The Ultimate Good-Life Checklist When You’re About to Leave the Matrix
The pros and cons of living in paradise for 10 years
photo: the author
I’ve been living in paradise for the last 10 years.
Ibiza.
A place that many call a new earth experiment, a conscious tribe hub, or an island of crystal and transformation. Apart from being clubbing island nr. 1 in the world.
This is all true, and it's not, as bright and light and new age conscious Ibiza might seem. Everything has its shadow, its counterbalance point.
Are you considering moving abroad, leaving the city, finding a place with a conscious tribe, discovering your communities of like-minded peers, finally embracing the good life?
Are you on your personal quest to find inner freedom while outside the world falls for fear and a tightening trend of dystopian control?
Good for you.
I am making the reverse movement at the moment.
A brilliant opportunity to feel, taste and experience the Dutch matrix again. A system created for people to live together, conscious or not. Super efficient, super-rich, unreal green, every square m2 is organized and with many other benefits.
Being in my mother country gives me a great opportunity to evaluate 10 years of Ibiza. To do an honest inquiry into what this time really brought me. Where I grew and where my growth was actually halted.
And finally, to give you a checklist when you are on the verge of leaving your old life of security to dive into the free new unknown.
Check out the energetic signature of the place you wanna move to.
Every place has an energetic signature. It makes you feel good, energetic, excited and expanded, or contracted, down, heavy and sick. And everything in between.
What I’ve experienced in Ibiza, also as a hiking guide, is that there is almost a tangible energetic field that has a high frequency.
I know, that sounds new-age in a world that wants data, proof, and scientific security.
This can’t be measured, you won't find it in tourism brochures, but most of the conscious tribes living on the island know this. It’s in the stories the island has brought forward, it's in the local legends and it's a common narrative in the conscious tribe.
It’s very difficult to walk the middle road of mediocrity in Ibiza.
You’re either high up there in the skies, or down in the valley of despair. Most conscious hubs have this signature, hence there would be not much transformation and they would not attract so many people that actually want and need a change in their lives or being recharged after a burnout.
It’s common knowledge that Bali has this same kind of strong energetic bubble, some even call it a spell.
You definitely need to like these dynamics, be open for your world to be cracked open, be ready to face your shadows, pain and things you walked away from for most of your life.
Check energy levels in your new home and your openness to face your sh*t.
Choose an abundance of beauty.
Most fiends I have on Ibiza, including myself, have a bag with towels and beach gear in their car, just in case a friend calls to meet on a paradise beach, or when you envy a swim in the crystal clear blue waters.
Living in Ibiza is a travel magazine experience always a 30-minute drive away.
Millions of hard-working folks on the planet wait the whole year to save money and get this experience in their week of Ibiza.
We got it all of the time when we like to.
So where do you prefer to live? In a grey city? In a country with 7 months of rain and a sea that is grey, polluted and never clear?
Or in paradise?
The choice is yours.
I know life is not only amazing beaches with palm trees waving at you, and you might have children that need a good school and keep you stuck in where you are. You probably have your mortgage too.
After 10 years of Ibiza, I am definitely sure that plenty of sun, blue Mediterranean waters, and playing frisbee on the beach 2 times a week have improved my health, mood, immune system, and joy in incalculable ways.
Check the amount of natural abundant beauty on your future land.
What about the community?
Isolation, separation, and a lost sense of community are our modern-day sickness of society. Suicide is skyrocketing, and big tech and Covid measures are not exactly helping to bend this curve.
That’s why many friends I have, many people I speak, are accelerating their manifestation to find like-minded peers and souls in communities. Portugal is a fast-growing community hub, as is Costa Rica for many years now, Mexico, Guatemala, and other places.
Ibiza is not.
I’ve spoken to countless game-changers that came to Ibiza to found a community, but they got stuck in their own healing. The transformative powers of Ibiza, when you’re open to them, are simply that strong.
This might sound weird, but it's true. All we need to do is the community count.
There are a handful of places that call themselves communities, like Casita Verde, the green hub of the island. Or Crystal Mountain where you trip over huge crystals buried in the ground. There are various smaller places where less than 10 people live together, eat from the land and organize drum & singing circles and hold retreats.
Why are not many more hippie souls and millionaire awake entrepreneurs setting up communities? The main problem apart from the strong inward directed energy is the price of land and property.
Check the land and property prices of your paradise-to-be.
Ibiza and the Super Rich
The other aspect that doesn’t speak in favor of Ibiza as a community hub is the fact that Ibiza is where the super-rich nestle.
They fly in with their private jets and disappear in the mountains in hard-to-find super villas. Having their leisure time in Formentera on their superyachts, ending the day in posh blue Marlin beach club with a $10.000 dinner at a VIP table, ordering 6 liters $6.000,- bottles of champagne while listening to the best DJ’s.
Under this top layer of elite money, there is a vast number of millionaires, celebrities, criminals, and Paris Hilton having a villa on the island.
They are the cause for accelerating housing and land prices. You won’t find anything normal, outside of the small cities on the island, for under $2500,-
That’s New York and London kind of rent prices.
So to change your world, you need to bring a bag of cash.
This doesn’t stimulate decentralized game-changers to introduce their green crypto, nor does it motivate and attract artists, ecologists, healers and other folks with lots of talents except for making money.
They end up in Portugal or chose countries with less insane prices.
Check the number of billionaires in your spiritual sanctuary to be.
You’ll need to make the jump to find out
Ten years ago, I took a gigantic risk.
I left my work, my network, my health insurance, and the strong financial safety net of the Netherlands to experience and help build the conscious side of Ibiza and make a personal deep-dive.
I wrote a viral blog about how I landed in a villa in front of the majestic magnetic landmark Es Vedra where I started to organize retreats.
I Don’t Own A House, Didn’t Build A Career… I Am 52 and Blissfully Happy
Now I am back temporarily.
My advice to you is to make the jump when you feel it.
Back then, there was not so much urgency as there is today to start building a new future for all of us and our children. Places with natural beauty, healthy soil to build community, normal prices and strong energy will attract you, almost by themselves, as Ibiza did with me.
As in a trance I left all my belongings and went on an adventure that deeply transformed my life.
I can’t be thankful enough. Now I am ready to bring this light and energy further into the world since most of these places of transformation are actually bubbles.
Amazing bubbles, but still bubbles. This is because you need space, safety and free minds around you to really transform out of the matrix.
Sell your house and stuff, pack your suitcases and use my checklist for choosing your next conscious, free, social eco-system in a world that’s on the brim of a global systemic meld down and transformation.
Be part of the change.
Lucien Lecarme
First published in the Ascent on Medium