Hello, my name is Zakaria. I am living and working in the UK and have a job within the education sector.

I first came across Desteni in 2007 and since then I have participated on and off, here and there, never really committing myself fully. Why?

Fear.

When I look back I can see that there was a lot of fear around openly sharing myself and openly participating within the various things that go on here, there was also a lot of fear around being associated to Desteni, there was fear around Everything. Firstly, the big point for me was how weird everything was, all the various things that were being done and said - and so it took some time to even introduce myself to the group and start mingling with some of the people here. I did so because when I started to talk to and get to know some of these people something stuck out, they seemed to be trustworthy, and they offered solutions that actually worked for me.

I initially came from a place of ‘spirituality’ - from meditation and ‘energy work’ - I was trying to become enlightened, it was my attempt at getting away from the world, from all the ‘evil’ that I apparently saw. It was a way of dealing with myself and my emotions and my ups and downs and my thoughts and backchats and memories, etc. For a while it seemed to work wonderfully. I thought that this type of ‘spirituality’ was the answer to life - that it would allow me to enter into some form of eternally bliss.

And then reality hit me, it wasn’t actually working for me, nothing was really happening, I wasn’t changing in the way that I wanted to change. And so I started to investigate writing and self forgiveness - because there was really nothing to lose. These two things were really ‘hard’, it was work that I actually had to ‘do’ - the solution was no longer going to be meditation or something energy based, I would actually have to put some effort in to get something out.

And so I started writing and self forgiving and self committing myself. I did this for a while, and then slowly I began to hit myself with paranoia, ‘these people are actually getting to know me … I don’t want them to get to know me, I don’t want them to see me like this’. ‘What if my colleagues of friends or family come across my writings?! What if they judge me? What if they see what a complete and utter ego I am, what if they don’t want to know me anymore?’.

I should say now that while I was sharing myself openly with the community, there was a great sense of release, a relaxation, every time I posted something about myself for everyone to see. I remember this experience, and it is still with me in some ways. But I allowed my fear of letting people in to disuade me from writing anymore, from participating anymore. Only existing within the shadows as a name that people kind of knew once upon a time.

I started doing the DIP courses, this was my way of saying to myself ‘hey atleast I am still doing something eh?’. But even within this I was slow and non committed. I allowed the laziness that came from fear to fester within myself until eventually I was hardly moving in my course at all, or only moving the bare minimum.

But even doing it like this seemed to work, albeit very very slowly, I started seeing through the fears, where they came from, I started changing in how I dealt with situations in work and life, with people and family, and even with friends. I overcame a near lifelong marijuana habit, it took ages to stop this - and I never really thought I would give up that dependance - but I did, and paranoia is stopping, and things are moving at a nice pace.

So I am taking my first step again, will be taking more steps in the future, and will not be willing to back down. Pushing myself out of my comfort zones, getting to know reality better, and getting to redefine myself in this life that I have.