Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, The older I get, the more I notice it. What I think is happening is usually not what’s happening. A friend goes quiet. I fill in the blanks. They’re ghosting me. I said something wrong. Someone’s tone changes and my body decides it knows why. Can you relate? Six years ago, just before lockdown, I watched this pattern take over at a ceremony in Austria. What happened that night became the story behind a song I later wrote called “Flesh and Blood.”...
12 days ago • 12 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, Have you ever found yourself living two separate lives? In one, you’re the version of you that shows up for people, steady, present, someone others come to for help. In the other, alone, you’re doing the thing you swore last time was the last time, and some part of you starts wondering which one of those two people is real. That gap doesn’t close on its own. Left alone, it just widens, quietly, until you’re managing two entire versions of...
19 days ago • 12 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, Have you ever noticed what happens in your body when you hear the word Jesus? For some people, the heart opens. There is warmth, devotion, and a sense of being held by something larger. For others, the body contracts before the mind can explain why: the chest tightens, the jaw braces, the belly pulls in. Something inside says, not safe. That reaction is worth paying attention to, because what looks like disbelief is often something else: the body...
26 days ago • 14 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, For most of my life, there was one verse in the Bible that never sat right with me. It became the doorway into my own understanding of Christ Consciousness, the I AM Presence, and Jesus’s core teachings. John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” I grew up Catholic, and I always heard those words interpreted in only one way. This man. This name. This religion. Or the door stays shut. If you...
about 1 month ago • 13 min read
Dear Reader, If you knew that the pain you are carrying right now could one day become medicine for someone else, would it change the way you relate to it? I don’t mean that it would make the pain easy, or that it would explain everything away. Pain is still pain. Some grief still breaks the heart. But sometimes, when we look back, we discover that the very place where life broke us open became the place through which healing began to move. First for us, and then, mysteriously, for others....
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Dear Reader, This past Wednesday, a participant in our meditation circle asked me a question that's stayed with me since. She said something like this. I've done the work, Gabriel. Years of Transcendental Meditation. Joe Dispenza's work. I know how to sit. I know how to breathe. I know how to still my mind. So what advanced practice should I tackle next? I paused before I answered her, because underneath her question was one I recognize in myself. The assumption that spiritual growth works...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Dear Reader, This week, I’ve been sitting with the stories of people who survived the Venezuelan earthquake. I’ve watched several interviews, and more than once I’ve found myself crying — not only because of the devastation, but because of the tenderness, clarity, and humility that comes through when someone has been brought so close to the edge of life and death. There is a way people speak after something like that. The unnecessary falls away. Gratitude becomes simple. Love becomes...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Dear Reader, It’s been ten days now since the earthquake struck Venezuela, my home country. My family is safe, and I want to thank so many of you for the beautiful comments you left last week when I shared how tender it all made me feel. More than a week later, I’m still watching the news more than I normally would. I’m sleeping very little. I’ve watched people walk out of the rubble alive after ten days underground, which still feels like a miracle every time. And I’ve also read about entire...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Dear Reader, I'm writing this from a tender place this week. As many of you already know, a devastating earthquake struck my home country Venezuela yesterday. The place where I was born, where my family still lives, where so many people I love are trying to make sense of what just happened. My immediate family is safe. And I want to say thank you to the many of you who reached out, emails, messages, calls, asking how I was, how my family was doing. That kind of care means more than I can say....
2 months ago • 6 min read