Books by Gonzalo W. Bénard I, Energy US

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CA MPower the Shaman US

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Materialist science, the new religion of the modern age, claims that an alive and conscious human is as cosmically significant as a takeaway coffee cup. So we can do what we want with ourselves and each other, within reason.

Gonzalo Bénard’s teachings are an antidote to the consumerism that the Western World offers. And that his knowledge on consciousness derives from direct, sensory experience is something that mainstream science cannot comprehend, nor compete with.

The moment we are born is probably the most traumatic one in any being’s life. It is also the most wonderful or magical one, in which the physical body connects with its own consciousness. You may either embrace the pain to achieve peace with yourself, or deal with suffering and mind noise, which are what ego brings.

Meditation on Stones and Body #22. ©GBénard

Ego separates body, mind and consciousness. But consciousness can connect them all. It depends on you the one you choose to feed.

Meditation on Stones and Body #7. ©GBénard

If you focus on your body you’re focusing on a temporary ego. You will suffer by watching it age and stress. If you focus on your consciousness you will find a challenging peace, silence and life itself. You will find wisdom from the knowledge of mind learning, memories from this life and past ones, and eternity. Through anamnesis.

Doors of Anamnesis #15. ©GBénard

“After being born I was taught to not be me, so I learned how to dream and create and live in my most secret and safest place on Earth: Naked and safe inside my own untouchable and secret mind.”

Doors of Anamnesis #13. ©GBénard

Since childhood I’ve felt the need to lie down on the ground (especially in forests or on the tops of hills), close my eyes and feel the resonance and vibration of the Earth. To be connected you need to feel and listen to her “heartbeat,” her breathing. I discovered when I was very young one precious thing: I am made of the same energy as the Earth, which is made of the same energy as the cosmos. The resonance and frequency of my brain is the same as the Earth itself. So I feel her, I listen to her, I learn constantly with her. We learned how to communicate with each other. We are one. And that is what connects me empathically to other people, and to the cosmos itself. What scientists describe as dark matter, is the same as our minds: a field of energy resonating in a specific frequency. Our brains are in tune with exactly the same frequency as the Earth.

Totem Island of Birds. ©GBénard

While the brain is hard (physical) the consciousness is soft (energy) as the mind itself is a product of these two. But, like any physical thing, the brain is just a physical form of energy, thus visible to the common eye.

The Hard Softness of Consciousness #6. ©GBénard

Autism brought me a wonderful world of silence and introspection. Buddhism taught me how to work with it so I can spread more positive thoughts. Shamanism taught me how to be a better healer and better medium between worlds. All of this taught me how to embrace myself and others. How compassion and love are the best healers. How emotions and suffering are connected to something called ego, and how we can avoid it without losing our own individuality, our own persona.

Autism, Buddhism and Shamanism can do wonders, teaching us how to work on our own abilities and skills, embracing silence so we can go further, projecting the best we have to help others in their own life paths. How to live in a world where so much information is so often badly managed. How to reach for knowledge, aiming for wisdom. How to be your own self and how to express it. How to respect and how to forgive. How to deal with collective consciousness, protect ourselves and spread our best. But to spread our best we need to work on ourselves. To be better humans than we were in the past. So we can spread better consciousness in the collective. So the collective can spread better to the cosmic.

Wiredscapes of Collective Consciousness #7. ©GBénard

“Mind is over Matter and Consciousness is over Mind. Use it the best way. Trust yourself. Have faith in humanity. Spread that faith. Do not let fear and anxiety take over. Do not absorb that energy. Work on your inner peace and spread it, in every moment, and on every occasion.”

Wiredscapes of Collective Consciousness #9. ©GBénard

In my former book, I, Energy I explain that we are all made of energy. The same energy that exists in the cosmic dark matter, the same energy that moves our planet, the same energy that connects everything inside our brains. And this is one of the reasons I’ve always felt that scientists and physicians are usually wrong, often stuck in their own dogmas like a religion. Even their search for inhabitable planets doesn’t make sense – for their minds are narrowed by the human ego superiority complex that states if there’s life outside it must be like our own. If you look around one can only be amazed by the diversity of flora and fauna, or even by the diversity of the human race itself. We were born here adapted to this planet. But each planet, each star system is surely different. Why would there be life like ours, or as we know it, in such diverse places? It’s not water, or carbon-oxygen-hydrogen, or bacteria, but consciousness: Consciousness is life itself. It’s energy in its purest form. And maybe it’s time for humans to accept that we are just humans, and that life exists out there in different shapes and forms of energy. Consciousness doesn’t need water or bacteria to survive. Consciousness can take any form. You can find consciousness in a stone.

Meditation on Stones and Body #17. ©GBénard

“In your life you have two choices: Go against nature, or go with it. My advice to you is to go with it. Learn with it. Embrace yourself, and turn your past into gold, as your past is now who you are.”

Souls Matter Stoned Hand. ©GBénard

When I went through brain death, I had absolutely no concept of body, of physical body. I was directly observing two bodies of energy: Mind and Consciousness. One with a logical and rational speech, the other following intuition and senses. There was no place for emotion or physicality. What I was able to observe for the several hours of coma was my body of energy with two different energies, located in different places. The mind, an energy located within the brain; the consciousness, located out of the mind, as an aura of light. Our consciousness is indeed out of the body and out of the mind. It’s where our past knowledge (from our bank of memories, past lives, etc.) is located.

The mind lives in a world of minds, beyond our own physical experience, in a transcendent collective experience, connected in a collective energy. And what you may call ‘god’ is just another energetic consciousness that you admire and follow, but is no more than other minds; one more mind in the collective universe of minds, to which your own belongs as well. Your consciousness is then part of the collective consciousness, giving life to the world itself, which you can either follow or lead. You can follow the collective intelligence, or lead by your own.

This knowledge, with its acceptance and awareness, can give you power, or can give power to the mind you carry within the collective intelligence through the collective energy for a better collective awareness. It is a continuous act, being constantly recycled as a living entity. It’s therefore not your heart that gives you life, but your mind, your own energy: your own consciousness. You project, and you get the new projection back. You’re part of the collective awareness, and this must be enough to make you more responsible for your own thoughts and actions. To lead your own mind, which – under your command – will lead to your consciousness and subconscious. It’s all a matter of energy, of living energy within nature. We project and we get it back. You project to your animals and plants as they project it back to you. You project to your surrounding humankind, and it will project back to you. It’s a world of consciousness, thus energy.

Oneness Feather. ©GBénard

“Let go of whatever you don’t need in your life, like Fall: before letting go, before releasing, turn yourself into gold, like a daily sunrise fixing the darkness of night.”

Oneness Uncaged Nature. ©GBénard

Space-time is an illusion. Your Now was the Now of a star sending light thousands of years ago. And that’s why we still see its light, even though the star was dead a long time ago. Reality is an illusion, just like space-time. Or even time itself. My reality is not yours and never will be. My consciousness is based on my concept of reality and space-time, and is therefore different from yours. We are beings of energy, generated by billions of years of evolution: Life is an illusion created by our own consciousness, based on our own respective realities and concepts of space-time. The moment you realize this, the moment you deeply understand the real meaning of being energy, that it’s an illusion, you will become timeless and without physical body. You will no longer weigh more than air. Being a body of energy is what can make you defy gravity, space and time. You will then be able to levitate, as there’s no longer weight within you. Reality is an illusion, as is time.

Souls Matter Smoke #3. ©GBénard

This means that to other cosmic entities, you’re now either yet to born or already dead. Even if you feel fully alive, to others you’re definitely not. And I mean, in this Now moment of time.

Oneness Shaman Dance #1. ©GBénard

While the Brain is physical, the Mind is the action that goes through it. Mind is the thinking ability, which has no physical form.

Consciousness is energy; it doesn’t need a brain. So maybe we should just stop searching for life as we know it on other planets, but rather for consciousness. And within our planet as well.

You can then see the brain as a place in which your knowledge or awareness is simplified by a decoder. Mind is the decoder of consciousness, which doesn’t exist within the brain. Consciousness is a signal that the brain receives and that the mind decodes. They do have independent roles. Consciousness is probably the most pure and highest form of energy and frequency.

When I went through brain death, my certainty of this couldn’t have been clearer.

I was home alone the day I induced myself into transcendental meditation to obtain the full bodiless experience. I disconnected myself from the world. I needed to challenge myself and empty my own mind. But first let me explain the meaning of meditation. Mediation is not sitting down and thinking deeply about something. Meditation is meeting the silence, the emptiness within us. Being void and silence. Being consciousness. Transcendental meditation is traveling through frequency to free our energy of body, through visualization of energy to transcend our own self.

The day I went into brain death was through transcendental meditation. I often go into this state to heal, to fix others or myself – visualizing the body as a body of frequency. When I heal someone, I most often visualize their illness or source of pain as energy so I can calibrate and balance their own frequency.

I remember the whole brain death. After going into this transcendental meditative trance in which I visualized my body as energy, I ordered the heart to stop sending oxygen to the brain. I needed to “format” it. I needed to clear it. I was in the lowest state of the descending, spiraling year I went through. And this was decisive; I had to challenge myself: to either live or die, but to get out of the state of mind confusion and blurriness in which I was in. I needed to find the answer. When the doctor arrived I was already in a coma, which soon became brain death. At the time I had no record of the physical world anymore. I was just a body of energy, “playing around” with my own frequency, challenging and recreating myself. I was brain dead for 3 days, which I later discovered was a period of Shamanic awakening, therefore creating an incredible shift in me.

I did see my body, but I was not therein; I was just a voyeur of it. My body of energy was levitating high above the void, relaxed. As any mind should be. Clear. I was just consciousness. Consciousness in the purest form of energy and frequency. I was free of the physical body. As frequency, I then realized the wonderful world of consciousness, and subconscious… and the battle begun. My mind informed the aim and challenge to consciousness and relaxed. But then, as a formless being I had to decide what I really wanted. And I wanted to come back to life in a clearer state after 3 days. As if it was a deep retreat in my own being. I asked the spirits and souls I had healed to accompany me through this journey. I asked the animals from the different realms and the cosmic consciousness for guidance. Then I focused on my own frequency. I was relaxed, as I trusted the souls that were guiding me. I was in a deep state of consciousness. But while getting guidance from the cosmic consciousness, I got opposite information: from one side I was to die, from another I was to live. The inner battle between what we call our own consciousness and the collective consciousness. After what I recall to be a timeless period, a never-ending timeless state of mind, I followed this whole argument as a voyeur of myself. My own life being scaled in values, although not being judged: just visualized. The reasons to die vs. the reasons to stay alive. My mission was not accomplished as human. It didn’t matter what the mission was; what mattered was that the conclusion of my own mind was clear now: my mission on earth was not accomplished yet, and far from it. I had to come back, so I allowed myself to stay in this state of brain death for three days and informed the whole frequency that I was ok with it and glad to come back whenever the time would be, but no more than three days. I had to put a time concept on this: even though I had no concept of time while I was connected with the cosmic consciousness. I kept observing myself as body surrounded by frequency and the clear image of consciousness as energy, external to the body itself, connected with the others. I was mindful as observer, a voyeur of my own body as energy surrounded and supported by consciousness. From one side I had the weight of the thought “die”, from another side I had the weight of the thought “live”. As in a scale, or arguing with each other as in an ancient polis. Trying to give the other the most valid arguments, either to die or to come back to life. I was part of it myself, and only when they became too loud did I realize that I was mind and it was me who should lead and take the final decision. I then informed the consciousness about my decision to relax for 3 days and come back to life. But I was out of my body, I had no concept of body, so they presented me with yet another challenge: “move your finger and you will die, as you will lose your balance and fall down to the abyss” vs. “move your finger and you’ll fly to your own freedom so you can accomplish your earthly mission.” I took the challenge and when I was finally ready to move my finger, informing the consciousness that I decided to come back to life, I realised that I had absolutely no concept of the body and therefore no concept of the finger: how could I move my finger if I had no body? Another journey to come back to the body so I could move my finger? That was the moment I knew I needed to make my decision clear. I had to trust the highest form of frequency of consciousness. My mind informed it clearly: I wanted to rest bodiless for 3 days and then to come back to life. I wanted to live so I could accomplish my mission, whatever it would be. The moment I voiced the final decision was when I allowed myself to rest. To move the finger so I could fly, no matter where the finger was. The finger was not important, but the will to come back to it as a body of frequency was. After 3 days of brain death, I came back to life to move my finger. I opened my eyes to find it moving, as if flying, like a newborn bird discovering its own wings. Wings that can use the wind itself to create even more wind. To open fields of energy, being connected, being one as a body of frequency.

Oneness Ritual #1. ©GBénard

When I woke up I came back to the concept of body, but with a higher frequency of energy.

Totem Horned Fire. ©GBénard

The time afterwards, I took a sabbatical year to fix my memory and regain physical strength. To be one with my body and my consciousness. I was mind. And through meditation and self-hypnosis I learned how and where to go to bring the memories back whenever I needed to. We are energy formed by frequency. Everything is there as it is, and you’re the only one who can recreate yourself; the only one who can work on your own concept of being. Your space-time essence. Your past, your now, and your future, because all of them belong to the now moment.

Totem Shaman. ©GBénard

Your life is then a triangle of time, spiralling in its own space-gravity.

This is a Bird. ©GBénard

As I had a very clear concept of consciousness being out of the physical body, I also had clear concept of space-time being one, being timeless, being frequency. There is no now and no past and no future. Time exists in a triangle, with equal sides and angles: one angle as past, another angle as future, another as now. They are all interdependent. They are all now and all past and all future. We are the ones who can lead and give the top angle to one or another. Some people will drag their past through their now and their future; some others will always neglect their past, being only focused on the future; some can find the balance and concept of all, living the now, giving meaning to their own lives. As timeless consciousness.

While low consciousness allows you to be driven by the universe, high consciousness allows you to drive your own self, in accordance with or parallel to the universe. You have to be aware of yourself and rise and increase your own vibration to a higher pitch, to take control of it. To have free will to raise your own frequency. I’m sure you’ve already heard someone say they were feeling low, and when you’re low you’re not who you really are. It’s you who has the power to increase it, the only one who can be aware, tune in with yourself and increase your own frequency. Your own high frequency, your own consciousness.

Lead yourself, master your mind, to decode your own personal consciousness. You have all the information to do so. And if you’re taught the opposite, you should erase that thought. Only you can and should lead your own mind, your own personal consciousness.

Oneness Daisy. ©GBénard

Cosmic consciousness is the highest mind-space-time multiverse. What some people call god. If so, I am god, and so are you, the moment you allow yourself to be.

Oneness Selfish. ©GBénard

The biggest shift I noticed in myself when going through the three days of brain death, was that I stopped being a walking encyclopedia (rational and scientific mind-knowledge, an autistic obsession since childhood), and became much more in tune with the universe in its higher state of consciousness; the brain’s death phase – a much deeper connection between the mind and the consciousness, located in the pineal gland. Consciousness connected with collective and cosmic consciousness per se. My scientific and rational thinking, product of the social collective consciousness and autism, had been incredibly tiring – an effort I had accepted as a natural social commitment. In a society that requires you to give proof of knowledge on a daily basis, like a fight for survival in the jungle, living with autism is incredibly draining. Competitive behaviour, which had never been natural to me, vanished with my brain death, as did my obsessive encyclopaedic tendencies.

All these events following the awakening of my pineal gland made me aware of the energetic shape of the brain. I realized that I wouldn’t need any special effort to remember something specific, if I knew the way to each one of the memory banks. Like this wonderful organisation we have in our brains. So whatever I need, I just visualize the brain and have a perfect sight of all the possible paths. This way, when I need to focus on something specific, I just visualize the brain and the connection that needs to be made in the moment, for any specific action. If the dentist tells me it will hurt, a click visualising the pain and the pleasure spot would immediately be connected to cancel the suffering, or even the pain; as if I now manage the cables and shortcuts to the external HD, instead of having the HD ON and over-heating internally.

Meditation on Stones and Body #25. ©GBénard

But why, if my consciousness is connected to a collective consciousness, and thus the cosmic, only rely on my own knowledge and not on that of others?

It is hard for me to focus on deeper knowledge when surrounded by superficiality, because my mind is thus surrounded by superficial minds. However, if I place myself among interesting people, my focus on what matters flows more silently and naturally. An open space can lead to confused minds working. A silent room next to others with functional and intelligent thought, will allow your thoughts to flow much better. This is how collective consciousness works. Through empathy. And that’s why empathy and collective consciousness can be wonderful tools for healing. Or for global disaster. One great example is social media: You can become addicted, and absorb the superficiality of others; you can then become duller, and less focused on what matters.

Why not use this for the better? If you get closer to me to become more focused, and I’m focused myself, then I will lose nothing, and you will become focused on what you need. When I need to think of something specific, let’s say a solution to a computer problem, I will not think of someone who never saw a computer in their life, but I will connect my thoughts with someone who I know could solve the problem. Collective consciousness is a wonderful iCloud, when used correctly.

This can also be true of healing. If someone you know is suffering from something, either psychologically or physically, you can send them specific thoughts. If a friend is going through a lonely/depressive/low moment in their life, connect with them, and instead of pitying them, think the best, warming thoughts. They will probably receive these thoughts in one shape or form, and feel better. And by thinking positively and sharing positivity, you’re recycling your own energy and uplifting yourself. That’s why feeling hate towards specific targets can end up damaging you – because you end up consumed by your own hateful thoughts.

Mind you, this has nothing to do with telepathy: You’re not reading the thoughts of others, and you’re not exposing your own. Your information stays with you as the other’s information stays with them. But your own computer and HD is one thing, and the shared Internet is another. If you connect to HD without a password, you’re using telepathy. If you connect your computer to the internet, you’re using collective consciousness.

Meditation on Stones and Body #15. ©GBénard

When you have your consciousness well connected and opened to the collective, you are more aware of the collective consciousness, thus more open to cosmic consciousness. Sometimes you’re even open to cosmic consciousness without realising it, so the process can be inverted: Listen to it. Don’t rationalise it, just feel it and let it flow. Let it come in.

Meditation on Stones and Body #12. ©GBénard

Consciousness is your own, which can be seen as the creator of your own mind, bringing memories from the past.

Collective consciousness is the energy carrying information within a collectivity, a group of people. When you feel the effects of being with other people, or your thoughts being disturbed by others, or of going into a peaceful state when in a group, you are tuned in with collective consciousness. If you, out of the blue, feel stressed, maybe it’s your upstairs neighbor who just arrived and is having a bad day.

Cosmic consciousness is the energetic information you get from being directly connected to the Universe. When you feel the effects of a special moon or a special cosmic event, you are tuned in with cosmic consciousness.

Being a shaman, no matter from which tradition, is being connected. Connected with the Earth, its plants and wisdom, animals, and living beings in general. Connected also with cosmic awareness, universe and its own energy, and aware of its events. It is being one with all beings, nature and cosmos. With the spirits of nature and the wisdom of universe. It is being aware of life.

And when you obtain this level, you become free of ego, and wiser. When you reach this level of consciousness, when you become fully aware of this energy, you can go into trance by ordering your mind as you order your hand to go up or down. You order your patient’s energy to heal itself. To recycle. Without a need for pills. Nature gives us all we need to heal ourselves and others. We are the Earth, on the same level of energy as the plants and animals and any other being.

Meditation on Stones and Body #5. ©GBénard

Life is not randomly happening to you:

Life is responding to you.

Through consciousness, make life happen your way.

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Practice silence in your daily life. Whenever you have five minutes, sit down and focus on silence. You may carry with you a stone, a pebble, a magnet, a colorful gem or a crystal, if it helps you. Focus on it whenever you have a moment. While you are waiting for food, or taking a train. It doesn’t matter; whenever you have few moments, instead of negatively absorbing your surroundings, take the stone out of your pocket and focus on it. Find its silence, connect with it, and find your own silence. By doing this, you are not only awakening yourself, producing self-awareness and finding silence, but also eventually spreading it through others. Practice this simple action daily, at different moments of the day. Make it your secret daily ritual. With short practice you will soon become more aware. Breathe in and out. Focus on inhaling and exhaling. Focus on the pebble. Connect with it. Find the silence. Silence your mind. Be consciousness. Spread that silence. Fulfil yourself.

Be one with nature. Allow yourself to shift.

This will give power and strength to your own consciousness. Your consciousness will bring to you more awareness, making you more awakened. Allow Consciousness to work its own anamnesis, building your own true self.

Being One.

Meditation on Stones and Body #3. ©GBénard

Gonzalo Bénard

gbenard.com

gbenard@gbenard.com

book “I, Energy”

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Gonzalo Bénard is a visual artist whose paintings, drawings and photography have been exhibited over 40 times around the world. He is author of The Sacred Book of G (a private journal written in stream of consciousness) and I, Energy, on consciousness and shamanism.

Born in Lisbon from Spanish and French descendants, Gonzalo soon went to the Himalayas, where he spent 3 years in a Buddhist Monastery school of philosophy and arts, and in the highlands spending time learning and practicing with the shamans from the old Tibetan Bon tradition.

Having been a curious mind from a very young age, and an avid reader of science, sociology and culture, Gonzalo has travelled for 20 years, mainly through Europe, Africa and Asia, discovering other rites and passages of shamanism.

Gonzalo Bénard is a natural born healer and shaman, who has practiced transcendental meditation since the age of 13; while in the Himalayas, he took refuge as Bonpo K. Lodro Zangpo, in the ancient Tibetan Bon Shamanic tradition.