It’s where fragments of memories, snapshots of personal experiences,
smells, sounds, fears and constructed views of reality, are privately and
secretly kept. It’s a vast lonely place but meaningful and revealing, like
a closed museum on Mondays.

It’s been said that there are 5 levels of consciousness.
I think of them as doors which open to different perceptions and
awareness about ourselves and the world. One of them is the door
to the consciousness of who we are as individuals. It seems to me
that the other 4 in the aisle can open more easily if the key to this first
one is found. The key is Knowledge, self-knowledge.
Knowledge is always key, isn’t it?

A nickname for all big cities where pressure, insecurity, stress
and anxiety charge a big daily toll in serotonin. It’s where life is
always on the fast lane and the mind is constantly trying to keep
the self sufficiently distracted and busy to not be aware of what
really lies within.

In Angstown some people go to the bar, some go to the drugstore,
and some try to escape it on holidays and weekends.

An analogy for illustrating the feeling of getting out of squeezing
stressful moments to a state of relief. From narrow to wide.
From darkness to light. Surprisingly, the light at the end of the tunnel
is something that a lot of people search for without noticing that
the only way to get to it is to understand first what is that tunnel
before the light.

Even if both actions point downwards, diving is not falling.
As an archetype, “The Fall” is described as a descent from
a higher to a lower state of being - from innocence and bliss to loss.
On the other hand “To Dive In” is metaphorically meant as a voluntary
descent from a superficial state of knowledge to a deeper one - from
ignorance to acknowledgment. So, going down in this case ultimately
leads upwards. One thing is certain: you won’t find yourself in shallow waters.

So far, the record for the deepest dive in history is set at 36,000 feet
at Mariana Trench on the west Pacific, the point most distant from the
water’s surface on Earth. Ironically, even at such extreme depth,
that diver may still have remained superficial.

Tresouq is an anagram to “Quetros”, a medication prescribed
as antipsychotic. I created the anagram for naming a dark sinkhole
I imagine existing at the abyssal plain of our fears.

The Hadal Zone is the deepest region of the ocean.
Its name refers to Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld.
But while sunlight progressively fades into darkness
when diving towards the bottom of the Hadal Zone,
the opposite happens in a self-awareness dive
because the deeper one goes, the clearer things get.

Getting at the bottom of things is challenging, whether it is
at the bottom of places like the Great Blue Hole, or in the depths
of the mind. I don’t know about the first one but I do know that
those who hit rock bottom in life and bounced back fear
very few things in the world.

So we all have our Comfort Zone, that stable but stoney ground
with as many rocks as dormant things conveniently held under them.
We can either sit down and rest on those rocks the entire life, or go
lifting them to deal with what lies underneath. The rocks may be big and
heavy but it’s perfectly possible to remove them since we were the ones
who actually laid them there in the first place.

The French writer André Gide once said: trust those who seek
the truth but doubt those who say they have found it. So, perhaps
Ataraxia is as mythical as Atlantis. But it’s the journey, not the
destination that is important, because even if the place is a metaphor,
the quest for self-awareness and knowledge creates understanding
and peace of mind. I guess that truth lies in the searching and not
necessarily in the finding.