Getting to know myself
This is me. Christopher Reusch. Creator of:
'spiritual advice from a barbarian lunatic'.
Hi, my name is Christopher Reusch. I am, to my knowledge, a human being and have somehow managed to break through my own personal dilemma and create something creative and personal, that is designed to help people finding and continuing their path to liberation.
I have been told that there are things that one should rather leave unsaid, and I must agree that I have never really listened to anyone. I have said whatever I wanted and there were times where I felt and perceived a lot of fear. So look at what you see and ask your self how much pressure someone is being subjected to that lives in the world that you find your self in when you have access to things like the internet and then feel and see how many times this person may have been rejected by everyone he knows and not knows. It's torture. That is the path of a yogi. Liberation. Suffering. There you go....! I have sacrificed basically everything that I knew about my self and was granted a vision of how my life could be if I stopped worshipping other people's opinions about my self. So I stand alone. I stand alone, but I had and still have backup. The of this page will stay this way, as everything else is somewhere in my content...
I was born on the 06.02.1989 in a small city in Germany, called Lüdenscheid. After I graduated from School, I decided to do a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Protection. Somehow things happened and I ended up writing my final thesis in the Bavarian Forest National Park. For five years they were using GPS-collars to monitor Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and red deer (Cervus elaphus).
My job was to analyse the collected data and evaluate, whether there was any connection between the activity patterns of lynx, roe deer and red deer. (In case you are interested in my findings, you are able to find my thesis and other documents at the bottom of this page.) I finished my B.Sc. in August 2014 and am henceforth able to call myself 'Engineer of Environmental Protection'. As my Bachelor Thesis already hinted, I had other things in mind, than to follow a career as an engineer (I guess I made a rhyme here). After working for several months as a call-center agent for Apple, I decided to pursue another goal. I had planned to go to South Africa and do a Masters of Science in Wildlife at the University of the Free State. Only to do that, I first needed to do a preliminary study that earned me the title of 'Bachelor of Science Honours majoring in Wildlife'.
So from 05/2016 until 12/2016 I was living at a small game reserve called Mogalakwena River Reserve, in the Limpopo Province. There I collected data on the behaviour of vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), more specifically on their diet and general activity throughout the day. I walked around with binoculars and a notepad and followed them as long as I could. The game reserve inhabited a variety of different animals, such as antilopes, crocodiles, giraffes, leopards, birds and different types of snakes scorpions and many more. After having lived there for 8 months, I went back to Germany, to apply for another study permit, so I could start with my Masters. No sooner said than done, I went back in May 2017 for another year of observation and data collection at the very same study site. There I made my fair share of experiences and collected enough data, so I could go back to Germany in 07/2018 to write up my thesis and finish my Masters. This did not go as smoothly as I hoped.
Being back in Germany, I realised that I was faced with some symptoms of depression and no motivation to write up my thesis. It took some time to pull myself together and finally, in the beginning of 2020, I handed in my Masters Thesis and was awarded the degree of 'Master of Science majoring in Wildlife'.
After my studies, I felt that I was different. After all, I had lived for several months in a small nature reserve, in the South African savannah. Surrounded by crocodiles, giraffes, snakes, scorpions, monkeys and various species of antelopes and birds, I had made experiences that changed my life. Experiences that changed me before I even realised it.
The time during my studies helped me to get to know myself better and I went from being a committed atheist to a spiritual person. I became heavily involved with the teachings of spiritual masters and was initiated into Reiki Grade 1 in March 2020. But the journey did not stop there and so, in October 2020, I decided to turn my life upside down once again. I made the decision to spend as much time as I could on the question of what I actually wanted, until I had an answer. I found this answer and it was not an easy path to get there. I reached my limits several times and had to get to know myself all over again. Finally I knew that I wanted to write a book and so I wrote the first draft of a book called 'The Book of Fear'.
What next? To say a bit about how I came to write a book, I need to go back to the year 2019. During this year I had started to become more spiritual. I had decided to be initiated in Reiki and I listened to spiritual teachers, such as Ram Dass, Alan Watts and Terence McKenna. I started to question my world view and my reality and did not understand, why I was constantly living through phases of ups and downs. I firmly believed, that it must be possible to find balance in life and to be liberated of the shackles of society. I learned a lot through observing myself and my surroundings and an idea began to sprout in my heart. I wanted to write a book. The topic somehow just came to me: fear. I knew, that I needed to write a book about fear and I also knew how it would be called: "Das Buch der Angst". Although most of my creative work up until now was in English, I was more or less sure that this book should be in German. So I started to gather experiences, insights and knowledge on the topic of fear. I did not need to include any references in this book, because I received the knowledge through observation and experiences alone. When faced with a problem, I take my time to reflect everything that happens to me, onto that problem. I was constantly concerned with the question "What is fear?" and was able to understand quite a bit about it. As my knowledge is based on my own experiences, I was able to include many examples from my own life into this book.
Who am I, you ask? Maybe I am my achievements or my experiences. Probably I am the only one who knows who I am. One thing is clear though: I have learned to question the world that surrounds me and to draw my own conclusions. I don't fit into any pigeonhole because I am an individual. I am someone who has learned to recognise my limits and redefine myself.
Between Knowing and Not Knowing
So Before I knew it, I had found my self in a position where I could no longer turn back. I had learned about the world and I had learned about a life that was different than the one that others were talking to me about. I had seen truth and I had looked deep. I had found something in Africa and during my studies, which was my creative self. What I felt was that we needed less, instead of more. What I felt was that we should feel, rather than think. What I saw was that humanity was sick and that people were relying too much on the products of the industry, rather than how they felt about the life that they had created for thremselves.
So I started to experiment with my self. I dove into a world of shamanism, psychedelics and dreams. I lost my self in order to find my self and I learned that whatever I thought I lost was still there. What I tried to find was inner peace and the connection to my inner child. A playful way to engage with life so to speak.
Each discovery came with new and unexptected teachings and as I found that there is a child living on the inside, I also found that there are people that were trying to get to what I had found. I was as homeless as the homeless, because I belonged nowhere. I had a place to live, which was my childhood room in my parents house. I had no income and nothing but my wish to continue with this weird path of creativity. I made something like friends, only I stopped believing in my self. I ran after cannabis and I ran after tobacco and I ran after company that had as little perspective as I did.
So I decided to change.
Transitioning to YOGA
After I had done all of the things I have mentioned above, I found my self an addict. Addicted to people, addicted to sugar, addicted to psychedelics and addicted to wanting to be liked.
I wanted to find out who I am without others telling me what to do. I wanted to test my own strength and I wanted to see if I could survive in a world full of people that are all just as addicted as I was, but act like they're not. I decided to focus on my own development and I started doing planks instead of smoking. I decided to go hiking, instead of running after people. I worked with my self like I was my own therapist and I allowed my self certain pleasures, while denying my self lots of others. I turned off the radiator in winter and continued to sleep on my 2cm Kapok-Mattress. In short: I forced my self to suffer and to toughen up, after a lifetime of running away from my own strength. So, here I am, the man I have become. An accomplished Yogi that acknowledges both sides at all times. A man that rose from the ashes of whatever was left after he opened the box of pandora and dared to look inside. This is the result of years of suffering and of facing the deepest depth of the human soul one can muster to look at. This is me, how he should have been raised. This is my inner child, the man and whatever is inbetween.
So ask not about who I am, but about who you have become, when everything is done...
Worldy accomplishments
The following lines are dedicated to my somewhat worldly accomplishments. They say only as much as you managed to learn from making these experiences. My life could not have turned out any different and I feel the importance of making these experiences reverberating through my entire being.
My thesis:Click on the image and start reading, if you like!
