Stream of Consciousness

by Uli on Rough Diamonds

The Antidote

It’s the opening factor.
It’s the missing piece.
It’s the glue of all connection.

Love.

It’s astonishing how convinced I am that love is the only answer there is.

How can this be?

Because I can feel it. I can lean towards it and she always receives me well.

It’s a healing force that is bringing me into union – instantly.

Where there is resistance there is love too! It’s within the fraction! It’s within the contradiction!

Always – there is a way to love.
Always – there is love all the way.

That’s the antidote. That’s the healthy destruction of violence.

 
by Uli on Rough Diamonds

Blame or Claim

Do you blame or do you claim? Do you choose freedom or do you lose your power over indecision? Do you try to fit into the standards of your surrounding or do you choose your own liberation over the patterns of the past?

Do you choose the freedom of your senses? The power of your intuition? Your intuitive knowing that always finds the way…

I came to terms with the fact that I am the one in charge.

I can’t have it all. Everything in life has its price. It’s just a matter of what I’m willing to pay. Do I pay with my freedom or with my insanity? Do I earn my liberation by choosing my free will at all costs? 

No, neither do I select my thoughts nor do I choose my upbringing. But I am the one who responds. And this is how I change my life.

Yes, some things might not happen – and some things never will. Life is not what happens in my wildest dreams. Because life is not what happens in my dreams in the first place.

Life is what happens when I choose to be myself now and in every moment. Life happens when I allow myself to listen and when I forget, for a moment, where I’m coming from and what I have been told.

That’s when I invent myself anew: When I forget the story that has been told.

When I claim instead of blame…. This is when I open up to possibility. – And this is when no one else gets harmed.

 
by Uli on Rough Diamonds

Nothing to Prove

You have absolutely nothing to prove, because you are the only one walking your path.

Whatever you do is highly individual; highly yours.

That’s all you need to know – about yoga and maybe about life?

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory

The Freedom of no Addiction

This is a thought experiment.

Imagine you are free of any addiction.

If there is no addiction there is total freedom.

If there is no addiction there is choice.

There is the choice to direct energy deliberately and not by force.
This is the liberation of life force. The original force that moves us through our lives.

I personally have been struggling with addiction all of my life. Mainly it was the addiction to distraction that led me into toxic behavioural patterns.

Today I stop this.
Today I choose ultimate liberation.
I vow to support my higher self:

I choose creativity over distraction.
I choose focus over diversion.
I choose wellbeing over intoxication.

Uuhh, that hurts. Yes, it hurts. Once and far all – and then there is the feeling of release.

If I am not jumping from one task to the other. Where am I going? I remain with myself. Centered within my own being.

If toxins don’t inhabit my body, where is the energy distributed? Yes, equally amongst my cells.

If I move my body, if I clear tension from my muscles all of a sudden there is lightness in my whole being.

Joy instead of repression becomes my driving force.

Life takes over and I roll with it.

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory

Allow Abundance

Do you allow abundance or are you resisting the flow of life?

I’m sitting at a hotel close to Delhi Airport. A five months journey of full-on transformation is coming to an end. Mainly it was a journey to myself. As most of you know, I’m not travelling in order to explore places but to discover my inner landscapes.

On this trip, more than ever before, I was able to witness my own transformation.

India broke me open. It loosened the tight bits. It shook the rigids of my being.

Never have I felt so fluid. Never have I felt so full of excitement facing the challenges ahead.

Mainly because I understood that everything I’m ever experiencing is a creation of my own mind. So why would it be scary?

I am not in control. Clearly.

Life is in control and it is moving through me. This abundance of power can be unnerving at times, because it rattles the human condition.

Many people, including myself, talk about abundance. But honestly, I think there is a huge misconception taking place. One might think, once I am abundant, nothing can scare me anymore. Life will move smoothly.

And it does! Because life doesn’t care about you specifically. She just moves – smoothly in her own terms.

Life goes on with or without you.

Life is abundance and this is what she offers us too. The fun part is: This abundance is already right here.

BUT. And there is the big but: It’s not flowers and unicorns or an enormous amount of money in our bank accounts.

Abundance is change. Abundance is constant flow. We can not expect to experience abundance while fearing the consequences of change.

Change and transformation is inherently scary for the human mind – and so is abundance, if we really look at it with all honesty. This is what abundance is: It is change. And we do fear the change that abundance brings us…

What happens if the mind looses grip?
What happens if, suddenly, something else leads the way?

Call it heart. Call it heart-mind. Call it wisdom – the only truth there is.

Cause and effect. Constant movement. The abundance of life requires steady opening – constant destruction in one form or another…

It is the destruction of the old and an immediate creation of the new which leads to another destruction in every moment.

Abundance is powerful and it forcefully destructs the old – if you are ready or not.

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory

Respond to Life

I just had an interesting revelation about now.

To respond to life means to respond to now. 

This is what it means to take responsibility for my own life. 

For some reason I always projected responsibility outwards to some point in the future.

This caused distress in my life, because it enforces constant worry about the future. 

How will I take responsibility for my life?

What does this question actually mean?!

There is no right answer.


The moment to respond to life is now.

What can I do now? 

Everything else is projection. 

And by projecting some potential outcome into the future I’m giving away control.

And this is what I suffer from every so often….

For the past couple of days I’ve been pondering the question: “How am I in control of my life?”
The answer is: By being present! That’s it.

It is so simple. And it is such a relief….

I realized it on my walk this morning. I have neglected these walks, but this morning I understood how much it helps me to arrive. 

If I don’t arrive I will never be able to take responsibility. The phrase “taking responsibility” is actually misleading, because I can’t take responsibility. 

I can only respond to life. Now.

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory

Hello, Darkness

Yes, I do struggle.
Yes, I don’t know.

And yes, here it is again: “Hello darkness my old friend”* – and the blank page, my salvation… 

I recently finished a ten-day Vipassana course and I have to say that it shattered something inside of me to an immeasurable degree. It shook me and my, still so precious, existence. It shifted my perspective on basically everything I have ever done in a subtle and at the same time fundamental way I had never experienced before. 

Don’t get me wrong: I know that everything I have ever done is perfect. My past is perfect. My future is perfect. And the presence is what I still long for. And probably this is what made me sign up for the Vipassana course.

In a brief conversation I had today, this person said: “We always have expectations. Otherwise we wouldn’t do a thing.” This was very interesting for me to hear. And it reminded me of how I am creating black and white stories around what “proper” detachment should look like….

It’s OKAY to have expecations. All is okay…. Anyway, later on you will eventually get the point (maybe, maybe not;).

Sooo. What did change through Vipassana? I realized how much I was (and still am!) searching for ‘something’ outside of myself. Yes, I investigate, I reflect.

Life forced me inward several times in my life. To be much more accurate MY PAIN forced me inward, because when the pain became unbearable I had to find resources inside – just to find out that THEY ARE THERE! There ARE resources!!

I internalized, but most of the time I analyzed:

And that is the point. At the end of the day I was always looking for an abstract answer. I was, unwillingly, looking for “an easy to digest” answer – an answer that is still, more or less, acceptable by my upbringing or by my conditioning, my inner voices and internal judges…

It sounds kinda cool to move through the dark night of the soul. It sounds impressive to move kundalini energy. It sounds amazing to “walk the camino”. Nothing more and nothing less. 

I confess: I like “the sounds of it”… Transformation. Healing. Yoga and so on.

So. What Vipassana did was that it stripped allll these cozy wordings, definitions, explanations, RITUALS and STORIES off me…. 

I could finally breathe again. 

Vipassana does not serve the answer on a golden platter. It does not give constructive feedback or valuable advice. 

‘Gotama showed the path…,’ they say. Yes. Figuratively. “The path” is nothing conceptual. It is nothing logical. It is nothing to map out or to comprehend. It is nothing to understand or to study. It can only – and ONLY be walked. One-step-at-a-time. One sensation after another after another after another….

To be fair: There is no freakin’ path (no offence). There is only life itself. And when I say life I don’t mean “this one life”…. Not at all. There is life vibrating through our cells. There is life sprouting from our veins.

There is no such thing as “the core of our being”. There is only being. 

It’s the conceptualization, the intellectualization that is keeping me trapped within my own mind. 

Vipassana forced me to open the gate. Or did it rip apart the fence? I don’t know and it honestly does not matter.

Vipassana let life within me run free. And this left traces in my consciousness.

There is some novelty, a new realization awakening within myself…

The purges have been purged. And now life is urging to move me the way I’m supposed to move…. And now writing this down here I can feel the ‘intellect’ creeping in asking: “What are you talking about?” 

To use the words of Satya Narayan Goenka, one of the leading teachers of the method of Vipassana: “There is only flux and flow.” 

Nothing to suppose. Only to surrender.

And today I do surrender to darkness, because darkness knows more than me. It grounds me. It helps me grow if I let it….

* Simon & Garfunkel, 1964 😉

 
by Uli on Transformation Inventory

Grinding Through Transformation

What the hell. THAT’S the time we have been anticipating. Change is here. Right at our fingertips.

It is UP TO US to make the most of it. 

Since the beginning of the year there is a post on “reversed resolutions” that I am wanting to share, but I am never quite there. Haha. It’s coming! I promise. 

SO. What IS happening right now? 

Honestly, these times are such an up and down!  I feel like I am swirling through the energies.

One moment I am boldly visualizing the future of humanity. The next moment I am cocooned in my old belief patterns – desperately trying to get rid of them…

This morning I understood something. And this is what makes me ‘hammer’ the keyboard now and again…

‘Do the things you want to do. You will automatically GET BETTER at whatever you are doing.’

And there is more to that: We learn from everything. Every experience. Every “mis-aligned” choice. Every shitty job. Every “bad boss” or bossy girlfriend (I have no idea who needs to hear this, but who am I to decide;)

We learn. We progress – from one point to another. (I am consciously choosing this definition of progress. Progress is NOT A STRAIGHT LINE. And I believe that this is even more crucial to understand than ever before – at least since I was born).

We always progress. We always transfrom. 

What makes this so significant? Sometimes I become soooooo impatient – with myself, my writing, the world – even with my friends.

There. Must. Be. Something. Moving. OMG. Hahahaha. I was soooo obsessed with continuous progress that I forgot to ARRIVE….

The difference from five years ago is: By now I know what to do when I am in a state of black and white thinking or plain ‘denial’…. I go for a walk, I dance or I roll out the yoga matt and MOVE – as simple as that….

Yesterday was one of those moments.

Self-doubt caused a nagging pain in my abdominals.

My thoughts were literally choking me. 

I WALKED. I walked fast across the park nearby. 

All of a sudden there was this tiny voice or should I say sensation in my chest area.

It said: “You are not alone.” (‘aaahaa….’ I sighed.) 

Silently I shouted to the sky: “LORD GIVE ME A SIGN”

When I turned my gaze I saw two rabbits about three meters away from me jumping happily into the sunset…. 

In awe and completely motionless I could feel my heart filling up with gratitude.

There was lightness – a deep knowing that the path is always there. I AM NOT ALONE IN THIS. 

What do I want to say with this post? KEEP trusting. Keep grinding through transformation. We are in this together and there is always light to be discovered.