A Journey into Crypto & Spirituality

What does crypto have to do with spirituality?

Why does it matter?

And how does this relate to Tsuka?

Curious to find out more about my journey?

Sit back, relax and take some time to read my story.

In order to understand my journey, I will give you a concise summary of how I grew up and the decisions I made to come to the place I am today.

I’d be happy to hear your thoughts, questions and whatever you wish to share, so don’t be shy to contact me after you finish reading 😊

If you just want to read about crypto & spirituality or about my perspective on Tsuka, then skip the first part and go to the last chapters.

Growing Up: Suffering

From a young age I have been suffering with depression & anxiety.

Being bullied at school for being an outsider, growing up as the son of immigrants, I struggled to find my place.

Ashamed of my roots as I didn’t feel I was fitting in.

Others would make fun of my origins, which perpetuated the feelings of shame, not feeling good enough, loneliness and depression.

I must have been seven or eight when I was standing in front of a mirror, looking at myself and thinking how ugly I am.

“Why am I in this world?”

“Why have I been born?”

“Why do I exist?”

Thinking about non-painful ways of how I could commit suicide, as I didn’t feel I belonged here.

Fortunately my younger self never pushed as far and the ‘survival instinct’ kept me from doing something stupid. Well, maybe not entirely, I have done a lot of stupid things in life, but none of them led to me departing.

Moving through the years of primary school, I found my own coping mechanisms to deal with the bullying, anxiety and depression. In third grade or so a new kid, also an immigrant, joined our class and we soon became best friends.

At home, the situation wasn’t always easy either. Parents were fighting, an authoritative father and a submissive mother, two opposites of the spectrum and I felt I was in the middle of it all.

As the years passed and my puberty started, primary school came to an end and a new adventure in high school started.

Exciting for a lot of kids, not so much for me, as social anxiety kicked in from the first day. New kids, new teachers, new environment, I had to start from the beginning again.

Feeling insecure about who I am did not help.

Being an introverted kid did not give me an advantage at all. What I learned thus far though, is that being extroverted creates opportunities that would, or so I thought, help me with the social anxiety.

As I had been suppressing my emotions for all those years learning things like “boys don’t cry”, through observing of others I learned that certain social behaviours help to be seen, recognized and achieve things that others would not.

During my high school years, crucial years of developing my identity, I have been introduced to alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs from an early age. Wanting to be part of the “cool kids” I found my place where through suppression, avoidance and negligence I somehow managed and dealt with life.

Suppressing the feelings of not wanting to live as opposed to understanding them led to numerous problems.

Suppression and avoidance are never solutions, albeit they may appear to be in the moment. For many years I believed those were the ways to forget and solve my issues.

Through good and bad experiences I finished high school, starting a new journey in University.

Fast forward to 2012, the end of my Masters….

The Search: Spirituality

Some questions that I used to ask as a child kept coming back to me.

“Why do I exist?”

“Why have I been born?”

Being raised as a Catholic, religion was part of my life from an early age. A place that was supposed to be giving answers to questions that I could not find any answers to elsewhere.

However, when I was asking priests about things like

“What does infinity mean?”

“What does it mean that God always existed and always will be?”

Nobody could give me an answer.

That was not enough for me.

I always kept on wondering,
kept on asking,
kept on searching.

Despite being depressed, despite not wanting to live, there was always something inside of me that made me move forward.

During the last year of my study I was confronted with the fact that for the first time in my life I actually had to make a decision what to do next.

Up until that point, my path was laid out to me.

1. Finish primary school
2. Finish high school
3. Finish University

I did not give much thought to it, I just did what I thought was expected from me.

But now what?

I am almost done with my Masters and I had to make a choice.

I fell into a deeper depressive hole,
started doing more drugs,
avoiding life,
suppressing my emotions and thoughts even more.

One day as I was hanging out with a friend he was sharing a story about his spiritual journey, a story he had told me before.

He made a trip on a bicycle from the Netherlands to Santiago de Compostela in Spain — in honour of his father —

As he was sharing his story I suddenly got this super intense feeling in the core of my heart.

What was happening?

An intense urge that I had not felt before.

Something that I can best describe as “a feeling of knowing”.

What was this knowing?

I knew I had to make a trip!

I did not know where.

I did not know how.

I did not know when.

I did not know why.

All I knew is that I had to travel.

I also knew that the next day when I would wake up I would get all these doubtful thoughts trying to dissuade me from making this journey.

“You need to finish your Master as soon as possible.”

“There is no point in traveling.”

“What will you do all by yourself?”

As I was anticipating these thoughts, the fears, the anxiety, the depression, the evening I hung out with my friend I made a very strong decision to follow my intuitive feeling.

The next days I got reminded of another friend of mine who travelled to Nepal and spent time in a monastery.

I had read his story on a blog as we had been out of touch for a couple of years. I decided to contact and meet up with him.

He shared his story and my travel destination was clear

Nepal

I decided to book a roundtrip for two months.

I knew I wanted to learn more about Buddhism, meditation whatever else would give me some answers.

The only things I planned for that trip was to do two retreats in two different monasteries.

1. A 10-day stay in Kopan Monastery to learn about the different types of Buddhism meditation.
2. A 10-day silent Vipassana (by Goenka) retreat.

The rest of the trip I left to be undecided. Up until that point I always wanted to plan things, be in control, or at least have the illusion of control, of how my life would look like.

When I shared with friends and family I was going to make this trip sine were not accepting my decision.

“Why would you go to Nepal? You can go to some place closer by!”

“You need to finish your study, don’t be stupid leaving for two months.”

Fortunately none of them kept me from going.

I persisted and the time came to board my plane to Nepal…

And So It Begun

As soon as I landed in Nepal I was overwhelmed by a culture shock.

Took a taxi to my hotel,
traversing roads that we would not consider to be roads in Europe,
looking around and seeing an environment so foreign to me,
trash on the streets,
weird smells,
buildings that looked like they were on the brink of collapse,
I could not believe my eyes!

After arriving to my hotel room I broke down. I was completely lost,

I started crying and wanted to go back home immediately.

Fortunately I persevered and the day of my first monastery retreat arrived. There was a no drugs, no smoking, no alcohol policy so I decided to drink my last beer the day before.

I also casually decided I would quit drinking for a while.

A bit of background to this. As I mentioned earlier, during my high school years, from an early age (12, 13) I got introduced to alcohol, cigarettes and drugs.

I used and abused these a lot leading to many detrimental experiences, from passing out and not remembering the nights out because I drank too much, to having an “aggressive drunk” where the suppressed emotions came to the surface and I would lash out in angry drunk episodes.

I had tried many times to give up drinking, smoking or drugs, but I always failed to do so.

Well here I was, going into my first monastery experience, I thought I’d give it another go.

Why not?

During these 10 days I got a good introduction into the various types of Buddhism and various meditation techniques.

I also met a lot of amazing people, some of which I have stayed in touch with for many years after.

Between the first and second monastery experience I had a few weeks to travel around and discover the beauties that Nepal had to show.

I had already forgotten about the anxiety episode of the first day and traveling alone for the first time outside of Europe was teaching me a lot in many ways.

It was surprisingly easy to connect to fellow travelers and form profound connections.

I used to think I needed years of knowing one another to get to these kind of levels of connecting with somebody.

The monastery, where the others were on similar journeys of finding themselves, connecting on a soul-to-soul level was truly magical.

The day of the second monastery adventure arrived: a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat. I was anticipating it would be hard to meditate for 10 hours per day in complete silence, without being able to talk to or communicate in any way with others, but I wasn’t anticipating it to be THAT challenging.

Challenging, yet very rewarding.

My first breakdown happened on the fourth or fifth day.

I just couldn’t handle being with myself and my own thoughts and emotions without any distractions.

Confronted with everything that came up, nowhere to run or hide, the thought of giving up crossed my mind more than once.

“Why the hell am I doing this?”

“What does it all matter anyway?”

Fortunately I persevered and one day something magical happened.

Sitting in the same position for 10 hours per day caused my body to resist in many ways. Pain in my knees, pain in my back, pain in my whole body in places I normally was not even aware of.

The form of meditation and breathing exercises helped me to be more aware of my body than I ever had been and the pains and aches got enhances as well.

As I was sitting and struggling with a lot of back pain, anger was arising, frustration was arising, but I kept moving forward.

Suddenly I started to feel the pain in my back turn into warmth.

From warmth, to heat, what was happening?

Out of nowhere the heat then shot down into the ground!

What just happened? I was flabbergasted.

The pain was gone.

The heat was gone..

I didn’t do anything. How is this possible?

I was shocked by this experience as I never experienced something like this before. I also couldn’t rationally explain this.

How can the pain suddenly leave the body out of nowhere?

A couple of days later I had another emotional breakdown, but fortunately I was closer to the end of the retreat than the beginning.

As we finished the 10 days and we finally had the opportunity to communicate with other students, I felt something I did not think I would ever feel. Going into the Vipassana I thought it was impossible not to talk for 10 days. Whereas now I was feeling like I didn’t want to talk at all anymore!

It was so peaceful and quiet and yet the 10 days ended and we shared some of the experiences with each other.

During those 10 days I got to experience myself in ways I had never experienced myself before.

Learn about parts of me that I did not know existed. Understand my body, my emotions, my thoughts on a deeper level.

However, this was just the beginning of the search for myself, the questions to existence, to life. I was reborn and ready to face life with new tools and resources.

And Now What?

If you have come this far and are still reading this: thank you for sticking with me: getting an insight into my mind and my life story 😊

Where does crypto fit in though?

I will get to that in a bit, let me tell you a bit more to help you understand my story even better.

Nepal came and went and through some amazing synchronicity I had the opportunity to do my internship (last part of my Masters) in Nepal as well!

In fact, Nepal taught me a lot about synchronicities.

About letting go of control.

About going with the flow.

About having faith and just living in the moment.

A lot of things that the “Western world” did not teach me up until that moment.

And so, I had the opportunity to come back to Nepal two months later to do my internship and spend more time amongst the amazing Nepali people, learn more about Nepali culture and learn more about myself.

After finishing my internship, I decided to travel through South East Asia a bit more.

I visited Singapore, Hongkong, Malaysia ending up in Myanmar.

A place where I spent almost three months in a monastery, learning about different meditation techniques and a different face of Buddhism.

I could tell a lot about these three months, but I will just leave it at one important lesson the teacher taught us.

Meditation is easy when you are in a monastery.

No distractions.

No work.

No family.

No worries.

You just meditate all day and the rest is being taken care of.

However, the real meditation begins once you are back into your day to day life.

At that moment I did not really understand what the teacher meant, but being back home and seeing how quickly old habits and patterns came back, I started to understand his words better.

The importance of the consistency of daily practices, in whatever form those are, is something that I found out in the years ahead.

I kept on searching and learning more about various meditation techniques and at some point I gave classes of meditation myself.

I attended courses and travelled and explored the world more.

To further improve my mental and emotional health I spent 2,5 years in Psychotherapy and I kept on challenging myself to improve my emotional and mental health.

The more I learned about myself and about life, the more questions I had.

“Why do I exist?”

“Where do I come from?”

Those questions that I used to ask as a child, I had not yet found an answer for.

As 2012 felt like my first rebirth, 2017 arrived.

As 2017 arrived, my second rebirth was there.

The Journey Ahead

Five years without alcohol.

Yes, the decision I made in Nepal to quit drinking was one that appeared to be permanent.

However, I was still experimenting with other substances, from XTC to Psychedelics.

Having had many bad experiences with alcohol, my approach was different here, especially with Psychedelics.

After my first mushroom trip, I uncovered new realms of consciousness and saw and experienced things that could help me, not only in my healing journey, but also in the expansion of my consciousness.

I had my first Ayahuasca experience in 2013, which was transformational in many ways.

Psychedelics opened my consciousness to other realms of existence that I always knew were there, but I never experienced so tangibly.

More questions came to me.

Questions to which I knew there were answers for, but for which I needed more “external” confirmations and more information.

As I continued my search, expanded more and more into my spiritual self, I was reading a lot of books about various topics.

A lot of different subjects that I had not been introduced to properly.

Books, Youtube videos, articles, knowledge and information that was hidden for a long time, but which has gotten more accessible through the blessings of the internet.

I started to learn alternative theories for things I assumed were “truths”, just because I learned about them in school.

I never took the opportunity to question them later on in life.

This journey of exploration led me into a lot of interesting rabbit holes expanding my worldview in many ways.

Learning different perspectives and points of views on a variety of subjects.

I started to experience more synchronicities in my life.

More things that came on my path on the right moment, at the right time.

This all led me to a point in 2017 where I learned more about civilizations outside of our Solar system.

A point where a lot of puzzle pieces came together.

I uncovered a huge chunk of the puzzle that led me to another rebirth.

Many unanswered questions finally started to make more sense.

As some questions were answered, more arose.

I started to understand my existence and my purpose on this earth better and better.

Being an infinite soul in a temporary human body, something I intuitively knew for a long time.

With all the “new” knowledge I now also understood this concept better.

Where humans come from.

The similarities between different religions and ancient scriptures started to make more sense.

In my teenage years I rejected everything that had to do with religion.

As I expanded, I started to distinguish different perspectives and things became clearer and clearer.

All this external knowledge and information is a lot of fun and it can open up many different rabbit holes.

At the same time it was also be a big distraction and swayed me from my path moving forward. Taking a sideroad is not a bad thing though, it was simply part of my journey.

My general approach in life is to take whatever information and lessons work for me and leave the rest aside.

I believe there are many truths, many different perspectives and we are all here on our own personal journey to learn and expand as humans and spiritual beings.

The more I search, the more I also find that eventually all the answers are found within myself. Through meditation, contemplation, following my intuition, having faith, I move forward and do my best to be a good human being, do good and enjoy the ride we call life.

Without getting into too much depth here, let me continue with the subject you all have been waiting for: how is all this connected to crypto?

If you have any more questions about my journey thus far, I’d love to connect with you and share thoughts and experiences. Just ping me anytime 😊

Crypto & Spirituality

What role does crypto play in all of this?

And how is it connected with spirituality?

Well, first of all, I feel I am just at the beginning of my (crypto) journey.

The more I learn, the more I feel I have to learn.

I first heard about crypto when Bitcoin was under $100.

I had a feeling that this was going to transform the world, but I didn’t yet know in what capacity.

The more I learn about it, the more I see how crypto is part of a movement to help expand human consciousness.

I feel that in the last couple of years humanity has been growing up a lot.

We have started to ask questions important questions, challenging the status quo and not accepting things at face value anymore.

Turbulent yet transformative times as we are seeing the breakdown of old paradigms and old systems.

Sometimes I look at the collective experience of the world and I see the parallels between my own personal journey.

Many things are changing.

What I observe within crypto is that a lot of people who believe in paradigm shifts are coming together.

I believe that crypto is fueling this collective expansion.

I do not yet understand the full capacity of crypto and what it brings to the world.

However, I can see that many who have embarked on this crypto journey are drawn to it for multiple, and often similar reasons.

Yes, financial freedom is probably the number one reason why most, if not all of us have started this journey.

But just like myself, I am sure many of you reading this are feeling that there is more to crypto.

Even if we only look at the aspect of financial freedom, it is unique to experience the current wealth redistribution.

Not ever in recent human history has there been a time where such transformative opportunities were as readily available as they are right now.

You can start with $100 and end up with thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the old systems these kind of opportunities were only available for people who already had a lot of money.

How to get there though?

Throughout my whole life I have been hearing things like “money makes corrupt” or “money doesn’t bring happiness”, whether it was through religion, my spiritual journey or the mainstream narrative.

I believed this for a long time.

In fact during my hardcore Buddhist period I had renounced material possessions to a great degree.

I learned to live with very little and I believed that money corrupts. It took me many years to understand the flaws in this way of thinking.

I started to see how those people with a lot of money were the ones who were pushing this narrative.

Now isn’t that strange and contradictory?

In recent years I started to learn different definitions of wealth, not only tied to money. Furthermore I learned that money is just a form of energy, a means to an end.

So what does wealth mean to me right now?

It is more of a feeling than a materialistic definition.

I feel wealthy when I feel healthy for example.

And health, whether spiritual, emotional, mental or physical health has been my number one priority for a long time now.

Another flawed definition I had learned was that taking care of myself is selfish.

That choosing me is selfish.

Just like the definition that money is corrupt, it took me a while to figure out that I don’t resonate with this at all.

That the opposite is true.

I need to take care of myself first before I can take care of others.

How can I properly take care of others if I don’t take care of myself first?

How can I love others if I don’t love myself first?

I came to the conclusion that I cannot.

Back To Crypto

The more I learn about crypto, the more excited I get!

There are so many things I don’t understand about this world yet.

Intuitively I feel and get drawn to it and know that it will help move humanity forward in so many ways.

What I love about this crypto journey is that I find so many like minded people.

Sure we are still in the baby phases of our development and there is so much more for us to explore, but this is what makes it more exciting!

The fact that we are building a decentralized world where the power does not lie in the hands of a few anymore.

We are learning to collaborate together, to share, to understand that we live in an abundant Universe as opposed to the scarcity mindset that we have been led to believe.

The fact that we can build things independently of each other but work for the benefit of all and we start to understand that one plus one is more than two.

The fact that we transcend borders and limits with payment systems accessible to all through crypto and decentralization.

These concepts are just the tip of the iceberg.

The fact that crypto has started in a period of time where humanity is evolving and expanding faster than ever.

What a beautiful time to be alive.

To be part of this.

An age in history that will go down as the age where humanity started to wake up to its true, divine potential.

We are living it every day.

Despite all the turmoil, despite the hardships, despite the hatred, we are still standing.

Crypto goes so far beyond what we can imagine and we are building the foundations together.

How do we want to build it?

I believe this is a question each and every one of us should ask ourselves.

As I mentioned earlier that the more I embark on my spiritual journey, the more I see that the answers lie within myself.

I believe all of us have the answers within ourselves.

We can share, expand and learn together.

As I do by writing this article, I hope it inspires you to ask questions, to become a better version of yourself, to understand yourself and the world better.

Go inward to expand outward. Many of the things I have written may sound paradoxical.

What I have learned is to always ask questions, stay humble, stay true to myself, be the most authentic version of who I can be.

As a child I was facing these challenges that led me to distance myself more and more from my true self.

Over the years through perseverance and persistence I kept on searching and coming back closer and closer to my authentic inner self.

The journey IS the destination.

Yes that may sound cliché, but what else is there than the present moment?

So yes, the journey is the destination.

And what a journey it is.

We are just getting started.

Teamhumanity, I believe in every single one of us.

We all have our own purpose.

Our own story to write.

Our own path to walk.

And we meet each other.

Wherever we are supposed to meet.

I love being on this journey together with you.

I love connecting with you.

Let’s walk this path together.

Onward and upward.

Through the ups and downs.

Through the bad and the good.

Tsuka
On my crypto journey I have discovered many crypto projects, some of them I liked, some of them I invested in, some of them I simply traded.

There was a period in my crypto journey where I was all about “fundamentals”, judging projects based on whether I believed they had some “utility” and “real life value”.

But how to actually judge this?

What does it mean that a crypto project has utility or real life value?

What does it mean that a crypto project has utility or real life value?

What problems does it solve?

There are different questions you can ask and different metrics you can use to measure this.

To each their own, just like outside of crypto.

We live in a time where for a lot of us have their most basic needs met.

You probably have food to eat, a roof above your head, access to streaming water, electricity and internet.

Now besides this, do other things in your life have utility?

Does crypto have utility?

Who decides this?

You do.

What utility a crypto project has is up to us to decide.

Initially I was putting crypto projects in different boxes.

One of those boxes would be utility versus no utility.

Trying to come up with some objective measures was impossible.

Not too long ago I tried to let go of this notion.

Not too long ago I stumbled upon Tsuka, a project that has been categorized as a “meme coin”.

To a lot of people “without utility”.

And so I initially thought as well.

However, after stumbling upon Tsuka, getting involved with the community (sangha), learning more about how it came to exist, the story and narrative behind it, I started to change my opinion.

There are other medium articles that will help you understand the narrative better and I encourage you to read those, some of them I will refer to here

I also highly encourage you to watch this 13 minute documentary made by community members to help you understand more about Tsuka:

Why am I so attracted to Tsuka?

To me one of the important utilities we share is the spiritual journey that Tsuka is inviting you to embark upon.

It inspired me to write this very article.

Tsuka is the first crypto project where I found these values at its core.

There is something to it.

Some kind of energy that just wants me to check the Telegram group.

Help with raiding Twitter.

Share and inspire.

Help others.

I intuitively felt drawn to Tsuka when it appeared on my Twitter feed a few weeks ago.

Once I became part of the community and felt the great vibe, I started to explore its nature more and more.

I highly recommend watching the documentary that will give a great summary of what we are all about.

I love what we are building together,

I love to lead by example.

Join us on this journey and let us explore together.

The Tsuka sangha is growing every day and I look forward to seeing you around 😊.

I hope that by giving you an insight into the intricacies of my mind and my life, I have been able to inspire you in one way or another.

As I mentioned before, I love to connect and build this new world together. Ping me a message anytime.

With love,

Sending you big hugs,

Filip

Website: https://dejitarutsuka.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dejitaru_Tsuka
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TsukaResearch
Telegram: https://t.me/Tsukaresearch
Discord: https://discord.gg/br37UNwfgF
Instagram: https://instagram.com/Dejitaru_Tsuka/
Crash Course:
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