Total stillness.
It’s a moment of truth.
Deep surrender.
And the realization that my home is within.
Nowhere but within.
Self Love
The Freedom of no Addiction
This is a thought experiment.
Imagine you are free of any addiction.
If there is no addiction there is total freedom.
If there is no addiction there is choice.
There is the choice to direct energy deliberately and not by force.
This is the liberation of life force. The original force that moves us through our lives.
I personally have been struggling with addiction all of my life. Mainly it was the addiction to distraction that led me into toxic behavioural patterns.
Today I stop this.
Today I choose ultimate liberation.
I vow to support my higher self:
I choose creativity over distraction.
I choose focus over diversion.
I choose wellbeing over intoxication.
Uuhh, that hurts. Yes, it hurts. Once and far all – and then there is the feeling of release.
If I am not jumping from one task to the other. Where am I going? I remain with myself. Centered within my own being.
If toxins don’t inhabit my body, where is the energy distributed? Yes, equally amongst my cells.
If I move my body, if I clear tension from my muscles all of a sudden there is lightness in my whole being.
Joy instead of repression becomes my driving force.
Life takes over and I roll with it.
Love The Path
Love the path and the path loves you.
You Are That Love
If you truly love, who you love is yourself.
These words came crashing down on me like a tsunami wave.
If I truly love, who I love is myself?
Yeah right, who I love is myself.
This insight stems from my personal experience of love in my life.
I am the love I’m wishing for and I can solely direct that love towards myself.
Only from there (myself) I can love anything or anyone.
I can’t love someone without loving myself.
I can only love.
And if I love, I love everything and everyone – including myself.
I was craving love for as long as I can think of.
I never thought I would find it – no one thought I would.
Until I found it – within myself.
My Life Changed…
My life changed…
when I allowed lightness.
when I let myself harvest the fruits.
when I acknowledged my work.
when I appreciated my own journey. Every step of it.
For a long time something was missing in my life and I could not grasp what it was.
Until I found it within myself. This female role model that puts me at ease.
The Headless Buddha or “Meeting Myself With Compassion”
For about two weeks I’ve been trying to make sense of it: The Headless Buddha.
…It was one of those moments when I was caught up in a spiral of self-doubt and self-flaggelation, when I re-discovered my heart.
In despair I was challenging the youtube-oracle.
I discovered a talk on “The trance of unworthiness” by Tara Brach, a teacher I really value for her compassionate pursuit:
“We can only meet ourselves with compassion,” she concludes the human striving for liberation.
Finally, I’m swallowing the medicine.
Suddenly I’m placing one hand on my heart and one on my belly.
I’m holding myself.
This is when I understand:
My mind deteriorates my self-esteem.
My mind strangles myself with reproaches.
Meeting myself with compassion – that’s the least I can do!
It is that simple.
And so I am lying there on the couch. One hand on my heart and one on my belly. My eyes filled with tears of relief.
I breathe and I cry.
That’s all it takes.
I remember the teachings of yoga I had received.
I let my body do the work.
A couple of moments later: All anxiety vanished.
I find myself going for a short walk.
What happened next still blows my mind:
I’m walking slowly towards the nearby park, contemplating the Buddhist teachings of impermanence – “anicca, anicca, anicca…,” echoing in my head…
When I gaze towards the bushes, suddenly, I see a headless Buddha standing there right at the framing of the sidewalk!
It is one of those decorative candle bearers a lot of people have standing in their bathroom or on the wardrobe.
Its head is accurately positioned where the candle is supposed to shine.
Immediately the omnipresent quote: “If you meet the Buddha, kill him!,” comes to my mind.
What does this quote, apparently firstly stated by Linji Yixuan, signifies?
Back home I immediately start researching:
“Killing the buddha” asserts ‘to quiet all concepts’ – about Buddhism, spirituality and ‘the path’ in general.
It’s about finding the teacher within.
It implies the actualization of emptiness by self-observation and unbiased contemplation.
The next thing I read is the word Kenshō, which is widely translated as “seeing one’s true nature”. Accordingly to Wikipedia it is often used interchangeably with the word satori, which signifies ‘comprehension’ or ‘understanding’.
It is often being mistaken for ‘enlightenment’, but this is not what it is. It is one step on the path, one realization of the non-personal nature of our lives….
I remember the moment on the couch earlier. The moment of surrender that lifted a weight off my shoulder and my chest.
It was the moment when I finally understood that this body is solely a vessel. It’s a precious vessel, because it maneuvers me through my physical experience here on earth.
My mind keeps me in chains, while my body sets me free.
There is so much more to say about that! There are so many terminologies and symbolism to study, but for now that’s all I’m able to share here – my personal encounter with the headless Buddha.