The hero and the hermit

When I was four and people asked what I wanted to become when I grew up I said: “I want to become a maker of things or a hero”. What a maker of things exactly would be I didn’t know, but for the hero I had a clear picture in mind. I saw myself in a red deux chevaux driving around and picking up sick and injured animals who would magically be healed again. When my parents moved from the big city to the country side the image of the red deux chevaux disappeared and I started saving hedgehogs and snails in de shed, funny enough only the hedgehogs stayed in my make shift animal hospital but the snails all disappeared. My real success as animal saving hero came when I was seven and my brother found a baby magpie. He found it, but not being the nurturing hero type, he handed it over to me. With little guides from my dad, I cut up worms and pushed it down the magpie throat. I had a wonderful time seeing the magpie grow stronger and attached to me. But baby’s grow into adults and the magpie needed other magpie to be really happy, so we looked around and found a rescue center for all kinds of wildlife and they were willing to take our magpie in. Saying my good-bye’s to the magpie was a mixture of sad and happy, I had to say goodbye to a real close friend but at the same time, visiting the rescue center, opened up a whole new world for me. For years after my first success as a hero I tried to save baby birds, kittens, hedgehogs, ducklings, a piglet, a goat and a pony, some I’ve saved, some died but they all taught me big lessons.

When I was sixteen I joined the animal rescue as a volunteer. At first I only had radio and telephone duty, but soon I was allowed to ride “shotgun” on the ambulance and for a while I lived the dream. One day we got a call about a horse that had fallen over in its trailer and was trapped, we rushed over and found the horse lying on its side with its leg caught under the partition, the big cut on its leg was bleeding heavily. I could feel the shear panic of the horse crawl inside of me. There were so many people standing around, doing nothing or doing too much that I froze. I meekly followed the ambulance driver into the trailer and looked at the big cut and then looked the horses in the eye and in an instant I know that the horse knew that it was having its last fight on earth. Silently I promised the horse I would stay till the end. Then it all went very quickly, the horse tried to get up, the ambulance driver tried to get the partition off the trapped leg, the owner cried, the gush became bigger and the partition cut into the main artery, the blood came gushing out in the rhythm of the panicked horses hart, I was pushed out the trailer, others rushed in, the horse was dragged out and a big circle off people was formed to see the spectacle. I stood outside the circle feeling the live drain out of the horse, I wanted to shout: “leave him be” but I didn’t. On the way back in the ambulance I felt drained, the ambulance driver felt all pumped up, when I started to cry he stopped the ambulance, put his arm around me and maybe said something nice, than he started to feel me up and tried to kiss me, I jumped out disgusted and walked all the way home. The walk home took about two or three hours and gave me lots of time to cry and think.

I quit my job at the animal rescue and was done being a hero, or so I thought. The years that followed were filled with ambiguity; to rescue or not to rescue, beings and human beings, connection and disconnection. Then one day I met up with a woman who had her own rescue syndrome. I was lead into the world of psychiatry and a group of hero’s that all were plotting to help people that were in psychiatric care make the transition back into the “normal” world. The hero in me jumped in and I saw more madness than I care to remember, from electro-shock and people who were fine with their medicated lives, to rescue workers that didn’t know when they were beaten by the rescues and the total disconnection between system and syndrome. After three years I realized that most people there didn’t want to be helped at all and that to most people who were helping that was exactly to their liking. I left that world of pretence.

Then I met a ex-junky who had seen the light and started a place where other ex-users of all sorts could come and find their way back into the “real” world. Because he was from “the other side” and had a totally different approach I put my hero energy into that center of pretence and experienced more elaborate ways of using the worlds resources, situations and people than I could ever hold possible. In all fairness I must state that I have learned a lot during that time. The main thing being that whatever I did helped me more than it helped anybody else and I should drop the pretence.

Whenever people would asked me at that time what I would like to be I would said, I want to become a maker of things or a hermit. For a long time I’ve worked on the hermit part, but having neither the money to buy myself a small island, nor the makings of a devotee to become a nun. I had no choice but to be among humans. I’ve met loads of wonderful people, funny people, wise people, strange people, dangerous people, warm people, people in whose company I’d felt save and I rejoice having met all of them, learned from them, connected with them. And as it stands now I somehow turned out to be a pretty good maker of things.

Emotion vs. Logic

I have always viewed myself as an emotional person, ask anyone around me and they will agree. As a child and young adult I only had an emotional response to any situation. I had soft emotions like feeling all tingly when watching something pretty, falling in love or eating something nice and hard emotions like overwhelming fear, anger for being misunderstood, sheer panic and even hate. I resented logical people, saw them as unreal and could not understand or deal with their logic.

But over the years I have seen myself change through all kinds of meditation and other ways of becoming more aware. I have witnessed myself get all tangled up in emotions and discovered that fear has many faces and functions, and discovered that emotions aren’t as pure as I thought they were.

I picture emotions like a water well; where it come to the service the water is all clear and pure, as its starts to flow, slowly all kinds of debris get into the water, things from long ago, like fear and pain. Pretty soon it is no longer clear what came from the source and what is added. For me meditation gave me tools to filter out the “add-ons”

In the period when my dad slowly lost his mind to Alzheimer, being able to “filter” was crucial. In the first few years no one knew what was happening and it caused a lot of confusion and even more emotions. My dad’s fear came out as anger, my mom’s fear came out in panic and tears, my brother fear came out as detachment and mine came out as filtering everything and becoming very logical.

Over a period of seven years big decisions had to be made, daycare, nursing home, hospitals, morphine-drips, casket, funeral. In that period I filtered the emotions from everyone involved and tried to figure out what the source was, what are our options, how to balance everything out and help make logical decisions. Being the youngest off the bunch it wasn’t easy and a lot of unfiltered emotions came my way. Recently we looked back on that period, my mum confessed that she leaned heavy on my logic and my brother told me he had hated me for being the stronger one and I had to confessed that I wasn’t that confident at all, that I had felt alone and afraid but I just knew someone had to step away from getting all tangled up by emotion, it just happened to be me.

I still see myself as an emotional person but my resentment to logic has disappeared. In having seen both sides now, I know that as emotions can get all tangled up and filed with debris so logic can get all cluttered with theories and opinions.

Emotions are scary things when you are confronted with only the add-ons and its manipulations, same as logic is dangerous when it is all cluttered and full of opinions and judgment.

Emotions are something to admire as a thing of beauty when they are raw but pure, the same admiration I have for logic when it is pure and without judgment.

It made me wonder; when we strip emotion from the debris and we strip logic from the judgment will we find they come from the same source?

The Aiki principle

Ri stands for the universal principle, the principle that can not be named, but can be known.

From this two circles are formed.

Doing and not doing.
These two merge and manifest themselves in energy, Ki
Energy flows through everything and by creation becomes “tangible” in form, Ji.

When awareness grows we know when a form, be it movement, sound, or object has Ri or lacks it completely. We are moved by it and can’t deny its truth or its beauty.

We instinctively know when we are conned by plastic lookalikes, hollow words, standardized emotions and empty gestures.

So let yourself be moved by Ri and don't fall for empty Ji

Me and the sea

A few years back I was walking along the beach, like I so often do, only this time I had this incredible urge to go and dive in. The weather was cloudy and not particularly warm and I didn’t have a bathing suite with me, but the need to go in the water was nagging at me like a small child whining for ice-cream. It wasn’t a busy day on the beach, and with a quick look around I decided to go for it, so I took off my shoes and cloths and waded in. The water was cold and I could feel chicken skin form on my legs, but I braved it and plunged in, head first. When I came up, my breathing was short and sharp and I could feel the waters cold reach my bones, but something in me was happy. I started to swim in an attempt to get warm and in the hope it would help me figure out what I was doing there. After a while I got tired and a bit bored with swimming, I wasn’t that cold anymore and the sun had come out, so I thought; “why not float for a bit”. I turned myself on my back and relaxed. I’ve always loved the water and trust it completely, so as soon as I could feel me and the sea have the right balance, I let go. My ears were under water and just enough of my face above water to breathe comfortably, meanwhile the sun warmed my tummy and I let my arms and legs dangled with the current. A voice without words said “that’s right” and I could feel a smile curl around my lips and I let go some more. Soon I lost the feeling of were I ended and the sea began, I could feel the waves kiss distant shores and warm and cold currents meeting. I could reach into the dark depth of this big water and touch the bottom and feel it stretch itself in all directions and wrap around the earth. At the same time I could see myself floating, without it really being in pictures. I felt completely at ease and could have floated there till this very moment if it hadn’t been for a seagull landing on my belly, the light touch of its feet brought me right back into my human form. The encounter startled both seagull and me. The seagull flew off and I let myself sink into the sea. When I serviced I was laughing so loud that a man, who happened to pass by, stopped and stared, I waved at him and let myself fall back into the sea laughing while a seagull cried it’s soul piercing cry. Without any words I poured my heart out in thanks to the sea and the voiceless voice embraced me with a “you’re welcome”.

Mindless less mind

Being someone that always thought to be the dummy by others and myself, I never had much faith in my mind, which now turns out to be rather a good thing. Not having to schlep the burden of formal intelligence around I can fall back on experiencing the world as I’ve always done. The thing that changed greatly though is the calm I feel. I’m no longer scared that what I feel doesn’t measure up to the thoughts and theories others have. I know where I have been and I know where I went wrong. The compass by which I steer is getting more and more accurate and is no longer hindered by the magnet of self doubt. It is okay to not know and learn, like it is okay to not do and listen. The freedom it gives me is immense, and the vastness of the knowledge I can partake in is immeasurable.