My life also depends on hers

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." – Elizabeth Stone

Indeed, she runs around with my heart on her sleeve. Could I have ever imagined the depth of bonding love such a fellow creature would fire up in a body that I once unknowingly determined my own?

Of course, boundaries are here to emphasize the ongoing responsive “othering” that is part of mothering and fathering. The selflessness that parenting can teach you is a highly intimate experience of the self. No relationship comes as close as this one, just a couple of minutes pass and my name (yes, to her it is a name), MAMA! the one she rightfully clings on to, echoes through our living room. My attention is high jacked, and for a good reason. My attention is her witness and at times, I fail miserably in acknowledging her powerful presence. Equally so, parenting can feel overly demanding, our interaction intensely chaotic or her needs rather pressing. Attachment patterns are all over the place and every day is a learning process. Mental clarity is challenged by tiredness, the relational knots only deep emotional investment offers us, and the shaky – and grateful - work of parenting together. It is an unconditional love, a rather factual gut feeling, that keeps me ready to provide whatever is needed. It entails a dynamic inner dialogue between a growing awareness of fruitful boundaries and the power of a sensitivity that perceives rather than judges.

The level of conscious delicateness that is part of this relationship is silencing the outer spheres of my ego's social influence. Sorry guys, I have something more significant to attend to. I imagine a child friendly world in which ‘we’, in the form of more tightly knit communities, take care of the readily growing, little human beings. Awkwardly allowing myself an expanding loving kindness: every child is a reminder of life’s energy extracted from us as a collective, unique in his, her or their way and ultimately a test for everybody whether, as one might say within spiritual contexts, an elephant can actually pass through a needle.

She points her finger and I immediately try to see the world through her eyes, frequently becoming aware of what I do not know, every time providing bits of borrowed maps of the world while hoping to cherish her felt freedom to fly around unburdened by these maps, by all the particular, symbolized ways of being human that might not be hers.

Radical honesty about the depth of bonding is a social, mental and cultural challenge. I would not like to glorify nor surpress when speaking about this connection. Its intensity knows many shapes and nuances, many stereotypes, and false representations, certainly all the emotional colors found on the spectrum of our interpretative possibilities.

My life also depends on hers; this is how it feels. A deep dependence that I consciously try to guide and let go at the same time. It is the most potent stuff out there if you learn to stay present with it, if conditions allow you to. And once I do, that potency, at times, cuts away all the babbling, disintegrating habits, and tendencies, forcing attention on the here and now embodied by her particular life.

Thank you, my friend

"I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other."

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I have a dear friend who is somewhere within love's reach. We don't speak to each other often anymore. We lost track along the way, but our hearts never spun out of sight. He has suffered tremendous loneliness and alchemized it into a solitude that I hold close to my own, at times fragile heart. We are both writers but tend to get lost in everyday customized language games. We are both adept to adaptation, and I have felt drawn often to playfully invite him away from the colorless middle ground. I miss him, but I don't. We both speak the same love language that solitude offers us, and thus know how to converse without using words, time or even space. A hint of magic supports our shared belief system. I know we will always be connected, funny enough in an emotional place far away from norms, consequences, or roles. Our friendship has a lasting existential quality, in the sense that we remain each other's witness even if we would never share a direct experience ever again. Him being part of my own stream of consciousness renders my experience of loneliness utterly understood and a vital remembrance of the void out of which we all emerge. At the contact boundary of our experiences, even if out of touch, we enjoy a horizon sharply perceived through the eyes of those that suddenly stopped seeking refuge in outside distractions. Although that horizon keeps suggesting there is more to explore within this connection, just staying present with the promise feels already like a gift to this friendship. Feelings are wide, memories are joyful, pain has been a source of softening laughter and existential grounding. Thank you, my friend, for everything and nothing at once.

A lot to be

“This moment is not life waiting to happen, goals waiting to be achieved, words waiting to be spoken, connections waiting to be made, regrets waiting to evaporate, aliveness waiting to be felt, enlightenment waiting to be gained. No. Nothing is waiting. This is it. This moment is life.”

Jeff Foster, Falling in Love with Where You Are

More than one friend has confirmed it firmly. Everything is fine just as it is. Bring your life, bring you aliveness, bring it all. Years of framing life through the lens of fluid yet seeking storytelling and years of lovingly yet safely guiding others has left some of my inner parts unseen and unspoken of. The time is here to share this deeper level of closeness by committing to the subtle here and now, to the unbearably light yes-ness of dear connections and the fragility of a spiritual path born out of the devoted decision to walk on it together. Whereas attachment triggers feelings, commitment is also a repeated, mindful decision. On a feeling level, fear likes to be right and see its projections turned into a comfortable nest of self-affirming truths. Wisdom tells me though that fear never knows what it does not know, is even afraid to be intelligently hesitant. Fear stops the show before any real-life tragedy might have catapulted me to overcome internalized, emotional constrictions. I need my mind here to redirect a hurt heart towards trust. My mind invites my heart to surrender as the former knows that the latter is burdened by an old burn out. Make the choice, Lot, my mind says, make the choice that likens the vividness of every lived moment to the open perception of reality as it is, to the open sky that only an opened heart allows you to see everywhere, anywhere.

I see the sensitized shame of that free spirited girl as she places her hand over her mouth. She absorbs the flickering candlelight, a soothing mantra and an open dance floor to stay present with her intensity.

“The work is done, stop yourself the moment you feel you need to work”, a friend said patiently.

There is a lot of complexity, yes, as there is a lot to be.

Lean into the abundance, Lot

"Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking."

David Whyte

Last week I heard myself saying that I felt lost in an emotional vacuum. Somewhat ironically, I used these words in conversations with dearly and clearly listening friends. It took a couple of days to fully realize this was mind created reality. Somewhere the last couple of weeks, I felt rejected. Or so named and tamed my mind. The sting of ‘rejection’ sang through my organs and bones, orchestrating a symphony of projections upon those dear and near. My muscles ached and wanted to flee the situations reminding me of supposedly unrequited love.

Hold on, I thought, I have been through this cycle of suffering before. Rusty attachment patterns kicking in for sure.

In the moments of despair, I did not know what to do. My mind re-read the experience of that vacuum, saw the feeling of being lost and abandoned, wild if you will, and reframed the situation as deeply complex, as being interconnected with a wild web of mine and other people’s aliveness. Uncertainty is the name of the game.

What a wonderful gift, the guide that only attention can offer us, the territory overruling the map. I started to pay attention after the first heaps of emotions (internalized maps of the world) came to rest, I felt listened to and loved as such, also by myself, and my body was ready again to receive stimuli from the outside in. Looking at the world from the perspective of uncertainty was, this time around, not frightening my limbs, but stimulating my awareness. Gosh, what a practice indeed, as the slogan on my company’s website gently reminds me:

"Appreciate the complexity of the world and don't shrink from it.”— Stephen Nachmanovitch

The complexity of my world transformed from appearing painstakingly alone to abundantly connected. Lean into the abundance Lot, it might just show you what is here already, all along. Some part of me wants to grasp reality and fixate it into small bits of security, but the whole of me knows only how to love from a place of letting go. Joy is reentering the scene, and I am getting acquainted again with the full emotional spectrum of life’s vitality. I paid attention just long enough to know it’s perfectly fine to let go of control and laugh myself back into the world again. It is kind of funny how, nearby clearsighted attention, every laugh is just waiting to be unfolded.

Pay attention, Lot

“What is required is an attentive response to something real and other than ourselves, of which we have only inklings at first, but which comes more and more into being through our response to it – if we are truly responsive to it. We nurture it into being; or not. In this it has something of the structure of love.”

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

This perspective feels rather soothing to me. In my existential dive into the question what love is, I find many different definitions and examples - and even more sensorial impressions. At the core, the emphasis of seeking poets and determined philosophers lies upon an act, an art, a process, or a way of being together, a way of relating. Yet, burdened by many myths, love can often seem a fleeting feeling, unbearably far away for the wounded healers, open only to the happy few or threateningly filled with unwanted suffering and unfulfilled needs. Leaning back into love as a way of being responsive, a way of nurturing each other’s presence into being, I spontaneously imagine love to be a form of devotional yet silent attention. The kind of attention that encompasses the one and the many all at once, is indeed patient in its companionship and graceful in its unrelenting curiosity and courage to set free. Put more simply, attentive responsivity it what makes or breaks the spirit of love. Seeing everything that captures our attention nowadays, this is indeed a challenge. My senses easily get oversaturated. How to love ourselves back into this world, this being in and of the earthly world? Listening with all my senses, honoring the whole of the other as an expanding part of my intimate experience, is a delicate orchestration between opening my heart, finetuning my senses and discernibly inhibiting overdue projections. Pay attention Lot, listen, to the shivering hints of being-here of what is understood as 'other' and 'out there'.

The dawn of individuation

Every personal encounter reminds me of life’s potential. We all resonate in different ways. Some walk by form afar and their brief smile is the sole concrete way in which our lives enliven each other. No minor passage, this coincidence precisely highlights the inescapable intimate nature of our interdependency.

Others are radically close, I try my hardest to keep them on a distance by producing radically contracting smiles, trying to manipulate the impending intimacy into a form that feels suitable to my frightened heart. Some of them don't mind, they just wait patiently and contain the autonomous space I need to relax and invite them over. In.

My intensity may intimidate. It seems to offer nutrients, courage, rest, clarity and at times a good portion of frivolous ecstasy. The intimidation, honestly, is also reflective of the mentalized walls inside. I know, I might as well call them by their names. Your patience, trust and fearlessness erodes them.

Truly opening all your sensorial eyes, letting a life beyond the tangible guide you from the inside out and the outside in, renders the whole world a part of your inner most being. It seems we can’t easily access this intensity all at once. For many it is an incremental process. Next to learning, a lot of unlearning paves the way for an effortless kind of presence with the emerging present.

I am shaping my ability to love. Love is an activity and process more than a moment of heightened connection. Peak experiences do offer glimpses into reality as it is unfolding from the depth of our magical unconscious. Here we intuit transformations that cannot be tempered, that can be hindered though by context and resistance. Can we allow all of life, can we allow the porous encounter with (the) other, to show us what is most truthful to our ever-changing selves?

Dear friendships offer containment for subtle and gross lessons in intimacy; how do I love them deeply. We all embody different intensities of polarities, and we all enjoy dancing with each other – that is not a coincidence. Every dance is a practice. Practicing our full, awakened vitality, a bundle of unutterable emotional shades is expressed, polarities merge into one collective being. We offer each other awe, renewed confidence, and the refreshing lack of self-defying control.

Our longing for this dance is our longing to awaken. To be present with life as it is. Aliveness is rising from within my pelvis. Subtly but surely, I consciously allow myself to feel into that birthplace of forms. Do I dare to do so while holding your gaze?

Dauntingly intimate, there is no escape route, whatever I thought was ‘mine’ annihilates as we exhale in synchrony.

Dance with me darling, dance towards the dawn of your individuation.

A clapping of awareness away

My bed served as a cushion. I closed my eyes and quickly entered a blank space. I felt an enormous amount of concentration between my eyes, a release of tension throughout my body, some very slight shaking of my upper body, very slow breathing and a total reset of my overall body’s energy balance.

A couple of minutes before I started the meditation, I decided to sit once more quietly next to my daughter’s bed and softly tickle her. Deep sighs and an expressive yawn affirmed her body’s need to slow down. When I accompanied her to bed and read to her that evening, I was a bit in a rush. Tiredness of ongoing concentration that day, unspoken irritations with respect to a friend and a lack of silent moments throughout the day led to impatience towards my daughters after-preschool emotional regulation. She clearly enjoys it there, and at the end of the day, returning home, when requested to brush her teeth, she lets go of the latter itsy-bitsy force of adaptation. The word ‘no’ echoes through our second floor – besides practicing autonomy, I know it is also her way of responding to my communication of agitation. How I understand the situation, we are resonating and before we know it, enmeshed.

After putting her to bed, hearing her call me, trying to communicate from across the room and sitting down for a minute or so in the hallway, I realized I was rushing her also and felt that her ongoing call for attention was just that: a call for attunement.

I got up and as mentioned sat myself next to her bed, whispered some sweets words into her ears, stroke her cheeks and went on talking with my fingers along her back, arms and through her tender blond hair. She could hardly keep her eyes open; I encouraged her to hold on to her cuddle toys, she curled up into the fetal position and within a minute, she fell asleep.

The meditative state I entered into a couple of minutes later, might have been just as deep. Somehow, thoughtlessness is a snap away these days, even though that does not undermine the need for emotional awareness (like the interaction with my daughter exemplified) and the intend to practice relaxation throughout the day. While I had my eyes closed (something I don’t usually do while meditating), an intense blue light appeared in front of me, more or less a shining blue dot. I could have been intrigued by its beautiful cobalt color, but I wasn’t. It seemed to fit perfectly with the intensity of pointed concentration that I felt, and any story about it felt far away from the openness beginning to rush through my vessels. The concentration transformed into an expansion beyond the bedroom’s walls, and my body did not feel very substantial anymore. Some anxiety popped up, I observed the mind’s tendency to want to hold on, felt a bit amused, also relaxed that qualification by again becoming one with my breathing. The meditation really felt like an energetic rebalancing, and like an entrance to some different dimension beyond solid form. It seemed, as I look back at it, every-thing became awareness – my ego was not enjoying this transition and tried to resist the expansion several times, with my mind trying to tame this experience conceptually by naming it ‘death anxiety’. Observer-me guided me in union with the breath of life.

After opening my eyes, I felt compassion towards those parts of me trying to resist the expansion. I listened to my partner’s words about his meditation experience and noticed my body and mind seemed receptive, not reactive. Again, a shot of that death anxiety swiftly passed through my existence. Hmm, awareness sighed inside. Spontaneously I offered my partner gentle caresses after he told me he was tired. Meanwhile, feeling the presence of my fingers through his hair, all I felt doing was looking out of the window and feel one with the world of all senses, beyond the usual focus on visual perception.

Still feeling slightly touched and gently grateful for this experience, I woke up this morning and noticed that the emotional undercurrent of my dreams affected my thinking processes. Just this observation created spaciousness and facilitated the simple act of getting up and writing this diary entry. Writing offers me the opportunity to connect feelings with my verbal fluency and it filters the internalized voices in my head that aren’t in tune anymore with my unfolding existential melodies. Words become music, an act of respect when it comes to their actual emotional meaning, their ‘embodiedness’. I feel the muscles in my jaw relaxing. No more to say than precisely that which I am sharing. Maybe stilness is always a clapping of awareness away.

Attachment is sacred

Attachment is sacred

even though

thousand of years of brilliant traditions

echoed the power of detachment

some renouncing the earthly related

some proclaiming touchy inhibitions

as if, when reaching out,

and nobody is there

you delight in the illusion

of overpowering

the finest intricacies of

enlightenment

called attachment

Now let me tell you

Dear heart

Dear heart broken

dare to attach

dare to see

you and life

are a perfect match

and then feel

heal

what in earth

is love

and thus has awoken

Flow through to your outreaching love

connect your spirits

Nourish your heart’s spaciousness

integrate our interdependency

at the deepest level possible

this is

the true gateway to being humble

Our heart is for a reason voracious

you and I are always here

to feed each other’s soul songs

interconnected spontaneously

then listen to the resonance of your body

in my attachment to you

the purest admitting of

life’s unity

her sacred embodiment of two-spirit

There is no other way

no path to not be connected

Sink into this truth

erode the illusion of separation

your life is overwhelmingly embedded

fall deeper into this non-duality

with the trust and relation

you build with those that embody union

together with you

That, I tell you

is love’s way of liberating

you from you

only

Dakini inpowerment

I just finished reading 'Dakini power' by journalist Michaela de Haas. The book narrates the life stories and activities of twelve women “shaping the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism in the West”. The word ‘dakini’ refers to a female messenger of wisdom. Hold on, wisdom in this sense is actually reflected by transcendence of dualities.

“The Tibetan word for dakini, khandro, means “sky-goer” or “space-dancer,” which indicates that these ethereal awakened ones have left the confinements of solid earth and have the vastness of open space to play in.”

Doesn’t that sound vividly free? Want to join?

Thirsty for inspiration, I explored the lives of those women dedicating themselves to the enlightenment of all sentient beings while practicing what Lama Tsultrim calls "inpowerment". Notably, all these women did or do this in their unique, contextualized ways and anchored in centuries old traditions.

My heart filled with courage when I encountered descriptions of intuitive decisions, the role independent thinking, community, dreams and recurring themes had (and have) for these women, how for some being a mother has been integrated in their daily life practice of awareness and connection (!), how deeply cherished bonds with spiritual companions play(ed) an important role in the development of their teachings, and how their personal character can be seen as a signature of the refreshing selflessness that they embodied or embody.

Jumping of joy on the inside, I noticed that some of them actually live and work in Colorado, the state where the next Dabrowski’s congress will be held. Surely, I can’t deny that this feels like a strong symbolic sign that I have to visit some of their retreat centres next year .

Through reading the book I got inspired to design an at-home retreat for the upcoming months, during the period in which I will share my reflections, diary entries and…who knows what? The designing has just started and can’t share details yet, but most importantly it will be an ongoing process – what else could it be?

Today I feel thrilled to be inspired by Lama Tsultrim and how she interweaves her life as a (grand) mother into her daily practice and study of Tibetan Buddhism. Maybe this also resonates with your inner processes and outer challenges, and you want to get inspired by this interview.

Meanwhile wishing you a Lot of love !

The no-things that matter

We were brushing our teeth and doing our habitual dance in the meantime, creating a fresh moment of shared childlike fun just before we entered the private space of our dreams. After this playful in-between time, I was staring briefly into the mirror of our bathroom. My mind equivalent to a silent observer, my face muscles tender, my eyes both foreign and mine, if you will. I saw myself and my partner, time stood still, any sense of separation melted. Unity consciousness. Instead of striving to under stripe unity by frequent rephrasing of shared meaning giving processes, I simply saw myself in the reflection of my partners face. Self-recognition annihilated any sense of a limited self. No striving whatsoever occurred. So simple and elegant, inner and outer resolved into being. The moment we were one, we were also no-thing. Any sense of separation felt illusionary afterwards, recurring glimpses of that sudden unity swiftly softened my attention into a good night sleep full of surrender.

I woke up this morning and felt empty inside. No tiredness, no disconnection. An ongoing stream of energy that didn’t contract somewhere in my body. My felt sense was unusually impersonally calm. The voices inside my head weren’t mine, just a small fraction of all available energy.

It’s kind of funny that I am reflecting on these experiences. I tried it several times during the day and I lacked the words. The process is still going strong, what is there to say? Well, it serves gratefulness to look back on the no-things that matter.

The most beautiful moments of this day, cherished by the tears slowly rolling over my face, was when my daughter lay her head on my shoulder and slept for half an hour while I was slowly dancing on a collection of soulful, healing songs. While she was sleeping, I was mourning the state of our world today and the existential uncertainty of many generations that came before us. The songs tapped into the experience of individual and collective suffering. Suffering that runs through my vessels but is easily circumvented by everyday chores. Surrendering her body in my arms, quietly asking me to keep on dancing when I briefly got distracted, her presence and the calmness of the day rendered every moment the perfect moment to connect with the deeper process of strength affirming grief. While I took a photo, I jokingly imagined a future full of unrecorded immersion. Seriously, her vitality is a heart awakening.

Good mourning

Immersion in life has left a thoughtless silence. Nourishing connections, dancing, painting, drawing, clear thinking, and straightforward communication. I feel grateful for having spend my time with a close circle of loved ones offering each other intimate joy, mindful wandering and the liberation that can be found in untying emotional knots. I am also tired because of all the impressions, less sleep and getting used to intensity as a normal feature of life’s experience (ha!).

In the midst of the cocreated warm social bath, I try to be aware of my own tendencies. Here and there I notice resistance when it comes to the reality of certain unfulfilled needs; when it comes to full embodiment of my vulnerability, of my inability to shape the world precisely according to my demanding needs while sensitively acknowledging those vibrant needs at the same time. While feeling joyful and connected, sadness rises. It is a longing to be seen by a distant beloved that, in my little private experience of reality, mirrors those parts that I haven’t taken full ownership of. The joy of the weekend provides passage to mourning. Mourning is important to set myself and loved ones free. The other is not merely a projection - and it is okay to long for intimacy.

Always in search of the answer to the question what love truly is, I lean into situations that challenge me to make space for both diversity and intensity of connection and resonance. Intimacy can be a synonym for the word ‘trigger’. A shared space that is easily filled with, or even blown out of proportion due to personal projections. A space that is easily restyled into a familiar emotional landscape, structured by what I think I want, undermining the fact that reality actually accommodates all perspectives and perceptions and that which is most vivid in myself may not be what has been socialized as a priority. Love is much more spacious and attuned, I am sure.

What essence is left of me when I allow myself the risk of annihilation, when I am not tamed by fear, when I allow myself an unrelenting look into the eyes of the frozen, fleeing and fighting animal inside? As a child, we grow up so deeply interdependent that we ostracize authenticity to secure attachment needs on the short term. We do this because it is life threatening not to. A baby can’t survive without care. Death anxiety, the root of all our demons. Years later, we can decide to consciously and mindfully take the risk and shape conditions in which we are challenged to overcome, or at least face, death anxiety. A full embrace of reality, we might call this presence, renders confrontation with vulnerability inevitable. Moving through the grand and subtle emotional storms, something indestructible that transcends the confinement of ego identification is lived. Untied energy in motion, all-encompassing, integrated mind included.

My eyes wander across our terrace. I feel that same mourning again. My heart misses the intimacy of being utterly one with nature. I have projected death anxiety upon others and upon the natural world around me. Understandably, but it flattens the intensity of life. Intimacy, whether that be social, spiritual, creative, or otherwise, is the ultimate joy of life. Exposure to natural elements will disintegrate my body, but this porous embodied being-here also mirrors the depth and breadth of being undeniably at home in an expanding instead of contracting universe.

Thoughtlessly my hand creates shapes. There is nobody overlooking the process, the process is the expression of life’s I-overpowering potential.

Buzzingly normal

After a reinvigorating warm-up, she tapped my sternum and arms, gently pressed my stomach and firmly whispered some of my own words into my ear. Vibrating air reached my stereocilia and materialized into embodied truth:

“Okay, now let us hear about all that love that is inside of you. Do not hold back.”

Twinkles all over my body. The inner guidance of introspective awareness and mentalized willingness to decondition and transform took over the process. Something more profound and exalted let me to overcome the constraints of inauthentically patterned selves. Deep from the inner realms of rock-solid earth, high into the overpowering and expanding, ethereal landscape of the universe, life’s energy found its way straight along my spine. The expressiveness of the highly inimitable human voice, mastering even the details of fingerprints. Opening the core of my body, I instantly found the technique to flowingly let go of all inhaled disintegrations, no body part nor related memory left out of this release.

Multiple generations of agony ran straight through the top of the cabin – I imagined this set the whole place on fire. With the speed of light my previously concentrated pain body dissolved into broadening and broadening circles of vibrations. “This must be the end of it,” a thought passed quickly through my mind, but a transpersonal body changed the rules of the game my lungs and untrained vocal cords adhered to.

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

I could not have imagined more releasement of build-up tension. More than seven breaths of volumized strength, here it was. Finally releasing the last contracted vibrations my body absorbed too long out of fear of being nothing, a rainbow of colors flashed in front of my just opened eyes. An incredible amount of energy streamed through my body. Clearly a transcendent experience, transcendental wonder took over. I just lost many pounds of personal, and I would even say transpersonal emotional weight. I felt empty and inexplicably firm at the same time.

No academic test, no profile, could have ever mirrored my life’s energy in such an awakening manner. Guided embodiment of intensity never was this straightforward.

Thanks to the extremely present, professional, and integral guidance of Julliana Goodblood (https://www.juliannabloodgood.com/), this voice release session made me transform so much suffering into total authentic presence that I felt newborn.

In the days that followed, I allowed myself the imagination of demons checking out of the hostel for suffering some of my body parts were. My participation at the tantra festival of which this release session was part, felt equally transformative as ten years of psychological puzzle making. Every workshop, from breath work to learning how to fully, interconnectedly say yes to life, incrementally brought me closer to my abandoned emotional home. The existential training* leading up to my participation at the festival already offered the practice of exhaling anger – compression of bodily power frequently disguised as self-rejection – in a collectively created holding space. The voice release session at the end of the festival felt like the apotheosis of a couple of years of seeking existential freedom.

Communication, decision making, creativity. Everything is pouring out of my being, while an organizing power experientally seated in between my eyes takes notice of this process, learning to surrender to it with its own potential pointedness. Silently overjoyed, I feel the strength to write my own vows and finally yet humbly, through ongoing practice and all too human detours my everyday life contains, embody what I have always felt to be true all along.

A daimon awakened, and ‘I’ am its momentaneous expression. However esoteric this might sound, however unearthly lyrical these narrated processes may be perceived, life this way feels actually buzzingly normal.

Grant oneself

Back to the reflections.

So, I ended my previous reflection with a reference to the training in existential skills I decided to participate in. Before deciding to take part, my heart was weighing the yeses and the nos. I intuited, also because of my previous collaborations with trainer Stijn, that my participation in his training would be a jump into the abyss. This type of training, this type of being together under the guidance of someone who has already done a lot of existential research into the spectrum of human experience, would surely reflect the longed-for depth of feeling, complexity of thinking and life-affirming authenticity. Surely, there would be no escape to look for the deeper meaning of my restlessness in the eyes of an eerie familiar feeling beloved! Life’s experience had already shown me that a jump into the unknown, the shivers such as an action sent along the spine, is what makes for the feeling of aliveness. Meaning in the immediacy of the moment. And so, I decided to test my wings…

It is kind of funny. I have been writing about the topic of intensity (embedded in the fields of giftedness, creativity and existential development) for over ten years now. And here I was, longing again for that lost intensity... The training offered a great variety of practices from eastern and western traditions. We practiced with honest emotional communication, we explored the territory of the imaginal, got a visceral taste of dying thanks to a Tibetan ritual, we danced attuned to one another even if blindfolded, escalating vibrations articulating our boundaries found their way out of our contracting lungs and we held each other firmly, or softly caressed the parts of our bodies that were in need of rudimentary recognition. The trainig was, to me, an open exploration of how life can express itself creatively through our udiscovered, or rediscovered selves. How life essentially always seeks unstrapped expression through the roots and flowers of our overall being, beyond the internalized psychic structures that socialize our movements, decisions, ways of relating and expressing (in Dabrowskian terms one might say the training offered conditions in which ways of being alive beyond the influence of the second factor - socialization - were explored and embodied).

The seeker in me did find – remembered - the intensity she was looking for. My body and mind started to respond, something came over me, got a hold on me, and an all too familiar expression of that intensity, one that can have an obsessive quality to it, filled my existence. A profound concentration on the question what love is orchestrated the electric concert of my thousandfold psychic preoccupations. Existential fire was one! What makes life worth living in the face of death? I read on the website of House of Beloved, an urban monastery, a communal effort in Brussels initiated by Stijn. Oh no, some part of me grieved silently, now that somebody else, someone I know firsthand and feel clearly drawn to, exclaims this question I must listen to my own resonating desires…. I was lucky to be inspired by someone that felt dedicated to the practice of ownership of one’s experience and lot (pun intended). Identification, remembering Dabrowski’s reflections on the topic, pointed towards personal authenticity. My journey continued, I started visiting House of the Beloved quite often, and whatever was restless in me transformed more and more into passion.

A passion that has been thwarted into conflictual forms quite often. An intense drive, in interaction with traumatic life experiences and sensitivities, turned into eating disorders, other addictions and recurring ambivalences.

Could I sit with the passion long enough to viscerally know that I am not this, but a vessel of life, ever changing and uncontrollable? The paradox being that this thorough knowing requires simultaneously the act of allowing the passion to freely flow and the act of perceiving its motions razor sharply, embodying the passion full heartedly, allowing impulses to be fully felt and transforming this intensity into fierce mental discernment and compassionate action.

Now, a couple of months after the ending of the training, I find myself contemplating a next step. Besides working together with Stijn on the next cohort of the training authentic presence, I am looking into the option to create a (part time) home retreat for the upcoming months. My heart longs for the space to untether life’s potential while sharpening my minds capacity to be one with the process.

I have been alone for long hours before, the idea of offering myself undirected time and space brings back the felt sense of life back then. However insightful the suffering that I encountered in those enduring hours of aloneness, my recent mourning for the pain my body was in (for example, during the time I wrestled with eating disorders), and the inspiration I get from being surrounded by equally intensity voicing human beings, drive me to reunite with all those parts of me that have never felt that emptiness, being no-thing, was truly the birthplace of creation. Am I ready to walk into that vital void? The never-ending expanding and threatening space that solitude often was to my younger self. Is the emptiness I long for similar to the boundarylessness that felt neglectful back then – do I dare to embrace the rising feelings? It would be an opening towards deeper desires. Artistic drives, those parts that long for clearcut research into the workings of the mind, the expression and transformation of my calling, a restraint from stimuli seemingly confirming the right to be, to be connected. I long for a type of existential research that is by no means encapsulated by grudges towards the experience of being alive in this particular body, mind, place, these relationships, and processes. A total yes to life, really.

Can I fully lean into my own glaring impulses, decide to not follow through on tendencies, being authentic by not automatically following my good-old self but inviting to accommodate more and more of her unexplored potential, including (neglected) painful memories? Is this something that I can grant myself, along the way learning how to be of deeper service to the environment?

PS: interested in doing existential research? This invitation might be interesting!

If dreams be told

In my dreams
I intuit
lives unspoken
realms of deeper meanings
whatever could
a narrator without a body
to fixate on endings
out of fear

In my dreams
I’m birthing imagery
impressions, withhold expressions
a sense of aliveness
rooted in the expansion
of universal consciousness

In my dreams
Some silent foreseer
takes hold of ripening fruits
germinating seeds
inquisitive inner beasts
and the oceans immense capacity
to ride any emotional wave
mirroring the depths of unconscious feeling
if truth be told
our everyday grave

Dreams beg for attention
a weary feeling we’ve baptized
tiredness
a daily dread, lack of life’s energy
a silent longing for sweet affection
a fine-tuning into the inner
the moment all our supposed knowing
dissolves into a sober sixth sense
a quick sharpening of the psychic lens

My dreams
right before I fall asleep
I’m thirsting for the transition
of
flat into deep

Emergence room

“It’s an emergent process,” I said with my hands theatrically emphasizing a fluid movement from toe to head.

“Yes, yes, you know your words…,” my partner said characteristically playful with, I imagine, a hint of uncertainty.

Admittedly, I felt kind of proud of what was transforming between us and this emotional intensity filled the space in between our bodies. Proudness can be an overcompensation for the contractions that build up in my stomach area. A release.

Our interaction might have stopped the buzzing connection right away, triggering anxiety and a sense of separation on both ends.
We are doing relational research into these dynamics and are exploring different ways of being together (also inspired by the training in existential development I mentioned yesterday, https://lavantgarde.be/training/ ). All vulnerabilities considered; we are learning to trust the process.

We entertained the idea to connect his musical and visual creations with my existential journey. That feels synergetic and like a newborn sequence to our previous collaborations (such as the podcasts we’ve made, for example, in Dutch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYv78PrMMcA ).

I don’t feel that this co-creative process needs to be structured on forehand nor do I feel a - demanding - need to push things towards a certain direction. Rather, I notice the attention-grabbing quality of the need and take it to be less ego-threathening than I often experienced. Work in progress.

It's always work 'to be' in the process.

To me, this time, the process is very much about openly discovering what is there. Limitlessly, not following the conditioned tendency to fully frame the how and what of the project to be sure we are like-minded. There is a why and that is ‘we,’ the entity we call our relationship or even our family. An open exploration of the dialogue that will and might flourish between his and my artistic life, within our family’s life, between his musical muses and my writings.

For the upcoming time, I am writing these diary fragments, sharing them online. A search for a calling, and a process of cutting through authenticity-undermining-attachments. He feels the impetus to create music. There is no strict framework to adhere to, it will be a potential encounter and a dialogue, but none of it comes with a fixed result in mind. Or at least, I am not fixating on the imagery in my mind .

Instead of trying to see whether his or mine projections resonate, I feel we are now working on a different kind of collaboration. A form that might suit us both, feels artistically free and includes the emotional growth of our family as part of it (he he, okay, at the end of this sentence my voice starts to become louder indeed, the echo of a calling). Instead of talking interminably and irritated about the precise definitions of whatever we are doing and how we should be doing this, something we can find ourselves intensly enmeshed in, there is the light promise of ‘just being authentically ourselves’ and seeing what emerges from that co-created space.

Oh dear, letting go of control! All the while embodying the full intensity of being alive and creativity driven.

‘Feel into what works for you,’ I hear myself say a couple of times.

Ha, that good-old tendency to name and tame, to emphasize, take care of, make sure that…. A loved expression of intensity that might undermine the others autonomy. I breathe and let go of the sentences.

Silence. The birthplace of creation.

Stay tuned, this diary might sound very vivid along the way. We will see how reality's melody will unfold.

Home is where the whole is

Yesterday I wrote about the experience of ‘not feeling at home.’ The words repeatedly bubbled up in my mind afterwards. This happens often, like a mantra words ebb and flow inside my mind and their visceral resonance in my body reflect emotional truth to me. Listening is all there is to it...

When I set out to explore the restlessness that I became much more aware of during the first two and a half years of our daughter’s postnatal life, I was seeking more than listening. In my lyrical book ‘Intens mens’ you can find a reflection titled ‘what you seek, is seeking you.’
Somehow, this previously recognized wisdom was uprooted.

The corona pandemic also had an impact on our family’s wellbeing. I was working from home, mostly online. I missed essential ingredients of the warm – embodied - interaction I had with friends, family and the participants of my workshops and trainings. Also, publication of my first book meant that I felt somewhat empty afterwards. This was an intense creative birth that also led me feeling 'artistically dead' for a while. Combine this with the already ‘home intensive’ situation of nursing our daughter and rewiring the love relationship as partners, and it becomes quite sensible that clearcut constraints with respect to time, space and sleep would lead to new forms of being and feeling human...

I noticed that my mind wanted to run away, skinny dip imagination and think about all kinds of possible, divergent futures. My value system, my emotional guiding system, stuttered. Here I was with a magnetic expression of life force, a fiercely growing baby, that surely needed my sensitive attention and devotion in the here and now. Old tendencies to cope with frustrated needs rose to their feet. I cried out sometimes, this was not the kind of mother that I felt like being... This was not ‘being.’ External restrictions made me look in the mirror once more. It reflected an image that felt foreign and anything but free. Did I choose this life for myself? Was it pure biology - and am I now becoming aware of the fact that motherhood is not my destiny?

No, my body mourned. Before choosing to try to get pregnant, I decided to sleep alone for a week. Essentially, I created a ritual without framing it this way at the time. My workspace became a cave. During that week, I deeply retreated into myself and silenced my thinking. I knew the answer to the question – do I want to become a mother? – would express itself spontaneously if I did not intervene with rising emotions and swirling thoughts, with projections and internalized norms. After five days, I woke up one morning and started to cry immediately. I felt called to say yes to the process of potentially giving birth to a new life and motherhood. And that was it. This was my, our, path wherever it would lead us. This was a practice of surrender even though suffering would inevitably be part of it. However uncertain this queeste would be, and even though I could not directly ask our potential child whether he, she or they wanted to live, I felt somehow that we were called to surrender to this process.

So, back to the unrest that I felt after giving birth. The constraints of that situation heightened my self-awareness. By being in a complex situation, by being deprived on different dimensions, and by not getting what I thought I wanted (business as usual), I was challenged to rethink what it was that I wanted. There were also parts of myself that I could not claim anymore as ‘typically Lotte-like,’ some of my supposed dearest hobbies (reading theory, ha!) seemed so futile. The whole situation forced me to rethink, to re-feel and include more honest mental discernment about what I had been doing the last couple of years and whether that was truly reflective of my calling in life.

The presence of our daughter, the 24/7 devotion to her wellbeing, amplified my capacity to feel into what a calling can be…The depth of desire I feel towards our daughter’s wellbeing made me more aware of life’s potential. The constraints of the situation made it possible to sense that desire and not run away from it, not flatten the depth of the insight like I might have done previously.

The situation forced me to listen. To listen more deeply on a daily basis and to perceive the ‘feeling of homelessness’ as a way of being in this world and in this body in and of itself. I had to learn, and in some cases relearn this existential skill.

Gratefully, something crossed my path that matched perfectly with the situation I was in. The seeking of course led to a discovery. Colleague, psychologist, and trans spiritual monk Stijn Smeets offered a new training in existential development. Intuitively and clearly knowing that my participation would stir up a lot of intensity and thus mental work to discern what this is all about, I decided to go for it. In the meantime, the fact that my partner and I were becoming more aware of our interdependency with the broader community would bring about many changes in the way we relate to each other and our social network.

Maybe ‘not feeling at home’ meant that our home is much bigger than we could have ever imagined…

To be continued!

Shaken, not Broken: the next chapter…

I am (re)starting a diary and I will share these fragments online. Also catalyzed by the keynote that I will give at the International Dabrowski congress 2024 in Denver, I will share reflections on my current existential journey under the working title ‘Shaken, not Broken: personal transformation in times of global, existential threat.’ While heat waves are defying the lives of many sentient beings around the globe, and I am personally undergoing a disintegration of limiting beliefs, actions and supposed freedom, I feel increasingly drawn towards an integration of a calling that goes beyond short-term personal safety and satisfaction.

The theme of next year’s congress is ‘Living the theory’. Ironically, my own journey has a lot to do with ‘shedding the theoretical skin’ and focusing more on the actual practices that challenge, condition and embody what is real to me (and, from hindsight, might or might not reflect Dabrowski’s view). Besides as a fruit of growing awareness of our global ecological situation, this process has come about as a response to the deep existential experience of becoming a mother. The pre-natal growth of our daughter drew my attention back into my body. On the experiential level, this came with an intense calmness that I had not known before or could only remember vaguely. At the same time, this calmness felt very real, a heartfelt remembrance of inner truths that made life so much more vivid and powerful in the moment, as such. After birth, parenting has been challenging and confrontational. A restlessness stirred up, egotistical tendencies had to disintegrate to make room for the profound interdependency with our daughter and us, both as parents and partners. Whilst creating a home for the mesmerizing little human being our daughter is, I noticed that I was not feeling at home. In the house, in my body, in my persona. A truth that I had knew all along rose to the surface and wasn’t deniable, or ‘managed intellectually,’ anymore. I felt a fervent desire to recognize, explore and integrate this truth, both for myself and my loved ones, although it wasn’t clear to me how this would translate into a practical form. Furthermore, both the desire to protect my daughter’s and other generations’ future and the experience of living in a small ecosystem (our family) rather than a somewhat confined individual psychic landscape made me even more sensitive towards the state of our planet’s ecosystems. What is my calling, how do I live this calling, and how does this practice relate to conscious care of my environment?

For more insight into the social and emotional processes leading up to this diary and existential journey, please see our video Shaken, not Broken (part of International Dabrowski Congress 2022).

Stay tuned 😊….

Hearable silence

Words come less. Uttering a word – seeking meaning out there – feels increasingly needless. Before words come into pronounced existence, I notice the dynamic energy ‘underneath’ their potential expression. In this ocean of unimaginable meaning waves carrying emotional patterns seek to manifest, such as the need for recognition, the need to assert existence, but even more so there is an ongoing stream of subtle energy shifting shape continuously. Words which do find their way into ‘airtime’ feel more like music than any other medium, their meaning intensifies as such.

Intonation, timing, rhythm – their aliveness and supposed meaning are directly intertwined with how I say these words and at which moment in time they become a shared shifting reality of an unfolding narrative.
The taste of these words is quite intense and intensely fluid, changeable at the same time. They never loose connection with the whole of the story while no listener knows precisely when and how this tale will end – there is no overview, the coastline is continuously on the move, waves and ocean are one.

There is a depth to this disintegration that I haven’t experienced before – consciously. Even though something feels so familiar, every moment an encounter with a person that I have known forever for as far as I can feel, the freshness of my tears births a sense of unknown aliveness.
I recently listened to Ólafur Arnalds' music with dear friends. One of them asked my partner what this music means to him, what it 'is' really. My partner mentioned loneliness, sadness, and beauty. He gently asked me how I would describe it. My thoughts became thinner and thinner, my sensorial body opened up. I listened to the sounds which did not reach the musical coastline.

'It makes silence hearable.'

Huisclown

Ik dij energetisch uit, leef wat meer in de ruimte. Vertragend, doorademend, verzet ontspannend. Gedachteconstructies vallen langzaam uit eén. Sommige zijn hardnekkig zwart-wit. Lachwekkend, dat ook. Met daaronder soms een zilte storm tranen. Mag ook. In de ruimte is er ruimte. Ruimte voor spontane, innerlijke bewegingen. Wat ontstaat er dan zoal?

Een huisclown. Eens per dag of enkele dagen zet ik spontaan die rode neus op. Onze dochter geniet. Het was even wennen, maar nu is er sprake van regelmatige boekingen door ons jongste gezinslid. En ik hoor mezelf dan grootmoederlijk zeggen 'We gaan het zien of ie er vandaag ook is, dat zou gezellig zijn'. De leefvoorwaarde van de clown is leegte, onzekerheid, potentieel, ruimte, noem het wat voor jou nu past. Soms borrelt ie op tijdens het ontbijt, dan weer direct bij thuiskomst van de opvang. Onbepaalde samenzijn momenten blijken te broeien van potentieel plezier.

Des te sprekend is dat ook partnerlief af en toe eén wordt met mij-als-clown. 'Je was het echt even!' Animistisch mooi!

De huisclown, deze 'familiar fool', intensiveert het gevoel oké te zijn met de vele uitingsvormen van 'mezelf'. Thuis is waar ik voel contextueel 'te ontstaan'.

Het experiment ontspant sociale patronen. Wat maakt het mij - de clown - ook uit, ik zet die transformationele neus ook op straat op, hand-in-hand wandelend met dochterlief. Oh, onverwachte winst, anderen genieten mee.... Maar dat is geen doel op voorhand, deze clown toont zich onwetend als het op verwachtingen aankomt, dat maakt hem zo aimabel. Het maakt hem niet uit en niet niet uít wat anderen van hem vinden. Fijne vent, ik zal blij zijn als ie er weer eens is. We zullen zien!

To allow life to play itself all the way out

"I am asking that we make space, phsyical, psychic room to allow life to play itself all the way out, so that rather than just getting out of the way, aging and dying can become a process of crescendo through to the end."

Op 13-jarige leeftijd schreef ik schijnbaar overtuigd: liefde is alles en het ultieme doel van leven is de dood. Wat....bedoelde ik nu? De levenswijsheid in - en uitademend voel ik die diepere zin en echtheid ervan. Ik proef het, het raakt me, het spitst mijn zintuigen. Ik voel een opening en weet waar dit over gaat. Al zou ik het op ontelbare wijze, schijnbaar tegenstrijdig, in woorden kunnen vatten, ik blijf nu. De beleving neemt en geeft ruimte. Tranen vinden hun weg naar mijn netvlies, het leven wil toegang, wil stromen. Ze wordt vastgehouden in mijn middenrif, maar breekt door tot de oppervlakte en ter plekke is de diepte vanzelflevend in lijf en geest. Intensiteit.

Zoals BJ Miller verwoordt:

"Parts of me died early on, and that's something we can all say one way or another. I got to redesign my life around this fact, and I tell you it has been a liberation to realize you can always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left, like that snowball lasting for a perfect moment, all the while melting away. If we love such moments ferociously then maybe we can learn to live well - not in spite of death, but because of it."