What happens when your most devastating heartbreak becomes the doorway to your greatest awakening? Nicolas Canon reveals how losing the relationship he thought he wanted became the catalyst that cracked open his heart to divine love, transforming him from a successful but empty tattoo artist into a spiritual guide helping others navigate their own profound transformations.
After years as one of Canada’s highest-paid tattoo artists, earning thousands per session with bags of cash beside his desk, Canon found himself at a crossroads when his girlfriend delivered words that would change his life forever. Instead of dismissing her brutal assessment of his character, he made a decision that would launch him into what he calls his “spiritual birthday.”
The Artist’s Awakening: From Financial Success to Spiritual Emptiness
Canon’s journey began in Colombia, where childhood violence from his mother planted seeds of unworthiness that would drive his adult pursuits. By his twenties, he had achieved everything society told him to chase as a man: financial success, dating freedom, a prestigious career in tattooing where clients would tip him up to $1,000 in cash.
“I remember one evening, my client left, and I grab a glass of wine. I look at the bag full of cash, wine in hand, a date and a party lined up. And I realised I feel miserable,” Canon recalls. “I’ve followed everything that society told me to follow as a man, the financial success, the plenty of dates, the cool career, all these things. And I just felt empty.”
The breaking point came when his girlfriend, in the heat of an argument, called him “the biggest piece of shit” she’d ever met. Rather than defending himself, something cracked open in Canon for the first time.
The Divine Orchestration: How Pain Becomes Medicine
Canon’s revolutionary insight centres on reframing our relationship with adversity. What most people see as random suffering, he now recognises as perfectly orchestrated opportunities for growth. “I saw that breakup with my girlfriend was so beautifully orchestrated,” he explains. “It was this divine plan that pushed the right spots, created the right amount of pain so that I will drop the mask.”
This perspective shift came through an intense ayahuasca experience that Canon describes as his spiritual rebirth. Initially an atheist who dismissed anything he couldn’t physically perceive, four cups of the sacred plant medicine forced him to confront every emotion he had avoided and every painful memory he had suppressed.
“At the other side of that, there was this big light where I felt the creator. For me, it was the most real experience I’ve ever had,” Canon shares. “I felt there is this thing that created me. It’s also part of me, like it’s bigger than me, but also I’m an extension of it.”
Pain vs. Suffering: The Crucial Distinction
One of Canon’s most powerful teachings distinguishes between pain and suffering. Pain, he explains, is mandatory in human experience, like cutting yourself while cooking. Suffering is the story we add, the emotional charge we attach.
Using his childhood as an example, Canon explains that while his mother’s physical discipline caused temporary pain, the real damage came from the stories he created: “I’m not worthy of safety. There’s something wrong with me. I’m not good enough.” While he experienced perhaps five incidents of physical punishment, he tortured himself thousands of times with these narratives well into his twenties.
“Pain is what life hands us, situations that are difficult. Suffering is living with that story,” Canon clarifies. “Pain happens. Suffering is a choice that we make, and very often a recurring choice.”
The Mirror of Relationships: Why We Attract Our Triggers
Canon challenges the popular notion of finding “the right person,” calling it “total bullshit and a cop-out from taking full responsibility for the relationships we decide to engage in.” Instead, he reveals how relationships serve as vehicles for healing, with each partner triggering the other’s unresolved traumas as opportunities for growth.
He describes the common dynamic between emotionally stoic men and highly emotional women as a perfect match where each possesses what the other needs to develop. “This one absorbs, and this one just keeps pouring. But they’re both driven by the same thing,” he explains.
The key insight: we don’t attract people despite our wounds, but because of them. Every relationship offers a chance to heal what’s unresolved within us, if we have the courage to stay and grow rather than run to the next person.
The Commitment Revolution: Creating Love vs. Finding It
Canon’s approach to relationships centres on a radical concept: your relationship becomes beautiful as a result of your commitment, not the other way around. He spent years waiting for his now-wife to prove she was “the one” before fully committing, only to realise he had it backwards.
“I realised, you know what? If I commit, something beautiful is going to come out of this,” he shares. “What is it like for my girlfriend to be dating a man who is half in, half out? Probably not very exciting. How much of herself does she want to give? How much love does she want to pour into that? Probably not.”
His marriage transformed when he stopped waiting for her to earn his commitment and instead poured himself fully into creating something beautiful together.
Three Essential Practices for Transformation
Canon offers three powerful tools for applying its philosophy:
1. The Grace Question: When facing difficult situations, ask, “How can I appreciate even more God’s grace and guidance in this moment?” This reframes challenges as character development rather than cosmic unfairness.
2. The Reset Breath: Take a deep inhalation, squeeze in a bit more air, hold comfortably, then exhale. This instantly resets the nervous system and creates space for conscious response rather than reactive behaviour.
3. The Hidden Benefits Inquiry: When experiencing consistent breakdowns, ask, “How is this serving me? What benefits am I getting from this situation?” This reveals the unconscious secondary gains that keep us stuck in destructive patterns.
Canon illustrates this final principle with his own story of financial anxiety in marriage. By honestly examining what benefits he was getting from the struggle, he discovered the stress gave him permission to say no to his wife’s spending, provided a distraction from uncomfortable self-reflection, and offered an excuse to avoid intimacy issues. Once he faced these patterns, his financial situation transformed within weeks.
The Deeper Truth: Everything Serves Your Awakening
Canon’s philosophy extends beyond individual healing to a cosmic perspective on human experience. He suggests that life sends us subtle messages through intuition and red flags, but when we ignore these whispers, pain becomes life’s last resort to grab our attention.
“Pain is the one thing we cannot normalise,” he explains. “We can normalise pleasure, but pain, no matter how many times you’ve cut yourself chopping food, if tomorrow you cut yourself, it still hurts. It’s going to hurt the same, because pain is one of the only human experiences that we cannot normalise.”
This design serves our evolution. Pain forces us to stop, pay attention, and examine what needs to change. It’s not punishment but invitation, not cruelty but compassion from a universe invested in our growth.
Why This Matters Now
In an era of increasing mental health challenges and spiritual disconnection, Canon’s message offers a radically different approach to adversity. Rather than seeing ourselves as victims of circumstances, he invites us to recognise the intelligence behind life’s unfolding.
His journey from successful but empty artist to fulfilled spiritual guide demonstrates that our perceived failures can become our greatest breakthroughs when we have the courage to extract their wisdom rather than resist their teachings.
Canon’s approach doesn’t minimise genuine trauma or suggest spiritual bypassing. Instead, it offers a framework for finding meaning and growth opportunities within even the most challenging circumstances, transforming our relationship with difficulty from resistance to curious investigation.
You can watch the full conversation on YouTube
About Nicolas Canon
Nicolas Canon is an international bestselling author and founder of Ayahuasca Colombia, where he guides impact-driven leaders through sacred plant medicine initiations. He specializes in helping high-achievers get unstuck by breaking through their deepest blockages to embody authentic power, unshakeable clarity, and soul-aligned purpose, transforming not just how they lead, but who they become.
Connect with Nicolas Canon
- Website: www.ayahuascacolombia.com | www.nicocanon.com
- Instagram: @nicocanon_
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolas.canon.garay
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AyahuascaRetreat