Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Bellone.
Hi Daniel, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
At the age of 24, I was living in Buenos Aires pursuing a career as an actor in the vibrant indie Latin-American cinematography scene. I was full of dreams, but my career was not progressing how I was dreaming of. It was a difficult time for me to see all of my friends moving forward in their lives while I was stuck in the same place. In that moment of despair, one of my childhood friends called me up and invited me to participate in a traditional sweat-lodge ceremony called ‘Temazcal’. She said this would be a great opportunity for me to gain insights about my life and also heal any unconscious patterns that might be holding me back. I had nothing to lose so I agreed, little did I know that on that day a whole new life would start for me. It was a Saturday morning, I was fasting, drinking water, getting ready to ignite the fire and sweat it all out. The whole group along with me was surrounding the ceremonial fire pyre of rocks, and the shaman who was leading the ceremony, Cristian, asked us to set our intentions for the visionary journey. We all expressed out loud our prayers and offered dried pieces of wood as we were doing it.
To close our prayer, we were asked to close our eyes and invite the Sacred Presence into our hearts. Cristian started singing a chant in a foreign language. The melody was enchanting, and my whole body was vibrating to the sounds he was producing. At some point, I realized that something out of the ordinary was happening to me. I opened my eyes and looked at my hands in prayer pose right in from of my chest, and I saw the doors of a temple opening up right in front of my heart. It was as real as anything else I could see with my physical eyes. I couldn’t believe it! This beautiful sacred temple was inviting me in. This was my first mystical experience ever. It showed me that there was a world beyond my understanding that was connected to the invisible realm of life. I also saw a clear connection between the invocation the shaman was offering and the state of consciousness in which I was drawn into. This was all to fascinating to me.
We went into the sweating lodge a few minutes later. The lodge was a structure made of thin tree branches that were anchored to the ground forming a geometrical structure. On top of it, all these layers of blankets were covering it end to end, only allowing a small opening for the people to walk into this pitch-dark dome. The chanting continued inside of the Temazcal, and I was so drawn into it that the mystical experiences continued.
The most memorable experience I had in that ceremony was that I was able to see myself as a ‘Sphere of Radiant Light’. I was this sphere of light that decided to come into a human form, and from this body, I spread a ripple vibrational wave, just like a pebble falling in a calm lake, extending its circles to the infinite. In my case, the ripples were created with the chanting. Finally, I saw how the light would leave my body once my journey is completed only to go back into it’s own native realm, where I was truly coming from, while the ripples would continue to echo in the rest of humanity.
This second experience was very meaningful to me. For the first time, I could see myself way beyond a human form. Seeing this higher purpose of my spirit was also revealing, specially at that time where I had no knowledge of Sanskrit mantras and chanting in any way.
When the ceremony was over and I came out of the Temazcal saying out loud, “Ometeotl permiso para nacer” (Ometeotl I ask permission to be born) then Cristian greeted me with a big hug saying, “Ometeotl welcome to your new life”.
Ometeotl is Nahua word that describes the nature of the Dual God, the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine in one. Ome means two, Teotl means God. This life is all about polarity, contrast, two extremes, and our cycles of evolution spiral between these two poles giving us meaningful insights about the nature of life and creation. I was in love with this tradition, and this was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had in my whole life, so I decided to come back to the next Temazcal to visit Cristian regularly in his house in the middle of the woods and understand better the philosophy behind it.
Cristian became my mentor, and after a few years of study and preparation, he told me I was ready to go to India to meet his own Gurus.
Cristian went to India in 1999 for the first time, ignited by the passion of becoming a part of an unfolding phenomenon called Deeksha. Deeksha turned out to be an ancient technology of consciousness in which a master would be able to pass on spiritual understanding to their disciples, activating the innate potential in the receiver by just placing his hands on the disciple’s head. Apparently, this is a common tradition of initiation in the esoteric circles since ancient times.
When I arrived at the ashram, I was greeted by these monks wearing white robes with bold heads and big smiles. They were called Dasas, or the “humble servants of Dharma”, the path of the highest good and evolution for all. Attending the course, I had the opportunity to receive this mystical initiation into the depths of spirituality. I was told that all the wisdom would come from within myself and that spiritual knowledge could not be transferred though study only. First, your state of consciousness needs to shift, only then you are able to see life through a higher perspective and all teachings make sense and prove themselves to be true. They were telling us ‘Don’t believe in anything we say or do, just have your own personal experience and continue from there’.
And so it was, Deeksha pushed my consciousness into an uncharted territory of spiritual revelation.
One of the main side effects that I could notice right away was that inside of my mind, I could hear ancient chants repeating over and over again. They seemed to be activated by the blessing and they were on all the time. I also felt a deep connection with this Vedic tradition, somehow, these 5,000-year-old chants felt so relevant.
This was the beginning of a 11-year journey where I was living side by side with this monks, witnessing the activation of this process in thousands of people around the globe that were coming to the ashram and seeing them go through very similar experiences that I was going through, a true phenomenon in consciousness like I have never imagined before!
My heart was leaning towards becoming a monk, serving humanity to find a way into love, cooperation and oneness, but the monks told me that my life mission was to bring this experience to the world. That I would be much more useful out there in the globe rather than sitting in a temple in some remote village of south India.
I took on that endeavor and with my guitar, I started sharing a concert-like experience called “Awakening Through Music”. In five years, I performed more than 400 concerts in 40+ countries in every continent: New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Amsterdam, Vienna, Budapest, Stockholm, Beijing, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Auckland, among many other cities.
In the year 2017, I decided I wanted to take a break from touring. At the time, I was granted with an O-1 visa for “Extraordinary ability in the field of Mantras” so that was the beginning of a new life here in Los Angeles. As much as I liked touring, I was longing to enjoy stable relationships, become settled in one place, and I was also dreaming of starting my own family. Only after three weeks after my arrival, I met my current wife Anastasia which whom I fell in love at first sight when I was invited to perform at a Yoga Exhibition in Santa Monica. At that time, Anastasia was studying Sanskrit at UCLA, something rare that was very captivating to me. After all, I was not the only one who could see the value in such an ancient language of consciousness!
Today, we are a family of three, with our beloved Sofía, our daughter.
The focus of my music moved towards producing music in a way that Sanskrit Mantras could reach the mainstream. I see the need humanity has to experience a deeper sense of peace and connection. After all the wonderful experiences that I had with them and the benefits that I could enjoy in my daily life, I felt my greatest service would be to present these ancient chants in a modern way, to make them accessible to everyone.
I knew that it was not going to be an easy path, specially knowing that chanting and mantras are considered a small niche within music, but the intention behind it is that as more and more people realize that music is a form of healing and upliftment, gradually, music will start to include this profound science of sound and vibration into the mainstream music, for the benefit of all, shifting our world into a better place.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
While everyone else was progressing in their studies and financially, I was investing all my time in this vision to create a better world through vibration and chanting, which I consider a form of prayer. Whenever I would meet someone new, it would be hard for me to explain what was the purpose of my work and what was exactly what I was doing. Even some dear family members thought that I should focus on the challenges of this world, to get a good job and a stable income rather than learning Sanskrit which is only used in sacred texts and for chanting. To share this knowledge, I left my country Argentina at a young age, and I was living on the road, traveling from one concert to another, from city to city, country to country. It was not easy to live like a gypsy, even though it was exciting for some time, eventually I needed something deeper in my life, like family and friends around me, and a place where I could call home. I was ready to give this all up for the sake of being truthful to myself, to follow my spiritual calling, and to open myself to ‘synchronicities’ as a way to advance in life rather than certainties.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a singer-songwriter and producer of music beyond entertainment. I create a fusion of the ancient and the modern that ignites the heart with a sound that most of the people can refer to. When we talk about meditation music, the first thing that comes to mind is slow, soothing melodies. My music has some of this characteristics, and beyond that, I can also be very uplifting, energizing, fast, and vibrant. I like to introduce traditional instruments such as sitar, harmonium, bansuri (Indian bamboo flute), and Tablas, with more modern instruments such as guitars, piano, synths and handpan. I believe that the best of the past and the best of the present can create the most extraordinary future. I work full-time as a software engineer, working in the cloud, the blockchain, with the most modern technologies available to mankind today.
Computer programming was an early interest in my life since I was ten years old.
I understood that God was the creator of this life and that we could also get to know him/her through the creation itself. The same principle fascinated me about programming computers! You can create outstanding solutions to today’s world problems.
After all programming a computer is in the same lines of programming the human mind, requiring a conscious directed effort toward a better understanding of who you are and what’s possible.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
The mentors who were more influential in my life and drove my own growth were the ones who I admired highly. Once you identify someone in the field that you want to be a part of, who has an extraordinary talent, who inspires you, who makes you want to grow to that level, then following their work has helped me to eventually be able to do what they have mastered, in my own way of course. I could never follow anyone who didn’t resonate deeply within myself. You don’t get to choose your mentors, either that fascination/inspiration is there, or it’s not.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.danielbellone.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielbellonemusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BelloneDaniel/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-bellone/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi19xwzpgby8eDq6khK3Y9g
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/daniel-bellone
