Can you turn towards yourself?
Can you melt your rigidity?
Can you live solidly and yet respond to life vividly?I’m asking you whole-heartedly: Can you meet yourself fully in love?
Go on human. Embrace the supposedly opposites.
Respond. Cooperate. Unite with the counterforces.
Feeling Feelings
Receive Resilience
I recently came across the term ‘collective resourcing’ in regards to collective ancestral trauma healing and this gave me a great feeling of relief.
I am sensing that I am not ‘doing the work’ for me . I’ve mentioned this repetitively.
What I find within is not ‘my answer’ it is ‘the response to life’ itself.
Every journey of self-discovery I indulge in internally reveals a great deal of resources that could be crucial for survival in ‘the external’…
“The veil is thin these days,” they say.
That’s the reason why I’ve decided to give this piece a go….
There might be something behind the veil that wants to be revealed (and that lays beyond my intellectual abilities).
What I understood during an online event with Thomas Hübl on collective trauma recovery is that my healing IS my union with my ancestors.
I do not only inherit the pain but also the resilience of my forefathers and mothers. And this resilience is what I recover.
I am ‘life incarnated’. I am resilience. The willingness to push through. Life wanted to live through me.
It is something I felt all the way. Every purge, every cry feels like a dissolution of barricades, a removal of debris that blocks my connection to source.
As I mentioned many times before – this can look different to every single one of us who consider themselves on a healing journey – the path. My tool is crying, yours could be something completely different.
Nevertheless, the more I see and the more I converse with the souls I am meeting on the way, the more I sympathize with one common idea:
Healing is the freeing of hidden resources – resources that have been a part of us since generations.
Healing is something that can only occur ‘from the inside out’.
What does that mean?
We have to have a conversation with ourselves in order to be able to respond to life. If we learn to communicate with ourselves, we eventually find out about our needs. By responding to our needs, we regain our response-ability to life.
And responding to life is in one way or another re-connecting with our ancestors. <3
What we discover within ourselves is not a concept of life. It is not a world-view. It is life itself if we let it. It is not the answer to a question. It is not our purpose. It is trust itself. Again – it is resilience, our innate power to move on.
And when I say power I don’t mean force. I’m talking about the subtle energy flow that keeps us alive…
Healing is the freeing of long-forgotten resources. It is receiving what is here for us anyways. Resources that are brought to us by our ancestors.
Healing is also the rediscovery of joy. The joy of being alive – our greatest resource.
Productive Gratitude
There is SO MUCH moving right now. This “stream of consciousness” moved through me just now. So I decided to let it out:
There is a fundamental truth I understood on a different level: We are all the same. We all have the same life force. We are all walking through this life with the same intention: To move energy – no matter if we are aware of it or not.
At the end of the day everyone of us is crucial.
Everyone of us has a purpose – the purpose to just be.
Omg, this purpose is so simple that it literally blows my mind when I try to put it into words, because as soon as I am trying to phrase it, it sounds so pathetic – too simple to be true.
Bizarre and surreal to most human beings who ‘distant’ themselves from aliveness so far off.
Still there is truth no one can deny: We are transforming matter from one state to another. Our emotions are our fuel to transform that matter, because they dictate what we do – short term and in the long run…
There is no human better or worse. There is no one on a higher level. The guru is us – you, me.
There is STILL such a huuuge misconception around the word ‘guru’. There is soooo much resistance created by splitting ourselves apart. We split us apart until nothing is left.
As soon as we’d understand that we are all one, that absolutely no being, no plant, not a single atom on this planet is separate, we’d find peace….
How could we do that? By FEELING OUR FEELINGS fully. And by assisting each other to do the same – safely. Without being judged and without judgment of ourselves.
I know that this is a long way to go. So let’s better start NOW.
If we take the time to just be there for a moment, be present with what and who is.
If we take the time to hold a hand, to look another person in the eyes, to not look through them, THIS is when we are creating change…
“Productive Gratitude” – this is a phrase my mind came up with the other day when I expressed my gratitude towards my fellow “yoga-retreaters” I journeyed with at “The Journey Through The Chakras” by Refeel Yoga.
All of a sudden I felt this huuuuuge connection – to myself, to this group, to the ALL.
And as sudden as this sensation arrived I felt it FOR MY WORK, for any work that I am doing – even the work I don’t love. The daily work. The 9-5. The 24/7. Whatever it is. I felt grateful for it and I DID IT with thankfulness for being able to do it.
If I am expressing my gratitude with EVERY SINGLE ACTION I will inevitably change the world.
How is this possible?
Because I am BECOMING gratitude. And by becoming it I am acting from a place that is not defined by trans-action.
I am doing and I am moving on at the same time (this is a small reference to Tao Te Ching;)
It is NOT easy. Definitely not. It is hard. In order to become gratitude I have to become myself first.
A quest of a life-time – a quest I am forever grateful for.
Namaste 🙏
Collective Purging
Today is a day of insights, a morning of stream of consciousness.
It is one of those moments when I understand that I am not doing it for me. I am not walking the path for the sake of walking it. I am not even sure if I am walking it.
I am experiencing transformation because my life experience is crucial for the life experience of everyone around me – everyone I influence with my being.
What I am talking about here is not my professional influence or what I am saying or not saying within my social relations. It is not about my writing, because this is what I am doing for myself.
It is about how I show up energetically (or not).
Recently there seems to be a challenging time for a lot of us.
I can feel the collective purge – the RELEASE of “old” emotions or life experience.
I witness it first hand by witnessing the processes of my friends.
The unbearable breaks open.
What was closing off is what is causing the opening – of “the path” and of the heart…
New beginnings appear on the horizon. Out of nowhere.
And what is beyond the horizon is unknown.
And that is where we want to go:
There is this big big big misconception around the spiritual path.
There seems to be some sort of cultural narrative (maybe it is within my perception because I am part of the narrative, which makes it even more pressuring to share this thought as unfiltered as possible.)
The narrative is being told on social media platforms. The images shown are flawless. The spiritual path seems to be paved with beauty. It appears to be a chronological process – and incorporation of THE beauty.
But guess what?
THIS IS NOT THE PATH.
The path is beauty, yes.
But “the way” is hard.
Yes, there are the souls that are awake. They are born into awake beings.
But, we, us, the ones who are reading this (I reckon’) are the ones who have to eat the sh*t.
We have to plough that dirt – the most nourishing ground that we have. Our beautiful ugly life experience, our suffering that is us.
It is within us.
It’s our feelings, our wrong-doings, our mistakes, our painfully covered truth that’s sooo crooked. It hurts.
The old skin that wants to be shed but it is so “intergrown” with our lives, entangled with our conditionings.
There is one thing I am more certain than ever: There is no way around it. The untangling is what will release a ton of energy. We know it deep down inside (not as far down as we think).
Our imagination can help us to give the push, but we have to make the move and trust.
The thing about that is: There is no reason not to trust.
This reminds me of a quote I read in a philosophy magazine called “Hohe Luft”: “Being satisfied with life can be an act of rebellion in times where thriving to be the best version of ourselves became the way of being.”
To trust is also an act of rebellion in times where deterioration is everything that is being broadcasted.
And the counter movement? Is BLINDFOLING our true feelings – burrying the truth….
The thing is: We don’t need a movement. All we need is to trust in our own abilities. And with abilities I mean the gifts that we have inherited, our DNA that is allowing us to receive information and process information within our physical body.
YES, our truth IS our feelings.
Trust exists independently from what is going on in the external.
Truth is subsisting. It is us.
Yes, I am saying: “TRUST! NO MATTER WHAT!”
Trust – whatever feeling arises.
Trust – no matter which decision is “the right” decision.
Trust – in your sadness, in your despair, in your anger, even – in your addiction or let’s say in “your awareness of your addiction”.
TRANSFORM IT BY BEING IT. LIVE THROUGH IT. This is how you overcome it.
It is so simple that I would like to scream it from the top of my lungs.
I invite trust.
I invite you to purge all of your emotions, to go all in, to feel it all and move on. You will see the next step. Help will appear out of nowhere.
You are never alone.
Thoughts on Compromise
I used to be allergic to compromise until I understood that it is essential for our survival…
‘To compromise’ originates from the latin word compromittere – ‘to make a mutual promise’. The prefix ‘com’ means ‘with’ or ‘together’. Precisely the word ‘promittere’ signifies ‘to let go’, ‘to send forth’, ‘to assure beforehand’.
‘Let go – together’ – I like that one.
Okay, what is compromise really?
To compromise means to consider everybody’s needs.
As human beings we all have the same needs.
Unfortunately we live in a society with strong narcissistic traits. We deny our needs with powerful defense-mechanisms. These mechanisms became so strong that we lost the ability to feel what we need – as humanity and more and more as an individual.
As a collective we are taking on masks that cover up our trauma – the trauma that needs to be solved in order to proceed to higher levels of consciousness. And this is where we want to go if we want to align with nature.
With other words – we live in a society that denies life.
Overcoming this conditioning became the challenge of my life. I was raised to function – nothing more. How can I be okay with that?
“You are seeing this a bit too pessimistic,” a friend recently called upon ‘my lack of optimism’.
Don’t get me wrong. I love life and I highly believe in life. That’s the reason why I am so passionate about transformation – because I believe in change for the better.
So, what does this all have to do with compromise?
The possibility of growth derives from exchange. This is a fact I become more and more certain about under current circumstances.
By not-compromising we are getting stuck in our own perspective of reality.
This is dangerous. Why?
What we call ‘our perspective’ are just thoughts.
No matter how certain we are about our own point of view – it is just our thoughts.
They are nothing – if you look at it sober-minded.
By clinging to our perspective, by always bringing up the ‘but’ (But this is me. But this is what I think. But you are not right.) we obstruct the pathway towards harmonious coexistence with righteousness.
And righteousness definitely belongs to a spectrum of lower frequencies which causes all the suffering in the world.
We are not allowing flow – the flow of life. If we are holding on to our arguments we are closing ourselves up to possibility.
We don’t ‘solve’ our collective misery by arguing.
We solve it only by establishing human values – mutual values around the whole globe.
We are ‘out of alignment’. Compromise is our means of transport to go back to human nature.
And how do we do it?
Lao Tzu says: “Knowing the other is intelligence, knowing yourself is wisdom.”
It starts with ourselves.
Crisis is a great opportunity to get to know ourselves better.
A real crisis is a turning point. It is about life or death. Am I willing to change for the better or do I prefer to stick to outworn habits?
Our relationships are an invitation to learn more about ourselves. And how do we relate to fellow human beings?
By being open about our needs.
If we are aware of it or not – our needs are the only certainty in our lives. Our basic needs are the same, so why not talk about it openly and find solutions that serve us all?
This crisis is our chance to find a mutual promise again.
Release It All
It is finally the time for some stream of consciousness from the verge of (in)sanity.
I’m going through an interesting phase of my life right now. A couple of weeks back I would have said “I’m going through hell”. But this is not true. I’m still on the surface – probably more grounded than ever before. Later on (within the next twelve months;) I will give you a bit more insight.
For now I would like to share a bit more intuitive writing here. In times of doubt I level up my inner dialog. It is the most valuable tool for a reality check. There are these mantra-like sentences that come flowing out of me into my keyboard – the result of years-long-learning:
Release everything that doesn’t belong to you. You are not supposed to carry all this luggage. Why are you over-complicating your life? Why are you holding on to anger, rage and frustration? Does it belong to you? Why are you still trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders instead of proceeding your way – lightly not with lightning speed.
Go grow your roots to resist that storm! Trust me – it will pass. You are allowed to let it all go… What has passed is gone – forever. You are not responsible. You are not in charge for every single event.
When are you going to understand this? How are you planning to continue if you travel with this heavy baggage?
Don’t be afraid of losing your love. Don’t be afraid of losing your will. Don’t be afraid of losing your hope.
Don’t you feel how your heart opens? Don’t you feel the expansion of your chest if you let it? Why are you suppressing it? Why are you holding your heart in chains? Why do you still control?
You are contracting. Can’t you feel it in your body? You are taking on too much. Are you crazy or what? (just kidding, of course you are)
You are taking things on and on and on and onto your plate. WHY? Your to-do-list is getting longer and longer, but is this what you have to do? When are you going to take care of yourself? I’m not talking about a vacation…
When are you going to trust in life? When are you going to trust in your abilities? You keep talking about trust, but deep inside you do know that you are not there. You don’t trust. You are still trying to control. Trying – because it is impossible to control.
“But it’s not me,” you are starting to scream. “It is my conditioning,” – “Ahahaha,” the universe is laughing out loud….
Don’t you see that this is the point??? THIS is your fucking problem. This is where you are not responding to your abilities. You did pretty good my dear. You gave up a whole lot of bullshit already. You gave up things and even people. Unfortunately you gave up a little bit too much. But don’t worry about that. You will keep g(r)o(w)ing.
Your path had been radical. And it is going to continue radically.
What do I mean by that?
Now your path is called radical healing – and nothing else. No people pleasing, no ‘being brave’.
You are living the adventures of other people’s dreams, but this is not your life. Pa! Here it is – the bitter truth.
“Okay, okay, I got that one. There is no need to yell at me in that arrogant manner. Tell me instead: How do I do it? This radical healing thing… ,”
First of all: You don’t DO it. Secondly: You’re gonna stop defending yourself completely and one hundred percent. There is absolutely no defending anymore. But you will realize how easy it gets. Now it might seem hard to impossible. Now you can’t imagine yourself ‘not defending’ yourself.
“But….,” I can see the constant concern in your head.
You will just stop it – automatically. It caused you so much pain in your life. You wasted so much energy by defending. What you defended was your mask, your story, the image you had of yourself.
Basically this is what caused you all the pain that you have ever felt in the past. You were ALWAYS trying to please others. You kept defending yourself – non-stop. Yes, it was involuntarily. But now that you know it, you have the opportunity to do better…
These days you wish so badly that you wouldn’t ‘know better’, right?! You would wish to continue the well-trodden path.
Well, that’s unfortunate, because the path is gone. There is no maintained path anymore – there never was! You made it up….
There is only the path you follow by walking it; and guess what – you have absolutely no choice but walking it.
The ironic bit is – this is not scary at all! You chose the path. Your soul chose it and you are totally capable of walking it. You have the abilities – even though you are still closing your eyes from it. You prefer to be groping in the dark. You prefer to predict the unpredictable. You prefer to waste your energy on examining uncertainty.
Do you sense the paradox?
Why Feeling Feelings Is Important
Since quite some time I’m trying to write an article about taking responsibility for one’s feelings. About three months ago at a writing meetup I’m attending every so often I thought ‘Okay, this article is nearly done. Just the final touch and off we go.’
Well, things turned out differently. An honest self-confession brought me to the realization: I don’t really have an idea about what I’m feeling, so how can I write about it?!
Yes, it sounds bizarre – to me too. How can I not know what I feel?
There was something going on, yes. There was anger. There was rage. There was excitement. But what did these emotions want to tell me? And is there anything that lies deeper?
The Seven-Minutes-Experiment
So, I started off with the Seven-Minutes-Experiment. Now I have a slightly better idea about what I feel. But this is an ongoing process. Every day I have to remind myself to take the time to feel.
What I did find out is that there is not always a necessity to act. It is the opposite: I obtain peace of mind by non-acting. By just observing I’m automatically detaching from my feelings. Because feelings are like thoughts – they come and go. They don’t define me.
Okay, where to start? I might feel cold or tired, agitated, overwhelmed or nervous. By nature these feelings are not connoted in a negative or positive way. They just ‘are’.
Our mind likes to label our feelings. It marks them as good or bad. This way our mind creates its own version of reality. And this version of reality dictates how we experience the world, how we make decisions and how we interact with our environment.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is important that we categorize. The problem arises when we overrate our own judgement and we identify with this perspective of reality.
This causes stress. The mind takes over. It judges and judges.
This way we create a barrier between ourselves and reality.
This is a difficult one. On the one hand I have to feel my feelings. Feelings are something natural. They give me a hint of what I need or what I am supposed to be doing in a given situation. They show me a direction.
On the other hand I have to be careful not to over-interpret them. Many times I would be better off by stoically ignoring them instead of labeling them and ‘acting out’ – verbally or ‘operatively’.
But let’s go a step back:
What Is The Difference Between Feelings And Emotions?
Oh boy, do I really want to open this jar? This is a huge topic. It is so complex and there are several approaches and even contradictory explanations of the relation between feelings and emotions. So, please research yourself if you want to draw a wider picture.
Etymologically the word emotion comes from the french word ‘to move’. Something is ‘in motion’ whereas a feeling is considered more as a state.
While an emotion passes quickly, a feeling can persist or better say reoccur over our whole lifetime when triggered for example by an emotion.
As you see – emotions and feelings are interconnected, but still something different.
The only way to really understand the difference between feelings and emotions is through neuroscience.
And this is pretty down to earth.
Emotions are a biochemical response – mainly brought on its way by the Amygdala and other subcortical regions of the brain. They originally helped us as a species to react quickly to possible danger or reward.
A feeling on the other hand is subjectively influenced by our former experience. They are processed in other areas of our brain, but as they are influenced by cognitive input it is hard to really locate them.
While an emotion is a physical reaction of the body to a stimulus a feeling manifests psychologically through our experience. This process is very complex. It can be more described as a psychological conditioning.
If you imagine a theatre play emotions would be the scenes whereas a feeling would be the genre.
You could say feelings ‘plot’ emotions on the canvas of our mind.
How Do Feelings Find Their Way Into Our Lives?
I summed up two perspectives:
Our background: What we have experienced as a child conditions us and our feelings. It determines how we act in relationships, what we think about ourselves and about others. It determines our whole experience of the world. Freud and his disciples knew that if we want to understand ourselves fully we have to go back to our traumatic experiences and feel the emotion that we faced during this traumatic event. This helps us to process and integrate the marks of our journey. Getting to know these ‘old’ emotions helps us to understand why we react in a certain way in a given situation.
Our needs: Rather our needs are fulfilled or not conditions the way we ‘feel’ about ourselves and the world. What are our needs? Yes, there is maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When we are tired, hungry or alone we lose our balance easily and we might react emotionally. Rosenberg extends or better say elaborates the list of needs even more: Next to physical nurturance every human has the need for autonomy (following own goals and values), the need for ‘celebration’ (celebration of the creation of life and its fulfillment, and also the celebration of losses, e.g. of loved ones), the need for integrity (authenticity, creativity, meaning and self-worth), the need for interdependence (community, appreciation, intimacy, emotional safety, contribution to the enrichment of life, honesty, support, trust,…), the need for play (fun, laughter) and the need for what he calls ‘spiritual communion’ (beauty, harmony, order, inspiration, peace).
With the definition of these needs and which feelings arise rather they are met or not Rosenberg lies the foundation for nonviolent communication: “The intend is to remind us about what we already know – about how we humans were meant to relate to another – and to assist us in living in a way that concretely manifests this knowledge.”
So what is there? We have a body and we have needs that make us feel one way or another. And we have things that happen to us that make us feel one way or another. And in the end we have our thoughts that influence the way we feel.
So far so good. Life should flow smoothly if we would just listen to our feelings. But a lot of times it doesn’t, because we distract ourselves.
How Do We Disconnect From Our Feelings?
A lot of times what we call ‘our feelings’ are just projections. We make other people responsible for not being heard, not being loved, for not being sufficient. More than anything they are often reponses of our old conditioning. Our little hurt self that wants attention.
Rosenberg explains: “Judgements, criticism, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our own needs and values. When others hear criticism, they tend to invest their energy in self-defense or counterattack. The more directly we can connect our feelings to our needs, the easier it is for others to respond compassionately.”
At the beginning I thought: Okay, I’m aware of this. I will just change it. I don’t judge. I don’t re-act. I only observe and take the time to understand my needs.
I found out that this is easier said than done. As I explained earlier – there is a fundamental biochemical process going on in our body. We don’t change that easily.
Sometimes we deny feelings subconsciously. Most likely we deny the uncomfortable feelings, because our brain can’t be bothered with finding a solution for an unsatisfying situation.
Why? Because it wants to protect us from discomfort. We make ourselves vulnerable by confessing our deepest needs, because they might not be met. This is called coherence. Our brain likes convenience. It wants us to experience our life as ‘comprehensive’ as possible. This is why it prefers to stick to behavioural patterns that ‘work’. And a lot of times these patterns are not very useful.
Most of the time we are craving for something or we lack something and we are trying to find a ‘quick fix’.
A quick fix can be work, our phone, sex, drugs, TV or any other type of entertainment.
The problem is that these distractions lead us further away from ourselves. I don’t say they are generally bad, but they can be if they help us to avoid confrontation with our feelings.
“Avoidance is never an option in order to live a happy life,” said Margarete Paul, author of the book “Healing your aloneness”.
By avoiding our feelings we deny ourselves.
‘Not taking part’ can also be a form of denial. By avoiding new experiences we prevent ourselves from failure – but also from feeling ourselves.
Why Should We Better Connect With Our Feelings?
If you detach yourself from your feelings you will never fully feel yourself. You will never arrive in the present moment. You will never know what it means to be alive.
The more you become aware of your feelings the more confidence you get. If you are able to accept your vulnerability you have nothing to be afraid of. Social anxiety won’t be necessary anymore as you are not looking for approval.
Your nervous system relaxes if you are honest with yourself. Confess and accept anger or rage or sadness and automatically you will find release.
Additionally your body starts working in its natural power, because energy is being released.
The Real Homework
I found out that this is what it’s all about. I get to know myself by coming to my senses, by feeling myself.
Daniel Goleman, expert in emotional intelligence, expresses why this is so crucial for all of us:
“To understand human nature in general it helps enormously to first understand ourselves, which takes self-awareness. With emotional self-awareness, we recognize our feelings and how they impact us, which helps us, for example speak from the heart in a way that resonates with other people. Self-awareness also underlies effective emotional mastery, as well as empathy– we can only understand other’s emotions if we understand our own.”
About six years ago, when I ended an unhealthy relationship, I started off with my journey of self-discovery.
The following years were only about ‘toughening up’. I thought I have to get stronger. I thought I have to toughen up and this is the only way to get through this life.
I was wrong. What I had to discover was my vulnerability.
Through a lot of painful experiences I finally realized that I have to do my real homework. I have to learn to manage my emotions, I have to deal with my feelings instead of numbing them.
Stop creating yourself. Be who you are.
About The Physical Aspect of ‘Being Preoccupied’ – A Personal Report
I occupy myself.
I’m occupied with myself.
I’m occupied with being myself.
I’m occupied with being occupied with being myself.
I’m occupied with an image of myself.
I’m standing on top of Hirschgarten Bridge in Munich. The traffic is buzzing around me.
I’m typing the beginning of a new article into my phone. Interestingly about ‘listening’.
To be honest, I was not able to listen to anything at all, because I was so harassed by my thoughts or let’s say ‘haunted by my own demands’:
“It’s really time to finish a new article.” “You have to prepare the photo project.” “And when are you going to practice Italian again?!”
The circus of my mind blasted. My brain clutter occupied all my senses.
In a few minutes I would meet my friend Patrick to have a chat about a photography project in cooperation with some founders from Munich.
All of a sudden my stomach is contracting. I feel like I’m completely hungover – without having been drinking anything.
Something else happened the day before that drained my energy: After my first ever full-body Thai Massage I cracked.
The Thai Masseuse: “Relax your muscles.”
Me: “I can’t.”
My body: “What the fuck are you talking about?!”
The massage was very painful. I expected that. But what happened four hours after the massage blew my mind.
I was writing on my computer at a co-working space when my lower abdominals started to burn slightly. I just took a deep breath to ease the pain.
A few minutes later I could feel a stinging pain circling around my navel. It started from my diaphragm circumnavigating my ribcage down to the core of the muscles around my pelvis.
“You have to move your body,” Patrick who I was working with tried to encourage me. So I moved – even though all I wanted was to lay down.
The pain started to hulk up. I was whining and shouting at the same time while my legs could barely hold my upper body.
It became unbearable. Instead of the U-Bahn I had to take a taxi home. The driver nearly hospitalized me. “Fuck no, they wont help me! Drive me home!!!,” I protested loudly.
In cold sweat and tears – after a lengthy traffic jam – I finally reached home.
I needed help.
The only person I could think of was Ralf – the only fitness trainer I know. Despite the fact that we hadn’t talked in ages I dialed his number.
With self-evidence he examined the pain with me. “Your body releases tension. Of course it hurts,” he scotches my concerns.
Apparently a muscle tension or better say ‘adherence’ released amongst my inner organs. Finally ‘loosened’ they fell into place again. “Actually the masseuse did a good job, if this is the result…,” Ralf lifted my spirits pointing out that this tension must have persisted for years.
Just by talking to him I relaxed – as good as I could. I nearly had to laugh about myself now.
You might ask yourself: “What does this have to do with ‘being preoccupied’?”
Through this experience I realized HOW much I’m gripping. How much I can not ‘let go’ of the image I have of myself.
Back to Hirschgarten bridge:
I’m standing there with my phone in my hand trying to ‘get something done’.
It is a beautiful day. The blue of the sky covers the city like a cozy blanket. The sun gives her warmest warmth possible on this early November day.
In the distance I can see the famous twin towers of Frauenkirche. I turn my face towards the sun to catch some UV beams with closed eyes.
When I open them again I can see the tops of the mountains at the end of the street southwards. As the traffic lights stop the cars next to me this view let’s me repose too.
Gentle release is crawling up my spine. It broadens my chest and opens my heart. Smoothly my body is warming up from head to toe – and so does the expression on my face. Even my feet are warm now.
This was a moment of grounding.
This moment on the bridge reminded me that everything I need is right here. I can perceive the magic of the moment if I stop being occupied with ‘doing me’.
What do I have to do instead?
“Relaxxx,” the Thai masseuse would say.
“Open up to the moment.” “Allow yourself to be present in order to heal.” This is the advice I would give to myself.
Why is this all so fundamental?
I’m taking myself so serious that it hurts. I understood how much I’m physically inhering my body. The clinging of my mind manifests in my physical body.
This is the opposite of surrendering to the moment.
I will never increase my productivity in a state of stress. I will never find connection with myself or anybody else in a state of stress. I will never be happy in a state of stress. And on top of it: I will never ‘be myself’ or ‘in my full power’ in a state of stress. Lao Tzu said: “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
And most fundamentally: If I compromise my relaxation I’m jeopardizing my health. There is absolutely nothing more important than my body.
I’m struggling with stress ever since. Already in the first grade I remember my sweaty feet. Nobody cared about it during this time. But now I have the power to care for my stress-level myself.
My body showed me several times that I have to relax. In the past I suffered from heart-burn. There were times when I could only eat grated carrots and apple because my body wouldn’t digest a thing without making my throat burn like fire.
A couple of years later I could barely move my chest, because my muscles had built a so called ‘armoring,’ how Wilhem Reich, the initiator of body-oriented psychotherapy describes it.
Since years I’m carrying these tense muscles around. Yoga, meditation and targeted exercises help me to constantly release this tension.
Maintaining my health – more than anything else needs to be my priority. But not in a way of “I have to eat healthy”. “I have to quit smoking.”
No, fuck no. Well, of course smoking is bad, but I don’t want to make my non-smoking my addiction. Otherwise I will become occupied with ‘trying to eat healthy’ or ‘being a non-smoker’.
It is more important to listen to the signs of my body, to allow myself rest, when I need it, to listen to what my body really wants instead of being occupied with what I think I have to want.
A couple of months ago I wrote a similar article. Please check it.
What you think is your ‘goddamn right’ is your prison.
What you think is your desire is your addiction.
What you think is your self-expression is forcing your will on others.
Will I finally shatter my resistance and surrender to the battle?
The Emergence Of Excitement or ‘Can You Feel The Burn?’
I’m standing there – embracing the rush.
Love is running through my veins.
A stranger smiles at me – twice.
Another stranger is glancing gently.
It is this moment when I realize that I have found what I had been looking for.
Finally the fire in my heart is burning beautifully.
Where there was repulsion there is passion.
Where there was tension there is lightness.
Where there was envy there is compassion.
Where there was emptiness there is love.
A massive burst erupts the shell.
There is nothing to achieve.
There is nothing to detest.
There is nothing to desire.
All of a sudden I realize that there is no resistance left.
There is only “surrenderance”.
I breathe out everything. I give my lower belly another press to get rid of the last trace of resistance. And then I release my muscles completely.
“Germany is one thing: various,” says the advertisement of the German Government in the subway.
A tear is generously watering my eye.
I realize how much my perception had changed.
I practiced to see.
I practiced to learn.
I practiced to surrender.
All of this became a part of my life. I co-exist. I create energy from a magical place within.
I can easily breathe away the tension. The mentor is within myself.
Have I learnt to utilize my tools yet?
I can see beauty everywhere I go.
My ego is not being busy ‘getting’.
I can fully perceive. I can fully immerse if I’m fully perceptive of my environment.
How can I be fully perceptive?
By not taking things personal.
By not being busy fulfilling needs.
By observation instead of judgement.
By opening the heart and shutting down the mind.
By dropping prejudice, disbelief and compulsive behaviour.
What can happen?
Absolutely nothing if I stop controlling and finally allow imperfection.
I have to replace motives with sympathy, moral with truth, intention with action and hesitation with trust.
It is the recovery of authenticity.
Where does it all start?
It starts with a fire within.
When are you going to understand that the world owes you nothing, but you owe something to the world? – Your excitement.
Follow Up – Feeling Feelings
An update of my “Seven Minute Experiment” is long overdue. Honestly – this is much more than a Micro Habit Challenge. My whole world literally comes crashing down on me – in a good way. I’d like to call it a healthy disillusionment.
What did I do? I started a small diary of my feelings in my notebook. Everyday I write down which emotions I felt on this day. In moments of extraordinary joy or pain I take the time to sit for seven minutes with these feelings. Afterwards I’m documenting it.
This helps me tremendously to get a better understanding of what is going on inside of me. It helps me to get a realistic image of my emotional state – this is the healthy disillusionment. I’m starting to face my reality.
It is crazy what kind of process this experiment had started. And how something so simple can be so fundamental. Actually I have to go a couple of steps back. There was a challenge that I called “Am I ready to stop judging?” The answer was “no”. But the only person I’m judging is myslef. And I found out why.
Yeah, there is a lot of perfectionism and blaming going on. But most of all. The reason why at times I feel so detached from myself is a lack of connection with my gut feelings, my core, my inner child – however you want to call it. A lot of times instead of recognizing what I actually want in a given situation I rather judge what’s best. My mind makes a decision before I can even listen what my inner self wants to tell me.
As soon as I take the time to listen I’m accepting these feelings as they are – without judgement from the mind.
I’m trying to sum up some insights:
Boost Of Positive Emotions
When I started this experiment I thought I would go through all my negative emotions. The idea was that I would ‘sit with the pain’ and see how it evolves. What I realized was that I don’t allow enough space for my positive emotions. Once I’ve started to allow myself the seven minutes in moments of exuberant joy I’ve started to raise my energy level. Even thinking about these moments now boosts my energy level.
I’m Actually Quite Happy
Through ‘watching out’ for my feelings I get a better – and more realistic – image of how I feel today and in my life. Also it made me realize that I’m not as depressed as I thought I am. And if I have negative emotions, anger or rage these seven minutes help me to see the source of the pain. Actually I have moments of joy and pleasure (from the small things) every day.
Feelings Are Normal
It might be a bit early to point out but I can feel my emotional intelligence increasing. The better I understand myself the better I’m able to understand what other people go through. In the end we all go through the same stuff in our lives. Looking at my feelings helps me to integrate moments of loneliness, confusion or pain without judging them.
Arrival in the Now
As soon as I observe I arrive in the presence. This doesn’t only apply to things, but also to emotions. It is incredible which aspects of my life are changing through watching my feelings.