The project
“Crossing the Fire” was born thanks to experiences made in my life. Experiences that are and remain private.
But what in materiality
was an individual life, on the spiritual plane becomes a thread woven into
the fabric of possibilities. Events, apparently
random, have impressed changes of direction in my existence, guiding the path of my soul towards the reason for which it came into the world.
I was not interested in telling my personal stories,
but taking what heaven had in store for me and distilling it
into something that could also serve others.
In my case, it was a matter of dancing between man and woman until I
-crossed the border between worlds endowed with increasingly
refined energy and learned to do the same between who I thought I was and
the soul that I have always been.
Nei Gong was my way. A journey into the invisible, through the fire of transformation:
-an immersion in what reality hides beneath the surface of
appearances, in the silence that precedes every form, in the breath held before
the word appears. Perhaps you too have felt that silence — before a change,
before a choice, before saying a truth that scared you.
I tried to address
these issues through the form of a novel of formation, putting in
many concepts of Taoism, without making it become a treatise on spiritual or esoteric themes, and the search for truth beyond names and forms. Because every story is
an ajar door, an invitation to look beyond appearance, to feel beyond the
definition, to find that spark that makes us whole.
At the end of the only novel in this Cycle, the protagonist describes the literary project "Crossing the Fire".
To study Taijiquan, Nikos leaves Greece with a backpack, in which he hides a makeup bag with tricks and women's underwear, to reach a Taoist monastery lost in the mountains of China. Here he encounters a completely different world from his: people, concepts, and customs disorient him.
He immerses himself in the energy practices that Master Liang teaches him, but when he feels the vital energy flowing inside him, ancient wounds reopen, and what he has always hidden emerges: Daphne, his feminine side, is not an illusion, but a living soul that demands to be recognized.
Following Master Liang's teachings, even when they seem absurd, Nikos discovers that the real battle is not between Hun and Po, between heaven and earth, between masculine and feminine. The real battle is to accept that there is no separation between extremes. The only way to be whole is to stop lying to oneself.
"Perhaps you don't need to become something, you just need to stop resisting what you already are."
The protagonist learns to shed the armor of Western culture and face the truth within himself, thanks to the compassion taught by Eastern traditions. Spirituality is a radical act of authenticity without compromise, especially towards what scares us the most to know.
The Taoist energy practices are presented without trying to make them digestible to the reader, but rather as Nikos perceives them: the master's words, the context, the analogies, the silence. Everything contributes to conveying a vision of life that is inexpressible through rationality.
Same thing for the contradictions of fluid gender identity: they are felt, tried to be denied, explored, feared, and then accepted. These movements of the soul are presented with the same frankness with which Master Liang teaches that the shape of Taijiquan is useful when it is empty.
This novel is the map of the journey I have undertaken, the reasons for my editorial project, and perhaps a first step for those who have not yet taken theirs. If you have the courage to be authentic, the discipline to face your shadows, and the compassion to welcome every part of yourself that you have rejected — in these pages, you will find a travel companion. If you don't have them yet, maybe you'll find them along the way. That's what happened to Nikos. That's what happened to me.
