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 🙏

 

There is Only Life

And all of a sudden, there it is again.
The life vibrating through my veins.
The eternal force bringing me back home.

Creation itself is filling my lungs.
I am breathing clarity.
Inspiration is flooding my heart.

Ideas are sprouting like leaflets.

Compassion is unleashing my chest.

Haaaaaaaaaa……. There she is again. My friend, freedom.

 

A Moment of Bliss

Curiosity is rising inside of me. There is only clarity. There is nothing I can see. The appearances of life don’t matter beyond the realm of my mind.

I arrive in my body. And I do it with delight. I feel a sense of care for myself. There is a pure source of love within my heart and my breath is the key to that door that I had locked with distraction.

I feel compassion for my old self. I let the anger fade like the clouds in the sky on that stormy day. The wind is blowing away my resentment towards myself and the world. No doubt is blurring my sight as I allow time to pass. And this is what I do – sitting and waiting and entering that state of bliss with all of my being. That chamber of excitement – bright and colorful placed inside of me is bringing me to life.

At the bottom of my heart I can be at rest. There is only peace. There is nothing to run from and nothing to run for. Because everything is already achieved.

I am earth. No need to “earth” myself.

There is a common ground within myself. This is why I feel compassion for the entire planet and not only for the people who are close and dear to me.

Non-judgement is the true nature of my being if I allow my thoughts to drop like snowflakes on an icy winter-afternoon. Thoughts can be fun, but they can also cause a lot of turmoil.

All of a sudden I am able to tap into that powerful being that I am. And I knew it all along. I feel grateful that I am finally able to hold my own hand. I finally found my tools – within.

 

Remember to Breathe

“Change doesn’t happen overnight.”

This truth revealed itself to me several times.

Sure, I can comprehend that intellectually.

But incorporating the patience to bear that truth – that’s a different story….

I AM IMPATIENT. With myself. With the world around me. With the people who are “waking up” right now in this world. I don’t want to be impatient. I want to have compassion.

How do I want to have patience with other people if I am my hardest judge?

“You should be more confident.”
“You should be somewhere else in your life.”

Yeah, I’m claiming myself to be empathetic. But when it comes to my own development I bounce my head against the walls of my own resistance. “Resistance to what?,” you might ask… My resistance to feel what really wants to be felt in the very moment.

Writing this down raises a smile on my face. Warmth is softening my chest. “Take it easy,” an internal voice whispers into my awareness.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”

Mary Anne Radmacher

Honestly, this quote moved me.

How much time do I give myself? To evolve, to learn, to remember, to integrate?

How many times do I rush into a decision?

How many times do I not listen to my exhaustion?

What this whole pandemic thing (call it whatever you please) teaches me is: PATIENCE. And I am so freakin’ grateful for this – even if it’s the hardest lesson I have yet to learn.

What I learnt over and over again from my past is that life does not follow a chronological timeline.

I can manifest. I can picture my brightest future. As soon as I take steps new challenges arise. New insecurities show up.

Surprise, surprise – the body is striking. The mind is rebelling.

And here you are: “Wait a minute? I have asked for this, why is it that hard?”

Because we grow in sections.
Friction is a companion on our journey.
Challenge will never leave us.
Challenge comes when we least expect it and, surely, when we most need it in order to make our own decisions.
They are here to test us.

When universe asks: “Are you serious?”

Do you go all in?

All in often times means not to push hard. It means to pull back. To take rest. To cry. To sleep. To recover. To re-cover what you have buried beneath new layers of life experience.

Something you considered as healed may re-inflames.
And then it is up to you to open your eyes to reality. Will you take the time to heal? Or will you distract yourself again and not move on?

The best advice I can give myself these days (as a fire sign) is: SLOW THE F*ck DOWN. Do you. Keep clear. Don’t overdo. Move along, but do it in your own pace (or slightly slower.)

Is there something you have overlooked in your enthusiasm?
Is your body asking for something else than your busy mind does deliver?
Is there anything at all that needs to be done right now?


Do you remember to breathe?

Breeeeeaaaathe through discomfort.
Move through hardships with grace.
Accept the challenge.

 

Ease in

What’s the difference between ‘easing in’ and ‘letting go’?

Words.

I will keep rephrasing them. Renaming the unnamable. Reshaping the intangible – the power of manifestation.

What’s the difference between ‘easing in’ and ‘letting go’?

The difference is the feeling beyond those words.

Everything that requires action has the potential to cause resistance.

To ‘ease in’ represents ‘non-action’.

It is a principle in every martial art form and in a lot of (if not most) ancient teachings.

Do I have to elaborate this any further?

I don’t think so.

Happy new moon everyone.

 

Time is Relative

Let it fade.
Let it die.
Let it be.
Let it fly.

Enjoy the moment for what it is.
Things change in an instant.
You can’t hold on to this.

Opportunities are endless, life is vast.

Time is fluctuating, so please human,
launch into the present and release the past.

 

How to Think More Colorful

This was supposed to be a threesome, but it turned out as a wholesome!? 😉

Here we go:

I’m experiencing mood-swings at the moment between gratitude for being alive – especially (!) in those turbulent times (chaos makes me move…) – and between heavy anxiety and doom mood that is nagging my energy.

Oftentimes I am easily irritable. Other times I start laughing for no reason – for minutes… To me it sounds manic, but the fact that I can phrase it seems to display a decent level of emotional intelligence. (Even though, to be really honest with you, I am not sure anymore how much of an advantage that is, but probably I will figure it out on the way;)

During the night I’m grinding my teeth, because my stirred-up mind is strenuously “sorting things out”. (Without telling me what it is actually doing?!)

When I wake up I still feel the cortisol and adrenaline levels in my cells….. F*ck…. I don’t know about you, but to me the energies right now feel INTENSE – and my physical body responds alike.

I find release during the morning walks or during my casual little meditation in the early sun facing the urban greenery in the park nearby.

Yes, these are my tools.

But I can’t silence my mind forever…

On a lot of days the black and the white of my thinking is narrowing my field of view like stone walls in a dungeon.

In those moments I feel trapped.

“Just make your thinking colorful,” I figured the other day. But HOW?

This question was roaming in the back of my head for days.

I tend to think black and white a lot. When I really think about it, my thinking generally appears to be more black than white.

Luckily, there are mornings like this morning today….

At 8 am I went to this little post shop café a few streets away. I have never been there – until yesterday, when I forgot my ID-card that I needed to pick up the small parcel I was awaiting.

I had to return this morning, so I combined it with my little walk. And what can I say? Some small incidents renewed my energy!

“Buenos dias,” I greeted this South American man accompanied by his son and his dog at the traffic light of an intersection. Surprised they asked me for my name. We continued speaking in german.

“We are going to join a soccer game now. You should enjoy the sun today, too.” – “I will,” I replied with honest happiness radiating from my heart – and probably from my face.

Our paths split, but I continued walking with a smile on my face. A few meters ahead I met another man waving at me from the doorstep of his bar. A bar most people just pass by while I was strolling delightfully; occasionally gazing the environment. There was enough time for another friendly encounter. This time it was just a smile.

A few meters further I entered the post shop to successfully pick up the parcel – another two big smiles of the guy behind the counter and the woman in front of the coffee-machine that served me a tasty “latte”.

I sat down in the fresh morning air, chatting with the man on the next table about this and that.

Do you know what? It made my day. This real-life connection to my surrounding. This appreciation of what is. This acceptance of where I am right now at this point in time.

“What if you were okay? What if you were where you are supposed to be at this point in time? What if you already are who you have desired to become for so long?”

These questions popped up in my head a couple of weeks earlier. They reappeared this morning.

I realized that I have colorful thoughts!

They are written in my notes. They are printed into my memory system. My head (and my notebook) is actually full of it. And I can create more of those thoughts just by acknowledging what is, just by witnessing my existence with all its appearances and by making the most of the tiniest moments….

Namaste.

 

Trust Harder

Do you feel like giving up?
Trust harder.

Are you angry?
Love stronger.

Are you restless?
Breathe in deeply.

Do you blame?
Forgive instead.

Do you want to scream and shout?
Dance.

Have you lost hope?
Keep dreaming.

There will be a tomorrow.

 

The Role of Mindfulness in The Process of Self-Discovery or ‘Be The Change’, But be Patient

2021 is in full swing – and so am I. At least that’s the theory.

Practically I’ve been crafting THE perfect New Year’s post for the past two weeks – and of course I stressed myself out about it.

As I indicated in ‘outdated’, I want to start afresh this year – with my creative processes and also in my professional life. The year has just begun and I had already been pressuring myself towards ‘a new me’. Guess what? I cracked solemnly with this approach – and disclosed a deep truth: Change is hard.

Transformation is a long and tiring process. It requires determination. It includes the celebration of small wins and the acceptance of continuous losses.

This is what change is: It is the destruction of the old and the creation of the new – all at once. And: It is not a straight line. Inherently ‘change’ is messy.

“Being the change” – This is nothing simple to strive for. It denotes the turning of the tides and the solidity of a rock at the same time.

The other day, on one of my numerous walks during lockdown, I saw a sticker at a gutter that shouted the catchphrase: “Be the change.”

‘I am the change!,’ something inside of me shouted back.

I exhaled and felt a sense of ease when I understood: ‘I am a prototype. I evolve in iterations.’

These days we all are ‘the change’. And this big change doesn’t happen overnight. It is uncomfortable and debilitating at times and it doesn’t smell like incense sticks and essential oils.

These days I remember what this blog is about. This blog is the result of a lot of frustration and the realisation that there is no change possible in this world, if I don’t start changing myself.

“The first step is to become aware of the fog that is in your mind. You must become aware that you are dreaming all the time. Only with awareness do you have the possibility of transforming your dream.”

As Miguel Ruiz induces in ‘The Four Agreements’: I became aware that I am not aware, when I started this blog experiment in 2017.

It dawned me that I’m the creator of everything in my life – all the achievements as well as all the turmoil.

Only gradually I comprehend the depth of the deconditioning process I got myself into:

Most of our life is determined by the subconscious. And most of the time we are unconscious about what our subconscious is doing. That’s why it’s called the subconscious. I’m referring to psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung here, who determined the state of the art when it comes to shadow work. He claims: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

So, how do we not let the subconscious rule our life? Or let’s say: How do we become conscious of the unconscious?

Yes, we practice mindfulness. (Yay, I got there in the end…)

Even though mindfulness experienced a devaluation due to its inflationary use. In my personal journey of self-discovery it continually increases its significance…

So: “What’s the role of mindfulness in the process of self-discovery?”

I would say mindfulness is the protagonist of this whole play. (In the end it’s a game. Call it karma if you like.)

So, what will happen to your life, if you become more mindful?

1. You Will Arrive Where You Are

Okay, where to begin? Just to make sure we have a common ground to start from: How do I define mindfulness here?

When you research the science of mindfulness, the first thing you are going to come across is the practice of mindfulness meditation or zen meditation.

From a buddhist point of view mindfulness is the essence of meditation: By watching your thoughts pass you will create a gap between you and your thinking. You will eventually learn to differentiate the thought from the thinker. With time you will start to perceive reality in a different, less personal way. Zen master and buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh describes meditation as ‘a serene encounter with reality’.

A german translation for the word mindfulness is ‘Geistesgegenwärtigkeit’. ‘Geist’ is the spirit or the mind. ‘Gegenwärtigkeit’ is the presence. ‘Presence of mind’. What is the presence of mind, if we look at it plainly? It is being aware of what our mind is doing…

There was a time in my life when I couldn’t peel potatoes or wash the dishes without getting an anxiety attack. I was not able to focus on the present moment, because I was so tangled up in my to-do-list. I was so focussed on my achievements that regular household-chores seemed to be a waste of time to me.

There was a huge discrepancy between what I was doing in the physical world and what was going on in my head.

Life became very dissatisfying this way, because I missed it.

Through mindfulness I started to return to the presence. Already meditating for a view minutes a day changed my perception of the world around me drastically.

Especially through long-term-travelling I learnt to look closely at things. By looking closely at my environment, I learnt to look closer at my thoughts, too.

I became mindful. I stopped rushing and I started to enjoy the small things again.

2. You Get To View Yourself From a Different Perspective

‘To be mindful’ means so much more than ‘arriving in the presence’. According to etymonline it can be translated as ‘remembrance’. I like that translation.

When you become mindful, you start to remember – not only how much pleasure it is to walk slow or to prepare fresh food, but over time you will remember who you are deep down inside…

“Know thyself,” is the only way to go in the process of ‘awakening’.

How do you want to ‘know thyself’, if you never take the time to actually look at who you are?

Mindfulness is your tool in becoming aware of yourself: What are you telling yourself each day? What do you truely enjoy doing? How do you treat yourself? What do you put in your body? Do you use a lot of I ‘shoulds’ or ‘musts’?

From my current perspective on ‘awakening’ it is a constant process of surfacing – layer after layer after layer. There is so much to look at:

There is your behaviour.
There is your way of thinking.
There is your environment.
There are the activities you invest your time in, the people you spend time with, what you eat, how you are treating your body and so on and so on…

It sounds simple, but it’s a big step to look at all aspects of yourself.

3. You Will Identify Triggers And Find A Way To Transform Them

For me it is still a painful and tenacious process to admit that I am the one who creates everything in my life – every success as well as all the chaos. And I don’t mean this in a sense of ‘prompting an order to the universe’.

I create by acting – in one way or another. If I don’t take the time to look at my actions and the roots of my actions I won’t live my own life, but the life controlled by a mind that is hacked by it’s conditioning – determined by reaction rather than intentional deed.

Luckily life offers potential for growth around every corner: Triggers are the signposts towards the land of self-discovery!

These days I get triggered a lot! And every trigger shows me an arena of my life, where I’m not willing or not able to take responsibility for my own life at the moment.

4. You Will Reveal Your True Motives

A quote of buddhist nun Pema Chördrön demonstrates the role of mindfulness in the process of self-discovery: “The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”

What do you want? And what do you think you want? How do you spend your time?

The more your start looking at yourself, the more you will ask yourself why you behave a certain way. And this is where the magic of mindfulness starts to unfold.

What drives you, really? What are your true values? Which values do you share with your friends and your family?

We are conditioned to believe in what we see. “To have faith is to believe unconditionally,” writes Don Miguel Ruiz in “The Four Agreements”.

What we see in our own reality is not what we are or what we are capable of. It is a story that either we have created ourselves or that has been told in order to make life a comprehensible experience. The human mind loves context.

It’s good to have context, but expansion can only happen if we create ‘space’ for ourselves. Imagine for a moment you would pursue exactly what you want to achieve in your life. You think you would fail? Have you tried it? I wrote an article on this two years ago

The more mindful you become the more you will realize that the image you have created of yourself is just – yes – an image. You can easily rewrite it, reframe it, recolour it. But first you have to identify which story you are telling yourself.

The more aware you become of your true feelings and your needs the more aware you will automatically become of which beliefs are holding you back.

Slowly you will uncover your motives, recover your faith and ‘reinvent’ your own conditioning. But remember, it happens in iterations. And iterations are NEVER a straight line.


5. You Will Eventually Start Acting

For a long time I wanted to learn another language apart from english. But something inside of me always blocked me from pursuing it. Until I realized that I just have to do it – despite the belief inside of me that I don’t have the capacity to do it.

The reality was that I didn’t even get started, because by default I thought I would fail. By practicing mindfulness I identified my false belief system. I found out that a lack of self-confidence underlies nearly every shortcoming that I perceive. My lack of self-discipline was caused by this lack of self-esteem.

So, how did I eventually start learning Italian? I established a tiny language learning routine. And with the first results my old beliefs started to fade. There was no foundation anymore for my old beliefs, because over time I undoubtedly made progress. When I ordered my first breakfast in Florence in Italian followed by a loose conversation with the waiter I couldn’t deny it anymore: I am able to learn another language! This experience of self-efficacy opened my eyes.

And this is how I’m wishing to approach all challenges throughout 2021 and beyond.


6. You Will Start To Love Yourself More

What I understood throughout the practice of mindfulness is that I have needs that want to be met. The more I understand this, the more I’m starting to value myself and the more I understand what this self-love is everybody talks about (including myself).

More and more I understand that I’m not crazy, but human. ‘A human in denial’ could be a title for my book. (I don’t know where that came up from, but I won’t erase it from this post. Who knows – maybe it’s valuable information.)

It’s a Process

Okay, I realized that this article doesn’t really find an end.
There are SO many aspects to address around mindfulness. What I wanted to get across is that self-development is called self-development for a reason.

There is something to develop. It is already there, but we can’t see it. Like a film reel. We need to soak in various liquids and hang from the ceiling to dry in order to get a full image of who we really are. But be careful not to overexpose. Haha, that’s what I like doing. It results in tears and lengthy blog posts like this one.

As I mentioned at the very beginning: change is hard. This whole awakening process is not a straight line. It’s easier said than done to transform negative thinking patterns. But it is not impossible. I have the suspicion that we reached a point collectively where change is not to be suspended.

To throw in another Thich Nhat Hanh: “If we want to become mindful rather than just knowing about mindfulness, we need to establish our own regular practice.”

It is easy to do things the same way over and over again. It is easy to cling to assumptions about the world and about ourselves, because they allow us to stick to our belief patterns. They are convenient, because they don’t require will-power.

It is an effort to change our belief system, yes. But it is doable with awareness, patience and compassion.

“nobody can save you but
yourself.
you will be put again and again
into nearly impossible
situations.
they will attempt again and again
through subterfuge, guise and
force
to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly
inside.

nobody can save you but
yourself
and it will be easy enough to fail
so very easily
but don’t, don’t, don’t.
just watch them.
listen to them.
do you want to be like that?
a faceless, mindless, heartless
being?
do you want to experience
death before death?

nobody can save you but
yourself
and you’re worth saving.
it’s a war not easily won
but if anything is worth winning then
this is it.

think about it.
think about saving your self.”

Charles Bukowski
 

The Battlefield Is In Your Head Vol. 1 – and The “Do-Nothing-Challenge”

‘I feel raw like a carpaccio,’ I am contemplating the current state of my being.

Raw and juicy. Mmmhhh…

My current life situation provides a learning curve with a steepness I didn’t quite expect for the rest of this year.

I had no idea what kind of surprises the universe would hold in stock for me after experiencing a so-called ‘dark night of the soul’, which lasted for about five months.

After working a couple of night shifts in a row I am sitting in front of my computer. I’m catching myself ‘waiting for inspiration’ – whereas my body is screaming for rest.

What do I expect of my neurons? I should lay down and sleep, but of course I’m trying to finish an article I had been working on for way too long (as my inner judge proclaims). In the back of my head I’m beating myself up for not doing (more) yoga or practicing a foreign language.

Jep. My internal organs are contracting. A heavy weight around my ribcage is limiting the capacity of my lungs…

I know this feeling very well. My perfectionism is pinching. Anxiety drains my energy system.

“This is a potent time to be with…,” the words of Kendra Adachi, who assisted me in arriving in the present moment over and over again for the past couple of months, are flashing through my head.

She is right.

I am working a full-time job at a low-budget hostel after living a nomad life for the past couple of years. I’ve started a relationship with a man who massages my feet every day (and who I’ve known only for two months). Me and my vagabond soul are practicing ourselves in ‘settling down’… more or less voluntarily. (I still owe you a longer story of what had happened in the past eight months. As some of you might know – I’ve travelled to India and then I fell apart.)

I discover my own boundaries and I’m learning to set them where I still need to set them. I’m learning to receive. I’m learning to ‘not run away’. To make it short: I’m confronted with regular life in times of a global pandemic. Yay – great fun!

It’s a time of adaptation. More than ever before I can feel it – an old phase had ended and something new began. Where this new period of time will lead? I have no clue… But do I have to know the destination?

2020 has been profoundly challenging – for a lot, if not all of us…

I did my homework during lockdown and quarantine phases (partly self-imposed). I dove deep into the darkest corners of the blackness of my personality. I reconnected with my soul in the darkness. My physical body is still sympathizing with old patterns.

There is A LOT to integrate.

And I better take my time to do it – if I don’t want to scare the people away who are trying to love me (for a change).

Still it amazes me how accurately aligned this global crisis is with the personal crisis I’m going through…

‘Who do you think you are? Some sort of hyper-human?,’ I’m questioning myself…

Well, honestly, I do think I’m some sort of a transmutation or at least I consider my life as a research project – as you might have noticed.

Haha, it sounds like the same story as usual… but it is not quite…

I’ve asked for help and I received it – in ways I have never expected. I’ve met the most inspiring and courageous souls that showed me my own strength and my own endurance.

The darkness became my friend in the end and finally it is my turn to actually apply the tools I had been gathering since I’ve started my journey in 2013 (or was it 2015? or 2017? :D)

‘Surrender or die’ – This is the short version of what I had learnt from my ‘dark night of the soul’. Dark night of the soul? Sounds more hip than just calling it a ‘depression’ or a ‘depressive phase’, right?!

I’m not even being pathetic here. It just wouldn’t be fair to call it a ‘depression’, because I was not depressed in the sense of ‘I couldn’t do anything’. I just lost track for a little while and remained paralyzed in a state of fear. I think that’s called trauma. That’s a difference. Argh, I didn’t mean to sound ironic here. It was really not fun. BUT… I FREAKIN’ DID IT!!! I SURVIVED AND I LEARNT A TON!!!

Anyway, probably I will dive into that further along the way… 😉

The challenge is to surrender. Surrender to the currents of life and trust that my life jacket will rescue me.

And how do I surrender? By doing nothing… First I wanted to call the challenge the ‘What-do-I-want-challenge”. This sounded too proactive and too ‘awwe, she is still searching’. Then I wanted to call it “Mindfulness-Challenge”, but come on?! “Do-Nothing-Challenge” sounds a bit more polarizing…

Another challenge? Well, the task is actually to destress myself. I want to give myself time to adjust…

I had attempted this challenge several times already. The task is to meditate for one hour a day for 30 days in a row…. And see what happens… I’m four days into this challenge and I’m already gathering some learning. By the end of the week I will give you an update.