated it into English. No poetic translation, especially this one, can do the original justice. But I hope it can communicate a fraction of the beauty of the original, which I have entitled “Life is Nostalgia.” Below you can also find two audio recording by Souad of the original Arabic and English translation.

One of our readers once shared the following quote: expression is the opposite of depression. It goes without saying that art can be a powerful means to expel negative energy.

Nostalgia [no-stal-juh]: a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.

Source: Dictionary.com

Life is Nostalgia (By Souad Tello) (Translated by Ben Peters)

The night comes. . with the moon in its embrace, mourning our sorry condition. . confused clouds, only occasionally visible to the eye. . a treacherous cold breeze after a violent heat. . the world spins around us. . as we stand firm in our place. . we cannot help but remember. . they departed. . they left our wounds to fester with blood. . and our eyes to wander through the labyrinths of the past in search of them. . because they were the source of our hope and confidence. . with a word or two they destroyed the worlds inscribed in our hearts . . with cold indifference they left like it was nothing. . the cold breeze returns. . the mourning moon. . and confused clouds, robbing sleep from our eyes. . with them they compel us to watch the threads of the past cloaked in sorrow. .

يأتي الليل . . وبحضنه قمر باك على حالنا . . غيوم حائرة . . تارة نراها وتارة لا . . نسمات برد غادرة بعد حر ثائر . . والدنيا تدور بنا . . وما زلنا واقفين بأمكنتنا . . مصرين على التذكر . . ذهبوا . . تركوا جراحنا تلعب بالدماء . . وأعيننا تائهة بمتاهات الماضي تبحث عنهم . . أجل إنهم من كانوا آمالنا من كانوا موضع ثقتنا . . بكلمة واثنتين دمروا عوالم كانت مخطوطة في قلوبنا . . وبلا أي مبالاة كان الفراق أسهل ما أمكنهم . . تعود نسمات البرد . . القمر الباكي . . والغيوم الحائرة وتسرق النوم من أعيننا . . لتجبرنا على السهر معها نشاهد أشرطة الماضي المغلفة بالأسى . .

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the cause of depression attributed to a chemical imbalance in the brain. It’s true that when depression manifests, chemical changes are sure to have taken place. All human emotions, hormones, and mental states are inextricably linked with chemical changes in the brain. When we describe these changes as an imbalance, what we mean is they do not lead to subjective feelings of well-being. The brain, on the contrary, has its own reasons for doing things. It may judge that the amount of a chemical is just right for reasons unknown to us even if it causes depression in a human being. That said, whether the chemical changes associated with depression should be thought of in terms of an imbalance is not crucial to this discussion. But to regard these changes as an explanation for the condition itself is simplistic at best and misleading at worst.

Take relationships, for example. Research has discovered that lust is associated with an increase in testosterone in males and estrogen in women (link). Attraction is associated with an increase in dopamine and a related hormone, norepinephrine, and an apparent reduction in serotonin. Attachment, for its part, is associated with increases in oxytocin and vasopressin. To reduce the phenomenon of lust, attraction, and attachment to their chemical states would be a blatant error. We all know from experience that social events in the world of human affairs are responsible for many changes in chemical composition.

The question depressed people must ask relates not to chemical changes in the brain but to the forces that trigger them. Speaking for myself, in the seasons I experienced depression it was always related to unresolved emotional issues. Sometimes these were clearly identifiable (I knew why I was depressed), while other times it had to do with processes taking place at a subconscious level that took some effort to access and resolve. Dr. John Sarno addresses at length the relationship between emotions, depressions, and a host of other medical conditions in his seminal work The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders. I recommend it to everyone as an introduction to the field of mindbody medicine, especially those for whom existing treatment has been ineffective.

As we should think long and hard about whether it makes sense to discuss chemical imbalance as an explanation for anything, much less a condition as serious as depression.

[You can follow me on Twitter @creatorvilla.] Vishen Lakhiani knows a thing or two about forgiveness. Two years ago, a friend, confidant, and high-level employee stole $100,000 from his company and threatened and harassed his family unprovoked. In a lecture, Lakhiani describes the powerful benefits he experienced after transforming his hurt through what he calls forgiveness into love. Perhaps most striking of all is the research conducted on Lakhiani’s brain that demonstrated positive changes in brainwave activity following this decision. Check out the complete video and transcript below!

Lakhiani is Founder and CEO of Mindvalley, an educational company specializing in personal growth. He authored the wildly popular book The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed on Your Own Terms.

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Popular Wisdom

Transcript:

Sometime last year, I experienced one of the most awful experiences in my life. I found out that a guy I had hired in my office in Malaysia where we have about 140 staff had been stealing money. Worse, he was a trusted person who was in charge of our operations. He was there to make sure that my employees had proper housing, that air conditioning was running, that the massive office of 15,000 sq. ft. was running well. But we caught him actually pilfering money. He had created a series of fake companies under his own name, a relative’s name, and he was paying his own air conditioning repair. Paying his own cleaners. And in the end he had pocketed $100,000 for himself.

So it was an awful thing, and when we finally caught him, there were threats. Threats that he was going to have gangsters follow me in my car on the way home. He started disrupting our work, sending the fire engine over saying that our office was a fire trap. All of this sh*t started happening, and it was a really really really stressful time. But sometimes the world or the universe or God–whatever you want to call it–gives you these moments of stress so you can rise above them. Michael Beckwith calls these kensho moments. Kensho moments are moments where you grow from pain. Something happens. Maybe your health breaks down and you end up in the hospital. But you grow from that and you learn to appreciate your body. I was about to have a Kensho moment, and that Kensho moment happened coincidentally.

This guy Dave Asperey and his friend JJ Bergen invited me to experience a new type of bio-hacking model that Dave was promoting called 40 years of Zen. So I went to this thing and what they promised was this. What was promised was that you’re going to meditate for 5 days in the chamber. You’re going to have your brain hooked up to all these machines. And the scientists who developed this had found how to reverse engineer the brainwave states of monks who had been meditating for 40 years. So they looked at monks, psychics, billionaires–these are what are in their brains. And they reverse engineered that so that you can hook up your brain and in 5 days, you can develop the brainwave activity of a monk who has been meditating for 20 to 40 years. So it’s a bit incredulous, but I thought “Wow, with a promise like that, let’s try it anyway.”

I went there, and as I went into the chamber with my brain hooked up, Dave was there, too, JJ was there, Joe Polish–some of you guys might know him–was there, too. As well as billionaires and Hollywood actors–it was a very elite group. They finally shared with us the secret, what were we supposed to do when our brains were hooked up? Now it turned out it wasn’t going into an astral-projection or lucid dreaming or going into deep states of meditation. It turned out that one of the biggest things these scientists found to get your brain to function like the brains of monks who have been meditating for 20 years–and, by the way, that’s what the hookup looks like [image on screen]–It was this one thing–radical forgiveness.

And so I had to forgive everything. I had to forgive–I mean I love my kids–I had to forgive my kids for little moments in the past when they irritated me when I was trying to work. I had to forgive my mom and dad for like the slightest thing. I had to forgive every friend I knew. I had to forgive people who genuinely hurt me. I had to forgive everyone. I had to forgive myself–younger versions of myself. I had to forgive myself from 10 years ago when I made a bad business decision that cost me $3 million. I had to forgive and forgive and forgive. And this was 4 days of forgiveness, and finally I came to that one guy–let’s call him Mr. X. That one guy. This had just happened. And I was so angry with him. It was so painful. And I had to forgive him, and I saved him for last. Because I’m like, “No, it’s going to be so tough.” This guy threatened my family, he stole from my family, he was someone who used my trust of him to take advantage of me. And I had to forgive him into love.

Now here’s the thing, it’s not just forgiveness, it was forgiveness into love. That means that at the end of the forgiveness session, you must be able to picture this person who hurt you so bad coming to you. And you must be able to hug them and feel empathy and understanding for what they went through. And so I had to forgive Mr. X. I had to see why did he do what he did. Maybe his parents were poor, and maybe theft was the only way his family could survive. Maybe his wife was sick. Maybe he was ill. Maybe he had an ill child, and that’s why he needed that. Maybe he was abused as a kid. And I had to imagine all the ways why he would justify what he did. And I had to be empathetic to him.

But here’s the crazy thing. When your brain is hooked up like that, it’s measuring your brainwaves. It’s measuring two things basically: alpha amplitude. So they hire your alpha spikes the more monk-like your brain is. And brain-wave resonance. So the more balanced your brain is–that means you’re not alpha on just one end, you’re alpha in both hemispheres. Again, the more ideal your brain. And all of a sudden as a I forgave Mr. X, I heard the loudest beep so far. They use sounds to tell you how well you’re doing. I opened my eyes and there was my score. And it was the highest alpha amplitude score I had ever generated. It was amazing to see with my own eyes what forgiveness could do in my brain. And that was liberating for me.

Now, the next year as I got rid of all my doubts, all of my forgiveness, the next year ended up being the single most successful year of my life. And my life had always been successful, always growing like that [moving hand in a straight line], but the next year it spiked. I had the book come out, the most successful A-Fest [big wellness event] we have ever done. My health, my happiness levels, everything just spiked because I was able to shed 40 years of pain, of things I had to forgive myself and other people around me for. And that’s why forgiveness is so important.

Now the exercise that’s done in 40 years of Zen is super simple. I now do it every morning. Every morning I forgive something. You wouldn’t believe but even a waiter who rubs you the wrong way. That negative energy stays with you so every morning I clear myself of all negativity. Now those of you who do the 6-phase meditation–which is the meditation program I popularized–phase 3 is what? It’s forgiveness, right. And this is basically what you do. Now we won’t be doing it live in this group because some people will break down. Some people will be really really really uncomfortable, but interesting things happen when you practice this.

For example, when I was at 40 years of Zen, we had one fellow participant with us, and this person was having a really tough time forgiving. He had to forgive a family member who had sexually abused him while he was like 10 years old. And that had really really really messed him up. Imagine if a family member does that to you at 10. Now he was having a tough time forgiving this family member, forgiving him forgiving him forgiving him. Now he was in his 50s but still had to forgive for something that happened 40 years ago. And an interesting thing happened the very next morning. So we were on day 2–the very next morning we were heading to the lab. And he showed me a video on his iPhone, he’s like “Vishen, I cannot believe this just happened. Remember I was telling you about that family ember who abused me when I was 10. Out of the blue, the family member just sent me a video of himself apologizing.”

It just happened. It’s as if reality shifted when this man forgave his family member. It happened within 48 hours of this forgiveness ritual. You may think it’s all happening in your head, but perhaps at a deeper level something more profound is happening. That’s why phase 3 of the 6-phase meditation is dedicated to forgiveness.

Now the exercise itself looks like this: you spend a minute or two minutes–no more than that–thinking or feeling the anger. And the anger can be for yourself for something you did in the past, for something someone did to you in the past. You spend 2 minutes feeling that, then you stop. Then you see a younger version of yourself or the person who abused you or wronged you in front of you. And you try to develop empathy for them. Ask them, you know, try to think for yourself. What made them do it? Did they face abuse as a kid? Did they experience something really bad? Were they simply mistrained?

Two ideas have really helped me. One is a quote from Neil Donald Walsh in his book Conversations with God. He says “I have sent you nothing but angels. Every person who enters your life–little, small, or big, good or bad–is a fellow angel there to teach you something.” So I find that thinking about that philosophy helps.

Another philosophy I think of is the phrase “Hurt people, hurt people.” Which simply means that everybody who hurts you is doing it because at some level they were hurt themselves. They’re just passing it on. But you have the ability to cut that cord and stop the hurt. So you don’t continue passing it on. Think about human history, right. How nations fight nations fight nations for generations because of this crazy idea “Hurt people hurt people.” But when we can forgive, we can move on. So in that second part of that exercise, you feel empathy.

Bill Bullard said “Knowledge is the lowest form of learning. Empathy is the highest form of learning.” Empathy means you can see things from another person’s point of view, and really seek to understand them. Empathy is one of the greatest forms of intelligence we can develop. That’s all it takes. Now it doesn’t mean you will forgive someone immediately. For certain acts, it can take years. But this is the first step. And you never know how powerful this can be until you try it.