The Sacred Accident: What a Crash Taught Me About Being

[Author's Note: Dear Reader, Beyond the stories in this article, I invite you to read the text as though reading about yourself -- not just about a random guy in Vienna who got into a car accident, but about your own being, and see what you will find.]

The whole thing happened in June this year — one day after my daughter's tenth birthday. We had prepared this big party for her at a place with a big garden,a space I know well because I run my men's circle there.I was driving over around 9 a.m.The car was fully packed; I think there were fifteen balloons in the back. I couldn't see anything behind me.

And here's the detail that matters: I was listening to Krishna Das. A few weeks earlier I'd been at his concert in Vienna, where I live, and was blown away, experiencing kirtan for the first time. So there I was, chanting Hare Krishna in this elevated spiritual state — while driving.

The street where the party was is a one-way street. I passed a parking spot on my right, stopped a little further on, and saw another spot ahead. So I sat for a moment, feeling into which parking space was the right one. Then — yeah, I should go back. Hare Krishna. I put the car in reverse and hit the gas.

Crash.

What's happening here? It's a one-way street. I looked back, and there was this huge SUV behind me. While I was contemplating parking spots, a car had come down the street and stopped, politely waiting for me to park. What the driver didn't expect was that I'd go full gas in reverse.

What Is Krishna Telling Me Here?

My first thought — I'm not kidding — was: What is Krishna telling me here? I took a deep breath. I opened the door and stepped out, and there was this guy jumping out of his SUV, really angry, shaking, shouting: You idiot!

What I did next was unconscious. I didn't think about it. I walked toward him really slowly, with a peace I genuinely felt in my whole body, and I gave him a hug, and I said: "Brother. Sorry, I didn't see you." And then I was silent.

He couldn't say anything. What's wrong with that guy? he must have thought. A normal person doesn't behave like that. And then something in him settled, and he said, yeah, you know, calm down, things can happen. Nothing serious had happened — just little scratches on his new SUV — and since I had a birthday party to set up and he lived nearby, we agreed to meet at the same spot in an hour to do the insurance papers.

An hour later, we met again. And now this was really mind-blowing, because the first thing he said to me was:

"Thank you so much for being human. And I'm so sorry that I freaked out."

He told me it was his new Volkswagen SUV — he'd had it five weeks, his sacred car. Then it came out that he has a kid, ten years old, the same age as my daughter. The whole scenario shifted. This really angry man — it almost felt like that wasn't him. He'd been put into a stress situation and reacted, but that's not who he is. I really saw the light in him.

I don't believe we crashed into each other by coincidence. His address was on the insurance papers, so I sent him a book with a note: thank you for this incident, be blessed. I even drew the car accident on it so he'd know who it was from. A day later he called. "Thank you so much for this book — and my wife just told me, you're writing a book?" I thought, am I writing a book? I don't know — yeah, maybe I'm writing a book as well.

How interesting it is, what you can create from your being. How different that whole day would have been if I had reacted normally — jumping out in fear, defending myself, you idiot, why are you not looking. My conclusion, in the end, was this: the universe was testing me. Matthias, are you really such a cool being-guy? Or are you just talking? That was the gift. I had been put into a situation where I could actually practice my being — seeing the light in everyone, and not getting distracted by a screaming man.

The Document

People ask why I reacted that way, and the honest answer is: nothing went through my head. It was autopilot. I never say "brother" to strangers — I use it with coaching clients as a term of connection, but in German it's weird. You don't walk up to a stranger on the street and say, hey, brother, love you. Maybe it should be the new normal. But it's weird. I think that's part of what disarmed him.

The deeper answer has to do with a practice I learned from one of my mentors, Steve Hardison — the coach in Arizona they wrote The Ultimate Coach about. We all already have a document: everything we think about ourselves, running all day long. So here's an exercise I invite you into. Sit down and write out your un-useful thoughts — the ones you tell yourself every day. I'm not good enough. I can't do that. I'm too old. When I did this, I wrote pages in my journal, and I was shocked: ninety percent was negative. If I'm talking to myself like that all day — no wonder what I'm creating.

Then, through a forgiveness process, you flip it. You let your heart speak, and you come up with statements of who you truly are. I have about twenty-five. The first and most important: I am loving presence, and I see the light in everyone, especially in myself. Another: I am a doer before ready. Another: I am crystal clear, like spring water from the heart of the mountain, guided by spirit. There's even one about being the most extraordinary, kind, patient, fun dad to my amazing kids Mia and Noa. Am I always that? No — sometimes I'm an impatient dad. But when I catch myself, I can fall back on the document and ask: who am I being right now, to be that?

It's not magic. It's like when you decide to buy a green car — suddenly you see green cars everywhere. They were always there; your brain is just focusing now. There's a difference between focusing all day on I'm not good enough and focusing on I am love. It's easy to say "I see the light in everyone" while sitting at home. It's not easy in a car accident. That's why I call it a sacred accident: it was my training ground.

The Voice on the Bicycle

This trust in something beyond logic didn't come naturally. I was a researcher — I have a PhD in molecular biology. As a scientist, I was cut off at the neck: everything in the brain, everything logic. I literally saw the world in black and white. I loved the studies, but the lab surroundings were so competitive, everyone for himself. The problem was, I'd already studied for years. What else could I do?

I used to cycle twenty-five minutes to work. One day on that ride, out of nowhere, I heard a voice: Why are you not becoming a concert photographer? No kidding. I had no clue what that even was. I'd played in a death metal band at thirteen, I'd picked up photography at thirty — but I had no idea what to do with the camera. I got to work, googled "concert photographer," and saw there were a handful of guys, mostly in the US, shooting their idols. And what I knew from my life is that whenever I follow this intuition — spirit, God, whatever you want to call it — there's something in it for me. So after nine years of molecular biology, I said no, I'm becoming a concert photographer. Everyone said I was completely crazy. I started shooting in small clubs in Vienna, and it grew until I was an international concert photographer. When Mia was born, I didn't want to hang around clubs at night anymore, so I built an online course: howtobecomearockstarphotographer.com — a really long URL — and it became one of the biggest concert photography communities worldwide.

Then COVID hit. No concerts, no courses, and I was starting my forties with two kids. I tried to force new projects from this energy of I need to do something — I even had nine podcast episodes recorded for one of them, ready to launch on a Monday — and on the Sunday I stopped. That's not the project. When you push from I need, rather than being pulled into something, it never works. The grass doesn't grow faster when you pull on it. Then a friend gave me a book about coaching I never asked for. Again — someone hands me a gift, and the gift turns out to be my new path. I closed the door on rockstar photography and went a hundred percent in. That's been my journey for the last five years: coaching entrepreneurs and leaders, holding my men's circle in Vienna. The first four years were hell — no clients, push, push, push. Now… almost exponential growth. It only feels easy because I did the hard work before. Most people quit before they even get started.

The Goal Line and the Soul Line

In a workshop on spiritual psychology at the University of Santa Monica, I heard a distinction I now share with everyone: the goal line and the soul line. The goal line is how most of us live — a better job, more money, a better car. You reach the goal, you're happy for a day, and then: what's the next goal? The high achievers I work with are often on this line, doing, doing, doing — and not really fulfilled. The soul line asks different questions: Who am I being? Why am I here? What fulfills me? Pure being alone would be sitting in a Himalayan cave meditating all day. The art is the mixture — doing that flows out of being.

That's why my being is primary. I meditate twenty minutes every day, and the best ideas of my life have come out of that silence — the men's circle itself arrived one January morning as I came out of meditation. I mentioned it to the other dads in front of my kids' school, and within a week ten men had committed without even knowing what it was. I asked what they wanted to get out of it. Nothing, they all said. I just want to be in there. Everybody is so hungry for a space where they don't need to perform.

And fear? I stopped trying to avoid it. If you want to create something you haven't created before, you're outside your comfort zone, and fear lives there. When I started as a photographer, I emailed famous bands thinking they'd never answer — then they said yes, and I had no clue what I was doing, and I did it anyhow. My first photo shoot turned out to be the band's first too — we were all nervous — and it ended up printed in one of the biggest music magazines in Germany. There's a saying I love: fear is not the gatekeeper at the door — it's the sign on the right door. For me, fear is rocket fuel.

So maybe that's what the sacred accident was really about. I'm always saying I want to connect with people heart to heart, not from the egoistical standpoint of I am right and you are wrong. On my daughter's birthday weekend, chanting Hare Krishna with fifteen balloons blocking my rear window, I got the chance to find out whether I meant it. You should have seen his face an hour later — thanking me for being human. I still don't believe that crash was a coincidence.

— as told by Matthias Hombauer on a Story Booth.