Everyone is different and follows a unique path. At the end of our voyages, we bear the unique marks of where we have been.

Some life marks are scars inflicted. They can be perpetrated by someone you know and love, or enemies from the darkness, or even fate from the heavens. These are significant scars, brutal and disfiguring: an assault, losing a leg, cancer.

Fortunately, the vast majority of life’s marks are chosen or self-inflicted, like tattoos. These can be mere scrapes and scratches or monumental pieces of art that brand you: your friends; the schools you went to; your profession; your marriage; your children. With these tattooed scars, you create an autobiography that echoes your soul or, if you choose unwisely, a work of fiction that enslaves it.

Then there are experiences that inscribe your soul so deeply they create fissures. Some are cavernous voids where darkness and despair engulf your very being, misleading you to reason that escape, perhaps even suicide, could be the answer. The other form of soul fissure is laden with precious gems and crystals that empower you with the energy of past and future. These riches emanate from such life-changing events as finding your soul mate, or having a spiritual rebirth or near-death experience. Sometimes a soul-fissure experience casts you onto a path of light, making it possible for you to function no matter what obstacles life throws at you.

One of my soul’s fissures came to be when I journeyed to Faial, one of the nine islands of the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I was travelling with a number of other individuals. We arrived at the site of an active volcano and it was here that my energy burst forth in a way I’d never experienced. It was as though I’d voyaged to a parallel universe, suspended from measured time, a billion years happening in an instant. The experience is documented in Chapter 14 of my book.

Risha Henrique