I want to close this series the way I try to close every significant chapter of my life: with clarity about what it actually meant.

What connects all of it is a single process. I'm calling it The Great Unlearning — and it is the most important work I've done in my life, more than any business I've built or visa I've applied for or country I've navigated.

I didn't arrive at this point quickly.

My first dark night of the soul was in 2005. By 2012, when my mother passed, I had been wanting to leave the United States for years. I just hadn't built the infrastructure to do it yet.

Then 2020 happened.

Why the West is Sleepwalking While the South Sprints

In Part 3, we talked about "drifting"—the state of being stuck in a system that does your thinking for you. We talked about how exhausting it is to stay in "Satan's Playground," (Seten frequency) clinging to comfort while your soul decays.

Today, I want to show you where the opposite of drifting is happening.

In Part 2, we talked about the patriarchy, the scams, and the ego that acts as a cage. But today, I want to talk about the most dangerous place of all: “Satan's Playground” (Disclaimer: I am not religious in any sense of the word).

In his book Outwitting the Devil, Napoleon Hill describes "Satan's Playground" as the state of mind of a person who has stopped thinking for themselves and started "drifting." When you live your life based on other people’s opinions (which he also calls Satan’s playground in Think and Grow Rich)—your parents, your religion, or a society that wants to keep you as a worker bee—you are drifting. And when you drift, you belong to the system.

Most people stay "in their place" because they are terrified of the unknown. They think staying stuck is the "safe" choice. They are wrong.

Remember that I am sharing the good, the bad and the ugly of this lifestyle and the lessons I learn along the way while observing the human conditiion all over the world. The good is all the beautiful experiences now embedded in my memories, the beautiful and interesting people I’ve met and the beautiful places I’ve been to.

But this is a universe built on polarity and with every positive comes a negative. It’s just part of the game we call life.

Most people see travel as a perpetual summer—a chase for the next beach, the next sun-drenched terrace, the next high. But as an Awakened Architect, I know that growth doesn’t happen in the heat of the chase. It happens in hibernation.

Winter has always been my time for reflection and self-pampering. I call it "hibernating like the bears." It’s a period of deep contemplation and planning—not for "New Year’s Resolutions" (I don't do those), but for auditing the bridge between my past, my present, and the future I am designing.