Introduction I, Tareq Nassri a.k.a MonyetBoy, was born and raised in Malaysia. Monyet is the Malaysian word for monkey, and why I call myself MonyetBoy will be more apparent as you read this book. I have been using alternative healing modalities, such as reiki tarot and shamanism, in my life since I began my journey of self-discovery in 2016. I was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and this was what catapulted me into my healing journey. A journey where I was extremely blessed to have met individuals who assisted me to reach a point in my life where I was no longer in pain and suffering. After battling depression, drug abuse and suicide attempts in the first 3 years of my diagnosis, I managed to slowly turn my life around. 3 years ago, I had been approached by a local publishing house to write a book about my story of being someone living with HIV. Writing a book has always been a dream of mine, yet at the time when I was given the opportunity, the feeling of excitement to have this dream come true didn’t last for too long. This was because I felt like I had nothing to really write about. I had already done numerous interviews and even a TedX Talk about my experience, mostly about the discrimination I had faced and the depression that came with it. I no longer felt that repeating the same story would in any way benefit others or myself Coming to Palawan a year ago in 2019, I had no inkling or thought of writing a book till recently. The idea had only come to me once I had encouragement from friends and family, and strangers who enjoyed reading my Facebook post every now and then. I reflected on my first 9 months in Palawan and the things that I had learned and experienced through the modality of InnerDance and realized I had enough material to share. Material that I believed could help readers. My back story may be different from what others have experienced in their lives, but emotions are universal. Emotions are the same. I ask, that when you read this book, without just focusing on me as a character, I invite you to reflect on your own life journey and take what lessons you find you can resonate with. In no way am I saying that the realizations or advice that I have written in this book are the ultimate universal truth, but they are of my own views, beliefs and understanding of life. I in no way condemn any other teachings or beliefs that differ from mine, and neither am I saying that you need to follow my practices and beliefs. I am merely sharing my own journey in trust that it brings you a sense of clarity, peace, comfort and love with your own self. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This book is my love letter to my mother. For without her blessings and support, I would have never had the chance to experience the healing that I so desperately needed. I love you MOM. THE DREAM As I played with bright colourful orbs against the star-filled night sky, I could feel so much love and life filling my entire body. I thought this was the most magical thing I’ve ever experienced. The orbs were in the colours of the rainbow. Chakra energy I had thought to myself. Maybe this was a symbolic reference to me doing self-healing work all this time. My attention was brought to the side where I saw a bunch of people dancing around a fire. Each and every one of them was smiling and laughing. My “soul family” I thought to myself. Because I didn’t recognize any of them, but it felt like I did. The scene changed to me being at a beach. I was looking at someone, a male figure from behind, sitting on the sand next to what seemed like the clearest and beautiful waters I had ever seen. Instantly I wondered if this was the soulmate I had been longing for all this time. I decided to get a closer look. As I moved closer to this stranger, he began to turn his head towards me. I was surprised to see my own face, with a bright and happy smile, staring gently right back at me. I woke up from this lucid dream state feeling extremely confused. Where was this place? Did I just imagine all this? Was this even real? And this was the first time I had ever seen my own face in a dream. This was something I had hated about going into deep meditation and dream states. Waking up from it. Because in my 4 or 5 years of meditating and experiencing lucid dreaming since my initiation into Munay Ki, I would constantly find myself being transported into magical lands that brought so much happiness and joy or seeing versions of my life that were completely different from my current state. As much as I would be happy in those visions, the reality of my current state would make me sad. Why did this happiness only seem to exist in my altered state of consciousness? Why couldn't it be my reality? When would I actually start living my dreams? Stage 0. The Fool New Beginnings. Free Spirit. "Was I making the right decision?" I asked myself. I had just been offered a raise at my current job, working as an assistant manager in one of the top bars in Kuala Lumpur. A job which helped me get my footing back in the real world, and a job that helped me pay off most of my debts. Debts that had been accumulated over a span of 4 years from being jobless and being addicted to drugs. Before working at the bar, I had been volunteering at a nursing home and rehab centre just outside the city. I originally had gone there to be a patient, to get sober and to deal with my depression and suicidal mental state. It worked, just not in the way I had imagined it to be, but it worked. Nothing seems to happen the way I imagine things to be and normally the reality of things is always much better than what I anticipated. Reflecting back on the past 6 years, I felt a sense of relief about where I had started to where I am now. It all seemed so gloomy and dark in the beginning, without a single hope of light insight. I had moved to 12 different homes in the span of a year, had been fired from a job because of my medical condition, kept surviving on whatever money I could make in a day, I felt like I was at the lowest of lows in life. But thanks to a great support system of friends, things did start to get lighter. It started to get better. I had made new improvements in my life, my mind was no longer filled with thoughts of suicide, I had money to eat, I had a roof over my head and I was actually enjoying myself more. So was going to Palawan really necessary? Was I just throwing away this new sense of comfort really the smartest thing to do? The idea of moving to Palawan had come to me when I met Pi, the founder of InnerDance, for the first time in May in Kuala Lumpur where he was holding sessions over the weekend. I had participated in InnerDance a couple of times before and could never really understand the depths of the modality at the time. All I knew about InnerDance was that you laid down, music would be played, and your body would start to move without you actually being in control. I enjoyed it. It felt light and fun, and I was always interested to see what my body would end up doing during the session. This session with Pi, however, my movements became more of a performance, where else before I would either just stand up and walk around looking for something. It felt like I was playing 2 characters in this session. One of a sultry belly dancer, and the other of poised Sheikh enjoying the bellydancers performance. My middle eastern roots coming to the surface I figured. When the session was done, Pi began to talk about Maia. An eco-village he owned located in Palawan, Philippines. He explained how there were mud houses spread across the land, representing each colour of the chakras, and how most nights after each InnerDance session people would gather around a bonfire exchanging wisdom and dancing under the night sky. And how the eco-village was just a walking distance to one of the nicest beaches in Palawan. I sat there stunned. He literally just described a place I had seen in my dreams a month ago. I knew I had to ask him more, as something I've learned in my life is that there is no such thing as a coincidence. I emailed Pi a few weeks later, telling him about my dream and how it matched his explanation of Maia, and how I felt like I needed to go to Maia without really knowing the reason but that I just needed to. He agreed saying he remembered me from that InnerDance session. I asked if a month visit would suffice, to which he replied, "Make it 6 months. You are in need of deep rest." Speaking to some family and friends about this interaction with Pi, I was met with different opinions. Friends who were into the spiritual life path said I should definitely take up the offer, where else my other friends and family said I was crazy. I kept going back and forth with my decision. I had to ask myself why I needed to go. Yes, I had a stable job and money in my pocket, but was I really happy? If I was happy, why were my days mostly filled with anxiety and fear? And when these emotions got intense, I would find myself holding a meth bong just to feel at ease again. It wasn't till one day at work where I had a full-blown panic attack, losing control of my saliva, that I knew these were signs of me slowly falling back into dark times. I was 34. I couldn't keep losing control like this every time the pressure of the real world started to get the best of me. So I handed in my resignation letter, made necessary arrangements and booked my flight. I was taking a leap of faith and as scary as it felt, something inside of me knew this was necessary. And now here I was the night before my departure, asking myself if what I was doing was right. "It is the right decision," I said to myself. Years of doing meditation and trying other alternative healing modalities just weren't enough, so why not give it one more try by fully immersing myself into InnerDance in a foreign place. Plus I already saw myself being happy there in my dreams, so why not trust the vision and all the signs from the universe leading up to this moment. Most of all, what did I really have to lose? Nothing. I could always come back and pick up where I left off. I went to bed excited about this new chapter in my life that was about to begin. Stage 1. The Magician The Expression of Self. The Divine Masculine. As I settled down into my new life in Palawan, Philippines, I first started to become aware of my surroundings and what was available to me. There were people from different nationalities who practiced different alternative healing modalities, but all mainly were there to immerse themselves in the modality of InnerDance. InnerDance, I further learned, is a modality that uses different types of music and sound frequencies that plays with the circadian rhythms of the brain, thus unlocking suppressed emotions and memories via uncontrollable body movements. Pairing this with other modalities that I had learned, I now had a wider library of self-help tools. There wasn't a strict schedule or a set of rules to follow, so I was free to just go at my own pace, exploring the area around me and to take a time out when I felt like it. A much needed deep rest as Pi had mentioned. It was all about me myself and I. In between getting to know people, and exploring the city, I dove straight into doing InnerDance every week, and before each session, I kept asking the question, Who Am I. During one particular session, I had a vision of a purple flower with a white glow around. The odd thing was it had what looked like thorns piercing inwards. I woke from the session thinking how strange for a flower to have thorns instead of petals. I shared this vision with the new friends I had made here, explaining how I felt it was a metaphor of me protecting myself. By building up a defence wall but not realizing I was actually hurting myself. I'd been told in the recent past, that I had a lot of anger in me and that at most times I came off as defensive and stubborn. I never felt this to be true. And this brought up the question. Who was I really? Yes, I was a 34-year-old guy who held several jobs since I was 19. I was an outgoing funny person who had the tendency to fall in love quickly. The company of friends and family were always important to me. And of course, I was someone who was living with HIV. Someone who for the past years had found himself speaking publicly about HIV, helping to counsel others who were living with HIV and thus creating an entire image surrounding the disease. It dawned on me that all I really knew about myself was HIV. About how I went through a turbulent childhood, with mother and father issues, a teenager who suffered from self-image issues, and finally a young adult who went through life constantly searching for true love without any care about self-worthiness and instead chose to self medicate with the help of drugs and alcohol. All those events leading to the dreaded diagnosis, which further pushed me into depression and a state of absolute chaos. For the past couple of years, I had been speaking publicly about my diagnosis, doing interviews and sitting on discussion panels. And it was always the same story of how I was mistreated and battling depression. This was just how people viewed me, or maybe this was just how I viewed myself. Even when people would say I was brave and courageous for sharing my story, I still felt like I was taken pity on and that I was a fraud because I was still feeling down on myself most of the time. How did this story that I was telling benefit anyone? This story wasn’t even helping me? I did not like this story about myself as it just didn't feel like who I really was. I was stuck in an image that I had created unconsciously. An image that I no longer wanted to be, nor felt associated with. The past 5 years I had been treating HIV as something that was separate from me. A disease that I had contracted from being reckless in my life and something I wanted so desperately to push out of my being. I was resisting this part of myself. Maybe this was why even though I had practiced so many different modalities of alternative healing, I still didn’t fully heal myself or find the peace that I needed. Maybe I needed to fully embrace the diagnosis and accept it as part of who I was now. So I did not ask myself, how do I get rid of the disease, because I needed to embrace it, nor did I ask the question “Who am I”, because I didn’t know who I was anymore. But instead, I asked, who is HIV? I had to be brutally honest with myself. What parts of my personality were part of this moulding that created this character, HIV? What were the emotions that I had carried with me throughout my whole life? Lonely. Judgmental. Ugly. Angry. Sad. Manipulative. Stubborn. Vindictive. Unforgiving. Afraid. As I wrote these words, I just kept looking at the paper in disbelief. How did I get to this point? Was this really who I was? I never once saw myself as any of these words, but the reality was exactly this. I was disheartened at first, but I remembered that just like everything in this world, change was possible. It was solely up to me to really want to make this change. The one word that stood out the most was lonely. It makes sense doesn't it when you think about the virus. It starts alone. Lonely. Wanting to spread. Wanting to convert others. Regardless of how much damage it causes to itself and its surrounding. It just wanted to feel like it belonged. Much like a human being. That's the downside of being a human being I guess. We get so caught up with life, wanting and needing to be loved, that we forget to just love and want ourselves first. I asked myself, why did I want to be wanted? Was it really important? Because even when I was with someone, why did I always end up being alone? I was always surrounded by amazing people in my life, but I still felt lonely. Why? And during an InnerDance session, I asked this question again. During the session, in my vision, I saw a young boy standing on top of a hill looking out at the night sky filled with stars. I thought to myself, this boy must be so happy. The boy turned to look at me. I wasn’t expecting him to look so sad. “I’ve lived many lives, and seen many wonders, but always on my own," he said to me. I felt the pain he had in his heart, so much so that it felt like my own. “Of course you feel my pain, for we are the same person". In an instant, the boy disappeared and I was left staring at a blank space. Until a vision of an eye appeared. It was brown, beautiful and had so much sense of power coming from it. I wonder who this eye belonged to. I heard this voice say, "Don't worry. The one is coming. But first, tend to yourself." Look in the mirror and ask yourself, "Who am I?". Reflect on your entire life journey and ask these questions: DoI like the story I'm telling about myself? Do I love and recognize the image that I see? Do I really know who I am? Be brutally honest. Stage 2. The High Priestess The Inner voice. The Divine Feminine One of the worst things said to me after I was diagnosed with HIV was, "What makes you think you know any better or that you're able to make decisions? All the decisions you have ever made have led you to being sick." These words were uttered to me by a family member, someone who I loved dearly, all because I had spoken up about how I felt she was being unfair in her business dealings. Did I no longer have the rights to speak up because I was diagnosed with HIV? Was I now completely worthless as a human being? This interaction affected me in ways I would have had no understanding about till now. I do know that at the time, I took that hurt and changed it into anger. My every action after this interaction was fueled with anger to prove my family member wrong. Actions that would affect all those in my path, disregarding their own rights or safety. And if I was being honest, this is exactly how I would act when I was in my late teens and young adult age. Its human nature isn't it when we are told who we are is wrong or when we are told not to do something, we react in the totally opposite way. We have this urge to prove we know better. I was constantly blaming the outside for my behaviour. People, environment and religion, but not realizing I was merely acting out. And this wasn't my inner voice. I didn't have an inner voice. All my beliefs and thoughts were in some ways a product of brainwashing by society, peer pressure from friends and most damaging, was inherited from family. Not having our own inner voice, we also tend to not stand up for ourselves or we feel unable to say no in a situation, even when we don’t feel safe and comfortable. Most of us, from a young age, are told what is right and what is wrong. We are told how we should act, who we should be friends with, what we should aspire to be in life, who we should pray to and what we should or shouldn't believe in. And most of the time we follow as we are told. Even when we don’t necessarily agree, we follow suit because of this fear of being unaccepted, rejected and most of all being judged. And thus start this unhealthy cycle of judging others and judging ourselves. Judgement blocks the intuition. Because we are constantly stuck in this duality concept of good and bad, we no longer are able to see ourselves or others in a clear light. We end up constantly seeking validation from the outside world, without really doing what we feel like doing. To make matters worse, I also had made my pain and hurt of the past, as my main focus point in life. By doing so I wasn’t able to see beyond the pain and hurt, and was unable to see or imagine a future that was any different than what I was used to. I struggled with this for a very long time. By the time I was 15, after running away from home for the second time, I decided I was no longer going to listen to what anyone said. I had spent the last 8 years doing everything that was asked of me only to endure more abuse and ridicule. I decided I was done listening and that from now on, I was just going to do whatever I wanted. But here comes the trap. I was doing things not because my soul wanted to. I was doing things just to rebel and go against people who tried to "control" me, without caring if things were good or bad for me. I became extremely stubborn and never wanted to heed advice even from people who truly loved and cared for me. All that mattered was that it was the opposite of what was said to or asked of me. And this always led me to experience less than favourable outcomes. But I was too deep in this unconscious angry victim mode to realize how I was actually self-sabotaging my own self, my own life. It was always someone else's fault, never my own. I had given away all my control and power rendering myself helpless and hopeless. This really had to change if I wanted my life to get better. How would I figure out what my true beliefs about myself and the world were? How would I undo years of mental programming that were charged with pain, hurt and abuse? I could not constantly seek validation from the outside. I could not call out every person in my life and get into an argument about who was right or wrong. It would be pointless and mindless. You can’t change someone else or force someone else to believe in something that they don’t. People need to see and decide for themselves if they are wanting to change. The answer was made clear. I had to go deep within myself. Deep within my being and figure out where these emotions and "bad" stuff were held inside my body. How they came to be. I had to start reliving the past. Going back to as far as my childhood. Remembering incidents that I so desperately wanted to forget ever happened, trauma's that I tried so hard to suppress. Having to remember why I had certain beliefs that I followed and believed in, even though I no longer resonated with. I needed to do this to find my own inner voice. A voice that wasn't tainted with outside influences. I had to figure out who I truly was. But where would I start? I got my answer during an InnerDance session here in Maia Earth Village, the place I was living at. At the beginning of the session, a conversation about my mother was brought up, about how it began with me loving and longing for her and ended with me disliking and feeling hurt by her. As we laid down and the music began to play, my mind began to fill itself with so many thoughts of anger and hatred towards her. I told myself I was never going back to her and that I wanted nothing to do with her. If she didn't love me, why should I love her? I then curled up into a ball and began to cry, feeling so much pain, sadness and fear. These feelings started to intensify as the session went on. It took a few seconds for me to realize that this wasn't my feelings any longer, but it was that of my mothers. I understood that I was feeling what she was probably going through during her pregnancy with me and during the time she was raising me. Once this realization occurred, an image of Quan Yin, the goddess of love, mercy and compassion, came to me. She held me in her arms and asked me if I now believed that my mother truly loved me. I said yes, and instantly my entire being was filled with what I can only describe as unconditional love. Listen to the stories you tell yourself... What do you believe about yourself? What do you believe about the world? Do you stand up for your own beliefs or are you merely following things that have been forced upon you? Listen to yourself clearly. Are you speaking your truth or are you speaking someone else's truth? Stage 3. The Empress. The Mother. The Emotional Feminine. From a young age, I always felt like I was this huge disappointment for my mother. She wasn’t really around till I was 9, leaving me to be taken care of with either my grandmother or my aunt, as she was busy being a single working mother trying to provide for me. And when I did finally live with her I felt like no matter what I did, it would always be met with disapproval and comparison. This involved being compared to my cousins, neighbours children, and schoolmates. Why wasn't I smart enough, why I didn't do my chores well enough, why couldn't I get an A on subjects at school, or even why I wasn't as talented or determined enough as others. It seemed like no matter what I did there was always someone better. This played out onto my young adult life. The friends I had, the jobs I took, the people I dated. It always seemed to be met with disapproval. As time went on, it was almost like I started going out of my way just to get this disapproval from her. The disapproval that I had mistaken for love. Which when I think about it made no sense as I felt like my mother never loved me, so how did I think disapproval meant to love? One thing I was sure of from the disapproval was that it meant I was ugly. Because who would approve of ugly? Growing up I was constantly made fun of regarding my weight, my hair, my skin, my facial features, my voice and even the way I dressed. It seemed like everything about me was wrong and ugly. And this wasn't solely just from my mother. It was from family, friends and acquaintances. But not having that reassurance from my mother that I was anything but ugly, and having to live through a period of time when she was broken, angry and going through her own struggles, I had unknowingly put all the blame on her. I remember when I was 15, and I had just opened up to some close friends that I was gay, they introduced me to a former senior from our highschool. By introduction, I meant by giving me his phone number. This was the time where mobile phones didn't have cameras or WhatsApp. We purely connected over SMS and phone calls. We talked daily for over 2 months before deciding on our first meet up. I was excited and nervous. It was my first date and first time experiencing the gay world. We planned for him to come pick me and my friends up from home and we would go watch a movie. By the time we got to the mall, he told us to go get the movie tickets while he parked the car. He never returned. And my messages and phone calls went unanswered for 2 weeks after that day. When he did finally answer, all he had to say was, "Sorry. But you're just too ugly for me." I believed even more now that I truly was unlovable. This broke me far beyond I would have imagined. It led to me having self-esteem issues that would lead to me experimenting with drugs and not having any sense of self-worth. I constantly battled with self-image issues and all for the sake of not wanting to look like how I did, as I desperately wanted to be accepted and loved by anybody who crossed paths with me. I was trying to be an image of someone I was not. And as the image of myself became worse, my resentment towards my mother grew even more. The uglier I felt, the uglier she was to me. When I was diagnosed with HIV, I was secretly hoping that it would bring me and my mother closer. I was hoping that she would finally just embrace me and tell me that she loved and approved of me. This of course did not happen. In fact, the total opposite happened. We grew further apart, and my resentment had now turned into full-blown hate and anger. I blamed her for everything that had happened to me and for how ugly I felt. Only after that InnerDance session of feeling her pain and sadness, did my view of my mother truly begin to change. And so did my view on our relationship and myself change. I now understood why things got worse between us and why she didn't embrace me when I told her about having HIV. I wasn't who I really was anymore. And my mother could see this. The sickly looking 28-year old that was standing in front of her was not the same person she gave birth to. How could she embrace me? How could I expect her to embrace a false image of myself that I had created? And it was during this moment that I realized I had been holding a false image of her my whole life. My mother did her best to support me while growing up, in the best way she knew how. Yes, she was strict and at times abusive, as this was how she was raised, and she was merely acting the only way she knew how. I was the one who was constantly disapproving of her, always comparing her to other mothers. Wanting her to be like the mothers I saw on TV and movies, or even being like my aunts and mothers of my friends. I wanted her to be somebody she was not. And even when she did show me love I would shut it down because it wasn't the sort of love I wanted from her. And by doing this, I was creating a double-edged sword. I was feeding that energy of disapproval for the both of us unconsciously. I realize it wasn't my mother that was the problem. It was me. It was what I believed about myself and what I believed about her that made things so toxic. I had kept the image of her being this angry ugly person even when she wasn't, and all because she was not what I imagined a perfect mother to be. Worst, by trying to change her, I had changed myself. Things have been good between us now after that InnerDance session. And all because I decided to stop forcing a made-up image of what I thought a mother should be like on her. Once I had learned to accept and love her unconditionally, and to stop seeing her as ugly, the relationship between us finally began to heal. And I began to see myself as beautiful. Look to your mother... What is your relationship with your mother like? Do you feel and see beauty inside and outside of you? What is your understanding about love? The way you view and feel about your mother plays an important role in your understanding of love and about self-love.