Spiritual Awakening

I had my first awakening experience in my early twenties. At that time, I was playing in a band. We had just found a new vocalist, and he and I had been friends and bandmates for maybe a month or so when he asked me one night at rehearsal if I had ever heard of the “law of attraction”. I had never heard of it, but for some reason, it felt familiar. At that time in my life, all four quadrants—mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical—were in poor health. I was intensely heartbroken from a failed romantic relationship, then my best friend at the time betrayed me, my entire group of friends had split up because of internal drama, the band had changed, everything was changing, and I was also physically unhealthy from all the drinking, smoking, and depression, and my spiritual life was non-existent other than the terrifying paranormal events that were occurring in my home daily.

Life was just a mess. After the law of attraction was brought to my awareness and explained to me that night, I remember driving home from our studio feeling completely defeated and victimized by whatever it was that created this whole human experience. I couldn’t possibly understand how I attracted that whole mess into my life. I was contemplating that experience the entire car ride home, and it just made me more upset by the minute. It made zero sense to me. I was an honest person, but I got lied to all the time. I was a loyal person, but I got betrayed and abandoned all the time. I worked extremely hard but never got very far or had much money. I played by the rules and lived my life with integrity, but it was the ones who cheated, stole, and lied that would always get the recognition or the reward. None of this made any sense to me.

As I pulled into my driveway that night, I remember thinking to myself that I just wanted to opt out of this reality. It seemed that the whole design of this world was rigged against good and peaceful beings, and the “law of attraction” apparently didn’t work for me, so I didn’t want any part of this backward, evil reality anymore. I wanted out; I even wanted to no longer be a part of this earth. So I parked on the driveway and just sat in the car, thinking to myself, This is it; I’m going to die; there’s no way I’m going to get out of this car tonight and go back into that haunted house and deal with that or any part of this unfair world anymore. I was done. After sitting there like an empty vessel for a few minutes, I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the steering wheel, and with every ounce of willpower I had, I focused all my intention on dying. I just wanted the switch that kept my life turned “on”, to get switched back to “off”. 

After a couple of minutes of intense focus on this process, my internal vision started fading to white. Moments later, I began to see still frames in my mind of events and memories that left my conscious awareness decades ago. Events from my early childhood and all others leading to the present moment started appearing in my mind like photographs that were alive and moving as if I was watching my life play out in a movie that I was witnessing with my mind. After what seemed like a few minutes, the visuals stopped and my internal vision went to black as if the movie had ended, so I opened my eyes, and that was the moment where I felt like it all began. There was an indescribable stillness around me. I then glanced into the rearview mirror and saw myself sitting there, staring right into my own eyes, and it was like seeing myself for the first time.

I placed my hands on my face, and I immediately started sobbing. I felt so many things at that moment. I felt such compassion and love for the person I saw in that mirror, and I was so sorry for allowing so many traumatic things to happen to that person and for treating and judging that person the way I did. I just wanted to give him the biggest hug he’s ever had and tell him that I’m sorry for everything, that I love him, and that I will never let him fall to these depths again. Part of the intense emotion was also coming from this palpable energy around me that felt like, without words, it was letting me know that everything was going to be okay and that I was loved very much. The last time I ever felt that secure and at peace was when I was a small child being embraced by my mother. It was just an indescribable feeling I got, and it put me in an overwhelming state of gratitude.

After I had regained some sense of composure from that experience, I opened the car door, stepped out of the car and onto the driveway, and looked up at the night sky in complete and utter awe. I think I started sobbing again because of how beautiful it was and how grateful I was to be experiencing that moment, truly aware of the astronomically rare opportunity it was to be experiencing life as a human being on this beautiful rock flying through the depths of outer space. It was a profound moment, and I was immensely grateful to be experiencing it. Keep in mind that just 10 minutes prior, I hated the world and everything in it, and I wanted to die and never look back at it again, so some extraordinary shift did indeed occur.

It was like someone or something hit the reset button. Then I remember walking from the driveway up to the front door of my house and opening the door, and not only was there absolutely zero fear in me regarding the entities I swore were in there, but I was in absolute amazement at how beautiful and peaceful my home was. I was in complete disbelief at the technology and the blessing it was to have buttons and switches on the walls that controlled the temperature and turned lights on and off, and to have running water and a refrigerator to keep my food fresh. There were just so many things that I became aware of that I previously never thought twice about, things that I took for granted. 

The whole process that night truly was an awakening and rebirth experience, and it changed my entire perspective on literally everything. In the days, months, and years following that experience, not only did I dive deeper into the law of attraction and eventually learn why and how things manifested for me the way they did back then, but it was that body of work that eventually led me deep down a spiritual rabbit hole, where I spent the following years studying ancient knowledge from several different faiths and paths. I dove into the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Hermeticism, alternative medicine, energy medicine, Kriya Yoga, and a lot of the current sciences that support the claims of many of those systems. It’s been quite the journey, and at the end of the day, I’m just grateful for this brief moment in time to experience being alive, because being alive is pretty awesome.

The newest single from Dino and Sages, “Walk Away,” has just been released and was produced by highly respected producer Beau Burchell. They have also earned a lot of buzz around California, and other members of Sages have been in very successful rock bands like FAR, Black Map and Simon Says.

Listen to “Walk Away” on Soundcloud.

“Walk Away was inspired by what I feel to be a perfect example of “Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.”, because in the particular case that inspired the song, I did get it; my wish came true, but it turned out to be something quite different than what I expected. In fact, it turned out that we were polar opposites in many of the ways we approached life and our existence in the world, but for the amount of growth that was achieved as a result, it was also a situation I am grateful for.” Dino