The first time they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the "graduation" ceremony from my kinder-garden- I answered book-keeper. My mother was a librarian, that's all I knew of professions and I loved books. I didn't know I had mixed up the word a little. But why would someone ask you what your professional dream is when you are 5 anyway? I am 32 now and I still don't know!

When I went to school, they asked us to write a creative story for a competition. I chose the theme of happiness. I wrote a piece of tragedy, of a person who had followed the worlds desire for happiness and all the society's guidelines to get there- she got a career, family, house, possessions- and didn't feel happy at all. She ended up killing herself, her final words- now I am finally happy cause I no longer have to be. It ended with a question- does the pursuit of happiness actually hinder/block the possibility of happiness. I had no idea what happiness was at that time or how to do it, but somehow I knew something in the world was off. My teacher told me she had read the story 5 times, she still didn't understand it, but she was kind enough to award it a prize, and I knew I must have stepped on something worth investigation.

And now, after many lessons in the school of life- all I want too- is to be happy. The ultimate difference is-I know now what makes me happy. I know I would be happy with a bare minimum surrounded by a natural and free culture, I know I need my time of solitude to commune with mother earth and father sky, I know I need to move like the wind sometimes. Personal. Simple. Doable. Actual.
Why do we live in a society which makes such a simple goal like happiness so hard for us.. In a world where only tremendous free spirits like John Lennon can understand it from a young age! (My utter respect!) 
We all want to be happy. We all want to be free. To understand that what we are told and what we are sold is not the way to happiness- that usually takes time. Making mistakes, suffering, waves, confusions... Above all courage to break free of the opinion of others. Willingness to search for our own way. Why is that so lacking? 
Travelers in the fog. No matter how many people ahead tell us of the way to clarity- we can never learn or know until our own steps have reached the end of our own maze. 
All I want to say in this particular ramble is- keep on your path, years are minuscule in comparison to the infinity that the essence of you will come to. Get lost, so utterly lost that you don't know who you are, that nothing makes sense, get as lost as you possibly can if you want. Or find your way now. Same difference. :)

My love story with the Divine or a short version of my history of the Dance

        I was wondering today if and how has my love for the Divine changed over the years, from the first "communion" through the years of union. From passion to commitment? So I dug up my diary...

Excerpt from diary, 2005

        I have been in love many times. I have lost myself in others countless moments. This has been a search, an escape, a hope!? Why fall in love? And out of love? It never lasts, this initial miracle. People stay together, and they have happiness, but the flame subdues to a quiet comfort, feeling of safety and warmth. It falls into a state of polarity- you start to fight, you wish to change the other. You make up. And finally you find a balance. Or maybe you don‘t. 
The impermanent world is such. Maybe I have become a slight cynic. At the same time I do believe people should share, should love each other, should help each other grow.

I have another lover. She is permanent. As long as I have a heart to feel, I will love Him. This love makes me fall to my knees, but without lowering myself; makes me cry, but only of happiness; makes me laugh, but only in awe and respect. My love for the Divine. Can I possibly measure it? Can anything else compare to it? She comprises all- He holds within himself all creatures, great or small, every leaf, stone, ant, snake, man, ape. Every contraction of music and every subtraction of silence. She only frustrates me with this- She cannot be put into words. He cannot be put into gender and yet I cannot say It, for that in linguistic terms means a lifeless thing. Yet nothing is lifeless about this All. There is nothing less lifeless than the All at all! How can I praise the Divine? How can I sing about the Divine? Only with my heart, only without words. Only by living.  

The thing I can describe is the love itself. I feel the love with me- I do not kneel to hope to get something- I receive total love by loving totally, by understanding. And this gift- this feeling of being loved so much, so completely, without boundaries, unconditionally, whatever I do, good or bad, for this Source, this Essence never judges you- this gift of being loved is what makes me love so much. This KNOWING of being loved makes me fall on my knees and live only for this love. In fact you can't even say- the universe loves me and I love the universe, because in this experience there is no lover and no beloved- it all mixes up and it comes together and there is nothing else but love, everything just IS love. Love that has nothing to do with giving, getting, being together or without, ownership, possession, hope, clinging, needing. Pure love, utter devotion that spreads so far and wide and deep that there is no receiver and no giver.

But then... 
2005

I become more of a hermit every day, each day I loathe the social mask I have to wear more and more. When I am in a room filled with people I see wild horses run past me, through me, beckoning me to jump on, they’re going to meet the stars in the dark nightly sky, and I cannot bear it. I want to fly too, alone and free.

Can you vomit up all the pain that comes from the nonsense, can you forcefully remove all that cold soulless existence that grows in you like a tumour? You eat and eat and eat (food and gossip and regret, the waves from the tv-set- the list is endless) to fill the void but as you become the junk in your belly, your whole being twists and turns and disgusts you so you throw it all up only to feel the void again. I guess for me the darkness beats the artificial light any day. It cannot be filled with the fake. I can learn to love companionship, I can even learn to like the sun, it has shown me its grace on occasions. Yet the night remains my master, my addiction, my only true friend. It’s a safe place for me to roam with all the other slugs and serpents, unseen and undisturbed.

And...

        How do you find the heat regulator button on the radiator and turn it from explosive to mild? Can you have burning passion, love and inspiration and loose its dark counter part of frustration, self-destruction and anger? Is there matter without antimatter? Or how do you rid yourself of the illusion of both?

        All I know is that there is such a huge dimension to the word feel at those times. I don’t just feel, I burn down to my very core of being. When I feel self-hatred it’s not a mild wallowing in pity, it’s the scream in the pillow, pulling hair and in the past self-hurt kind. Maybe it’s just life. If you want to taste life, smell it, feel it, hear it to the extreme then you will end up wanting to kill it. I desire the fear and fear the desire.

And...

I guess because I have come to understand that everyone suffers I have in some way ended up reaching an underlining level of peace in my mind. I have gained an understanding about the constant change that everything is subject to. How can you fight with the law of nature? All you can do is flow with the tide and surrender to the madness, give yourself up to the universe. 

At the same time it makes me so much more sensitive to seeing all the suffering in the world. It’s so strange- I thought that I was so lucky to gain an insight that will protect me from pain, but now I find that this has only opened me up to feeling EVERYONE’S hurt at the same time- what do you do with that? I walk on the street and I hear people shouting and screaming at each other, I see violence and it makes me cry, this blindness, the hurt that people cause themselves. If that is the salvation in the loss of ego then its grotesquely hilarious. But at the same time an inescapable fact I guess. On this earthly plain there is no pleasure without pain, never mind your vision and perspective, when the pleasure gets greater then so does the pain.

The strength of it is scary. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders so much that my head wants to explode, my neck longs to shatter into thousands of pieces.      


If death is not the answer and life kills you day by day then what do you do?

I’m numb. After one implosion, waiting another. I can sense it already though my awareness is concentrated on the level of my skin, as thick as an elephants.
Maybe the next one is the last. Does it matter? Joy is as far as the moon.

And..

Darkness. Guilt. Suffering. Sin.
        The winds are howling, battering the tiny birds as they fight to keep their direction. Not a soul outside, though its midday.
I sit in this moment and try to hold it. This desperate and beautiful moment. The atmosphere is dark and yet filled with little specks of carefree laughter, tiny bits of hope.
        Or is it my mind?
        I sit and I play with my vision like the wind is playing with the trees and the birds. Bending it, twisting and turning everything and yet not changing a thing. The birds will fly in a straight line, the trees will reach to the skies after the wind goes once again. My essence will remain constant. Nothing matters. How beautiful.

And..

Still 2005

Little glimpses of truth. I am chopping a tomato to make a fresh salad. My mind is empty, the thoughts have tired of themselves, time has gotten over it’s pompous self-delusion and has left me be. So all I do is chop a tomato. I do not think- I am chopping a tomato, I have quite forgotten words. But I am here, now, still, with a full awareness. And this way, suddenly- I am for the first time chopping a tomato. Quite unexpectedly I am filled with joy and peace. I know, this very instant, that the meaning of life is chopping a tomato. Chuckling I fall to a seat and sigh, “Thank you- tomato! Thank you- divine, for allowing me to chop into your essence!”  I have a fleeting feeling maybe I was actually chopping up myself. 

Somewhere in India, 2006

We are all free, nonexistent, without beginning and end. Bubbles of air, drops of water, grains of sand. Who am I? Who are you? Take a microscope and still you won’t find the answer. But in that ocean, cloud, in that desert of sand, nobody stands alone, separate. There are no quarrels or misunderstandings. This if we step out of our tiny little shell for a moment and look around. Or turn inward and take a look at our hearts. We will discover that someone has tried to pull our leg- nothing is as it seems, nowhere is the person we call “I”. 

And now? What happens now? Will all the storms in the world sail past me now? Of course not. But who will they shake? Who will they hurt? In fact are there any storms at all outside our own little inner world? Or do the rivers of suffering start from here and run into myself?

I have caught hold of the carriage of now and pulled myself to its comfy seat. This moment is the only one that exists, that matters. I, who have since childhood searched for a reason to be, have jumped from one view to another, like a piece of wood on stormy waves, a prey for the forces of nature, victim of my own emotions and passions, have reached the simple truth that no reason is necessary. The solidity of myself has separated me before from this truth, the search itself has prevented finding. Dissolved in the sea there are no more questions. Everything just is.  

And perhaps even a more wonderful realization- there are really no polarities. I have said that this is true before. I have believed that this is true before. I have even, in brief magical glimpses experienced that this is true, yet somehow I have never truly understood the real essence of this truth. If I am lost at any time in my life, then it only appears to my very limited consciousness then, at that moment, that I am lost, that I am not whole at the same time. I am simply playing the game of the cosmos- the appearing and the dissolving, blindness and vision, good and bad.  But that game itself is also a part of the divine essence. The divine is whole. So how did I think that when I didn’t have my mystical vision I was not whole? That when I was shaking with torrents of torture I was not also peacefully laughing? That when I was deeply ridden with all sorts of complexes and diseases I was not also shining with health, light and confidence. In reality all these are words, concepts, feelings. Ever-changing protrusions from the centre that doesn’t change. 

All that there is leaves me in deep awe. 

All that there is, is a playful dance of all the opposites, all the possibilities. A natural rhythm and energy. A heart, that goes on beating no matter where the legs run and how the hands bang and gesticulate.  A heart that keeps on beating no matter what dreams the head dreams.

...... October 2012

       My love came out of the night. How impassioned it was in those beginning stages! How painful was its beauty! I was a prayer then. Nothing else mattered. Days were obstacles cause I couldn't wait to fall to my knees and cherish. I was consumed by the union and I longed and needed the solitude that allowed it. 

      This love is not bound by the night anymore. The pendulum used to rock hard and fast from ecstasy to despair, it was such a difficult existence for many years, constantly torn up and then flinged to the heavens and torn up again by these extremes. I had no control whatsoever, I had no idea why the Divine had one day simply filled me from above, and I had no idea how to stop myself from falling into Hell. It was the opposite of constant at those times- namely because of that despair I felt when I was without it. It was all or nothing then. 
      When I wanted it all and devoured all the Universe I needed to empty myself after a while. It was a spiritual bulimia which then expressed itself as a physical bulimia. 
      When I had it all, then my mind collapsed into fear for a while- too high, too fast! It was a spiritual vertigo which then expressed itself as the physical vertigo also- the ground was literally falling and rising under my feet, I couldn't even work for a while, walking was a huge mile-stone I had to conquer again. In other words- with the spiritual gymnastics- the body follows- beware!
      It was a spiritual death which made me go out and test the limits of danger, to feel as alive as I possibly could. And then it was a spiritual birth which made me long for physical death. And again it was those moments when I was ready to give up that actually sparked Life! Death! Life! Death! Life!
      Yes, it was a passion then! 
      Yet it is through this rocking- that I know that there is no good or bad. Yet it's through the experience that the love remained by my side, saving me time and again from the ultimate threat I posed to myself- that I developed my absolute and unshakable trust in the Universe, my rock-solid faith that everything happens for the best, despite all the seeming suffering on the surface reality. 

     How can I describe my love now? It is such a quiet feeling now compared to all that, despite its stealthy strength. A silent under-current of everything. A saving grace for every disappointment, an indestructible net underneath every fall. The arms of this love always catch me. Every unpleasant thought is subdued by it. When before I loved to fall cause it meant first the void and then the flying and dissolution in ecstasy, then now I have  learned to love the simple walk on the ground of being. For some years, they can be called the stabilizing years I guess- I did not fall at all, and I was shocked by this, it was the polar opposite of what I knew and was used to. Of course life goes on and suffering returns. It returns so much smaller though, and more importantly- it returns within the loving arms of the Divine.       

      This feeling has spread out over a myriad of tempos and tonalities now. There is no frustration with describing it, cause there is no need to describe it- it is there, just there, in day-light and at night. Sometimes the awareness of it sleeps also. But when the sleep has lasted for longer than I can bear, for days or weeks, the love soars through my heart refreshed with such a tumultuous ecstasy that I still kneel, I still shout out to the heavens and laugh for hours with tears of gratitude rolling down my face. And I am grateful for the temporary solitude cause I get to feel the over-flowing joining. Its just that I don't need the rapture anymore, I am utterly happy to find the quiet energy of love behind small things.

       I am married to You- to Myself. No earthly love or the loss of it makes me suffer for long. Most of my friends are shocked at how fast I get over things. But they don't know about my real love, which encompasses and immortalizes these loves also. 
       I have no more ambitions in life cause You were my only ambition. I only want to live when I live, and to die when I die, with You by my side, around, within- 
       in Love.

The dance starts out slowly, fueled by a vague longing in the heart and a strong curiosity of mind.

The dance quickens into fire- both igniting and purging darkness.

The dance settles into the dance. 

A day of unrest- a short story

Decided to share a little short story of mine from about 5 years ago, from a time, when breath was writing and nothing was real unless put into a font. Peace can be an enemy of creativity I find... A day of unrest can be more fruitful than many a day of peace, at least as far as self-expression goes.
...

A DAY OF UNREST


He was sitting under the canopy of a colossal chestnut tree, leaning against its majestic thick trunk; sitting with one leg bent up and on it a tatty note-book where he was scribbling into with haste, almost frantically. His forehead was furrowed and there was a deep crease between his thick black brows. A fly landed on his knee and started to test this newfound potential source of food by rubbing its hind legs together. To this harmless annoyance the man was left blissfully unaware.

“Boo!”

A Child had jumped up to him from behind the tree and this made the Writer in turn jump as if he had just fallen out of a deep sleep.  It was the fly who probably got the biggest scare, comparable to an earthquake and flew away.

“What are you doing on such a wonderful summer’s day?”  

He glanced at the wilderness beyond him, with dazed eyes that seemed still slightly unfocused. What a wonderful day it was indeed! How bright was the sun! How the sunbeams danced in the air, how the whole atmosphere seemed to shine and sparkle in a tiny spectra from white to silver to gold. “Like fairy dust,” he mumbled and smiled.

He put his pen back to work while the Child was curiously leaning over to see what he was writing.

“The sun is sprinkling the Earth with fairy dust. In these rare brilliant summer days all the hearts of people are blessed with purely joyous, optimistic thoughts. Nothing seems impossible with the power of the sun behind us. We become for one day like magical children, like Gods themselves.”

The Child smiled at this but to herself she was thinking, “Crazy. He is totally crazy but I like him. Why sit here under this beautiful tree, see the wonder of this gorgeous day and do nothing but write? Write, write, write. That’s all he ever does. But at least he's not like that horrid Queen. Although she can‘t help being like she is I suppose either.”

“Do you wanna come and play with the rocks on the seashore?” the Child jumped up and down in front of the Writer. “There are such great rocks there. If you find the really magical ones and hold them in your hand for a while then they make your palm tingle. I swear!! It was the Mystic who showed me. You really must come!”

The writer started to explain that what he was doing was quite important here and he would perhaps come and see the rocks later, in fact he would promise her that, when he noticed another figure approaching from the little path in the forest.

“Oh, no”, they both thought simultaneously. “The Saboteur.”

The slightly hunched older man walked slowly. He always paced himself for he never seemed to be quite sure where he was, even though he had of course lived here for over 30 years now. Or perhaps he didn’t quite have the faith that if he did indeed start to walk a bit faster with his right leg his left leg would follow? There were always strange uncertainties in his head; he had grown to accept them, even though for others they became slightly intolerable after a while. His eyes seemed to be narrow slits; they kept flying from left to right as if always trying to catch some unseen enemy.

“I have had an idea. I spoke about this with the Queen and she did seem to understand, so I think that it’s fair to say that I have saved us once again.”

Both the Child and the Writer remained quiet. The Writer kept flicking over the pages in his notebook, pretending to be re-reading his story, while the Child had found a beetle on the grass to play with. The lack of a willing audience had however never stopped the Saboteur.

“So this is the problem. We have lived here on this island for a long time. We have been doing fine. It’s peaceful here, nobody ever disturbs us. But lately I have begun to hear people whispering about going out to the World. I hear everything, never doubt that.”

The Child was still happy enough playing with the beetle who she had named Didi and adopted to be her- oh, about five hundredth adopted child, but only about the fourteenth beetle and definitely the first with its shell with that sort of marvellous tiny little crack which made the Child love this beetle most of all, she was certain of that. But the Writer had stopped fumbling with the pages and had turned his face up to the Saboteur now.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Oh there’s no need to play stupid. I know that there has been talk and I know that you have started to write your manuscript about f-ffrreed-om.” The last word was almost spat out and distorted as if with a deliberate attempt to make even the sound itself ridiculous.

“I have written about many things. Although you have never seemed to take an interest in the subject of my writing before, an addictive waste of time as you have always just called it.”

“Yes. Of course it’s a waste of time. I mean what have you accomplished by this annoying habit of yours? All you seem to do is write but there is no audience to read what you write, and will never be an audience. So who are you writing for? Furthermore- if you don‘t have an audience then how do you even know that what you write makes sense or if it is worth while? You don‘t have enough talent to be a true writer, surely you know that.”

The Writer had become defensive but he had hunched his shoulders a little, just like the man standing before him.

“I am writing because I need to write. Because I need to express all the beauty that I see in the world and I hope to inspire people to see it too some day. But have we not gone over this a thousand times? Leave me be.”

“I have always let you be and do what you want and waste your time. But this stuff about… hggghh…ff-freeedom”, he cleared his throat of sudden phlegm, “That stuff is dangerous. We all know what can happen. So I have made a suggestion to the Queen to find a better outlet for your energy. I have proposed to her to build an iron fence around our land. “

“We are living on an island for god’s sakes!” This time the Saboteur has really lost it, he thought.
Even the Child had started to take an interest in the conversation now.

“Yes! We are going to the World! Oh, I simply can’t wait! It will be wonderful! There will be other people, and other trees and fields and seas and mountains and animals and birds and…. Ah! Won’t there, Writer? Won’t there?”

The Writer was once again saved by the bell as now there were three more figures approaching from the other side.

The first one walked slightly ahead of others. He was dressed in his favourite Che Guevara T-shirt, wearing a pair of scarlet shorts and his usual tough walking boots. He seemed to move in the thick grass like a tank, bending down every tall plant and vine that came on his way. There was a path right there beside him but he never walked on paths, he preferred to make his own way, always one where nobody had seemed to walk before.

A little way behind the Pioneer was the Mystic. What a contrast his peaceful energy seemed to the previous one. He walked with confidence as well but each of his steps spoke of his love and awareness for the nature around him, he carefully avoided an ant’s nest and then caressed a passing branch with his palm as if greeting an old friend. All the while laughingly trying to imitate a blackbird that had just finished its refrain.

Last behind was a puffy-eyed and red-nosed teenager, dragging his feet and holding his gaze to the ground.

The Pioneer spoke first. He had pulled himself up to sit on the lowest branch of the chestnut tree and was dangling his feet now right above the head of the Writer.

“I have started to build the boat. It won’t be weeks till we can finally leave.” His voice was trembling with excitement and joy and at the same time he had never sounded more secure, more at ease with himself. How long had he thought about leaving this island! How tired he had become of the same roads and paths, the same meadow, the same farm, the same faces of people day in and day out! Then he had started to climb the trees. That had been fun for a while but even this joy was soon exhausted. A few months ago he had taken to swimming. He had swum further and further, as far as his strong physique had allowed him, sometimes turning back only at the very last minute and had barely been able to crawl back to the shore coughing salt water from his lungs. He had seen everything on this pathetic small peace of land for about a million times and he was utterly, killingly, depressingly sick, sick, sick of it. That moment he had discovered the way to string together planks of wood that he could float on, and had made his first raft which, yes- had fallen apart after a few moments but nevertheless was undeniable proof that escape was possible, had been the happiest time of his life. And now the boat was almost ready.

“Really? Are we really leaving? Oh!” the Child could barely hide his excitement.

“No. We are not leaving. This is our home. We will never leave this place.” The Saboteur had said this. His face was grave and sombre. This was worse than he had thought.

“Oh yes we are!” said the Pioneer with an arrogant, rebellious tone of voice. “Everybody wants to leave this prison of yours. Me, the Child, the Writer…” He had turned over to the Writer, waiting for the latter to speak and lend him some support.

The Writer had not moved since the argument had started. He had been so peaceful and happy and full of life and the power of dreams. And now it was all gone. He was sad. He had pulled his other knee close to his chest, huddled them both and remained silent while drifting away in his thoughts, desperate thoughts of inability and futility.

Nobody had noticed that the birds were not singing anymore. The blossoming flowers had an ever so slightly duller colour; the wind had stopped playing with the leaves and the strands of hay. The beetles and flies and bees had crawled and flown away. They had sensed the storm coming before anybody else and had gone to find refuge in the little cavities of the trees and the earth.

“You understand me at least,” the Pioneer was addressing the Mystic. “You have always talked to me about the wonder of the World, the love and the beauty of it. Why are you never saying anything when we need you to speak?”

“What is there to be said?” the Mystic said with his ever-calm and peaceful eyes sparkling as if he found the question humorous. “What can be said is never true. That is to say it is true, but so is the opposite if we voice that. I find no meaning in words. They break up the infinity, the absolute truth into little pieces, into polarities and render them without the beauty of their wholeness. We are all One and we can be happy with experiencing this directly, without words and concepts and opinions.”

The Writer looked up. “But I understand that as well. Yet the Unity can play with words, words can fall out of the great mystery of oneness without dividing it but exploring its many-faceted appearance, finding symbols and links between the seemingly opposing forces, thus enriching the minds of people.”

“Yes. That is your joy and we must all follow our own joy. I prefer the sound of silence, and to let my love for the world come out with my breath, you prefer to release it with your pen. There is no right or wrong. It is not wrong to stay here on this island or to go out to the World. It is only the outer circumstance that will change; the inner truth will remain the same. I can love the world from here or from there, I am never outside it.”

The Pioneer was getting extremely impatient now. “We are going. If I have to drag each and every one of your pathetic bottoms onto my boat, I will. If I have to set fire on this island, I will do that. We are not going to stay in this prison for another month and there is nothing anybody can do about that!”

“I always knew that you were a fool!” snorted the Saboteur. “But that you had a secret desire to kill us all, that I didn‘t expect even from you!”

“Oh shut up, you old fart! I have had enough of your pitiful excuses, and your pessimism and your never-ending fears and stupidity! I have had enough of you, do you hear!” There was a passion of anger behind the Pioneers voice that he had never expressed or even felt before and everybody was taken aback, sensing for the first time that their quiet little imaginary idyll was not so idyllic after all. It was as if there were deep cracks beneath the very earth they were standing on and for the first time everybody knew it, knew it but could not think of it. Thinking about it made them all shudder as if faced with more than a fear of unrest and arguments; they had experienced plenty of those before. But this crack made them fear something far more terrible, something far more fatal, it was as if death itself knocked at their door. But they could not not think about it, for it was right there, it had been right there in the voice of the Pioneer and nobody could think about anything else.

Even the Saboteur sensed this. Even he knew that the dreaded freedom was no longer the issue; there was something far more dangerous at hand.

The weather was starting to change. The air was thick, hot and falling heavy on the lungs. Huge dark clouds had drifted onto the previously pure and empty blueness and they hung there threateningly, standing completely still as if to pretend that they were merely figments of artistry and imagination on a huge canvas. Yet they would be alive soon enough, their inner essence and the danger behind their immobility was not to be mistaken.

It was a quiet little voice of the teenager that put an end to the tension of silence in the air.
“But what will become of me? What will become of me?” He broke into tears, a fountain of sobs was released as if from behind a dam, so strong, powerful and unrelenting from such a small skinny weak body that the Child started to cry as well with conforming sympathy and fear.

This encouraged the Victim to enter the next phase of his wailing, one that everybody was familiar with by now. The stage when the tears were punctuated with brief spells of sentences. The same story, the same words, time after time.

“But I… I… have been out there… in the World… there were terrible monsters there… men who… did horrible things… to me… They made me… they hurt me… I could not… defend myself… I am too weak… too sensitive… I cannot handle… the World… other People… They… Will… Kill… Me…”

The Pioneer who usually stopped talking about his plans and his dreams when he was faced with this incessantly crying boy for the first time made his heart cold and refused to be moved away from his resolution.

“You will be fine,” he said. “I am tired of your constant crying as well. Can you not just pull yourself together for once? We have played up to your scenes and tears for too long. Get over it.”

The Victim was shaking violently now. He looked around to find the Mystic, who had always been the only one able to calm and console him. But the Mystic had distanced himself from this scene. He was struggling to walk, his steps were shaky, and he seemed to have lost all balance. He was tormented down to his very soul. He had felt the tremor of the island with greater power than anybody else. He had felt something else that made his heart contort with spasms, his breath rapid and shallow. Rather it was something he didn’t feel. He didn’t feel the Divine, he didn’t feel the love from the universal soul, he felt as if the link that had always fed and enlivened him was suddenly cut away, leaving all of his body a huge scar, bleeding with anguish, with desolation, with fear. He felt he could not breathe; the air just could not enter his lungs. He gasped in this terrible sudden asthma attack. Why would the air not enter? Where was the Divine? Where? How could he live without it?

There was a sudden rumbling sound heard from the cloud directly above them. Silence. Another rumble. It sounded as if the heavens themselves were suffering from a violent argument or perhaps indigestion.

The first person that the Queen noticed as she hurried into the opening in the forest was the Mystic lying on the ground and clasping his stomach as if in a death agony.

Then she heard the sobs of the Child and the Victim. They were holding each other and shaking with quiet groans, their tears had spent up their force, and their voices had grown weak and husky.

Where were the rest of them?

She found the Pioneer and the Writer underneath a tree, sitting with stony, expressionless, empty faces, not resembling living beings at all. The Saboteur was standing like a statue. His eyes were blank; he was staring at the Mystic.

It was a sight the Queen scarcely dared to believe. She didn’t recognize any of her subjects at all. She had gotten used to their periodic rebellious streaks and annoying arguments and childish behaviour. But this was something terrible. Something so terrible that she had to act at once or all of them would be lost forever.
She had punished them many times when they had tried to subvert her authority. When they had argued and made plans behind her back without consulting her. She had restricted their movement; she had been vicious and cruel. Yes, she had been cruel. But it had been for their own good. The peace in her land came first.
But this time she decided that ruthlessness was not an option. They were all suffering and there was a deep benevolence and compassion in the Queens soul, for the first time perhaps.

One by one she went up to all of her royal subjects. She whispered words of strength, of wisdom, of comfort to each of their ears. The Mystic was the most difficult one to console. But as the man lying on the ground looked into the Queens eyes he suddenly saw in them a glimpse of the Divine. He had always respected the Queen but had never realised that in her humanity, in her many human flaws, in her desire to control and cling to her subjects, was simply another face of the Divine Soul. And he knew that he could never be separated from the universal unity. Even if he lost contact with it, it was there. Where else would it be? Oneness was oneness always, not merely at the times when he felt it. The small group of people suddenly awoke and with the Queens command ran to their little farm house, ran in togetherness and in friendship, ran to take shelter from the rain.

It was the Queen who brought peace to me. I had a deep anxiety attack, I had been crying for what seemed like forever. A part of me felt dead, closed off from awareness, numb, almost void.
It had all started when I sat down in my garden with my notebook, trying to put down all the thoughts and feelings in my ever-restless soul. There were countless different feelings, countless different personalities, and forces battling inside me. This had always been so. But this time they poured out of me and didn’t seem to find a common language, all the different sides of me seemed to disagree, leaving me with a deep discomfort, indecision, desperation.

A battle between creative urges and a desire to simply enjoy the summer weather and the nature around me like a magical child. That had been harmless enough.

The push towards new frontiers, a profound need to break free from my comfort zone. Colliding with the
distrust in humanity and fear of the unknown and my own self-sabotaging voice telling me I wasn’t able to fulfil my dreams or to survive outside my little safety net.

Past feelings of abuse fighting with the forceful drive to open myself up and become more of a social being, to re-enter the world again from my self-imposed solitude.

These had been already more difficult experiences.

Then there had been a peaceful joy of feeling the unity of the world. And suddenly that had disappeared. Disappeared together with all faith and hope. This had been terrible; I was not able to even breathe from this fear of never feeling the love of the Divine again.  

But the crisis had been resolved by some kind of inner ruler of my being. A sane voice that was able to unite the opposing forces. A benevolent queen in my soul who is able to resolve the arguments within, sometimes with force, this time with kindness.

I can live in peace with my inner fractions, with those different and sometimes rowdy voices in my heart. I accept them. I accept myself as I am.

Meeting the inner child and the outer parent

Photo-Richard Heeks

Pain comes up into bubbles...

Bubbles come up into air... 

I have recently realized how much of an "insight" meditation Vipassana meditation really is.

We, the waking spirits, who are no longer deep in slumber, yet not constantly present and in the fullness of now either, have to wonder with our minds- where are these invisible obstacles, what is it that is holding us back, why do we have to fall, can we not just always fly, why do we fall back to the old tracks of behavior, why do we lose patience and peace. It is lovely- to know the peace is longer, the fullness closer at hand, yet where are those hidden magnets- we want to soar at all times, we think we know how! Digging in the psyche it is always the childhood we get back to, the formative years, the upsets of the inner child.

Vipassana shows this in the level of the body, it is wondrous how perfectly the mind and body are aligned. We observe the subtle and oh-so-pleasant free-flow of energy on our body, but just as we get into it- POP! A bubble. The flow of awareness is stopped by a painful hard obstacle. Oh- the unpleasant pain of it to the sensitive mind pinpointed on a single tiny area of matter/energy! The thought of unpleasantness resulting in another instant POP, and soon we are rigid, solid, there is no way for the awareness now, it is again crippled, again stuck in solid matter where it has to cut through with force and move at a speed of a turtle. No more gliding through our own bodies alive and buzzing with its vibratory wave, now transforming into a bulldozer and ramming through as if we are our own obstacle. Perhaps we are.

We have to meet our inner child I feel. The one standing in the corner of our mind, hiding, waiting. The innocent one robbed of their innocence. The one born timeless taught time. The confident being who was shown they are not worthy. The one full of love unloved. The big reduced to tiny, the one who knew oneness and was shown one less. It is the nature of this world to create this abandoned creature. It is the role of the parents to show us the nature of the manifest world of duality.

The roots are dug deep, and we are usually scared to tackle them. It is difficult as well cause of all the coping mechanisms we have built. The deepest fears and pains of the ego- I am not worthy, I am not lovable- these had to have a solution even as a child and to tackle them now as a grown up- is hard. But inevitable. All roads lead to this point I feel. 

And it is a tricky point, it is a deep pit. How many times have I thought I have forgiven my parents. I was so full of the Universe then that everything dissolved, the inner child was at home. But the world and time keeps pushing up. More bubbles. Pop. Pop.

Do we take time to really face our parents? I have met some who have, it has usually been on their death bed, with a few first honest words spoken, and then onto another pain- grieving. 

Can we look eye to eye with them, soul to soul with them? Can we tell them how we felt as a child with no blame, can we take responsibility of our own response mechanisms if those have cost them pain in return? Can we talk to them past the roles that we play, past the huge bulk of hidden and unhidden baggage?

It is not about understanding. I understand perfectly well that my parents did what they knew best, acting from their own hurts and fears, walking on their own path, dealing with their own lessons. At the end of the day I do believe that both the parents and the children have chosen each other. Parents- to widen their own lessons of soul; children to learn a particular lesson of soul which heightens the journey, whether it is abandonment, abuse, absence, clinging, dependence... We chose and we received. There is no blame. The clarity of understanding makes it even more difficult to know exactly how to untangle the roots. How ironic to face meeting the first people we ever glimpsed, felt, touched- last.

There is only one way and it is honest and open communication. With both the inner child and the outer parent. 

The yin and the yang. 

Bubble after bubble, 

Bursting in the air..