Next level surrender

neos·life turns 1

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a message from one of our advisors. He challenged me to create a one-page investment memorandum and to send it out to everyone we know in an effort to finally secure funding for neos·life.

It made sense so I sat down and started working on it. But I felt resistance. It didn’t feel right. I shared my feeling with Karen and we decided to meditate.

Just a few minutes in, it became clear to us that this was not the way. Yes, it made sense. We need money or there will be no neos·village. The banker and entrepreneur in me said ‘yes, let’s do it.’ But the wiser, more evolved intuitive me knew this is living from the old paradigm.

Control is the kool-aid we all drank

All my life I have been doing — because that’s what I was taught to do. That’s what nearly all of us are taught to do: “You need to do to create results.” This is not wrong — but it’s incomplete.

Our minds are formidable at reasoning the illusion that our doing is able to create the outcomes we desire. Without doing, things don’t happen but neither can doing alone create an outcome. We are in control is the kool-aid we all drank.

A new way of BEING

Doing is the glorified part of being human. The forgotten part is being. Being is meant to be the master of doing — not the other way around.

This is what exemplifies new paradigm operating.

Being or presence is a state where we are connected to a higher knowing that guides us and knows precisely where we need to go and what we need to do. We might not know why nor might it make rationally sense but we know it’s true.

Truer than any reasoning ever is. Some call it faith though it has nothing to do with religion. It is being connected with oneself, one’s higher self, one’s true self rather than the construct we call ego that believe we are.

Surrender — peace and power

Surrender is detaching from the outcome. It does not mean passivity or apathy. Doing while being in surrender to the outcome is the perfect union of masculine and feminine energies — the balanced union we are all meant to live in.

Once we realise that we were never in control, surrender is the only way of being that makes sense. Chance, synchronicities or serendipity, these are the factors that ultimately decide outcomes and they are outside of our (direct) control.

‘Direct’ because we have a say in how things play out. But not on the physical or doing plane. It’s a frequency, resonance, an energetic thing. Let me try to illustrate with examples from neos·life and my life:

• The neos·life land was brought to me without me looking for any land. Thank you, Marie, Telmo and Marcia!
• Karen was introduced to me without me searching for a co-founder. Thank you, Bart!
• Numerous investors, connectors, partners and advisors were introduced to us without us looking for those roles but they turned up when needed. Thank you to the all of you who made introductions!
• When organising the Awaken retreats, I reached out to everyone who I thought could be interested and more. None of them signed up. Instead it was people that were referred to me or that read about it. Thank you for your trust! And thank you, Farhad, John and Fouad for bringing the gift of awakening to me!
• In my last startup, I talked to 100+ potential investors. None of them invested. Instead, a relative had asked for our investment deck which somehow landed on a Private Equity funds’ desk and they ended up investing $5M in our company at the 11th hour. We could not have asked for a better partner and one that I had not even been aware of. Thank you, Ernest, Manning, Morgan and Chris!

You get the idea.

Things happened seemingly related to my actions but never as a result of them. When looking back at my life, things (good and bad) were always coming to me. Yes, I needed to do the work (building a company, creating an investment deck, building relationships, etc.) but the results were unforeseeable rather than direct responses to my actions.

The Surrender Experiment

In 2016, I was staying at a friend’s place in SF where Michael Singer’s ‘The Untethered Soul - The Journey Beyond Yourself’ was lying on the coffee table. I picked it up and plowed through it in three days. It became the book that I gave away the most — so profoundly did it impact me.

Michael is also the author of ‘The Surrender Experiment’ where he tells the story how the entire unfoldment of his life — from meditating in the forest, to creating a sanga to becoming a computer programmer, to building a multi-billion software company and taking it public — was entirely a process of surrender to what was in front of him. Yes, he built a public company without any intention of doing so. He just stepped into what unfolded in front of him.

So what has all this to do with neos·life?

neos·life turns 1

Today marks the one year anniversary that a stranger at the airport, Marie, approached me only for us to stand together on the neos·life land a week later. And so this journey began. And if you followed my personal newsletter, you know how much has happened since then.

neos·life is at the 11th hour. Or so my mind tells me. We were hoping to sign the deed for the land today on its birthday. However, neither the seller nor we were ready. Everything happens for a reason.

Karen and I feel that we have done everything we were meant to do to attract an aligned investor: We invested €1 million, created several investment decks, advanced the project in multiple streams, connected with countless people, rejected unaligned financial proposals and in the process, died even more ego deaths and plunged into deep healing and transformational work like never before.

neos·life is looking for a very specific investor, one that understands what we are building because once he sees it it makes all the sense — no explaining needed.

My redemption

In 2014, I was a former investment banker, atheist, a doer, startup founder and I had just been kicked out of the very company I co-founded — licking my wounds. I had no idea that this seeming failure would be the biggest blessing of my life.

It put me on the journey to learn, study, grow, expand and ultimately conceive of neos·life — the new earth operating system for a new way of being. A way of being surrendered to life, present to what is, moving with grace and in gratitude for every single thing, recognising the divinity in everything that is and ultimately reconnecting with my higher self and Source/Consciousness/God — the thing we all are but have forgotten.

And all because my ego needed to be kicked by what I thought was a jealous co-founder’s ego. Joao, if you are reading this, thank you. It was the experience I needed to evolve and ultimately be able to create what is now neos·life. Every single of my seeming failures was an invitation to go through the doors of the (often painful) truth bringing me closer to peace, surrender and living an awakened life.

A new spiritual Kingdom

Today’s Vincent is a different Vincent than even just a week ago. There’s no more fear. Though we are running out of time for this special piece of land, I am clear, calm, confident, even victorious — and surrendered at the same time. We are a yes to closing on this land shortly and building neos·life — and if we don’t something even greater will happen.

neos·life is already unstoppable. Not because we are building it but because the world is ready for a new operating system, a new way of being — saying goodbye to ego and with that, leaving wars, conflicts, diseases and suffering behind us. Yes, such a world exists and we are creating it.

You can call me crazy, but this is how waking up looks like. And nothing can stop this process for humanity. We are awakening.

Today, after a year of gestation, neos·life is truly born and with it, so are we.

Karen and I can’t wait to welcome you on this magical land.

Where our hearts meet

Vincent and Karen