By Te’Devan Kriyavan Kurzweil (Friend me on Facebook)
I grew up in Short Hills, NJ in what they say is the American dream, but American dreams are hardly what they seem. I have always been seeking an adventure. Call me Don quixote or Peter Pan if you want, as I’m sure my mother has. My father is content to merely say his son is a free spirit. People call me a lot of different things. Hippie is a common one, though honestly, I never resonated with it. I prefer nomad, beatnik, highbrow hobo, but people will see you however they want. Some perceive me as a slacker, lunatic, outcast or even prophet. These are labels and I never fit in any…which frustrates some people.
The boys at Campus Socialite met me in Aruba. Needless to say I am not the typical guy you meet in Aruba nor the typical guy you meet anywhere. For starters, I am 6 feet 7 inches tall. I have long, blondish, pseudo-dreadlocks that formed because I don’t seem to know what the heck a comb is and I have an aversion for haircuts at the moment. My name is Te’DeVan and I am a modern day mystic of sorts. I travel wherever the wind takes me while depending on the kindness of strangers. I work for donations by helping people with their emotional, mental, and physical pains, kind of like a shrink meets a doctor. Of course, they never feel like strangers to me. As far as I’ve been told…I never feel like a stranger to them either.
In the last 9 years since graduating from the University of Michigan (that’s right I actually went to college), I have had many experiences. I am a traveler… I have stayed on roughly 700 different couches, floors, backyards, buses, rooftops, and the occasional bed. It is all the same to me. I’m grateful as long as I have a place to sleep. I used to tell people I was a professional couch surfer because sometimes explaining that I was a “healing qi-gong shaman” seemed even more absurd. The status quo and I never did flow. I’ve also been known to dance like an exploding volcano, and as you know, it’s difficult to ignore such a force of nature. Thus, my ticket to an entourage of girls and general hijinx.
Somewhere along the way I started to put God and Guru before girls. Don’t get me wrong, I still sometimes screw up the order, just less frequently. I make mistakes and I usually learn from them, but some mistakes are more tempting than others. I don’t drink or smoke and have never been a fan of either. Instead, I travel the world so frequently that I wake up sometimes and don’t immediately know what city, state, or couch I am on. One of my friends told me I was like a hit man in the sense that I have no attachments (I still have attachments, just less than most).
I am here to expose you to ideas rarely explored on today’s college campuses. I believe in fate, but with a strong enough will you can change your destiny. Everything happens for a reason though it takes time to see what those reasons are. I believe in making choices from intuition, but sometimes I make choices from impulse; I am human. I believe our fiction holds more truth than our reality. If everyone agrees to live a collective lie then somehow people falsely accept it as truth, but that does not make it so. It’s only when everything else fails that we sometimes actually discover something new about ourselves and the world at large.
My journey has taken me to all sorts of music, art, and film festivals, parties, spiritual gatherings, etc…. I never know when I will run into someone I meet or will have them track me down via the internet, which has been known to lead to spontaneous road trips (I am the quintessential wing man). I merely remain open to this present moment and whatever it holds. I hope to take you along on these experiences and gain a deeper glimpse into oneself in this process and get rid of those things that don’t serve you, whatever they may be. I have truly learned from silence. My qi-gong master once said to me, “You tell one lie you must tell three more lies.” I never forgot that. I will always be as honest as I know how. The key is how quickly we can get untangled from the bullstuff. And sometimes the bullstuff is merely unexplored truth and sometimes it is merely bullstuff. I recommend investigating thoroughly before you make your decision. I don’t so much believe or disbelieve, I have either had the experience or haven’t. I have had the expereince that it is always good to add a new play to your playbook even if you only use it once.
