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Self Knowledge
Respond to Life
I just had an interesting revelation about now.
To respond to life means to respond to now.
This is what it means to take responsibility for my own life.
For some reason I always projected responsibility outwards to some point in the future.
This caused distress in my life, because it enforces constant worry about the future.
How will I take responsibility for my life?
What does this question actually mean?!
There is no right answer.
The moment to respond to life is now.
What can I do now?
Everything else is projection.
And by projecting some potential outcome into the future I’m giving away control.
And this is what I suffer from every so often….
For the past couple of days I’ve been pondering the question: “How am I in control of my life?”
The answer is: By being present! That’s it.
It is so simple. And it is such a relief….
I realized it on my walk this morning. I have neglected these walks, but this morning I understood how much it helps me to arrive.
If I don’t arrive I will never be able to take responsibility. The phrase “taking responsibility” is actually misleading, because I can’t take responsibility.
I can only respond to life. Now.
The Flame
I can see it now clearly unfolding.
My life’s story.
My trajectory.The old voices have faded.
This morning I rediscovered the flame that is burning inside of me.
Calm and beautifully, undisturbed.
It burnt all the way through.
The soft power of the flame is relentless.
I knew it deep down inside.
There is something “more”…
There is a force beyond my perception.
As the conditions get worse, severe weather is impeding the sight, evil forces are dragging my will….
A fundamental strength establishes and executes.
Sudden revelations are the result.
A physical destruction of patterns and control.
This morning it was there: The flame.
Burning and nurturing my wild self.
Beacon of Change
Be a symbol for change.
Be a beacon of transformation.
Be an example.
Your Story
Do you live your life? Or do you focus on the outcome?
The story of your life is not achievement.
It is not only adventure.
Your story is failure. It is pain. It is taking the wrong path. It is detours. It is twists and turns.
Companionship in one chapter.
Loneliness in the other.
Your story is bravery. It is torture. It is joy.
It is every choice you make.
Your story is unfolding every step of the way.
Only in the aftermath you do understand a part of its meaning.
If you focus on the goal. If you are only attached to the outcome, you will miss the whole point.
Life is in the moments….. The heavy and the light.
Life’s unfolding in ALL moments; in the dark AND in the bright….
All of it makes your story.
And this story is of significance.
You are not here to tell or to judge.
Your story is life itself. It’s us.
Do you take pride in your unworthiness? What would happen if you’d give it up? What would happen to your life if you’d take pride in your story?
Fading Stories
When the old voices become quieter and quieter.
When the new story is not being told.
This is the time when you step into your creation.
This is the time to act.
Hello, Darkness
Yes, I do struggle.
Yes, I don’t know.
And yes, here it is again: “Hello darkness my old friend”* – and the blank page, my salvation…
I recently finished a ten-day Vipassana course and I have to say that it shattered something inside of me to an immeasurable degree. It shook me and my, still so precious, existence. It shifted my perspective on basically everything I have ever done in a subtle and at the same time fundamental way I had never experienced before.
Don’t get me wrong: I know that everything I have ever done is perfect. My past is perfect. My future is perfect. And the presence is what I still long for. And probably this is what made me sign up for the Vipassana course.
In a brief conversation I had today, this person said: “We always have expectations. Otherwise we wouldn’t do a thing.” This was very interesting for me to hear. And it reminded me of how I am creating black and white stories around what “proper” detachment should look like….
It’s OKAY to have expecations. All is okay…. Anyway, later on you will eventually get the point (maybe, maybe not;).
Sooo. What did change through Vipassana? I realized how much I was (and still am!) searching for ‘something’ outside of myself. Yes, I investigate, I reflect.
Life forced me inward several times in my life. To be much more accurate MY PAIN forced me inward, because when the pain became unbearable I had to find resources inside – just to find out that THEY ARE THERE! There ARE resources!!
I internalized, but most of the time I analyzed:
And that is the point. At the end of the day I was always looking for an abstract answer. I was, unwillingly, looking for “an easy to digest” answer – an answer that is still, more or less, acceptable by my upbringing or by my conditioning, my inner voices and internal judges…
It sounds kinda cool to move through the dark night of the soul. It sounds impressive to move kundalini energy. It sounds amazing to “walk the camino”. Nothing more and nothing less.
I confess: I like “the sounds of it”… Transformation. Healing. Yoga and so on.
So. What Vipassana did was that it stripped allll these cozy wordings, definitions, explanations, RITUALS and STORIES off me….
I could finally breathe again.
Vipassana does not serve the answer on a golden platter. It does not give constructive feedback or valuable advice.
‘Gotama showed the path…,’ they say. Yes. Figuratively. “The path” is nothing conceptual. It is nothing logical. It is nothing to map out or to comprehend. It is nothing to understand or to study. It can only – and ONLY be walked. One-step-at-a-time. One sensation after another after another after another….
To be fair: There is no freakin’ path (no offence). There is only life itself. And when I say life I don’t mean “this one life”…. Not at all. There is life vibrating through our cells. There is life sprouting from our veins.
There is no such thing as “the core of our being”. There is only being.
It’s the conceptualization, the intellectualization that is keeping me trapped within my own mind.
Vipassana forced me to open the gate. Or did it rip apart the fence? I don’t know and it honestly does not matter.
Vipassana let life within me run free. And this left traces in my consciousness.
There is some novelty, a new realization awakening within myself…
The purges have been purged. And now life is urging to move me the way I’m supposed to move…. And now writing this down here I can feel the ‘intellect’ creeping in asking: “What are you talking about?”
To use the words of Satya Narayan Goenka, one of the leading teachers of the method of Vipassana: “There is only flux and flow.”
Nothing to suppose. Only to surrender.
And today I do surrender to darkness, because darkness knows more than me. It grounds me. It helps me grow if I let it….
* Simon & Garfunkel, 1964 😉
How to Humble Yourself
Life is full of paradox. In order to “master” our experience here on earth we get to embrace the paradox. We get to understand that we are a part of the whole – THE ALL – nothing more and nothing less.
I wrote about it many times: The role of appreciation and gratitude. The ACCEPTANCE of the “3D”.
Nevertheless there is some universal truth being revealed to me every single day I walk on this earth. I’m doing my best to let it run free…
By now I finally understand why I did not “get” it earlier?! Because I CAN’T GET it. I am not the all. I am a part of it and every single day I experience its manifestations. I am a witness, to (modestly) say the least.
And more and more I can see the beauty in this experience….
Every single day there is some new aspect unfolding in front of my eyes like a delicate leaflet of an unseen flower I have known for an eternity.
And more than ever I am understanding how I have created this experience with intention – intention that I have set in the darkest moments of my life.
How? Yeah, tell me how?
I TRANSMUTED energies…. Nothing more and nothing less. To say it with the hermetic teachings:
“Mastery consists not in abnormal dreams, visions and fantastic imaginings or living, but in using the higher forces against the lower – escaping the lower planes by vibrating on the higher. Transmutation, not presumptuous denial, is the weapon of the Master.”
The Kybalion
What does that mean? We don’t create a new reality by mere imagination.
I can literally feel the resistance towards this truth in my every day encounters and even in the “spiritual community” (If there is such thing. I honestly don’t know…).
I can feel it within myself too! My body forcefully separates me from my imaginations… The further I proceed the more I am forced to let go of the idea that I had about enlightenment or the state of being awake….
So. I decided to give this little piece of advice a go in order to conserve my insights. This is what I recently understood about “the way back” to union.
Don’t take things personal.
This morning on the train I had the urge to start writing this down. “This is not about you. You are a vessel of energy. Nothing more and nothing less. Nothing that ever happens to you has anything to do with you. ”
Our train was delayed and it was unclear if I was able to catch my connecting train – and so did the other passengers. I had a choice: Do I get angry or do I use my time to nap or write or read? The delay of the train was a gift for me. It was definitely not the “evil Deutsche Bahn” or stuff like that. The thing that happened to you or to me. The whaterverness – it is nothing personal. It blows my mind how simple this is….
Give what you have.
So, when nothing ever is something personal why would we obsess about belongings, thoughts or ideas? Let go of greed. Greed only cultivates dark matter. It literally rivets us to the lower planes of reality! I don’t say that you have to give everything away. I don’t. I don’t say to give up all your belongings. But don’t cling to it. Don’t consider it as your security.
Give up the control. You can’t hold on to anything anyways, so why not give what you are capable of giving? I will never forget the moment when I decided to GIVE. Looking back, I think it was the moment when my life started to shift. It was when I was living in a WG and I stopped counting who bought the last toilet paper or filled the salt shaker. It was when I was asked for clothing by a homeless on the street and when I handed a warm puffy jacket to him. It was when I decided to “pay my dues”. What do I mean by that? I received this life. Now, I understood, it was time to give.
Practice GRATITUDE.
This leads me to the next point: It sounds platitudious, I know. However it is crucial. I only understand the meaning of Gratitude NOW. When I learnt to GIVE I simultaneously learnt to receive…
The more I value my experience here on earth the more I value myself – and I mean “the good and the ugly”.
The more I accept that everything is a part of me, the more I am learning to accept myself with all my gifts and my shortcomings (also materialistic ones).
This is something I had to understand – tediously. The word gratitude sounds exploited by our cultural narration. I saw people getting very aggressive when they where invited to be grateful. I want to invite those even more to appreciate what is. Appreciate even your resistance and you will witness how (and what) transforms in front of your eyes!
Take yourself seriously.
This might sound a bit contradictory to the first point I mentioned. What I mean by that is: Take your ABILITIES serious, because they are your GIFTS. This is very connected to the practice of gratitude.
Do what needs to be done. Learn what needs to be learnt. NURTURE your challenges instead of condemning them.
You ARE here for a reason! And you have homework to do. You know exactly what to do. So, go ahead and do it. Appreciate it – seriously!
Follow the signs….
You are always guided. You are never alone. Never. There are the subtleties that show you the way. Sometimes your authentic YES is a hell NO in your mind. So, how do you differentiate? That’s a tricky one. And it is very individual. I think this is about patience. Practice to sit with yourself. Practice to live through your emotions in order to understand their language. Life is constantly talking to you. It is up to you to listen….
That’s it for now.
Enjoy the ride and speak soon <3
Self-Honourship 2023
Recently I understood how “optimizing” my life had become an obsession.
“I have to work through this.” “I got to master that.” “I got to become stronger, more confident, a better communicator and so on…”
I did become more confident. I did grow. For sure I made progress.
But at what cost?
I just came back from a short but intense retreat with my community of Becoach Academy.
“This time we want to invite you to a more holistic approach,” Isil, one of our coaching trainers, welcomed us.
What that meant was that we collectively worked through our topics of 2022. We contemplated what came to fruition and what we let go of.
We visualized what we want to take with us into 2023.
We let intuition and body intelligence guide us through dance and the elements…
The result was a very emotional, honest – I want to say “raw” – exchange. It was heart-opening for all of us.
It was beautiful. During the whole process I understood that I don’t have to have New Year’s Resolutions in order to have an “intentional” 2023.
Layer after layer I could feel pressure dropping off my shoulders.
“You are an inspiration,” some of my fellow retreaters proclaimed.
I did not feel like it. I felt raw and vulnerable.
Yes, I was authentic.
More than ever before I came to the realization that I don’t have to become someone. All I need is to be MYSELF in order to inspire others.
All of the years I tried to prove myself. Mostly, myself was my harshest critic: “You got to be more professional.” “You are too emotional.” “You should be somewhere else in your life.”
During my coach training the feedback was relentless.
Relentless in the sense of facing myself in a SAVE environment over and over and over again.
And what I received was not harsh feedback, it was confirmation. The confirmation that I am OKAY. The confirmation that it is all a process. The confirmation that it is totally fine to NOT be okay.
In our society (or let’s narrow it down to the “self-optimization”- bubble) we are obsessed with improvement….
This brought me literally to my knees.
How? I forgot to walk. I was projecting a version of myself to the future that I could not possibly meet in a lifetime. Why? Because I AM HERE.
My path is right in front of me….. I just have to make one step after another. And I have absolutely NO CLUE where it is going to lead me.
And that’s the beauty of it. That’s the uniqueness. This is how I bring novelty to this world. By being me – walking on my own path.
…
This morning I did not follow a routine. I did some stretching. Made a cup of tea. Watched the squirrels playing around the oak tree in front of the kitchen window.
I am not where I thought I would be at the beginning of 2023.
I told my boyfriend: “You know, I had so many resolutions about my morning routine”.
With a warm smile he responded: “What about listening to what you need this morning?”
I went for a 45 minute walk in the morning sun.
Since years I have been trying to develop a morning routine. It never really crossed my mind that it is supposed to serve ME and not the image that I have of me.
I believe the “best” routine in the world can be detrimental if it undermines our needs in this very moment.
Here we go 2023 – more flexible than ever with a warm smile of compassion towards myself AND my inner critic.
Everything is okay.
Roads to Take
What risk are you ready to take?
Which barriers are you willing to break?