There are moments in life that shift everything. Moments where, without warning, the way you see the world cracks open, and something entirely new comes flooding in. For me, one of those moments happened on a beach near Baleal, Portugal, as I sat meditating at sunset, feeling—for the first time—universal energy moving through me.
At this point, I had already been meditating every day for three years. It had become part of my life, a daily ritual that kept me grounded. But what happened on that beach was something different. It wasn’t just about inner calm or focus. It was something far beyond that. It was the beginning of a realization that consciousness is not contained within us—it flows through everything.
This is how it happened.
The Journey to Baleal
It was 2019, and something in me was shifting. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I needed to step outside of my normal life and into something different. That’s how I ended up in Baleal, Portugal—a small surf town where the Atlantic crashes with raw power, and the salty wind carries something ancient in it. I wasn’t alone. Natasha—my girlfriend at the time, now my wife—was with me, along with two close friends, Jannik and Max. We came for the surf, the freedom, the adventure. But something deeper was waiting.
Days were spent in the water, catching waves, bodies exhausted in the best way. But as the sun began its descent, something called me to stillness. Every evening, just before sunset, I’d walk down to the beach, sit in the sand, and meditate for an hour. No distractions. Just me, the ocean, and the setting sun. At first, it felt like discipline—something I was doing because I knew it was good for me. But soon, it became something else. Something profound.
The first evening was restless. My thoughts jumped from one place to another, clinging to whatever noise they could find. The wind, the crashing tide, the occasional distant laugh from a passing surfer—it all felt like an interruption. But as the minutes stretched, something in me started to sync with the rhythm of the waves. Thought by thought, my mind began to let go.
The Ocean’s Rhythm
Something happens when you sit in stillness long enough. At first, the body resists, shifting, itching, searching for comfort. The mind does the same. But then, eventually, it all settles. The breath slows. The body quiets. And if you stay with it, something opens.
Every evening, I focused on the ocean, matching my breath to the movement of the tide. Inhale as the water rolled in. Exhale as it pulled back. Over and over. It felt like the ocean itself was breathing with me. There was no separation between us. I wasn’t watching the waves—I was part of them.
Science backs this up. Rhythmic breathing, like the kind used in meditation, activates the parasympathetic nervous system, calming the body and opening deeper states of awareness. The National Center for Biotechnology Information confirms that meditation rewires brain activity, improving emotional regulation and cognitive function. But in that moment, I didn’t need studies to tell me what was happening—I could feel it.
The First Glimpses of Energy
Then the energy came. At first, it was subtle—just a warmth in my hands, a soft tingling at the base of my spine. I thought it was the sun still warming my skin, but as the air cooled, the sensation didn’t fade. It grew.
By the fifth evening, I recognized it. This wasn’t just body heat—it was something alive, something flowing. A current moving through me, rising up, expanding outward. I had read about energy before—prana, qi, kundalini. But this wasn’t an idea. It was happening.
There are traditions that speak of this. Yogis call it the awakening of the subtle body. Taoists refer to it as the cultivation of qi. Neuroscientists might describe it as an altered state of consciousness. Psychology Today discusses how deep meditation can activate areas of the brain linked to mystical experiences and states of deep interconnectedness. Whatever the name, I knew one thing: it was real.
Silence and Space
Stillness isn’t empty. It only feels that way at first. But if you sit long enough, you realize—it’s not empty at all. It’s full. Full of everything. The sky, the ocean, the wind. They weren’t separate from me. They *were* me.
One night, as the final sliver of the sun dipped beneath the horizon, I realized I hadn’t had a single thought for what felt like forever. No analyzing, no remembering, no planning. Just pure presence. And in that presence, there was only one thing left—love. Not love as an emotion, but love as the fundamental nature of existence.
A Shift That Stayed
That week in Portugal changed everything. Before, meditation had been a practice—something I did daily, something that brought calm, focus, and clarity. But after those sunset sessions by the ocean, it wasn’t just a habit anymore. It wasn’t even a tool. It was something deeper. Something I couldn’t step away from because it had become part of me.
I no longer felt like I was meditating to achieve something—to quiet my mind, to manage stress, to reach a certain state. Instead, meditation became a return. A return to what had always been there but had gone unnoticed.
The experience in Baleal left a mark. Even as life pulled me back into movement, I carried that stillness with me. The awareness that the breath, the waves, and consciousness itself were all moving as one never left. The sense of separation that once felt so real had loosened.
I wasn’t just someone who meditated. I was someone who knew—without a doubt—that everything is connected. And that knowledge, that feeling, never truly faded.
The Doorway Is Always Open
Now, every time I sit in meditation, I return to that feeling. The waves. The sky. The boundless presence. But I no longer think of it as something that happened in Portugal. That week wasn’t an end—it was the beginning. A doorway I stepped through. And once you walk through, you realize it was never closed to begin with.
The truth is, what I touched in those still moments on the beach was always there. It didn’t come from the ocean or the sunset or the perfect setting. It came from within—uncovered when everything else was stripped away. And that’s the key. This presence, this energy, isn’t something we need to find. It’s something we remember.
The doorway is always open because it was never locked. It’s there in the silence, in the breath, in the space between thoughts. And it’s waiting for anyone willing to sit, to listen, and to let go.
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