A body to remember

Some 25 years ago I worked as a volunteer in a place that you now would call something like a spiritual learning center but then we called it a safe haven for misfits. We organized all kinds of lectures and played videos from all kinds of Guru’s. We had workshops ranging from Trance Dance to Rebirthing and the Singing of Chakra’s. We opened the center up to teachers in Zen Meditation, Ikebana and Tai Chi. As a good little volunteer, who happened have a craving for the love and attention from the extremely handsome founder of the place, who I felt, hand picked me to volunteer. I plunged head first in all these meditations and altered states of awareness.

Every time I surfaced from one of these mind altering, spirit enhancing body checks I could see me drift further away from the handsome founder and could not see then that I was drifting closer and closer to myself. Instead I plunged back it to another rebirth session or bio energetic meditation. It was there that I first sat on a safu and counted my breath and found my first Tai Chi teacher.

Tai Chi was a course that was not very popular; people rather danced to jungle music with blindfolds on or scream their heads of in cathartic encounter groups. Being the good little volunteer that I was, I offered to “shepherd the course” as we called it. It involved all the hustle and bustle to get a course to run smoothly. So two nights a week I took care of the needs of the teacher, students and center and while I was there I learned some Tai Chi as well.

My teacher was a woman of not many word, she taught as she had been taught by her Chinese teachers and did not see the point in getting students enthusiastic, they either were or they were not. She saw herself merely as someone pointing at the moon and it was up to the students to gaze up. At a time where, in our western society, we wanted to be entertained, enthralled, persuade and encouraged I saw the group of students waver and slowly fall apart. As a good little shepherd I had no choice but to go to the Tai Chi class and it brought me a lot.

She taught “the form” and in the middle of “the routine” she would stop and you were supposed to hold that “stands”. She would walk around and “sculpted” her students in the right shape. At first I thought it was all about the esthetics of the stands and as a good little student I tried to hold on to the form she molded me in to, but after a minute standing like a statue I would feel my muscles burn and I’d flop back into a position that felt more comfortable. I could see the other students flop back too and talk amongst their selves about pork chops and the film they saw last night. Something in me knew that was not the way to get what she was teaching and as I had no where to go and the pork chops wavered in and out, I started to focus more on what she was telling my body when she was molding me into position. One evening she again gently straightened out my fingers, touched my shoulders lightly to tell them to relax, tugged my hips back to where they were supposed to be and there it was, total relaxation.

I could not belief the feeling of energy rushing through me totally free and unobstructed, breathing in and out with every fiber. I felt the power of complete body awareness and I knew that, if I wanted, I could stay in that stands for hours. I did not want to move for fear of losing that sensation, I could hear the talk of pork chops and desperately wanted to share this feeling of total freedom…..but that would mean I had to move and talk and I could not bring myself to do that. Besides I was not the teacher here, I was the student and as the shepherd I knew time was nearly up.

After class I told my teacher about my experience and she said: “now you have got a reference point, they are like little pearls, slowly but surely you will gather enough of them to string together. I saw the moon, I got the principle and now it was up to me to keep my awareness.

I use her lesson from then on and the pearls I found along the way in other disciplines like Aikido, sculpting and working with horses, made me aware how a raised shoulder can hold me back from feeling what I feel and how the flaring of my nostril can keep me from knowing what I need to know.

And when I lose sight of the moon I go back to basics, I plant my feet firmly on the ground and do a move that in Tai Chi is called the preparation. It only takes seconds to see again all the pearls I already have strung together and I smile when I hear all my teachers say: “Zen mind is beginners mind”

Message in a bottle

Have you ever send a massage in a bottle?
I had the idea of sending a message out a few years ago.

So I looked for a bottle that would be able to hold my message and after rejecting a few I found the perfect one. I had never seen a bottle like that and, being the explorer that I am, I tried to learn as much as I could about the kind of vessel I chose for this journey.

Now the writing, what kind of message could I possibly send into the world? I had put so much time and effort into finding the right bottle that a simple “hello” would not suffice. I wanted to send something that would make sense to another, something profound but not pompous, something touching but nothing sentimental, something the other could relate to without it being too personal. This goal seemed to high at times and there were many days where I wished I could go back to a simple bottle with a simple hello. But by now I had made an image in my head of “the other”, that images and the bottle on my desk kept reminding me of my initial intentions.

By thinking about the unknown other and placing myself in their unfamiliar shoes made me rummage through the things that we must share. Things like pain and fear, joy and love, the sense of belonging and the feeling of being alone and slowly but surely my message formed. Exploring my side of these things and by walking a few miles in unfamiliar shoes brought me new perspectives and left me with no reasons to hold on to the familiar and claim it as truth. It took what seemed like forever to find a proper ending to conclude the message but I finally did. After reading it and rereading it, rewriting it and rereading it again the message said: “I’m done, I’m told and I’m ready to be send”

I placed the message in the bottle and there I was, at the line where water meets land and certainty meets uncertainty and I could feel a war raging inside me, letting go or holding on. I looked back at the person I was when I started this idea and smiled, than looked at the person I had become at the end of this quest and smiled. Gently I placed the bottle in the water and saw it being swept away by the tides of change and I smiled. Knowing I had no longer any control over it filled me with a sense of relieve and sadness. Knowing that I’ve picked my bottle and words carefully gave me a feeling of wellbeing and gratitude that was unfamiliar to me.

Over the days and week that followed my mind drifted back to the bottle floating in the ocean of opportunities and I dreamed about “the other” that would find it. Those dreams went from bright pink in where the bottle would end up on a white beach where a handsome stranger would find and read the message and become instantly and forever happy, to dark gray where the bottle would be smashed to pieces and the message got eaten by sharks. I was surprised at how I would wake up from those dreams filled with emotion; after all, I let it go, didn’t I?

The weeks became months and as the tides of changes ripped through my life, the memory of the message in a bottle faded. But the writing continued and so did the quest. I found words of others that were on a similar quest and found things that were lacking in mine. Was rudely awakened many times by the real realization that you should walk the walk if you talk the talk and was overwhelmed by moments of profound joy. Pieces I found along the way began to sink in deeper and I saw that I am “the other”, the handsome stranger and the shark and I could feel how we all suffer and I became conscious of what makes it so and where it will end. It could very well be that all who embark on this voyage will come to the same conclusions but it is I who had to do the walking and be willing to go that extra mile and not just take anyone’s word for it. Having said that, words of others were great and at times instrumental in helping me on my way.

Words like:
“Our consciousness gives us the ability to empower ourselves through choice and experience compassion for ourselves and by extension compassion for others.

(a kind stranger)

Slowly but surely I am becoming a softer version of myself and see “the other” in a softer light and as I visit and revisit words of others I form my own and I get to know “the other me” even better.

And then an unexpected miracle happened, I got word from “the other”, the familiar stranger found my message and said hello and thank you. It filled me with immense gratitude and sense of wellbeing that felt strangely familiar and that’s more than enough for me.

Bramble and Broom

I have been cutting bramble and broom for days now, trying to clear a piece of land so we can plant berries and cherries.

Cutting bramble and broom that have had the run of the land for years, i did not find neat bushes with easy access or nice rows of trimmed shrubs, you find chaos. Things have grown over each other, in each other, killing each other, taking each others light and space.

I started cutting while full of energy and good plans, but after a while of snipping away at stalks and stems nothing seemed to happen. The chaos was still intact and only seemed to grow after each snip. Time to take a rake and see if I could get something to shift. So I dug in and after a fierce tug of war I could see something moving. But it moved like a thousand headed monster with thorns and slimy black spaghetti like things and when I let go of the rake the whole thing seems to jump right back to where it was minutes before.

Now was not the time to give in to frustration and think all my hard work has been wasted, more snipping was needed. After more snipping, yanking and tugging the dark thorny mass moved and was ready to be shredded and burned. After all that I found that the job had only just began, the thousand headed monster did not give up the fight that easy. By now I had the scrapes bumps and bruises to proof that. Even more snipping, tugging and raking was needed and after that I was left with a desolate piece of land, dark soil without any live, still filled with snippets of what was there before, but freed of the thousand headed monster made from bramble and broom. For the first time in years the sun touches the earth and the wind freely caresses the soil. It is open and ready for planting, or so I thought.

If I would leave it now and come back in say a year all the bramble and broom will have come back in force. The bramble and broom will be very grateful for all my hard work and will use all my snipping and raking to rejuvenate in rapid speed. So now that I see the promised land and my soul wants to plant, my head needs to take control and seek out the roots that lurk beneath the soil, make decisions on which once to dig up and which once to leave and understand that from old roots new grows will form.

Now I was ready to plant new things and keep what ever grows from the old roots under check, keenly, sharply and lead it to where I want them to go.

This story is not only true for clearing bramble and broom the same goes for clearing my heart, mind and soul.