Why I Decided To Stop Teaching & Become a Full Time Trader in The Stock Market

A Lifelong Thread: Fate and Destiny

One of the most consistent threads in my life has been a focus on fate and destiny.

This was something that concerned me even as a child. Of course, as a child, I didn’t have the language for it. More so, it was the context I grew up in.

I’ve spoken about this before on this podcast, but because it is directly relevant to this episode, I want to bring it up again.

The Tradition I Was Born Into

This is in reference to the tradition I grew up in, one that came from Africa, through various regions, and made its way to the Caribbean, to Cuba, through the slave trade.

My family, being Cuban, was steeped in this tradition a few generations back at the very least, and it formed an ecosystem within the household I grew up in.

This tradition is a shamanic tradition, a magical tradition, a divination tradition.

I was initiated into it as an infant. I have spoken about this before. I was brought into this tradition as a baby. This is not common, but it happened for a variety of reasons.

In part, I was told repeatedly that it had to do with keeping me alive, because there was concern about my ability to survive as a child. At least, that is the story I was told growing up.

Divination and Destiny at Birth

A major part of initiation into this tradition involves a long-form divination done over multiple days.

We might say the equivalent of a high priest comes, aided by other practitioners, and performs a deep divinatory process.

It became a reference point for what my life was supposed to be from the beginning.

This gave me a focus on fate and destiny from a very young age. What was choice versus what was handed to me. What was predestined.

Another layer of this divination was that I was told, from childhood, that I would grow up to be a spiritual teacher, a leader of some form, even language like prophet was used.

This is not my interpretation. This has been confirmed by multiple family members.

I grew up with this idea: you are going to grow up to be a spiritual leader.

Growing Up Inside the Story

This is in part why my grandmother trained me from a very young age in magic and showed me as much of her practice as she could.

She was completely dedicated to this tradition. It was her life’s work. Literally how she put food on the table.

All of this was sealed into my awareness as I grew up.

I still had a regular childhood. This wasn’t militaristic. I wasn’t forced into one path. But it was a background story that shaped my sense of self from infancy.

At the same time, I was raised in modern Western culture, in a major city, in what was essentially a Spanish ghetto.

As a teenager, I decided I was going to live my own life.

And I rebelled.

Exercising Free Will

Around 16 or 17, I left the tradition and began practicing Taoist alchemy, meditation, and exploring science.

I continued moving forward. Eventually, my grandmother died.

After her death, I began to experience deeply uncomfortable somatic sensations that had been present for a long time.

Working with Karen, I traced these sensations back to the pressure of the story I had been given growing up.

At the time, I was running a blog called Healing the Human Animal. I had been working on it for four to five years. I had clients. Students. Momentum.

I was reaching a point of clarity and purpose. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew my Dharma.

I had support from my wife to leave my job at the wolf sanctuary and focus on my business.

And then something shifted.

A Radical Break

I realized that I could not be sure that being a teacher, running Healing the Human Animal, and putting myself out there was actually my choice.

I realized I might be mechanically living out a story I had been given.

From one day to the next, I shut down my business. I took my blog offline. I stopped working with clients.

I decided I was not going to be a teacher anymore.

In that moment, I exercised free will in a way that is relatively rare.

I chose outside of conditioning.
Outside of family story.
Outside of expectation.

I decided I was going to be a stock market trader.

The Trader Years

For several years, I devoted myself fully to trading.

I studied. Took courses. Listened to audio CDs. Learned the psychology of trading, which is primarily emotional and psychological.

I traded every day. Studied charts. Studied businesses.

From mid-2020 to the end of 2021, that was my world.

I made thousands of dollars.
I lost thousands of dollars.
There were highs and lows.

There was immense emotional and mental labor.

During this time, I experienced multiple breakdowns, crying in deep depression with my wife supporting me.

This grief was about losing the part of me that was a teacher, an artist, someone who wanted to transmit understanding.

I couldn’t shake it.

I was a teacher in my heart.

The Pressure Cooker

Even while trading, I was still practicing.

Physical practice.
Energetic meditation.
Talking to my teachers.

As breakthroughs emerged, the practices created a pressure cooker that burned away what was not aligned.

I realized I could not hide from this part of myself anymore.

Eventually, I decided to return to the work, though trepidatiously.

The first thing that emerged was a book.

I wrote The Ancestral Now in about six months.

Since then, I’ve been immersed in this work, cultivating something that feels authentic and aligned with my soul’s purpose.

There are still ups and downs. Conditioning still appears. I still check whether I am living a story I was given or touching the golden thread within it.

The Formula

This is why I’m sharing this today.

If there were a formula for destiny, it would be this:

Consciously engage with your fate and bring your soul forces to bear to transmute that fate into destiny.

Your fate consists of the circumstances that shaped you outside of your direct control.

These circumstances prepared you.
They shaped you.
They gave you unique capacities.

Fate is soil.

But destiny does not sprout on its own.

Destiny requires soul forces.

Soul Forces and Archetypes

Soul forces are the archetypal qualities your soul arrived with.

For me, two of those are teacher and artist.

To transmute fate into destiny, I must bring those archetypes online.

Destiny is not a job description.

It is not rigid.

Destiny is like water finding the sea.

Water always reaches the sea, but through many paths.

This is where free will truly comes in.

The choice to realize destiny.
Or not.

Whether one can truly escape destiny is a mystery.

The Sword and the Mystery

Consider a swordsman born into a martial lineage in ancient China.

Practicing from infancy. Conditioned socially and biologically.

Can they truly choose to be anything else?

Or did the soul choose that lineage?

This is one of the great mysteries of fate, free will, and destiny.

It is more art than science.

But one key insight remains:

Free will emerges when we choose outside conditioning.

The deeper question is:

What is free will trying to change?

And what is ripe to be transmuted?

What better choice could we make than to realize our destiny?