It’s not easy.
You’ll be tested up to your limits to keep going with your goals.
Some of the truly certainties that you have, you talk and almost everything you believe will be putting in test to consideration.
I had to start with this because is exactly what I’m feeling right now.
While I’m testing this lifestyle with the whole traveling experience, I’m visiting new places and expanding my consciousness in a practical way. It’s very challenging to be able to keep my routine, to enjoy the places I’m visiting, to make real and truly connections, to work, to travel, to be present… anyway, to keep everything “on the plate”.
By the way: so far, so good if I can say.
There’s something more beyond the external, tho.
Sometimes I start to really experiment my body fighting my mind.
I understand how they two are always living together and keeping the disagreement of what’s best or/and what my whole system should be doing.
Wanna know what started to power up? The ability to be in an intensive conversation with your unconscious manifestations, even if you don’t want that to happen at all.
I believe that this is actually the final goal of being the experience and the scientist of your own lifestyle: Be even more present besides the external circumstances.
Your routine would be even more stronger if you’re always adapting the core parts. The important insights, the way to maneuver the “hour blocks” to wherever you are experiencing, the refine of prioritization.
In fact, maybe the way to teste the real functionality of your routine is exactly this.
Cause, if your habits just work where you are placed, I mean physically, you’re not freeing yourself through discipline; you’re unconsciously finding more excuses to be stuck in your very well build environment; and sometimes, it do not challenge you enough.
In the same manner you can pack your very small luggage with those very necessary stuffs you cannot leave without, you can also pack your habits and routine to understand what’s really necessary to live, taking in consideration the importance of a health life even when changing places every 15 days.
That’s why my morning routine is the best way to keep me on tracking (even when sometimes I struggle with the working out issue; I miss my muscles).
This Newsletter is all about that:
How to keep the core habits that ground yourself while testing your own capability of maintaining them?
Virtue x Sadhana
Without embodiment, consistent ideas lose credibility.
The moment you stop living what you believe is the moment that will be even harder to people believe in you.
You live yourself fully, both to yourself and to understand the feedback from others.
(you certainly don’t need other people to believe in you, you should know that by now. But can be a great measure of reflection about the manifestation of your being to use the feedback to accelerate your learning)
The thing is: the world try really hard to separate things in two opposite polarities.
It’s part of the modus operandi of reality, actually… and, sometimes, makes sense to bring clarity in a lot of confusing things around you.
But, for me, the two most opposed issues in the modern world have actually a lot in common.
Living in a rational way (1) and experiencing intuition (2) are the “different directions” that people use to turn apart.
But being able to relate these two things is something that comes naturally when you start to focus in the… right things.
This split sometimes is also in a general way, being: the West focuses on reason, structure, and achievement while the East focuses on devotion, alignment, and flow…
Most people end up choosing one and neglecting the other.
My whole journey by far is very transparent about this daily:
Bridging between Reason and Devotion.
I’m a person who is moved by challenging situations where I can grow and improve myself.
I also have been moved by the practice of praying and learning how to surrender.
In this context, without really bridging the two worlds I will talk about (Virtue & Sadhana), you risk becoming unbalanced, cause:
- Pure reason without devotion can lead to burnout and rigidity
- Pure devotion without structure can lead to lack of tangible results
It’s a true mission to learn how to live in a specific king of health tension.
I’m living this tension myself, and when I try to find a more deeper definition I always face those two same concepts over and over in how is the best way to live life. And here’s what I’m always doing when this happens: connecting the two points of view.
Let’s dive in:
Aristotle’s Virtue
We have two main concepts in Aristotle’s view on how to live life in a complete and meaningful way.
He defines what’s Excellence (areté) and what’s having Practical Wisdom (phronesis) in every aspect of your daily life.
Think about Areté as the act of sharpening a blade everyday of your life. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to use it all the time and also doesn’t mean you’ll be perfect or the blade will be the supreme most sharp blade of the world.
But there’s a magic sensation that, which is being able to just perceive what could be better and following the steps to make it happen.
Phronesis on the other hand is how you’re going to use your blade, which is being sharpened consistently awaiting the “right situation”. It’s the alive wisdom to know when and how to apply what you’ve honed.
Virtue is about the way I’ve trained myself to meet life, over and over again and not just about knowing.
Aristotle insists that character is built in the small repetitions no one sees.
The day by day challenges that you put yourself into and to decide to stick to it. Like a clock that keeps repeating hours without complaining like “Oh no, I’ve been in 6 before. Why again?”.
Think about it:
Walking up at 4AM is not glamorous.
Doing yoga or focusing in your body by the morning it’s not something easy. Meditating Writing …being there, e v e r y d a y.
For me, those are the things I found that make me feel good with myself; make me feel aligned. Those are the things that help me to reach my best version.
I’m sure you have yours (and I’m sure that you’re neglecting some of them.
Every repetition is a stone laid into the foundation of who you’re becoming.
That’s way is important to ask yourself: What does my consistency say about me when no one is watching?
In conclusion, Virtue from Aristotle is discipline that polish the lens.
Without habituation, your perception gets weaker.
The goal is not to close yourself while you’re in your routine without being able to experience something new; or to not give the opportunity to new things enter your routine and daily habits.
It’s simply to understand how yourself works at the best, aiming to be by the edge of your performance, **so you can live more present and perceptive in new situations by removing or introducing the habits the really matters.
Sadhana
If Aristotle’s Virtue is about being sharp and attentive to every detail to extract the best of it in every situation (you could even say ”too rational, Aristotle…waay too rational”), Sadhana otherwise is about understanding the real meaning of surrender.
What really moves you through the world?
What’s that invisible things that is beyond your comprehension which own subliminally guide in your life?
You can know your Sadhana by showing up not just for yourself, but for something higher.
Sadhana can be define like this:
- A disciplined spiritual practice — often daily, often at the same time, designed to purify the mind and body.
- Less about the specific technique (yoga, meditation, mantra) and more about the commitment to show up, no matter what.
- A process of aligning the self with a higher consciousness or truth — whether understood as divine, cosmic order (dharma), or inner realization.
- Intended to dissolve resistance and shape the practitioner into someone whose is more present and aligned.
Is letting the default state of your being be transformed by blind trust.
“The invisible ground always rise for bold steppers”
— Augusto Schneider
The thing that anchor me in my travels right now is being able to follow a simple routine that “could be done everywhere”.
The stubbornness of following mine really meaningful practices to be connected with the source… and repeating them all over the places.
The ritual remains:
Waking up at 4AM. Meditating. Practicing yoga first thing in the morning. Making coffee. Writing at the very early hour in the day (including right now). The working block very well defined until the end of the morning. Reading.
This is practically the sacred thread I’ve been carried from place to place, weaving coherence through my journey.
“What does it means that the sun may rise elsewhere, but my practice rises within me at the same time?”
Holding the two worlds
I like to think that those two concepts together are the aspirational of a perfect balance.
There’s a kind of harmony in holding both sides of the same rope, being at the edge of them in two different roles.
Sometimes I just want to let it all go.
Other times I want to control every little aspect of what I can do.
Seems like the right amount of tension brings the right amount of sharpness and trust. One side totally complete the other in this “balancing plates equilibrium” mindset.
The aspiration here is to use Aristotle’s Virtue to give your path the structure and stability you need.
While sharing the same energy in applying your Sadhana.
This way you can give your own path coherence and alignment without losing the deeper flow of your life.
If you think about it, your whole life will be your particular scientific experiment, private for the experiment, and public cause you’re testing in the external lab of reality.
Right now I’m testing it all. Like, the All-in of Life (poker ref): Testing my concepts of The Grid and The Bubble to understand much more about the quality of the vision and consciousness I’m nourishing.
The adventure consists in living those concepts thought different contexts, cultures, and challenges.
“Yoga practice, like virtue ethics, is not about following a set of rules, but about cultivating the habits and dispositions that lead to a life of flourishing.”
— Marlysa Sullivan
Who came to me in defining this all? My scientific project, being my own life the Petri dish in this context, which I can observe and make my analysis in this way:
Hypothesis → Living Test → Observation → Refinement
It’s both a Oroborus and a Torus, a dynamic to thrive in life itself; seeing the own action as the only source of pure, non-negotiable and transparent knowledge, literally digging it out of the ground.
Very intense. (Time to breath..) ufff
🕹️ What can I share with more property now?
I’ll outline Three Clear Actions that I believe are the most important, after living like that for a little while.
You can make it to your daily routine or to your own kind of “life-experiment-I am-expading-the-quality-of-consciousness”:
- One non-negotiable practice
The change is always there. You cannot avoid it. It is what moves us, right?
Therefore, there’s always something you can carry with you to make things more familiar along the path of changes.
It’s your anchor to, future comparison, metric and data everything in a grounding point.
For me is My Early Morning.
I love to wake up earlier than everyone, meditate, do my yoga practice (depending on the place), and write.
That take me to another level in my routine. I understand right now that with the traveling context, it’s better to put all the work in my morning as I’m inside my “creative explosion” part of the day.
So, mornings for me, please. Always.
- Keep coherence
Much more than an action itself, or a practice to be followed like a routine or schedule, keep the coherence is the most magical thing you can develop.
It’s about noticing your field and being able to understand the nuances of what’s changing, or even more imaginative: how “your presence is spinning” and the angle of your own existence axis.
We don’t need to complicate it (oh yeah, seriously? Spinning what?), so keep in mind that some parts of your day feels right and other feels off.
That’s it. Your coherence comes from noticing yourself during the day and choosing what’s seems right to keep your flow and growth.
Remember The Bubble all the time and remember to remain it crystal clear, knowing the projections and the reactions of your own field.
- Flow your actions through the day
Not everything can be reasonably decided.
There are some things that will happen which you don’t even know yet: in the day, the month or the year.
You don’t know yourself in the situation that will come.
You don’t know the circumstances of what’s going to appear.
You don’t even know the kind of “expertise pack” will be useful.
When you ground yourself with the non-negotiable practice and you keep coherence about your own self-experiment, trusting your guts is something that rises as letting go and accepting become together a tool to face challenges
You will not all the time be right or in alignment with your own projection in that specific happening, but for sure your own path will be unfolding to bring you the necessary teachings you need.
In this way, let The Grid guide your action. Be able to respond to that in a meaningful way. Don’t try to control what comes.
Be aware of the power in touching the lines of perception and see how they will resonate, turning each choice into proof and data to your self-experiment.
The Freedom of living without Fear
Grounding is a very beautiful concept.
Some call it Earthing. It’s consists in:
The attitude which involves connecting your body to the Earth’s natural electric charge. Through direct skin contact — walking on the ground with bare feet, for example — the Earth absorbs your body’s positive charge, and you receive its energy in the form of electrons.
That is one of the examples in how you can do in a physical way. Therefore, came to my mind that it can happen also in a mental way, just needing to understand what’s grounding yourself in your own mind.
Taking here this Mental Grounding in consideration, what happens is that you’ll gain the stability that doesn’t depend on location, conditions, or mood.
Your Bubble will remain magnetic and coherent.
The question is, how can you find those certain things and habits in your daily live, your movings, your challenges that can help you with this “mindly” gronding?
Noticing how what you choose to keep, wherever you go or whoever you talk, is always attracting aligned opportunities and aligned situations.
And for that I want to give a better clue: You’ll have to be very perceptive, very attentive.
As much as you expose yourself to new situations, could be long travels across countries or just a new gym in the next neighborhood, you’re stimulating your perception and gaining more and more angles in your POV to interpret life.
So, your Grid will sharpen (if you let it, by working with it) around you, letting you see patterns and solutions other people miss.
What I can tell by experience is: be consistent. Malleable, but consistent.
You’ll trust yourself more because you’ll have lived proof you can sustain your own path. (I’m saying that if you’re choosing a Traveling Lifestyle or just if you’re Traveling through life.)
Keep traveling with this in mind.
Some things keep you grounded. Find those things, define them and use your ability to discriminate so you can be Virtue and concise at the same time you are Devotional and loose.
“The unity of mind and body is not given from the beginning, but must be cultivated through practice. Only then does one’s being align with the order of the world.”
— Yasuo Yuasa
What keeps you is what you keep with you.
Your interpretation of the world can have a filter so thick that you don’t even see the outside, being everything a reflection of you like a mirror from inside.
(Very dangerous, if I could say.)
Or you can live by the other extreme, having no ground at all in the things your personality can come back to meditate about and understand whats happening.
When you choose the balance to navigate what brings you back with the ability to let it go, the walls of your internal world become transparent, spongy, but very very based.
(seems like everything comes to breath in and breath out, all the time)
My suggestion with all this reflection?
Everything around is reflecting yourself, so let it reflect your best version.
It’s not just a question of adapt anymore.
It is perceiving that the first stages of truly becoming are in the very next step.
The bold step.
For me, I read as integrating East and West, Reason and Devotion, Consistency and Openness.
For you, can be this reflection of turning your life into both the experiment and the evidence; you can give whatever name is more comfortable for your understanding.
The main goal is to be breathing yourself in and out.
Focusing most of the time on what brings you back; but experimenting at the point of almost losing it.
This way you can fly even further, physically and consciously, having the nest as a backpack.
“The will to learn without tiring, and to teach without growing weary — this is the way of the noble person.”
— Confucius, Analects
Define your Virtue.
Honor your Sadhana.
Step into the (meaningful) loop.
