On My Way Home: Volume 1

By Christoffel Hendrickx

In a time of global awakening, a young woman and an enigmatic man fortuitously meet far away from home. Marina and Tiger try to make ends meet and look for the best life has to offer. Soon, their expectations clash, and after a climactic conflict, they break up.

As Tiger drifts away, Marina is inspired by his notes and determined to write down his story as he would have told it, learning more about herself and the true nature of love in every scribble. Tiger’s story is a turbulent tale of a sensitive man who tries to understand the world and wants to elevate it to a more humane state. He is chased by a series of strange coincidences that challenge him to adjust his view and purify his mind.

With settings in some of the most beautiful places on earth, On My Way Home, dissects our world and reveals its true nature. The reader has a choice: read the book as Tiger’s rollercoaster ride into awareness or as Marina’s testimony to the challenges of unconditional love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Sep 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781504319454

Christoffel Hendrickx

Christoffel Hendrickx was born in Belgium and graduated with a Master’s in literature from the University of Antwerp. He has published his poetry and other Dutch works in Belgium and is involved in different cultural enterprises like yoga, dance, music promotion, and activism. He wrote On My Way Home, his first novel, while traveling in Australia and New Zealand.

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Copyright © 2019 Christoffel Hendrickx.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

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www.balboapress.com.au

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Artwork front by Mahtous ©2015

Artwork back by Sara Schelkens ©2019

ISBN: 978-1-5043-1944-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-1945-4 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 09/24/2019

Contents

BEGINNINGS

A Dedication

Before It Begins

THE SHIFT

Hegira Red Magnetic Moon; I Unify in Order to Purify

Beginning

How I Became a Tiger

Encounter

Magic at Work Blue Solar Night; I Pulse in Order to Dream

The Mess of Stress

Waihippy Island; Yellow Resonant Sun; I Channel in Order to Enlighten

Serendipity

In Grace Yellow Crystal Human; I Dedicate in Order to Influence

The Kiwi Dream

Burn the Man Red Spectral Earth; I Dissolve in Order to Evolve

The Teachings

THE CONNECTION

The Australian Dream

Mental as Anything White Overtone Dog; I Empower in Order to Love

The Party Pack Yellow Cosmic Seed; I Endure in Order to Target

Made for Each Other

The Owl White Lunar World Bridger; I Polarise in Order to Equalise

Wild Love

Skin on Skin Blue Electric Hand; I Activate in Order to Know

The Morning After

Greyhound and Close Encounters Red Galactic Serpent; I Harmonise in Order to Survive

Sydney Set-Up

Island People and Piano Magic Yellow Cosmic Warrior; I Endure in Order to Question

Black Swan Pick-Nick

The Falling of the Tower Red Spectral Skywalker; I Dissolve in Order to Explore

Tribulation

Siddhartha Blue Spectral Storm; I Dissolve in Order to Catalyse

Metanoia

Rainbow Serpent Red Cosmic Dragon; I Endure in Order to Nurture

THE REDEMPTION

Vipassana

Anicca White Electric Dog; I Activate in Order to Love

Sabukka mangale hoye re  (May All Beings Be Happy)

For all people will know themselves through others,

we seek to meet and face our self

before we can move on to where we belong.

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BEGINNINGS

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A Dedication

A ny sensible person’s heart fills with inexplicable warmth when Joe Cocker hits the crackling high note in With a Little Help from My Friends in the 1969 recording of Woodstock . Friendship resonates deeply with everyone. The second biggest regret of terminal patients is not spending enough time with friends, just after not chasing their true dream. We don’t always consider quality companionship a priority. We often only spend energy on our relationships after the disappointment of focussing blindly on achieving our own goals. In that gap of disappointment when all seems lost, friends are there to remind us that we have worth and meaning. Friends contribute to the most essential learning in life. You could say friendship is a nonreligious experience of connecting with the divine within, through the form of others. The most tangible experience of unconditional love is to open up to others and their emotions and thoughts, to share experiences so freely that it empowers you to feel real and be yourself.

My roomies and my mates, homies, pals, brothers, and sisters, both of blood and spirit, have kept me in a positive mind-space throughout the years; they even kept me alive in some cases. Friends are medicine music in healing harmony, pacing my rhythm and showing me truth. They are the unmissable corner pieces of a mystical puzzle on the table of life before me.

As I am leaving, stepping out of the physical realm of these friendships and moving out further than ever, these relationships are so important. They have proven to be true spiritual connections, guiding me even when not physically present. I have always needed my friends more than they needed me. Not for merely material or social support; friends were the essential allies in performing the crucial rites of passage, as to move ahead in life was one of my biggest challenges. The journey I was about to take needed this sort of ritual: an occasion for manifesting presence with senses and mind so it could forever be remembered as a milestone of the past and the beginning of something remarkably new.

My best friend’s name was Sara. We jokingly called her Saraswati, as she used to travel to India almost every year. She was a crazily talented visual artist and a true guide for me. It was as if she had been sent from a higher plane to restore a balance in my life when I was hitting rock bottom. The only reason she showed any interest in me was because after a chance reading of one of my early poetry books, she understood more of the intricate perceptions of reality that were grounded under my immature sense of sexuality and relatedness and desperate seeking of attention. She became a beacon of light and an artistic partner in crime. Her own practice had transformed from illustration to painting to sculpting to herbalism to welding to display designer to t-shirt printing and finally to the eternal art of tattooing.

A week before I left on my journey, she was looking for people to practice tattooing on, as she wanted to start her own studio and had so far been practising on herself. I was wildly enthusiastic about the idea, fully trusting her supernatural skills. It gave me the perfect occasion to say goodbye, to adapt my body to the new part of myself to be explored, and to give deeper meaning to the launch of my travels. A rite of passage was born, and off we went to the Bear Claw, an urban off-the-grid community close to the city of Leuven, supported by socialist ideas, crafts, small farming, dumpster diving, and free art festivals.

In a manky shed with the most homey of atmospheres, the vibration of change filled the room as she started up the buzzing tattoo device, and I lounged back in a chair with my freshly shaved arm stretched out. The experience made me deeply silent, and I was glad that Sara’s insecure chatter kept the whole room grounded, as I was floating off into another world where formless gods dwell on the symbols that are to be carried on human skin into the earthly planes.

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The triangle is a symbol for humanity as ‘a child in time’. The left and right angle being the past and the future, and the downward angle being the present, even more so the central triangle within the triangle, depicting the eye of Ra, the Egyptian sun god, an ancient sign of omniscience: all the senses in one central mystical sensory organ, associated with the pineal gland in the human brain. Every triangle as such was a part of the holy structure of life itself: earth, fire, water, and air, all present within ether or space, the eye of Ra was central; normally, it would be depicted as the top of something, but I believe all hierarchic structures are bound to break, and there’s nothing to overrule the divinity within ourselves, within all elements, a symbol for consciousness and eternity.

Now is forever, and consciousness created all three human enterprises, the three surrounding empty or infinitely spacious triangles: science to ground us, religion, and art to reach for the divine. These are the three unlimited channels of human creativity. And the triangle was also the most simplified example of the relationship between human geometry and sacred geometry or fractal mathematics: a pattern that can be repeated in a growing size infinitely. The tattoo was the beginning of an illustrative life story and represented my birth, or the start of existence of my single life story within the infinity of consciousness.

The story of the tattoo became an eternal reminder of the reasons I started my travels and of the idea that I could look back with love and pride at that instant and that connection between two souls, injected by an inky needle. Not only the tattoo story but all my stories were a dedication to my real friends, close ones and others, who had been my teachers and from whom I now had to part to go work out my own lessons and my own destinies. I secretly prayed I would meet Saraswati again, and in my mind, I made a watertight connection between us, through our soul-wires, understanding in reverse.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

—Seneca

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Before It Begins

W hat is life but a collection of stories? My story was pretty insignificant in the light of the message that needed to be passed on. My encounter was but a scenes dialogue in the greater play of this life and human evolution. It was true knowledge that inspired me and opened my eyes and gave me the strength to persevere. The wisest people are not the famous academics or the intellectuals of science books but the hard-bred nation of skilful hospitality workers, inexhaustible social servers, and trendsetting creatives offering their lives to the elevation of others and the expansion of the human experience. There are only a few people in history who have elevated their lives beyond the common ups and downs of humanity. Their achievements are uplifting chapters in human history. In between pages of continuous replication of joys and catastrophes, people like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, John Lennon, and Martin Luther King Jr. appeal to our imaginations. Their memory gives us a rush of blood to the heart and causes a deep sense of appreciation of real values, such as integrity and moral ingenuity. Their lives will forever be remembered as examples of human excellence.

As a woman living now in a civilisation full of technical ingenuity but challenged by ecological annihilation, I feel these role models inspire me and enable me to have faith in humanity, as it is pushed to work out its deepest complexes and issues. Even though we easily claim to be working on ourselves, most of us are still looking for our teachers; many of us haven’t even begun our learning yet. To grow, we need to surround ourselves with people of value, not necessarily great masters like the examples given but men and women who at least attempt to live in an honourable and respectful way, with willpower as the main tool in dedication to life itself.

I have always been convinced that I was succeeding fairly well at managing my life. Maybe ignorantly, but at least I was content enough to move through life with smiles and sympathy. It wasn’t until I discovered the gaping emptiness of a broken heart that I realised I too was incomplete and very much searching to be fixed and finished. It only revealed a deeper fracture unrelated to the love story I told myself, a disconnection of the understanding of my inner nature and the true meaning of love.

This book is my attempt at repairing the damage done. It is my path to self-realisation through the processing of some events in my life and the teachings and understandings of an incomplete and broken human being, as we can only learn from those who understand the lessons we need. In all my enquiry, I have never found real answers, but in reworking the many stories that have come to me, I can at least find peace of mind, knowing it’s all part of the process. I hope my efforts benefit all who read this book. Tiger explicitly wanted to dedicate this work to his friends.

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THE SHIFT

We cannot fully understand the beginning of anything until we understand the end.

—G. Spencer Brown

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Hegira

Red Magnetic Moon; I Unify in Order to Purify

T he days are quickly getting shorter; winter is sneaking in the bushes, hiding like a leopard ready to hunt us down faster than we can escape it. All we can do is prepare to be prey or start migration.

Before I go, I wish to revel in local feasts once more, to feed the beast and to consciously shower in the energy eruption of self-loathing. Just like when looking at your vomit, realising you had that one drink too many, I knew it was pointless to eat what I’d already barfed out so many times. But my behaviour was programmed at this particular moment in my life that was so crucial for the shaping of my destiny.

I went to a rave put on by people I knew and didn’t like all too much, but these people knew other people I liked more. After hearing the same hardcore kick and amen breaks for hours, boredom struck me. Outside, zombies gathered as if a fresh grave had just been dug up. As I started to pick up conversations with the crowd, I saw how rapidly their eyes turned to pain when I mentioned the world’s issues. Soon they turned from me, craving distraction. I realised that true rebellion in our generation was being disembodied by our own creation of rave culture. Free expression was limited to formless and uninspired dance, and the energy we needed to stand up against the growing cancer system was lost in fighting self-induced intoxication. Where was the protest? The parades? The occupations?

The only real confrontation most youngsters seemed to face was the one with our unwanted shepherds: the bouncers who kicked us out in the morning and the policemen who guided us back to the stables. We were sheep for the slaughterhouse of the incorporated war machine, and all our cool talk and tribelike appearances couldn’t save us. Our lack of organising structure or even a common goal of liberation was fatal. In our minds, we may have gained a few battles and opened a few portals to unseen dimensions and new levels of individual freedom. But in our material world, we acknowledged our limits and borderlines more than ever.

There was no true youth movement or counterculture. There was only a whole bunch of young people who disagreed with the standing laws and who came together to ignore a good night’s sleep for monotonous electronic sounds that made them for a night forget about their woes and feel connected. True connection seemed lost. As the rave culture became part of the mainstream entertainment world, there was little magic to it all. The influence of legal drugs like alcohol and cigarettes instead of medicinal psychedelics, and the lack of creativity of the organisers instead of a truly subversive frame of thought, resulted in an almost clublike setting that lacked the inspiration of the early days.

We were doomed to isolation once again, as liberal individualism grew stronger and the populace collaborating for civil disobedience shrank rapidly. People came to impress each other rather than to caress each other and were prepared to fight each other’s ideas more than to find a common ground, if it weren’t for the chosen music genre. Overdoses, fights, gossip, and the formation of subscenes became typical for a subculture that used to be about smart-drugging, peace, unification, and togetherness.

Of course, the impact of the music business and the enforced competitive behaviour between artists and organisers played its part in this. Probably the porno industry and the financial crisis even worked their way deep into curves of the brains of so many in need of true liberation. This was the reason people from the scene started disappearing from dance floors and appearing in small community farms, NGOs, visual arts, and other channels of expression. True rebels seek fertile ground for their roots, and a new forest was what we really needed.

I had lost myself in the unsteady soil of Antwerp and Flanders for too long. The days had passed so fast, and all I could do was bear witness to the speed and testify to its cruelty and magnificence. Time had stopped making sense, and our generation had no voice. A zeitgeist was only perceivable in snapshot hypes and day-to-day curiosities. There was a minority of people still out to kill the old world, ready to bring in a new state of being, a free space for human spirits unravelling. We were the hopeless and the hopeful, with a loud message to the world in the quiet state of indoctrinated apathy. I could no longer be silenced. It was time for another shout-out, the perfect moment for some rambling, open-hearted chanting and sexy whispering. I honestly feel the most present and the least alive when behind a screen with a Word document, fingers attacking keys, freeing my mind from its demon spirits, unleashing spells and sayings, poetic dust for thought. The message was the same as it had always been: we needed to speak up, and we were looking for someone to listen.

My heart feels like it can explode, like it’s an external signal for the nuclear and