The Compass of Becoming: The Other within me
Root with me, meet the Other — and feel your own Big Bang begin.
JASMININE is not bounded. The field flows through.
Reading suggestion: on a sofa you’ve never sat before.
The Days of Rooting In
Do you know those days when all you want is to walk out and sit beneath a tree? You open a book, read a few lines, and let the wind turn the pages for you. Nothing more is needed. You don’t put on music, you don’t listen to the radio, you don’t scroll through the news. You are here. Complete. You don’t even want to think a new thought.
These could be called days of rooting in — when from morning until night you accomplish nothing “serious,” yet before sleep you smile like a child.
Grateful for the chance to experience nothing but pure alignment with yourself, with nature, and with the course you’ve set — the new atmosphere of JASMININE.
Since childhood I felt that beyond the behavioral patterns of family and society, there was also this Other within me.
This Other searched through my parents’ bookshelves and tucked the best volumes by my bed.
This Other slipped out through the garden gate, hoping to discover another world — not the one ruling schools, streets, parties, shops, queues.
This Other refused to believe there was nothing more.
Facing Her
In recent years, since publishing under the name Jasmine Monta, I have met many people who confirmed that they too carry this Other. Some have given it a name — usually different from the one in their passport — but rarely has the Other been given a full chance to express itself.
Most often it remains trapped in diaries and sketches, neither destroyed nor shared — left in-between.
Yet for some, this Other has become a brand, a body of work, a voice, a living interaction with the world and community.
And then comes the most interesting part: before I was born, my mother truly wanted to name me after a heroine from a novel, but she did not dare.
My father’s choice won — Ance, a name so unique and authentic in my culture that I believed until the last moment it would unlock the doors to the Other’s world.
It did not.
The roots of Ance now flow through the streams of JASMININE. Ance, the old and enduring, has grown quieter, now evolving within the atmosphere infused by Jasmine Monta. Ance has meaning.
Devotion is what blossoms. The complete surrender of self into the hands of the Other. To be JASMININE.
Every quiet moment, every minute by the tree, every undisturbed hour of writing carries a different weight. It is how I sustain, renew, and weave connection with JASMININE — with myself and with you. This is my work — this rooting in, this listening, this seeing through.
Formula
I can no longer diminish myself or you by offering less, or something merely similar.
The formula is simple: where less is asked of me, there I am not.
That was the hardest part — realizing that even when you don’t show up somewhere or aren’t invited… you still are. I am. We continue to be.
The Question
JASMININE was born consciously and with full attention within a single month — beginning in Batumi, Georgia, in the off-season, when my husband casually asked me: “What would you do if you had a lot of money?”
“I would create an outstanding niche media,” I replied — though I had never even considered such a possibility before.
That was how it began.
We walked into a bookstore. I felt it had to be there — the book that would set the process in motion.
I don’t know if that copy of Rework (2010) had really sat on the shelf for fifteen years, but it was worn and weathered. And now it was mine.
I read the book and began to act — though no one paid me for it. My supporters were my husband, a few friends, and readers of my previous blog, Detoxed Paragraph.
Pulsing with life, with day and night, JASMININE took shape. Never once pressing the brake to the floor. Such devotion surpassed everything I had known before.
Alive in Us
This Other lives within us, but that alone is not enough. The next step is to recognize it. To let it speak, to let it appear. It doesn’t matter if its form at first seems strange.
That is the point — to step out of the illusion that from a living person everything will emerge like from a conveyor belt — ready, perfect, packaged for sale. It doesn’t happen that way.
It is a process — forever alive, and precisely for that reason, irresistible.
The doors do not need to be forced open. In front of the Other, they open on their own. But — the Other needs your consent, and your voice.
The larger story beyond the screen
A mini workshop after reading
Rooting In
Take a book or sit beneath a tree.
Allow yourself three minutes of doing nothing — just being, breathing, sensing that you are.
The Other’s Voice
Write down one sentence that wants to flow out of you right now, even if it feels odd or unfinished.
This is the signal that the Other is present and wants to appear.
Formula
Repeat aloud or silently: “Devotion is what blossoms. Where less is asked of me, there I am not.”
Let this formula merge with your breath and feelings. It is permission to be real.
Sharing
Share your sentence or feeling — in a comment, a conversation, or at the dinner table.
This is how you experience that the Other lives in others too, and together the stream flows, the field comes alive.
In white chalk upon the black board of darkness
— JASMININE by Jasmine Monta
Photos taken along the trail to Oniore Waterfall, nestled in the mountainous region of western Georgia, capturing the forest’s natural diversity and flowing landscapes.
Your presence, your voice, your gift — all become part of the soil from which JASMININE grows.