Joseph Campbell talked about the birds being the “eyes and ears” of the universe—nature's surveillance system, observing and verifying every move. The esoteric ledger that records all of this consciousness is known as the Akashic Records.

Due to the uncanny similarities between the laws of the esoteric and what we are seeing play out in society today, it is no wonder the experience of ‘finding Bitcoin’ manifests a spiritual experience for many, including myself.

Carl Jung, infamously said on the nature of God “I don’t need to believe, I know.” The difference between ‘believing’ and ‘knowing’ is a challenging subject to discuss, and one many Westerners refuse to entertain. The notion one could ‘know’ of the esoteric, beyond ‘believing’ is, in their mind, delusional.

As explored quite brilliantly in Season 1 of Westworld, the journey toward discovering consciousness, or the ‘awakening’, is a maze where many clues or crumbs are left to help guide you out of amnesia. Below, I will share a small selection of the crumbs, clues, and ‘sublime coincidences’, that helped guide me out of the maze before finding Bitcoin.

December 1989, remote South Island, New Zealand

My grandparents took my sister and I on a visit to our cousin’s farm. We were both under the age of 4; everything was new, and everything was exciting. While driving, I saw an old man sitting on a blue tractor slowly driving on the side of the road in the opposite direction. For that brief second, as we drove past, I was mesmerised because I had a miniature tractor in my sandpit at home just like his, but mine was yellow.

Bang! The car flipped and flipped again, and again. There were a few screams, then silence. I was upside down, as was everyone. All the windows were smashed. My sister started to sob. We didn’t really know what happened and confusion set in.

My grandparents began to murmur, and it looked like everyone was alive. At the age of 3 I did not understand the seriousness of the situation. Just like seeing the tractor beforehand, this was another new experience.

No more than 5 minutes passed before we heard a vehicle pull up beside us. A woman appeared and our eyes locked. There was a familiarity to this person. Did I know her? She seemed to recognise my sister and me. Yes, I had met her for the first time 3 days earlier. This woman was my mum’s friend, a nurse, who just happened to be driving along the same remote road 100+ km from home.

“Oh my God”, she gasped. “You’re (x & y’s) children.”

My grandfather had fallen asleep at the wheel, causing the vehicle to veer off the road and into a ditch. We just missed a row of trees, which likely would have resulted in a quick exit from this system we call life. There were broken bones, concussions, and cuts, but miraculously we all survived thanks to our first responder, our mum’s friend.

June - August 1995, Zimbabwe, France, USA

At age 9 my parents took my sister and I out of school to see “the real world”. Over the course of 3 months we walked around Robert Mugabe’s compound in Harare, climbed inside WW2 bunkers on the beaches of Northern France, and finally visited Disney World.

When we visited Disney World my parents said, “don’t forget the poverty you saw in Zimbabwe or the war bunkers in France - that’s the real world”.

Just 5 years later, Mugabe’s utopic vision and reputation crumbled as his thirst for power corrupted both the economy and the sovereignty of the people, as hyperinflation took off and farms were nationalised.

September 2015, Perth, Australia

Many years earlier, during a father and son mentoring session, my dad said “Never let a man play golf alone. If you see someone behind you, always invite them in.”

On this particular day there was an older gentleman playing alone behind us. So my friend and I waited for him at the next hole and asked if he would like to join us. 

“I’d love to!”, he exclaimed.

Over the next 4 hours, Peter, an emeritus professor at the nearby university, told us of his life's adventure that started in a small town in the South Island of New Zealand. It took him all the way to the United States, where he made internationally recognised discoveries in cancer research, and concluded in Perth where he settled as an academic.

At the end of the round, Peter offered to exchange emails in the off-chance we could ever play again. One week later I did receive an email from Peter, but it wasn’t an invitation to play golf.

Hi {Madge},

Pleasure playing with you last week. As we swapped email addresses I recognised your last name. In fact, I remember your grandfather. He was the Reverend of our local church growing up. Even though I left at age 7 I can still recall one of his sermons.

I found this photo (attached) a few years ago clearing out my father’s estate.

I believe this might be of interest to your family.

Regards,

Peter

The photo, now in digital form, was indeed of interest to my family. It was a lost photo taken 60 years earlier, 5000 km away, of my grandfather, grandmother, my father, and my father’s siblings.

My grandfather had passed away by this point, but my grandmother got to see the missing photo and in it she saw my grandfather winking from the other side.

August 2018, Melbourne Australia

I first learned of the hallucinogenic drug DMT in 2007 when I was 21. Everything I heard about it scared the living daylights out of me. Occasionally I would read about the stories of those who had trekked deep into the Amazon to sample ayahuasca, and I watched the odd Joe Rogan clip. But it was too much for me.

Then one day my life turned to chaos. In the space of a month, my ex-girlfriend jumped ship, my company spectacularly crashed, I became laden with debt, and crippling sciatica and insomnia set in.

I wanted to die. Not suicide, but die with dignity and bow out with some honour—cancer, maybe.

In that darkest week, the strangest things happened. Three people out of nowhere started talking to me about DMT: my barber, a random dude at a bar, and an old friend I ran into at a crypto conference (I wasn’t a Bitcoin believer at the time, just curious). At the end of the week I told my close friend of the weird coincidences around DMT I was experiencing, and that “maybe I should try it”.

The following day he called me up and said “you’re not going to believe this, I have DMT in my hand right now, a friend gave it to me… for free. That's the DMT code apparently.”

Well if there ever was a sign to try it, this was it.

That weekend we ventured out of town with a glass bulb in hand. One drag in, a female voice said to me “welcome, you’re in good hands, it’s OK.” Second drag in, the room started to break apart, and by third drag, well, who knows. I was in a different dimension.

The next day I woke up and saw the world with a fresh set of eyes, like I had exited Westworld’s maze, discovered consciousness. And even better, my crippling sciatica was gone.

September 2019, London

On a late Saturday evening, still in sports attire, I received a message from a girl over WhatsApp who I matched with a month or so earlier on Hinge, to join her for a drink with her friends. I checked the location and noticed it was exactly on my route home. I quickly made arrangements for the Uber driver to re-direct. Why not?

We’d never met before, but I found her soon enough sitting on a couch with her friends. The reception I received on entry was less than welcoming—almost hostile. Reluctantly she agreed to have a drink with me whilst her friends sniggered away.

Not that I knew at the time, but she hadn’t invited me for a drink. In fact, she thought I was a stalker. As it would turn out, her friends nicked her phone and invited me, without her knowledge.

As you can imagine, “the date” didn’t get off to a roaring start. That was until I asked her what she studied at university.

“Psychology and Economics” she replied.

“Oh, you wouldn’t happen to be a Behavioural Economist would you?”

“That is exactly what I am, how do you know about that field?” she asked with intrigue.

“I’m reading Alchemy by Rory Sutherland, and have been fascinated with B.E. for years.”

Her jaw dropped before revealing, “I’m reading the same book too.”

Six months later we were sitting on the couch in the middle of the infamous ‘London Lockdown’ with a glass of wine in hand when suddenly a ring flashed up in my 3rd eye. It was my girlfriend’s Oma’s wedding ring. A message came through:

“Now is the moment, it is all set up for you, use my ring and propose.”

Without a shadow of a doubt or ounce of hesitation I walked down stairs, threw on a suit jacket, took the ring from the spot I could see it, grabbed a bunch of flowers, and proposed. It was the most magical moment—and I didn’t even plan it!

May/June 2020, London

Two weeks before our engagement, I started having extremely lucid dreams and flashbacks of the events mentioned above. It was all very strange and I didn’t know what to make of it. I quizzed my parents on the car accident, which had never been discussed after the event, as it had become a family secret to protect my grandfather.

They confirmed the events I saw in the flashbacks.

The Bitcoin “HODL” Epiphany

You may rightly be asking yourself, “What does all this have to do with Bitcoin?”

Bitcoin has been in my sphere for many years, but a bit like being lost in the Westworld maze before finding consciousness, I couldn’t see the universe trying to guide me towards it.

My first Bitcoin purchase nearly happened in 2014, after some weird teenage blockchain developer was going on about it at my local co-working space. He was crazy, but I love crazy so I listened. The friction involved in purchasing it at the time was too much of a distraction, and I kept forgetting to buy.

In 2016, another little slap. This time on a tech accelerator. I was working in the same cohort as a bunch of developers attempting to emulate blockchain technology for voting. They tried their absolute hardest to help me “see past the event horizon” as John Vallis calls it, but I couldn’t.

In 2018, a bigger slap. My ex-girlfriend—a former software simulations engineer for the Department of Defence—revealed she first owned Bitcoin back in the Silk Road days and that I “should take a look down the rabbit hole”. I didn’t.

Then comes 2020. WTAF is happening.

Nothing in this system makes sense. The manual has been thrown out. It’s like well-established economic models and political theories have been uninvented. This system is about to break, and break badly.

I see the money printing, I think of Zimbabwe. 

Then one day amidst the chaos as a joke I say out loud:

“Well, only Bitcoin can save us now.”

At that moment I had the epiphany.

“BITCOIN! It’s fucking Bitcoin. The world has been trying to tell me for the last 6 years, Bitcoin is not an alternative asset, Bitcoin is going to change the world.”

The Bitcoin HODL, I’ve come to learn, is a belief system equal to knowing you are one with the universe, that your life force is being encoded in the Akashic Records.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the inspiration behind @MadgeSpeaks: Madge is the name of my late grandmother who, according to several mystics, is right beside me at all times.

HODL for life!

Madge xx