The resistance that is coming up is your light.
Beneath all the anger there is the gift.
All of your unfulfillment is your gift in disguise.
Your body wants you to express this gift.
This is your purpose, wanting to come alive.
Your resistance is your body asking for devotion.
When your cells move in harmony you reach flow.
Your body can make the impossible possible.
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.
Ride the wave of gratitude
and then land.
Plant the seeds.
Nurture them and see them grow.
I’m standing on Donnersbergerbrücke.
It’s the evening haze of a regular weekday in Munich and it dawns on me that I am EXACTLY where I am supposed to be.
I am not rushing to catch the bus I’m supposed to take.
The sun is painting its last colors on the sky.
I don’t remember the last time I was standing on this bridge.
But what I know is: It is not the same person standing here.
I have changed.
Something inside of me has changed fundamentally.
I felt strangely at home.
At this moment I realize that my shadow is comforting me.
It is my home.
“Just come as you are,” they say.
Okay, here I am.
All of a sudden it is there.
I under-stand.
I take pride in my path.
I own my story.
A rush of gratitude fills my eyes….
I grew from the inside and for the first time I really feel that.
I evolved – FROM the inside.
I have done the work. And now I am standing here.
“What’s next?,” my busy mind wants to ask.
Again, I gaze towards the setting sun….
“What if instead of moving forward, i’d move backwards?,” my busy mind itself countered with an open question.
I can’t sow endless seeds.
Now is the moment that I finally understand that rest is AS important as progress.
Digesting what is instead of preparing a new meal.
Clearing the debris instead of building anew.
Integrating what happened instead of initiating something else.
I can’t sow endless seeds, no, but I can praise the garden that is growing inside of me, in front of me, around me…
I don’t know how I could not get it earlier, but it does not matter.
On a random day, in stillness, I recovered the beauty of my life.
…
For too long I witnessed it within myself and in others…
We are pushing so hard to move forward. We are aiming for one dimensional progress. The thing is that progress is not one dimensional.
It’s expansive.
It’s round and whole.
It’s the yin and the yang. The animation and the integration are both equally important.
Growth is the integration of what is.
Growth is not only about harvesting the fruits, it’s about ploughing the land, fertilizing the dirt, and preparing for the upcoming season…
Personal growth is the care-taking of our internal motherland….
In some years maybe the harvest is not what we expected it to be. It is not as lush, as fruitful, or as delicious.
Some years we can only use it for compost. To fertilize the new ground in front of us.
Here we go 2023.
It’s the reversed resolutions…
I want to embrace every single moment.
Merge with the beauty of Now.
Return from the realm of phantasy.
Among all the ways I wish to find the way home.
Share my wisdom in silence.
Lay down my arms.
Demolish all resistance.
I want to find the way back with grace – in devotion to life.
Tap into beauty wherever I go.I give and I take with all my being.
I open up to possibility here and now.
I am.
I arrive.
I offer my full heart to the moment.
I bow to you life.
I connect to source from the core of my being.
I launch the channel.
I receive with every cell of my body.
I dance with my heart.
I connect to my soul.
I embrace my gifts.
I give away control.
Amen.
I just had a moment that invigorated my spirit. It is tiny, still I feel the urge to express it.
I just came back from the farmers market with a bag full of vegetables.
When I entered the house I became aware of my warm feet. I noticed a subtle excitement in my chest. My heart emanated love: I was happy!
All of a sudden I felt a sense of connection – a warmth expanded across my whole abdominal area, around my hips and my lower back, up my spine to my throat…
The joy of being alive lifted my whole being.
Over the past couple of days I wanted to write….
I wanted to put in words what I had experienced during the yoga retreat I attended last week.
I can not find the words yet. Maybe it is not important to find them, because there is nothing to say.
There is a lot of resistance present within myself. The pressure of becoming the perfect human…
The tenacious desire to clear myself, to find relief from all the humanness….
This morning reminded me of “the divine”.
The ever present appreciation in everything.
Every moment is here to remind us of our connection to source.
Every moment is perfect – and so am I.
And this is “the way”: finding awareness in the tiniest daily action, recognizing the divine in everything – even in the beetroot and in the soles of my feet…
“You got to become your own person before you can do your job on this earth.“
I don’t remember the exact words of Maor, someone I met briefly at a goodbye party of a friend of mine in Hamburg in 2018.
“Hm.”
Or something like that could have been my response. To be honest, I don’t remember if I countered anything. But I do remember that I was desperate. I was desperately searching and looking. I was desperate for adventure, for feeling feelings, for feeling something.
I was craving life. I was terrified of never finding what I was looking for – without knowing what I was looking for.
I was collecting memories and acquaintances – but did I know myself?
In the meantime I numbed myself. I filled the void inside of myself with all sorts of things. (substances, pleasure, party,….), but I had no clue what was really going on within myself…
This ‘unclarity’ crumbled away over time – like a crust of mud.
What I have learnt is that the mud has to dry first. The dust has to settle. And then the path clears eventually. The seeds can spring and the blossoms bloom…
I have been stirring up mud for quite a while. And I am pretty sure that I will keep stirring up mud. It is part of the journey (my journey) – to experience it all.
There is this big Why roaming around in the spheres around “personal development” – and yes knowing the why can be quite helpful.
Especially the “Why do I feel like shit most of the time?” over the “Why am I getting up in the morning?”
I did not want to question my feelings. Why? (Haha) Firstly: Because I didn’t even know this could be a good question to ask?! Secondly: I didn’t want to admit to myself in which areas of my life I had “lost it” or I supposedly “failed”.
“Find your why” – this has become an ever-lasting quest for a lot of people.
The realizations that I am sharing here with you stem solely from my personal experience. There is a huge probability that this self-development thing works different for you. Nevertheless I feel the urge to share this:
What I found out is that “the WHY” is not the holy grail… healing is!
What do I mean by that?
In 2015, when I was made redundant from my first work-contract, I was feeling the call too – the call that I translated into: “Find your why!”.
Over the years I have met a lot of people who put a mirror right in front of my face:
“You are lost.”
“You are the universe.”
“You have to prioritize yourself.”
“You need to find yourself first before you can make a difference in this world”
(Wo),man, I had no clue what this was all about.
Well, not no clue, but I was not able to deduce any action from all the mirroring I had (involuntarily) received from the outside-world.
Now I still don’t have a full picture, but I came to the understanding that I don’t need to have a full picture. I will never comprehend it all. This life is freakin’ unpredictable and I better embrace the unknown!
What is predictable is one universal truth: “Things WILL change” (I wrote about change many times in this blog. Actually every post is about change.)
And they did…. in my life over and over and over again. And I am more and more able to EMBRACE the unknown.
I was – and I still am lost – to some extent. But more and more this feeling of being lost transmutes into a state of floating (for some reason this is the word that emerged).
And I tell you: My mind is intervening – all the fucking time. Letting go is a permanent practice.
Thoughts, thinking patterns, limiting beliefs – they come back in circles, in arrays, in fractals, in seasons… (You choose which image works for you).
So. I faced a lot of (uncomfortable) truths about:
The list is long….
What I have learnt over the years is that “the WHY” is slowly sneaking in.
I am growing into my why….
First things ARE first: If I close my eyes from the areas where my body and my being demands healing, I will not find any useful “why”. The “why” will be a sugarcoated lie that I keep telling myself until I collapse.
Well, I do want to be radical here. First of all I have to define what I mean by healing.
Healing is the process of becoming whole again.
This is not really correct. We are already whole to be accurate. Healing is more a “fixing of the holes”, removing the dirt, dropping the unnecessary baggage, standing up on our own feet…
The healing process is sometimes a refurbishing, sometimes it is a surgery, sometimes it’s a sudden removal or a complete turn-over.
We are thrown into situations that tear us apart.
This is part of the human experience. These situations are here to teach us….
If we are torn apart the first step we need to take is to find the pieces that belong to us. The next step is to put them back together.
As long as I am putting myself together – this is my “why”. My healing is my “why”.
I don’t say you have to wait until you are fully healed until you are finally able to share your work.
The opposite is the case.
There is beauty in all of our messy healing procedures.
And there are people who benefit.
There are people who will embrace your experience.
There are people who will love to hear your story. This is what humanity always did – listening to stories and learning from them.
I am not cheesy here, this is what it is – and always used to be.
There are people out there whose healing depends on your healing.
The work that you put in matters.
Nothing you do is self-sufficient.
You will show-up in a way that is beneficial for others. Sometimes it’s only one person in the room. Sometimes it’s an audience of a million…..
So, you don’t know your why?
Don’t worry about it. Rest. Heal. Your time will come.
Healing is expansion.
Healing is the arrival in the present moment.
Healing is union with yourself.
Healing is completion.
Healing is meeting yourself where you are at.
Healing is doing one step at a time. Patiently.
“The why” can become a trap if you don’t take the time to really acknowledge where you are at right now.
And I tell you, I have been there. I am still rushing. I am still wondering very frequently: How do I set boundaries? How do I know what I want? How do I know that I am still on the path?
Then I remember to walk hand in hand with my heart.
This is what the hard times do to me.
There is this potential or let’s say a potential for potential stored within ourselves. This little seed that is resting there somewhere in our subconscious or in our brain.
When you heal you are able to reveal what wants to be revealed. And this is how you follow your purpose.
The hard times force us to walk hand in hand with our heart.
Let’s shed our old skin. Let’s forgive and heal.
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.
Recently I found out HOW FAR I had crossed my boundaries in the past years – basically since my adolescence.
I don’t remember the day when I forgot where I start and where I end.
“Who did traumatize you?,” some ex-colleague asked me a couple of years ago.
I didn’t know how to reply.
I didn’t remember consciously.
Now I can see it more and more clearly.
There is trauma stored inside of my body and my genes – conditioned through former generations and lifetimes.
The trauma manifests in my belief patterns and my tendency to end up in unhealthy (I don’t like the term toxic anymore – even though it is an accurate description) relationships.
I re-traumatized myself by not knowing my boundaries….
I knew that there is such thing as ‘boundaries’. What I didn’t understand ultimately was that I’m the one who has to set them.
What feels good for me? Do I feel esteemed by my partner or my friends? Do I enjoy doing what I’m doing? Do I enjoy where I am? These were questions that never occurred to me….
Either I was busy meeting my own demands or fulfilling the needs of others. But I never asked myself if I feel good? If the relationship or the friendship gives me what I need? I never allowed myself to have any demands.
Now I know that this is called codependency and now I know that there is a cure for this and the cure is called ‘radical healing’.
Finally I understood that not every human wants my very best.
How could I be so naive?
Well, luckily I learnt to laugh about myself. A good portion of humor helps me to accept my former blindness and keeps me from becoming bitter.
Luckily the universe presented me with the necessary lessons – as usual.
Finally the pain forced me into self-love.
I reached a point where I HAVE to set boundaries – if I want to survive.
A crisis is the most radical learning experience you can ever have.
For a long time I was talking about pain and fear on this blog, but I have to admit that I never fully allowed my pain.
There was always this last resistance.
There was always this fear of the fear. The fear of feeling the pain completely. I thought I must be strong. I am not allowed to remain in pain…. But some pain is persistent… It might takes months. Or even years?
What did I think?
Probably I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I thought I would break.
What I learnt now through emotional pain that manifested physically in my body is that the toxic thing is not the pain itself but the resistance…
The more I’m holding on to my feelings, the more I’m resisting to feel anger, grief or sadness fully the more painful it gets…
This is how anxiety attacks are able to drain my energy system.
This is how I become ‘unaware’.
This is how I get lost in ‘shortcuts’ (addictions).
What’s the cure?
The cure is radical honesty. It is that simple. Being able to be honest about my real feelings. I wish I would have known this when I was 16 years old.
The feelings won’t harm me. They will pass – no matter how long it takes. I have to allow them. What will harm me in the end is the disconnection from myself that is created by resisting negative feelings…
The good news is that there is a way back.
And the way back exists right in this moment.
To be more precise – the present moment IS the way back.
By allowing what is in this moment I reconnect with myself.
Ram Dass says: “Don’t be afraid of appearances”
Finally I get what he is talking about.
This is what I call ‘radical awareness’.
Radical awareness is the ability to be aware of what is going on internally and externally – without judging it, or counteracting.
Only now I understand HOW important the practice of awareness truly is for personal development – the personal path.
Awareness is the path to the path.
The more I become aware the more clearly I can see. The clearer I can see everything the more clears my path.
All of a sudden I can see the signs again.
All of a sudden my whole body relaxes into place.
Only by becoming aware of what is.
This is the way towards radical healing.
‘Investigate!’
This is something I blared into my notebook many times recently…
I didn’t understand how ‘intuition’ and ‘investigation’ are interlinked.
intuitio – ‘the immediate insight’
How do you act intuitively?
By being aware and by looking – constantly!
I have the impression we are mistaken intuition for a spontaneous reaction or something like that.
But in reality it can be covered up and what we think is our intuition is just an emotional reaction to an external trigger…
Intuition is a response in alignment with our needs.
Nowadays these needs are most likely covered up with… with what?
I’d say expectations, pressure, distractions, addictions,…..
So, sometimes we have to investigate in order to find what our intuition is trying to say to us again.
I got caught up in concepts.
I got caught up in my own expectations.
I got caught up in ‘adding up’ instead of ‘letting go’.
Until?
Until I nearly exploded (or imploded). This is pretty much the only way I can put it.
I got so tense.
I had to open my heart and my heart moved me towards forgiveness.
Radical Forgiveness
I forgive myself for my mistakes.
I forgive my parents.
I forgive the system.
I forgive my abusers.
I forgive men.
I forgive me.
My heart bursts open and all of a sudden there is space…
It was always there, but I always locked the doors. Ooohh, I barricaded them! And I didn’t even realize it. I asked myself why does nobody want to enter my heart?
I locked my heart so tightly and I threw away the key.
Until my heart got so big that it exploded the chains.
Yayyy.
My heart itself ruptured my resistance.
And what there is is love, more compassion than ever before, more beauty, more light….
This is healing. This is becoming whole. I can feel myself again, because I felt myself fully in my deepest pain.
I was left alone and what I found was that I am my best company, my best friend. I am my everything, so why would I need to be the everything of somebody else?
Radical Healing
Radical forgiveness is possible through radical awareness.
If I wouldn’t look at everything I wouldn’t see cleary.
How can I heal if I don’t look at my wounds? How can I heal if I abstract? If I get lost in the process… I had lost myself in strategies. These were coping mechanisms to prevent me from seeing the truth.
I’m not sure yet if I need to know the origin of all these wounds.
I feel like I’ve overcomplicated this path tremendously with my intellectual understanding.
All I had to do was to become aware of my wounds. Fully aware.
The more clear I can see the more clear become the milestones of the path….
Don’t challenge reality.
Look at what you see.
Don’t be scared of your wounds.
Look right into it.
See things clear.