Godly Substances?

Eternally an Unfinished Work

Before you start reading this, please know that I have had my experiences with "psychedelics" and that they revealed to me certain perspectives, visions, feelings that I was formerly unaware of. Please also know that "psychedelics" are tools that ought to open you, to release energy in one orgasmic experience. Now you must understand that this energy will be missing at a later stage. Later can be next week. Later can be your relationship with your wife, or the time you spend being creative. "Psychedelics" do not give you energy, but use the energy you have stored up. This is important to understand. This part of my website is therefore an aid to people who still think "Psychedelics" are what they need. You are psychedelic by nature and only by going into nature can you understand what I mean. This is why my message is thus: If you feel like making experiences with certain tools, then do so while knowing that you will have to let go of this method of connecting with the felt reality / oneness / the one mind / Gaia / Nature through the means of using certain tools.

Hi! I have reposted this post as it was formerly in its own section. I needed space for the Music and added this entry to the Blog-Section instead. I would like to tell you that I have also written a book on psychedelics quite recently. You can find it under the following link:
"Not mad, ness? - hacking your life with psychedelics: extended version"

For many moons have I ventured the hidden paths of my consciousness. I have visited areas I would never have found without mother nature. I would like to talk to you about my experiences I have gathered through psychedelic medicine - as one might call it. I figured the tools I use for my spiritual work should have their own space and not be mixed in with everything else. With this I would like to talk about my own experience with different kinds of plant-based indigenous medicines. For those of you who are wanderers in the realms of consciousness, these tools might pose useful in reaching new heights or gaining clarity over some matters. Some of them are quite powerful and need to be used carefully. This page is of a solely informative manner and does not urge you to do any of this. That said, please use my own experience as something to learn from and get an idea of how to progress to reach your own specific goals.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. To use or to be used?
3. Set and Setting
4. Releasing Energies
5. Buddy awareness
6. Through the nose?
7. Mario's Delight
8. Jungles and Deserts
9. Investigating laboratories

Was it love, or hate?

Let us begin this post with one word: Duality.

Now there were already several words, but what I tried to mean, and what I meant, was to direct your attention, your focus onto this one very specific word.
Duality.

What is it? Duality is what comes after oneness. Oneness is the knowledge, that everything is one. God. We are all connected. There is no separation. The fear of most people is separation and it starts, quite simply, at birth. A woman will feel what it means to separate from something that she has nurtured inside of her, where it was safe. Some women probably would rather keep their child on the inside. Nobody to take it away from you. Nobody to say naughty things about your child. Nobody to judge your child. At least less likely.

Now you are born. You? The child. A moment ago you felt like one with your mother and your mother felt you inside of her and she felt one with her child too. Then, quite suddenly the birth canal gets all wide and open and you slide - you? The child - into the world. Splosh! and out you are. Breathing, crying, sucking and taking big shits inside your diapers.

Quite weird, is it not? From one moment to the next you are separated and depending on your birthing sequence and your character - you? The child, most naturally.

Everybody is different, but every child that wants to have a round on "planet" earth will experience being born. Not like this, because quite often Doctors (self-proclaimed gods of telling you what to do) think that they would need to make a little cut and take you (?) out by their own means, because according to them, nature isn't very good at it.

Separation. What a scary place. No matter how you came into this world, or out of it, you will be separated. The latest stage of separation is the cutting of the umbilical cord and there you go: Separation.

Why are we so afraid of separation?

"Fear? What is that? I have no fear!", is what most people say when you feel like you caught them at being afraid. Nobody is afraid, according to them. Not even you (and this time I actually do mean you), quite possibly.

This is how fear looks like on the inside. At least that's what I feel like, when I am overwhelmed by an emotion. if you really take the time to have a look at fear, then you can figure out what caused you to be afraid in the first place.

There isn't just fear however. There are also other kinds of emotions, such as hate. Hate is often a result of fear and so is shame. We are afraid of not being loved and sometimes we feel ashamed about our own behaviour. Why though? It is often the other person that gives us the feeling that we ought to feel ashamed. In this way you are guilty and they are free from guilt. You are carrying their cross of shame and guilt. Don't do that. Everyone needs to look at their own fear and as long as you allow them to shame you, or make you look like the bad one, you loose. You loose the love in your life, because bit by bit, it is being replaced with feelings of resentment. You start to believe that all these nasty emotions that others were giving you and projecting onto you, are actually who you are. Bit by bit, you forget to remember that you are actually full of light.

Maybe you begin to see your self more like some kind of vicious and deadly animal that people ought to be afraid of?

This article isn't going to be overly long. I still have an appointment with some stinging nettles, because yesterday I was called by them, to receive some healing. Healing, I say and what I mean with that, is the sting of the nettle. Often it will sting to open your heart and to let go of certain emotions. Maybe you have hated for such a long time, that you started to define your self with the one that hates. You began to forget, bit by bit, that you are also love. We have both inside of us and it is important to remember and acknowledge this. Some people only try to love and they run away into the light, without ever dealing with their darkness. The darkness first needs to be looked at, before one can smile upon it.

Fear is that way. It only looks bad, if you are afraid. Afraid of your self, afraid of other people. The part in you that hates is the part that is afraid. That part is just the collection of things that you may have done, or that people would want you to be responsible of. What have you really done that is so terrible? Have you once shouted at someone? Have you said nasty things?

Have a look at this saying and I am sure you have heard it before:
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words (names) can never hurt me.

What does it really say? It says that we often believe that someone can hurt us with mere words. The reason for this misconception of truth is fear. We are afraid to be nasty, or a bitch, or an asshole, or ugly, or disgusting, because we think these things of ourselves. We are so afraid of being terrible, that when someone calls us terrible names, it hurts us. Not quite right.

It does not hurt us. It shows us that there is a wound, a trauma, that needs to be looked at. It tells us that we should take some time for ourselves and heal. It says that there is pain and pointing at it, or touching it (with words) shows us that the pain is there. Until now we have tried to ignore it. We tried to even forget that it existed and we have started to use all kinds of coping mechanisms. We keep people at a distance, because we begin to believe that it is better that way. We drink alcohol, we smoke cannabis and we do all kinds of things. We watch a lot of movies, because in the world of a movie, my trauma does not exist. Only it does. Some people keep reading books about rape, instead of dealing with their emotional trauma. They say they are fine, while actually they avoid looking at it. And maybe reading books about it, or watching movies about it also helps. Who is to say?

This post turns out a bit like my books, only not as extensive and intensive, I would say. There is of course a reason why I do this, because writing books means an income for me, while doing blog-posts, does not. Maybe you could call this a teaser. I have learned something and that is: We are living in a world, where money is important. If I would spend hours and days writing things for my website, people would use it and they would like it, but they would never ever be able to appreciate what I am giving them. This is why most of my content is in the form of books and also why I spend most of my time writing books. it is my choice. I give value to my work and as such, i am okay with the fact that some people won't read them, because they want everything for free. My books are not for free, because I discovered my own value and the value of my work. I need to also think a bit of my self.

Maybe this is what you would need to do sometimes. Think a bit about how others are treating you and think about drawing boundaries. Sometimes we surround ourselves with people (even family) that put us into a certain position, or place and the judge us for what we have done. In this way you will feel terrible and they will feel good. You may do the same sometimes. Love starts with you. If you want people to love you, you are their slave and you will feel miserable if they don't.

This is where I introduce the black and white, Ying and Yang, good or evil concept of duality.

Everything has two sides. Everything. You have two sides and your family has two sides. They act like they are holy, but they give you the feeling that you are a piece of shit. Trash. Fucked up. Crazy. Weird. Rotten. Addicted. All kinds of things.

They do this, because they too are afraid. They are afraid that they are all of these things, so saying that you are these things makes it so much easier. You are happy to believe that you are evil and terrible, because you learned to feel loved through punishment. This is how this system works. If you don't do as I say, I will punish you. On YT I cannot openly say that - let's say - a certain set of symptoms attributed to a viral infection is a lie. They gave me a warning and they deleted some of my videos. I was then forced to make a decision. I decided to take down some of the contents and talk about some matters in my books or on my podcast.

Sometimes you have to make compromises, you see? Nobody is forcing you to do anything. usually it is us that tell ourselves that we "have" to do certain things. I am free and I have a choice. I choose to keep some videos on YouTube, because I have something to say and it is more important to me, to say it on YouTube, than to be stubborn and be banned. It is a conscious decision, even though I dislike it party, it still is a conscious decision.

Can you make a conscious decision, about what kind of people, thoughts and ideas you want to have in your own system? Can you make a conscious decision for love, or hate? Can you deal with your fear in a conscious way?

Laughing at Jesus

If somebody would ask you what or who Jesus is, then what would you say?

Do you think of Jesus as the guy who got nailed to the cross?

How come that the Christian Church is looking at Jesus nailed to the cross, rather than Jesus when he was without holes. Holy is what he was afterwards, was it not? The same people that nailed Jesus to the cross, also spread the lie that red wine is the blood of Christ and ordinary bread is his flesh. Christ. Christ consciousness.

Does that ring a bell?

How many words must I write, in order to read for one hour? Can you tell? I cannot. It is a question, but to answer it, you must try. Make an experience. Go out into the woods and find out.

I love Jesus. I love Jesus, because I know he was like me and still is. Jesus stands for something. Jesus was not just preaching love, he was preaching truth. He would get mad at you, if you were phony holy and therefore they nailed him to the cross. They hated Jesus, because they were liars.

These liars are still amongst us, because the spirits that were guiding them just switched the bodies.

You look at Jesus and you look at the church. The church says that you must only repent for your sins with a priest and you are fine. They claim that they can erase your sin. Nobody can erase your sins through words. You can only erase your sins through deeds.

What are your deeds?

You lie and you cheat and you look down on others? Afterwards you go to a priest and he tells you that your sins are now gone, because they once nailed Jesus to the cross. They tell you that Jesus died for our sins. Wrong. Jesus died, because of the sins of the people back then. These are not my sins. These sins were back then. Jesus stands for truth and yet, all these good Christians are laughing at Jesus. I, too, was laughing at Jesus, because the way Jesus is portrayed is laughable. The Christian Church is something to laugh at, because they are as phony as they come, all of them. Whoever believes in the church, believes in the lie.

The entire system is a lie.

A Muslim once told me that in order to understand the Islam, I have to look at the religion and not at the people, the Muslims. The people are the religion, are they not?

Good Christians walk the streets, but they just hide beneath the mantle of a word. "I am a Christian". That makes you a liar. You define your self as something that was responsible for the crossing of a righteous man. You drink red wine and you seriously think that this will bring you to heaven. Do you realise that alcohol makes you more stupid. Have you ever tried Ayahuasca, or Jurema? You would probably shit your pants, because of all the lies you have been nurturing in your self.

How many stories are there of priests that drank Ayahuasca and could not continue with their former Christian beliefs any more? They suddenly knew how it feels like to meet god. To "be in love". All those Christians and all those Muslims only know words, unless they live what they preach. Most of them only preach, but do not live. They look at the world and all they see is sinners that must be punished.

They are phony, because they think they got it right. They help homeless people, but are disgusted by them. They claim to be Christians and they make fun of Jesus. I hated it. I hated it and I became an atheist. That was the most honest thing that I could have done at the time. I hated the church and the way they live their lies. I became an atheist, because it was better to believe in science, than to believe in a lie. Of course, atheism was also a lie, but it was necessary to distance my self from the lie of god. I stopped believing in God, because I could not find it with the people that claim to have found him. I sensed their lies and therefore I left.

I walked my path and somehow I found my self once more in the presence of God. God within me and god without me. He is within and he is without. As above so below. Up and down. Inside and outside.

The truth is that God is a feeling, not a book. God is about letting go, instead of clinging to traditions and words.

You need no words when you pray. All you need is truth.

To be with god, means to be with your self. Connected to your true self.

You would never laugh at Jesus, if you would understand how he lived and what he did. If you would understand what he stood for, you could never pray to Jesus on the cross. If you believe that Jesus died that day, than you have been deceived. Jesus was highly spiritual. Jesus was taught to brew Jurema in the desert and he was tempted by the devil. The devil surrounds us from all sides. Coffee. Sugar. Porn. Smartphones. Dopamine. Rushes. Sex. Flesh. Meat.

I am far from being perfect, but I try to live as truthful as I can. If I fail, I am honest about it. I know of my faults and of my strengths and I deal with them how I see fit. Nobody needs to judge me, because I can do so my self. Nobody needs to nail me to a cross, for sins I did not commit, because nobody is without sin. He who is without sin shall throw the first rock. Have you learned nothing from these words? You laugh at Jesus, while hiding inside your own bubble. You laugh at Jesus, while being as phony as they come.

Hypocrite. Liar. Cheat.

Run, little man. Run little girl. Be scared, or play. Be true, or false.

Live. Love. Let go. Continue.

How to be alone without killing your self

Hi, my name is Christopher. Wait, did I say that already? Well, you probably know, because you are right here on my Website. First of all, I would like to share something with you. My past: Cricket, sorry I meant Click it. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned? For anyone who feels, like this is too private, I say sorry. It is as much my life as it is yours and as such I do not need to ask permission, to disclose something of it. Plus: I deleted my account and have no means to delete this blog anymore.

Recently I have been somewhat lazy to write things here. I believe the reason is fairly simple and obvious, once you start looking for it and once you begin to understand it in all its complexity. What did I just say? Say? Say? Nay....

My life is a collection of awesome experiences and yet, I had trouble to see them as such. I was unable to look beyond the melodrama of my inner frustration and self pity. The question arises, why this is so? Maybe it has something to do with my inability of being alone, for the most part of my life? I remember writing my Blog in the South African Savanna and putting on really loud music. Really Loud. I mean: REALLY LOUD! If you would have wanted to talk to me, you would have needed to shout at the top of your lungs. By the way: "The art of shouting at someone at the top of your lungs" is one of the chapters - or sections - in my newest book, which will be available sometime in the future. It is called (what was it again?) - that's not the name by the way - Am I weird or is it just me with the following subtitle....still following...or: How to find true love. Interesting right? Interesting is also, how I managed to refrain (avoiding the word not) from killing myself when being on my own, or how most people would phrase it: alone. Jesus what am I talking about here? Is this still in line with my general protocol of going about the stuff I want to go about? Letting it flow into the toilet and hoping to never see it again does not work at all with you emotions or your past for that matter. Still following? No? Then read it again and again and again, until something meaningful reveals itself to you and until you can read what I just wrote without stumbling over your own tongue. I am writing rather fast, so I assume you would have to read all of this rather fast too. The skill of writing fast probably developed somewhere in Africa, too. Too afraid to stop now and too stubborn to continue. Wait that should be the other wax round or am I mistaken....taking a break and doing some push-ups may be a good idea, while I do not believe it is considering, that I drank a coffee for the exact purpose of getting into this state of flow. Why would I do something and then dis-allow my self to pull through with it? Why the heck would I be so amazing and not be able to see it? There you go. Back on track. Just a matter of time.

The problem most of us, including may for the majority of my so-called life, are facing nowadays is, that we are unable to be alone. Why is this the case? Inferiority? Fear in general is probably a good place to start. We are afraid to be alone, because we were taught by everyone that surrounds us, that being alone is something terrible. I know that my parents have trouble to be alone and I know that most of my friends have trouble to be alone. Wait. These are the friends from my past. Not having to deal with them anymore, after I said goodbye to them, is one of the most liberating things I did in my life. They were clingy and I was clingy. I did not want to be clingy anymore, so I stopped hanging out with clingy people. My family is clingy too, but that is my family....

Actually it is quite simple to stay alive and choose to be alone for some time. You do so consciously. You stop having contact with everyone you know and you start figuring out ways for you to be alone and not feel miserable. I did so over Christmas and NYE. I spend most of these days alone in my room and talked to nobody. No messaging, no nothing. No messengers and no Internet. Just me and one room. It was hard, but the best thing I ever did. I started to realise, that the only person who knows what I want and who understands my needs, is myself. I alone am capable of giving my self, what my self truly needs. As long as I keep looking for others to give me what I need, I am a sucker. I am hanging on their sleeves and I am waiting for someone to come and give me the things that I ought to be giving my self. Whether it is food, of a hug, or a smile or simply a good time. Most people are so needy, it makes me want to punch them in the gut. It is true. It makes me angry, because I see my self in them. I see the way I used to be and I never want to go back to being such a person. Once I understood how needy I was and how needy everyone around me is, I could start to stop being so needy. I stopped encouraging others to show this kind of behaviour in my presence, so that they start getting it from other people. I do not have time or the energy to share with needy people anymore. Unless they have the guts to work on themselves. This is why I decided to keep going with my work. The only people I want to support in their transformation, are the people who are able to see through my madness and find truth. This kind of truth will be the most liberating present I can give to you. There will be people, who will see what I do as entertaining. These people exist and I will probably be unable to get rid of them. Those few of you, who realise the message I send here, will be able to look behind the obvious and you should get in touch with me, if you want. All the information on how to do that is on this Website. Drop me an e-mail and see what comes out of it. I guarantee you that I will find ways to challenge you. I do not charge money for this, but I do rely on donations, which you may or may not send to me. I need to say this, because I also need to make sure that people understand, that what I am doing is not simply a hobby or fun - NO - it is deadly serious and only for those who are about to rock their life from the bottom of their heart. To be continue in another expression of truth . . . .

Depression

Here I sit in my bed, typing away. It is 1:33 in the morning and I cannot sleep. I am not even sure if it is, that I cannot sleep, but more that I do not want to sleep. These past couple of weeks feel heavy and light. So strange, to change. At times I feel so much bliss and then...

There more I am in this state of depression, the better I learn to understand it. It is not the same anymore as it was before. I feel that it is less heavy, but heavy it still is. Writing these lines feels strange, because observing yourself, while being somewhat sad and then writing about it, seems strange, doesn't it?

It is the only way I know how to deal with it, though!

I have accomplished so much recently and a part of me is wishing for something to change. I feel sick of still living in my old room. I feel sick of having no money. I feel sick of being alone. At the same time I want to be alone. At the same time I enjoy being alone, because I can be creative. I have created so much in the last weeks, my YouTube Channel, my Website and the two books I published speak for themselves. Still, I am impatient. I want that I finally grow out of myself. I want that something happens. I often feel, like I want to be rescued by someone. I am constantly waiting for something to happen and that makes me sick. It makes me depressed, because I feel like the world should be different. Instead of accepting the way things are right now and being thankful, I wish it were different. That is what makes me sad. Not accepting my circumstances as they are...

That too is okay I believe. I do not always have to be grateful. I do not always have to be happy. I have worked a lot and sometimes I can allow myself to feel miserable. I have given up so much in the past months. I gave these things up, because my feeling told me, to do so. Friends I will never see again. Things that I threw away or burned. Pictures I deleted. Memories destroyed, from a life that is now in the past. I have transformed myself and sometimes it makes me sad. How often do I think of the friends, that no longer suited me and my path? Almost every day I think about them. Almost every day I wonder, whether I have made a mistake, to let all these things go. I begin to understand, that it is part of the process, to question. It is part of the process to mourn. I always try to keep myself from mourning. I am good at telling myself, that everything is perfect. Sometimes I am sad. Sometimes I am happy. Right now I feel bad. Tomorrow I might feel good again. The sooner I accept, that right now I need to feel bad, the easier it will be to get out of it.

Depression can be something horrible, when we try to fight it. When you try to observe yourself, while you are depressed, it gets easier. Seeing it as a phase, that will pass, makes it easier. What also makes it easier, is being creative. When I do not feel good these days, I do something creative. Today I painted the rat. The sketch already existed, because it was designed for my book. So I coloured it and put some background behind it. This is the kind of work that I can easily do, when I feel like I do today. The worst thing about feeling depressed is, that I do not allow myself to rest or to do something healthy. I want to eat sugar and fat and I want to stay inside. Although I know, that eating healthy and going outside, would really help me. Right now I am waiting. I am waiting for the universe to get going. There is actually nothing for me to do right now. Nothing but waiting. Waiting is impossible, when I am supposed to wait. It makes me crazy, so I work into the night. I overwork myself and I eat too much sugar. I stop doing my stretching and I stop working out. I feel terrible. It is a decision. Every day I decide, how I want to feel. I could easily take up my routine right now. Only, a part of me doesn't want to. A part of me feels like being lazy. Maybe it is my way of relaxing? Not taking things so seriously? Sleeping little and staying up late? I have been very disciplined lately and maybe this is my way of relaxing. I need to rest, but sleeping is impossible. SO I eat ice-cream at 12am and chips, instead of rice with dal. A part of me really enjoys this. Being spiritual does not mean, that you have to be perfect. Being spiritual does not mean, you cannot watch TV while eating. Being spiritual does not mean, you cannot be angry at god or the universe. Being spiritual means, that you realised, that there is a choice. You do not have to do this forever, but sometimes it is worth feeling depressed. Today I felt depressed, so that I can feel motivated tomorrow.

What I learned is the following:
Observation is the one skill, that helps me remember that my depression is not who I am. I observe myself and I realise that there is something, which is bothering me. Yesterday at 2am I handed it 'The Book of Fear' for publication. Of course I am nervous. It was something big for me. A big step and an important one too. A lot of work flowed into this book and now I have finalised it. I learned to observed myself, so I know that this is what is feeling heavy right now. If I would not observe myself, I wouldn't be able to know this. Most people are depressed and they have no idea why. When I am depressed, I know why I am depressed. This is what helps me to get through it. Knowing what is heavy and knowing that it is only a phase. Feeling depressed is a phase that will pass and I can focus on all the nice stuff that I want to do, when I am no longer depressed.

In the meantime, I allow myself to really go in there. I allow myself to eat sugar until I feel sick of it. I do this consciously. It is an active decision. Now I decide to stop writing, because my hands are hurting and I really need some sleep!

Remember:

Depression is a decision.
And so is happiness.

Something else that I have the pleasure of letting you know! In case you have not seen it yet, I have created a series on my YouTube Channel on the topic of depression.

In This series I elaborate further on the topic and talk about how I deal with depression!
Click on the video below, to get to my YouTube Channel and the Playlist:

I have to add at this point that I have deleted the majority of my really old videos, because YT's censoring was threatening the existence of my Channel. I realised that I said lots of stuff on the claims made by the Health-Industry, especially from 2021 onward and I decided to keep this for my Podcast and books. YouTube is a different medium, but certain content-guidelines are simple censorship and this needs to be regarded when aiming to use the platform to advertise one's message. It was more important for me to keep using YT as a means to spread my message, than to be stubborn and ignorant of the fact that YT is run by certain shareholders with specific interests and is therefore not free to do as one pleases. Is this a problem? Well, Just gather the information you can, from using any such platform and then spread the message as an insider in a "matter of fact" Way, without over-emotionalising your discoveries. You are thus taking the standpoint of a "scientist" that is doing self-selected research-assignments as a sort of spiritual homework on the way the world works, especially in terms of Truth. You can then present what you found without shouting at anyone (as I might have done). This also means that you know what you're talking about, which means that you can allow your self to form an informed opinion, rather than parroting what others were saying. Get it?

Being in love

Hello you! Yes, you! I mean you. Are you reading these lines? The last few weeks were quite interesting. I did this and I did that, but most of all I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. Each day I would get up and ask myself the question: "What do I want to do?", only to be struck by confusion. Some days I knew what to do and some days I did not know what to do. Do you know this feeling of confusion? I do! It confuses me heavily, that some morning I would wake up and know for certain that there is this one thing which I have to do. This one task which needs to be done before the day is over. For some time it would be finishing my book. I was very determined in the last weeks. I knew what my task was and I finished it. Suddenly I finished that task. What now? What to do, when you have nothing to do? Any normal person gets up and goes to work. They run some errands or do whatever needs to be done. Most people have jobs, where you already know from the description what needs to be done. People instruct you and you do what you learned to do. Now I found myself in a situation, which I created myself. I did not want anyone to tell me what to do. Only what to do, when nobody tells you what to do? Quite confusing isn't it? You make a decision. Wait. I make a decision. I made a decision. I decided, that I do not want to work for anyone else any more. So I need to figure out what to do next on my own. The problem is, that after I finished writing that book I only had these minor tasks to do. Add a contact form to my website. Write a poem. Record some footage for the next podcast series. After working on "Das Buch der Angst", there was a big chunk of work, time and energy that suddenly discharged. I published the book and all that energy was sent out in one instant. Should I not go around and promote my book now? Well, here's the problem with that. I do not believe in that. I believe, that when you create something truly good, there is no need for advertisement. It will just happen as it is supposed to happen. If I should be a successful author, I will be. So I refrained from doing heavy promotive work. I refrained from going on social media. I did talk about it in my podcast though. The rest I want to happen by itself. If you create something with love, it has to be good, no? If you create something, you basically give birth to it. You go pregnant with an idea and you nurture it. You feed it until it grows and until it can walk on its own and then you let it fly or walk or do whatever it wants. This is how I see what happened with my book. Some month ago I had this crazy idea, to write a book about fear. So I started to reflect on the topic. I was obsesses with understanding fear and with mastering it. I did not want to be a slave of my own fears any more. I also did not want to be a slave of fear from the outside any more. So I observed and I reflected and I learned to understand what fear is. Then I started to write. I started to draw and I started to create. Words were flowing from my fingers like raindrops gliding down your face. My emotions, my being and my beliefs flowed into this book. Many times I was scared to continue. Many times I wondered whether I shouldn't just stop and get a job. Many times I questioned the validity of what I was saying. Shouldn't I do it different? Are people going to like it? Through all these thoughts I waded and every time that I felt doubt creeping up my spine, I made a decision. I decided every time anew, that I would not stop. I decided every time, that I would trust in myself and continue. On the 17th of September I felt that it was completed. There was no further work to do, than to hand it in for publication. Only here I was, faced with the last obstacle. Publication. Submitting completely to my work and trusting in it. A big step. I felt I wasn't ready. I knew I wasn't ready. I imagined myself going over it once more and checking for spelling mistakes, but as I watched myself in front of my inner eye, I realised that it did not feel right. I knew, that there was only one thing to do, which was handing it in. I shut down my laptop and grabbed my slackline and I went to the park. I felt uncertain and I was scared. So I did something to overcome my own fear. Instead of putting up the slackline at my usual height, which is about hip height, I put it up higher. Head height. 1.75m above the ground. You heard me. I did not question why I was doing it, because I knew why. I was raising the bar. Publishing a book, is raising the bar. For me it was a symbol. A symbol, that I would not submit to my fear. A symbol, that I believe in myself. So I got on the slackline and I walked. I walked back and forth a couple of times and although I did not manage to turn, I had accomplished what I came there to do. I knew again what need to be done. I knew what I needed to do. I had faced my fear and I packed up and left. As I was back in my tiny room, I turned on my laptop, uploaded the book and completed the process.

I felt happy, but of course I also felt scared. What if people did not like it? What do I need to do next? Millions of questions suddenly started to pop up. First of all, there was one thing I knew. There is always somebody who likes it. Opinions exist in all shaped and varieties and therefore I also knew one thing. I do not need to ask for opinions. I also do not need to send my book to any reviewer. Nobody had seen my book before I published it. Nobody was allowed to read it or comment on it. This book was born out of myself and as such, nobody has the right to criticise it, unless I ask them to. Humans are always eager to give their opinion on anything. Most of these opinions are worthless. I created something, which was born out of my love, my creativity and my passion. Through writing this book I also learned something else. Most people believe, that in order to be 'in love' they need another human being or maybe a dog. That is false. Being 'in love' refers to a state of mind. You are 'in love' not because there is someone or something that put you there. You are 'in love', because you decided to open your heart. Once you begin to open your heart for yourself and your own future, you can be 'in love' all the time. There is no person on this planet, that can give you what you need, except for yourself. When you attach the feeling of 'love' to one person, it will vanish once that person dies and you will suffer and be sad. Imagine you discover, that love surrounds you and that love is something that is inside of you. Love is something that starts to grow in yourself, once you start asking yourself, what you want out of life. What do YOU want? You begin to imagine how your love should play out and what you would like to do with the time that was given to you. Never let anyone take you love away from you. Some people are jealous and they will try to say something bad, when you are creative. They will mock your creation, because they are jealous. They will try to destroy it. They will spit on your work with their words and their looks. They will spit on your work with their opinions. You do not need the opinion of anyone to do something great with your life. The only thing you need is trust. Trust in yourself.

You can say, that for a couple of weeks I was 'in love'. I loved working on that book so much, that I needed nobody and nothing else. I was determined. I felt exhilarated. Who needs women right? Who needs pornography right? This is exactly the feeling I have, when I was with a woman that I loved. I was 'in love'. While I was 'in love' together, everything was fine. Interesting enough to realise that I could have a similar feeling while being creative. Now that the work on this book is gone, I almost feel like a relationship has ended. My devotion and my passion seems to have lost me. Not completely, because otherwise I could not be working on my homepage or write this blog entry. I still feel similar to a breakup though. Every day is a struggle. Asking myself what to do. Making a decision. Going running or working out. I keep trying to find that flow state. I keep trying to get this feeling back, which I had while working on my book. I keep trying to elevate myself, only it doesn't work though outside measures. I feel ashamed to admit, that pornographic material has found it's way back into my go-to method. I did not watch porn for a couple of months now and suddenly it is all forgotten. So how to get back 'in love'? I keep looking for women. I keep reminding myself on someone that I once loved. Someone I still love it feels and my heart is waiting. Waiting for a call or a note or just something. At the same time I realise, that this cannot be the solution. Running to a woman for love usually did not work for me, because then I would just want to cuddle up and be stroked by her. I would be my old needy self and I would be afraid to be parted from her. So what to do? Keep going. Don't stop. The more you learn to be creative and the more you learn to find an outlet for your sexual energy in your creative work, the easier it will become to be 'in love'. Love is a place in yourself. Through creative work, you can go to that place. Creative work can be anything, that you do because you really want to. Whether it is cooking or running or doing crochet. Maybe you can clean your room with love? For me, having experienced, that I can be 'in love' through writing is an incredible experience. Never could I have imagined how this would feel like. I always looked for love in other people, until I learned to look in myself. Whatever you try to do, be patient. I could lose hope now and feel defeated, because I watched some porn again. Only I do not plan to do that. I see it as something that is happening right now. Just because I wrote a book or because I am a spiritual person, does not mean that I do not long for sexual expression. Just because I learned how to transform my sexual energy into creative energy, does not mean that I do not wish for a woman by my side, that I can love. After all, I am still a human being and for me being human means to communicate. For me sexuality is a form of communication and another way of being 'in love'. For many years I felt bad for wanting to have sex. I thought there was something wrong with me. Now I know, that it is a part of myself and that I only needed to accept it. Using my sexual energy in only one way is too extreme for myself. I can use my sexual energy and work out. I can use it and write a book. When I imagine myself and my life I know one thing for sure: I also want express myself sexually, simply because I like it.

So what do do, when there is nobody around to express yourself sexually? What if you do not have that one giant task to finish, that needs all your focus, energy and concentration? Right now, I am exactly in that place. I feel like all I have to do right now, is to be patient and keep going. For that matter I wrote down something on my Telegram Channel (I deleted the account) a couple of weeks back:
"How many words might describe how you feel like? How many words need thy utter, till you feel right? A million and more; for words are not what you need right now! What you need is something to do! Peace out!" 
. What to do then? What did I do? I looked for the things I could do. Right now I do not feel like recording episodes or like starting another book or something. So I looked for small things to do. I realised, that rather than using my imagination to start a novel or write a story, I feel more like talking from my own experience. I realised, that I did not work much on my Blog section for a while now and felt like this could be something I would want to do. Every day I get up. Every day I ask myself what to do. Every day I try to get my head around my priorities. This morning I went for a short run and then I cleaned my room. It is very important to keep the space you live in clean and free of dust and dirt. It has been three weeks now, since I last cleaned it. Although I did not feel like it, I felt that it was necessary. So I cleaned, whether I wanted to or not. Yesterday I had the feeling I could go for a walk and take some pictures. Although a part of me did not feel like it, I planned to go. I prepared myself mentally, to do what I wanted to do and what I needed to do. Every day I want to do something worthwhile, otherwise I will end up doing noting. Why do I do this? If there is nothing to do, then why do something? I do this, because I have a dream. I want to be self-employed and I want to run my own business and do what I want to do. In order to accomplish this, I have to do something. If I don't, I will feel miserable. What you do with your time is completely up to you. IT IS YOUR BUSINESS. Exactly. It is none of my business. IT IS YOUR BUSINESS. It is also none of your business what I do with my time. IT IS MY BUSINESS. If I don't do anything, that is also my business. The thing is, I want to do something. I want that my homepage and my podcast are growing. I want to make experiences and learn to work for myself. I want to be able to create an income for myself and not be dependent on others. I want to accomplish this on my own. That is why I set myself a task yesterday. I had already started to write this Blog entry. I had also announced it on my Telegram channel (I deleted this account) already. Still, I felt like I needed to add something more to it. I had this feeling, that it wasn't ready yet. Nevertheless a voice in my head tried to convince me all the time, that I didn't feel like working on it. So I prepared myself, so that I would be able to write this. I thought about what I could talk about roughly in this post and more important, what I felt like talking about in this post. When you are self-employed and working creatively, it is important to always pay attention to what your feeling tells you. What do you feel like? What is it you really want to do right now? What stands in your way? It feels weird to talk about this, but often something stands in my way. I touched the subject already, even though I feel uncomfortable about it. I do not want to paint a picture of myself, that makes me look better than I am. I do not want to glorify myself, because it would feel like lying. So I try to be as honest as I need to me. In this case I want to be honest, although I find it hard. There is no woman in my life, so I get frustrated. I am longing for some female company. Every day I am faced with this. Some days, like today I know that I will not be able to be creative, unless I visit a pornographic site. I feel dirty doing so and I also feel a bit of shame. Being open about it helps me not to feel ashamed though. If I would try to hide it, a part of myself would feel incredibly dirty about myself. I would act like everything is going smooth and nothing is bothering me. Basically what everybody does on social media. I do not want to be on social media though. This is my blog and I can write in here what I want. So how do I handle this situation? I accept it. I realised, that right now I am unable to fight this urge. I either submit to it or I struggle the whole day. Of course I still need to keep my own behaviours and routines in check. I also feel like eating all day, to treat myself and release some tension, but I decide to only eat two meals and have no snacks. Otherwise I would loose control and feel even worse. Enough of the honesty, I wanted to show you something which I did yesterday!

So yesterday I felt like going for a walk and taking my camera. I started walking, but I wasn't really motivated. I had a rough direction, but usually I end up somewhere else. That is exactly what happened yesterday. I walked for about half an hour and found myself in a nearby forest. The weather was lovely, but still I did not really understand why I was going for a walk. Like I said, my motivation was not at its peak. 200m after walking on the forest path, I felt this urge to go to the left. Just next to the path the forest took over and started climbing at a steep angle into a promising patch of woodland. When I saw a squirrel chasing acorns across the forest floor, my feeling became stronger and I left the path. I walked up the slope and was amazed by the beauty of the area. The warm and bright sunlight was breaking through the canopy in some areas and further up I saw a nice open area, which looked promising. The first thing I did was put down my backpack and lie down. I wasn't really in the mood to take any pictures at all and felt more like sleeping. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of being alone. For the first time in a while I was at a place, where nobody else would bother me. I realised, that I really missed that and like so many times before, I couldn't understand why I waited for such along time to go alone to the forest. The past couple of weeks, I was feeling like I was trapped. Without money or a car, I felt unable to go anywhere. I always felt like I needed to be at home to work or be productive. I did not allow myself to go alone to the forest, because it felt like taking time off. What an idiot I was and probably still am. All of this I realised while lying there on the forest floor. After a while I opened my eyes and felt like taking out my camera. These are the pictures I took in that opening:

Now something quite interesting happened. A phenomenon, which often occurs when I am uncertain how to proceed. I still felt tired and although a part of me really enjoyed taking pictures, the other part just wanted to pack up and go home. I got some pictures and that should help me with my blog entry, right? I started to pack up. As I took my second and cheap lens into my hand I accidentally let it slip and it tumbled away downhill. Luckily everything was covered in moss and quite soft, so I did not worry about any damage. On my way down I saw some mushrooms sprouting from the ground and thought they would make a nice picture. This moment convinced me to continue and not turn back:

This is basically how life goes. Sometimes you are uncertain, but before you can make a mistake or take the wrong turn, the universe will guide you in the right direction. No matter what I did in my life or where I went, in the end I always knew, that it could not have happened any other way. There are no wrong turns. There are, however, lessons that need to be learned. When you engage life with an open mind and heart and look for the teachings that it offers you, you will find, that it becomes more and more easy to navigate on your path. From past experiences you have learned in which direction you should continue and what decision to make. You will be able to make a conscious decision and not a random one. When I started out to study environmental protection in 2009, I had no idea why I did that. Even until recently, I would have had no idea why I did that. Looking back, I know that my life would not be my life, when I would not have studied environmental protection. I needed to do this, in order to sit here today. Even though I had no idea why I studied it, I still did. Why? Because I heard an inner call. This inner call is your intuition. Your heart. For the really important things in your life, you will not be able to resist it. There is no need to worry. If there is something important that has to happen, it will. You cannot do anything wrong, other than deciding against it. Sure, you need some courage to follow this call, but is it really that hard? Is it so hard to follow a call, that feels right? Is it really so hard to find the courage to do what your heart wants? I think not.

As my resolve to continue my forest walk was absolute, I shouldered my backpack and continued to walk. Along the way I often felt the urge to leave the path and discover some areas on the beaten track. Many times I decided against that. Instead I found, that even along the well trodden path could I find hidden secrets without needing to stray from the safety of a gravel road. Looking into a shady thicket, I discovered a beautiful mushroom, which I could not pass without taking a picture:

After taking a quick shot I continued. Finally I turned around a bend and saw to the left of the path a little opening. It looked promising, as it was not covered with thick bushes and lead up to a higher level of the forest. What caught my eye right away was a beautiful display of roots:

I continued up a little slope, where I passed the beautiful array of roots. My mind was quite, but my heart told me where to go next. I went to the left and as I looked around I tried to find my next portrait. I saw in the distance a glimmer of red and knew that I wanted to capture it. So I started another session right there:

So my journey continued. Whenever I saw a beautiful patch I would decide, whether I wanted to continue on the path or leave it. I learned to walk in this manner a long time ago and it continues to prove a valuable gift. At first I practised in my hometown. I would leave the house and whenever I came to a crossing or an alley, I would consult my feeling where to go. Left or right? I would close my eyes and imagine before my inner eye taking the right and taking the left route. One route always felt right. I did not question it, I trusted. I learned to trust my feeling and my intuition. Once I was in the Netherlands, in a city I did not know. We left the car at a parking lot and went to walk around for a bit. In the end it was quite late and my girlfriend at the time was very tired and annoyed. She wanted to use navigation on her phone, but I took advantage of her tiredness and told her that I knew the way. I did. I had never been there, but I knew exactly where to walk. At every junction I would consult my feeling. The direction towards the car was in me like a compass needle. My intuition was pointing me in the right direction and we found the parking lot without a problem. I learned that day, that my intuition will always point me in the right direction, when I know where I need to go. It only works, when your heart knows exactly where you want to be. Once I was driving away from someone, to go and visit some friends of mine. I new where they lived and it was maybe half an hour of driving. I had used my intuition before to get to places, but this time it wouldn't work. Why not? My heart did not want to leave the person I had just left. I found myself wanting to go back to her. It took me about 20 minutes, before I decided to turn on my navigation. When your heart is uncertain as where to go, rather use a map! When you are out for a walk, there is nowhere to go, really. It is the perfect time to practise. My road continued and I would like to show you the rest of the pictures I took that day:

It is not the purpose of this post to tell you everything that I went through during my walk. You could have several questions now. You might ask yourself, why I named the pictures as I named them? Why not reflect on this? I'm sure, that if you think long enough, you will find an answer. Or maybe not. These pictures are memories of my own life. They are moments, which I can look back on and smile or cry or laugh. The associations I have with them are also my own. Why does the spruce bleed? Maybe it is my training as en environmental protectionist, that allows my to see that. Many others would look at the picture and see a forest. They might not even know, that it is spruce they see. I look at the world in a way, that is unique. Every person has a unique view of the world. Mine is not better or worse than yours. The difference between me and you is perhaps, that I recognise what my strength is. I recognise now, that I have certain abilities that allow me to create my own life. To manifest a life than best suits me. The only reason why I can do this is because I started to ask myself a question. I began to ask myself: "What do I want?"

Nobody on this planet can tell you what you want, except for yourself. I know what I want and I am willing to work for that. If you believe in God, a higher power or the universe, then let me tell you one thing. When you want something from life, you must trust. Once you begin to trust in whatever it is you believe in, you will have times where it is easy and you will have times where it is hard. Easy times are lush and pleasant. It feels like everything is working in your favour and nothing can go wrong. It feels like you are exactly in the right place. Hard times are basically the opposite of easy times. Hard times make you grovel. You will feel like nothing works and you will probably get angry. You will get angry at the world, at god and at yourself. It feels like nothing works in your favour and everyone is against you. The one thing, that I wish to tell you is the following:

I wouldn't go so far as to say, that I have nothing. Compared to many people I do have nothing though. Looking at myself materialistically, I am poor. From a spiritual perspective I might be rich. Rich, because I have faith. I have trust. I have love. I learned through many hard years of experience, what it means to be free. I have tasted freedom, because I believed in it. I wanted to be free and I got very close. My road has not yet ended and therefore I am still faced with many trials. Pornography is one of them. Yesterday I almost gave in to the temptation of placing an order for psychedelic mushrooms. They were already in the cart. I already wanted to buy them, but luckily a stroke of luck prevented it. Something went wrong with the paying process and I had time to come to my senses. I realised, that I needed the last 27 Euros on my bank account for something more important. Food. Priorities. Most of my life, I only thought about instant gratification. I wanted what I wanted and I wanted it right away. NOW! Until I learned, that patience is the key. In order to get what you want, you need to stop wanting it so badly. That is where trust comes in. You learn to trust and you learn to be patient. You begin to cherish what you have available right now and not what you might have tomorrow. It does not mean, that you cannot look forward to things in the future. It means, that you are happy with what you've got. Looking back, I always had what I needed, when I needed it. The problem is, that most of the times I did not realise what I had, because I was too busy wanting something else. Pornography and psychedelics are one and the same thing in my life right now. I have learned from psychedelics what I needed to learn for the moment. No I need to learn to life without them. I tell you, that it is not easy. Psychedelics put you into that space of love. They allow you to be 'in love'. That short period of time, where all your worries are beneath yourself. A very nice quote from Doctor strange is the following:

Right now I feel the truth of this more than ever before in my life. Every day is a choice. Do I go back to the hell I came from or do I strive towards heaven? Heaven is far away, when you are working hard. Only something is different. When I fall, I remember how sweet life is. I am no longer lost in my depression or my own misery. I realise, that feeling low is only a phase and I am no longer consumed by it completely. I begin to stand above my own suffering. I begin to use my own suffering as a vehicle to enlightenment. I have a lot to learn still, but let me give you another truth, which I have discovered in the talks of one of my favourite teachers:

From a certain point in your life, you will begin to feel that something is different. You are not the person you once were and your choices become more conscious. The way to get there is by looking back. Look at your life and learn what you did not see until now. Look at the choices you made and where they got you. Look when there was drama in your life and understand how this drama was created. Understand how you contribute to create your own drama. Drama is something that can be avoided. As long as you keep making the same decisions, drama will be a part of your life. I had a lot of drama in my life. Oh boy! You cannot imagine the drama I had in relationships. Mostly this drama was created, because I did not really know what I wanted. I wasn't really 'in love'. Well, maybe in the beginning. Only from a certain point on, the relationships just kept going, because both of us were too afraid to break up. At least one person is usually clinging to the feeling that was present in the beginning of the relationship. When everything was butterflies and Turkish Delight. You were actually 'in love', until you were suddenly 'out of love'. It happens quite fast, because you never learned to stay in it. Nobody talks about consciousness like something you can actually train, right? Well you can train to be 'in love' and the best sparring partner is yourself. By figuring out what you want in life and sorting out the things you do not want, you learn to be 'in love' more. Love is a place, where you can be true. Love is a place where you can be creative. I get there through my flow states. Energy is flowing and suddenly I keep typing away on the keyboard or I record an episode and suddenly an hour has passed. I was 'in love'. Until I was 'out of love' again. I am constantly trying to get back in there, because when I'm 'out of it' my cravings come back. Suddenly I feel like I need or miss all kinds of things. Physical contact with a woman, food, sugar or whatever it is that I do not have at the moment. I keep seeking for this one thing, that will bring me back to this place of love. The trick is, that it is always there. Love surrounds us all the time. How to get there is something, each of us has to find out for himself or herself. For me it is having a healthy routine. Planning my day in the way that I love. Waking up when I want to and enjoying whatever I do. I can enjoy writing deep into the night, but then I need to remember, that lack of sleep can throw me off balance. Balance is an important thing in our life. In the coming weeks I will talk more about the topic of "discipline" in my podcast. I think this could be interesting in combination with this post. Whatever you do, remember that you are the creator of your own reality. You need to figure out what is good for you and what is not. It is your job to find out which methods help you to keep your balance and which ones don't. There is no general rule, which will lead to enlightenment. Only you can find your path!

I feel like this post is about to end. This is not the first time, that I have this feeling. I ended this post already 4 times, at least in my mind. Every time I thought I was done working on it, I knew that something was missing. I went to eat something or I went to sleep, but I always came back to it. Not because I am a perfectionist, but because my feeling told me that I did not say everything that needs to be said. Nobody could have told me this. I could have asked 1000 people, but nobody would have been able to tell me what I feel and what needs to be in here. It is my job to make that decision. In order to make this decision, I needed to stop asking people for their opinions. I needed to get going. I needed to be by myself and I needed to be more confident in my abilities. As a finishing remark, read this: Discovering your own path, may be one of the hardest things in the world. As you continue to walk, you will begin to realise, that nobody else can do it for you. One day, you will look back at your life and you will be able to see, that the path did not change, YOU DID!

THE END

In case you are interested in being creative yourself, pick something and then do it!!!

The science of being left

Good morning dear reader. It is not my intention to hurt or cause suffering with these words. When you are ready to read these lines, you may be ready to address something inside of yourself. I strongly believe, that everything that happens in our lives, does so that we can grow and get stronger. When you are not strong enough, it might break you. Only, who said that broken things cannot be mended? Love is the glue that can fix anything. You only need to know where to look for the crack that needs to be fixed.

Where to begin? First of all, not with myself. I can say that I do not recall a childhood trauma, where someone dear to me left me. I have lost people through death, but that is a completely different matter. Why? When someone dies it is usually involuntarily. Being left means that for some reason or other a close person makes a decision (based on his/her individual circumstances) to leave someone behind. Now why am I writing about this? Well, let me tell you something personal. A lot of the women that I fell in love with over the years had something in common. I am no therapist (at least not certified), but I can observe and connect the dots. Connecting the dots is a very essential skill that enables us to connect seemingly unrelated events in our lives to each other and learn from them. What did these women have in common? First of all, they were women. Second, most of them had blonde hair. Different shades of blonde, yet blonde they were (mostly). I cannot really say why, but blonde is the colour of hair that I seem to be drawn towards. Well, in a way I can say why. I believe that deep within myself I know what hair-colour my soulmate has and instinctively I am attracted to women with a similar colour of hair. The most striking thing they had in common and the thing which had the most intense effect on the relationship, was - believe it or not - the relationship with their own father. I know this sounds like some kind of Cliché, but I am simply connecting the dots here from my own life experience. Whenever I found myself in a relationship with a woman, where the father had left her, trouble was along the way.

The first two relationships I had were kind of terrible. I was treated badly by the women I was with and it took me some time to get over this. Being treated badly does not always mean you are being abused physically. No. It can be that someone tries to control your every move or blames you for everything bad that happens to them. I do not want to make this article sound like my own sob-story and blame everything that happened in my relationships on the women. I simply want to talk about this, because I feel like it really is an issue for quite some women. Sometimes I never understood why it is necessary to fight? I somehow have the ability to forgive. When someone does something wrong, I forgive. I can learn to love a lot of things in my partner, because they do not really matter. What matters is, whether you love a person or not. The problem arises, when your partner cannot love you back. I use the word 'cannot' on purpose here, because sometimes it is truly the case. What I realised in women that were left by their father, is their inability to truly open up to another man. What does it mean to open up to someone? It means the ability to show yourself with all your feelings and weaknesses. It means that you fully trust the other person. It means that whatever happens you work through it, because you simply love your partner.

On the other side of love stands fear. Where fear grows there is a lack of trust. A little girl that comes into this world wishes to be loved. It wishes to be held and accepted for they way she is. Imagine this beautiful girl and imagine her smile. Now, relationships between parents and children are always intertwined. Mother-daughter, father-son, mother-son and father-daughter. When one of these relationships is somehow not healthy, it can manifest later in life. As children it still seems fine, but the longer we carry these problems with us, the stronger they become. A girl that has been left by her father will have to deal with certain issues that may come up during her life. As this trauma is already there since her childhood, it may be very difficult to solve, because the trauma becomes the person. At one point we believe that we are the trauma, without realising that we actually are traumatised by the events of our childhood. So we keep telling ourselves, that we are okay with being left and abandoned. Only there is a part in ourselves which is never okay with it. It is our inner child.

What I have experienced in one of the Ayahuasca ceremonies I attended is that the traumas we suffer in our early childhood stay with us for the rest of our life, unless we face and heal them. During this experience, I was inside a very dark and black room. I felt like I was grown-up me walking around. Suddenly I heard some sort of sobbing. A child crying? Before my inner eye I was walking towards the noise and I discovered a child, all alone and very sad. The child was in deep, deep pain and did not want to talk to me. There was such deep despair that I felt like I was about to be dragged into it. Like a vortex of fear and negative energy pulling me into darkness. In this very moment I knew what to do. I spoke to this child, for I knew this child was me - or a part of me. I asked this part of myself why it was crying and little Christopher told me about his pain and why he felt so alone. In the end I 'simply' told little Christopher that I loved him and that everything was going to be alright. I gave him the feeling that I would take care of him from this moment onward and that he was not alone. In this moment I could feel the dark energy dissolving and this part was no longer suffering, but once more happy and joyful. This was only one of many parts of my inner child that I visited that night. I cannot really tell you how many there were exactly, but my guess is at least 30. Some of these parts did not even experience really traumatising things (from my grown-up perspective), but for them it was hell. It might be a disgusted look someone gives you, or someone who pushed you in the dirt and laughed at you. Children are very sensitive and delicate beings and all they want is to be loved. When someone gives them the feeling that they are not wanted or not good enough, it hurts them so bad that something breaks inside of them. This pain and suffering manifests as a split-up part of yourself with its own personality and needs. Through my experience I have learned to realise when one of these personalities comes to the surface. They are triggered by events which remind them of their pain. Once we learn to see through this we can distance ourselves from the pain and the suffering and begin to heal them.

Something I realised is that these inner children which are trapped inside of us, in a world of fear and pain, also show themselves as children when they come to the surface. Sometimes we act in certain ways and do not understand why. Sometimes we are just so stubborn and we do not really know the reason why. Sometimes we just want to hurt somebody, although this is not who we want to be. All these behaviours can be traced down to our inner child, which is split into many fragments. To heal them and bring them back together is a very important part of the spiritual path and to enlightenment. Until then, this inner child of ours will constantly recreate the situation that made it suffer in the first place. Now imagine a little girl being left by her father. Imagine the kind of pain and suffering this would cause. The feeling of not being good enough. The girl will blame herself and she will be wondering what she did wrong. Why did he leave me? What did I do wrong? Why doesn't he love me? Am I not good enough?

This is the world this part of yourself will be living in from now on. It is basically hell. A world of fear, pain and suffering and whenever you are in a situation where you are faced with this topic, your inner child will resurface and remind you of the pain you suffered. This will never end, unless you work on it. Allow yourself to acknowledge the trauma and truly work on it. As long as you deny yourself this painful experience, you cannot move on. Saying to yourself that it wasn't painful to be left by your father will not help you. Lying to yourself about it will not help you. This needs to be addressed and it needs to be healed, otherwise you will be stuck in this vortex of pain forever. Now to come to the conclusion.

The way I have experienced this is through the women I have been with. Now any woman who will read this and has been in a relationship with me, will surely point her finger at me saying something like "Don't blame this on me". Well I am not. I am helping you to grow. I tried many times in relationships to tell my partner that I am not the issue, but their childhood trauma. I am not a terrible person. I would say I am nice. Of course I have my own package to carry, but that does not make me a terrible person either. I have tried over and over to make women realise, how they treat me. They look for mistakes in me and they find them. In the beginning everything seems fine. Roses and butterflies. From a certain point on they suddenly do not see the beautiful things any more, they start to fish for mistakes. I say 'fish', because it seems like they want to find them. Why else would it be a problem that I forgot to clean away my hair? When you love each other you can surely work this out and do not need to have a discussion every time this happens? This can be minor things that suddenly are such a great issue that the relationship will end. The thing I want to imply here is not that women are terrible. No. Women are nice and lovely. I am also aware that every relationship has two stories, not just one. My message here is that whenever a problem occurs it can be solved. Any relationship has problems. The question is, do you love each other enough to solve them? Or are you going to recreate the trauma?

Any person is able to recreate their trauma, by simply feeding into it. Any woman can behave in a way that will make it so hard to love her that any man will eventually leave. Or the woman decides every time to leave the man. In this way the original trauma is strengthened, because the inner child beliefs deep down that no man can be trusted. Why? Because her own father left her or treated her badly. The little girl inside of you is constantly living in a world of fear. The fear of being left and abandoned once more. The fear of not being good enough. No man can change this believe, unless you open your heart and let him love you. In this way your believe that all men are eventually going to leave you is going to change and your inner child will learn that there are men that will stay with you for the rest of their life and never leave you. Not because they have to, but because they love you and want to do everything in their power to make you happy.

Scientific obscurity

Dear reader,
I would like to tell you something about science and why I did not follow this path any further. During my time in South Africa I did science. I collected data and I analysed it. I also wrote a dissertation and earned a masters degree. I visited different projects and learned, how they did science. Through my university I also learned one thing or other about the world of science. My take home message from science can be worded as one or all of the following statements: Science is an industry. Science is a system of stagnant beliefs. Science is dead. Science is mainly truthful. Science is possibly honest. Science is slightly biased. Science is generally correct and most likely a reflection of the truth. Science is wishy washy. Well, these terms could all be used for science. For some science at least. But WAIT! Let me continue first, before you create your opinion. There is more to consider than just the negative side...

At this point I would like to say something in defense of everyone who does honest science. Who simply likes to collect and analyse data and present it in the most honest and respectable way. Who has no interest in the publication of his or her results, other than to spread his or her discoveries. No science can ever be objective, because an observer is always a subject to his own beliefs. There are true scientists out there who have a conscience. Honest, hard working people who simply want to do good research and follow their passion and the believe to change the world with their work. This needed to be said, for I know many people who work like this. On their behalf do I see the necessity to contribute this article. To speak up and to create change. I have witnessed so many good and honest people doing what they love in order to help the animals they observe. There are those people out there. People like Jane Goodall, only not as famous, yet. Now let me continue with the downside of science.

We hear about "scientific evidence" everywhere. When someone wants to make a statement, he puts a reference behind the sentence and suddenly it becomes valid. The problem is that you find this kind of evidence to basically anything. You have money? You have resources? Great! Use science to validate your opinions. You want coffee to have health benefits? Great! Science will help you find them! You feel like the world needs something, but they don't know it yet? Use science to help you sell it. There is a whole industry behind the "scientific community" and it is booming. Yet, it has the same treadmill-character that any other industry on this planet provides. Working standards are miserable. Scientists that love to do field work and truly love their job, are paid little or no salary. They don't mind a simple lifestyle, because they love their work. They spend ours and ours in the field collecting data. After they collect the data they usually need to spend hours typing it into their laptops. Then they spend hours analysing it and organising the results. After they have done that they need to transform their discoveries into words and turn them into a story. True and honest scientists do all of this, because they believe in what they are doing. Sadly, most of the time they do not get paid a single dime. All in the name of science.

What most people do not know is that there is a lot of money in science. I only graduated last year, so you could say I am fresh out of University.

My degree is a Research degree, which means I did not have to write any exams. This was actually one of the most intriguing facts about it. Having earned already a Bachelors degree in environmental protection, I knew that I found exams very stressful. A 'Research Degree' seemed like the perfect solution. Maybe I should have considered the writing up of my Bachelor thesis first, before following that line of thought. I did not really like that either. Things happened as they happened and I did what I did. I am now a certified Master of Science in Wildlife. How did I get there? I studied. I collected data. I analysed said data and I wrote my dissertation. Sounds easy enough right? Now comes the other side of the coin. I certainly struggled to finish my dissertation - I did not really believe in the usefulness of it and how this could help the vervet monkeys at all. Every research always claims to have some benefits. Phrases such as "In order to better understand 'this or that species' it is important to study it more closely and in different environments. This can help in the protection of the species", are very common in behavioural science. You just have to come up with reasons, why this research is important and you can do it. Everyone is happy when you have a reason for the benefit of a whole species. Animals are not always treated nicely in these experiments. In some they are captured. Their blood is withdrawn, they are sedated and relocated. They are measured and weighed. In my opinion it is a violation of their rights as living beings. As they are considered "animals" they are considered less than us humans. So they have no rights. They have the right to be studied, to be eaten and to please us humans. This seems drastic? Kind of harsh, right? Well wake up and take a look in the mirror. Is this leather you are wearing? Is there yoghurt in your fridge? Cheese? Wool in your socks? All of this is provided by animals that nobody cares about. They are exploited by an industry. Why would the scientific industry be any different? They make money with animals, because research is well paid. Only the researcher gets nothing or almost nothing of this. Universities are companies and their product is "knowledge". Students and lecturers work for this institution and create an income by producing scientific content, mostly in the form of journal articles. When you check online for how much one of these articles is sold, you are wondering why the author is not paid for this? It is the university that gets paid fine money, so that they can continue to research and produce an income for the distributors of scientific journals. They create new knowledge every day. They get funded. When you have an interest in something that should be known to the public, you fund it. Someone willing to do research on coffee paid by a well known Coffee brand? Weird right? Don't they have an interest in selling coffee? So that would mean that the researcher is kind of biased. Well, if he isn't biased, then someone else surely will be and tell the story that the money-giver wants to hear.

What is my takeaway message here? My point is not that science itself is bad. My point is, that we live in a capitalistic system and everything which started out good was turned into something that simply produces income. My message is that most of the people that will read this live in an idealistic fantasy, where money shouldn't even exist. Well, it does exist and we better use it in a good way. When you are someone who lives outside of the capitalistic bubble and you want to change the world, then do not say "NO" to money. Say "NO" to exploitation. Say "NO" to treating animals like products. I urge you to start saying "YES" to money. Why? The more people who believe in something good start to produce money, the more money we will have to oppose the system we currently live in. In my recent podcast episode I talked about Nudity at festivals. I talked about a transitional phase, where you get from wearing clothes everywhere, to being nude in open spaces. Why? Simply because we are not ready yet. The same goes for money. Imagine all the money everywhere would suddenly seize to exist? I promise you we would be confronted with absolute chaos! Nobody would know what to do. Right now all the rich people in the world, are people who do not care for the planet. All they want is to get filthy rich and stay that way. They are okay with exploitation. I am not. In order to change the world right now, we need to play by the rules that underlie the current system. The current system runs on money. Start earning money by providing services that only have one thing in mind: the well-being of the planet. When you do that, evil money is turned into good money. Be part of the process and change the way money is used. Do not work for free, just because you are passionate and believe in what you are doing. When you are passionate about your job, then create your own job and get paid!

Observation

Dear reader,
thank you for being here right now. This very moment belongs to you. Use it well. Use it to learn and to grow. Let me take you on another journey into realms of experience and perspective, of beauty and novelty. I have learned much in Africa. One thing that I can now pinpoint is my ability to observe.

Before I dive into the topic of why this is a useful skill, let me first tell you something about the way I learned to observe. My job in South Africa was to observe. I studied at the University of the Free State and they have a degree called "M.Sc. in Wildlife". This degree is a research degree, which means that you do 1 year of fieldwork and data collection, followed by roughly 1 year of writing up your dissertation. The dissertation is the only 'official' requirement for this degree. One day I will write a post on why I put this into quotes! My project was about vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus). I was meant to follow a 40 individual troop of those primates and make records on how and what they eat and their general activity. To accomplish this I used binoculars, pen and paper. Every twenty minutes I would take 5 minutes of time to write down the activity of every monkey I could cast my eyes on. In addition, every time I observed an individual while eating, I would note the species and part of the consumed food. I learned to pay attention. I learned to pay attention to little brown object that the monkey put into their mouths from a distance of 20m. I learned to zoom in on what is happening. Not only that. I learned to keep an overview of my surroundings. I learned to get a sense of the whole picture. I only zoomed in during the following 20 minutes, I tried to spot as many vervets as possible, to see figure out what they are doing before the next scan. When did you ever pay such close attention to what's going on? No interfering, just observation. Do give you some visuals on who I was observing, I introduce to you: MY BELOVED VERVETS:

As there is no need to restrict myself in the size of my images, I am free to post them as big as possible! Good gracious, isn't that great? Joy to the world and to my freedom to create. Thank you.

In addition to what I learned through direct observation I also learned to capture moments with my DSLR camera. I bought it especially for my time in South Africa. I see a lot of people just taking pictures without paying attention. They just take their phone and casually take a picture. Through my camera I learned to see the beauty of life in every corner. I learned to look at unlikely places for a perspective that allowed me to see the beauty. I can find something beautiful in a bathtub. Sometimes it is enough to look from the outside. Landscapes for example are a great way of appreciating the beauty of nature. Large scale. Sometimes you are in a very ugly urban area. How to spot beauty there? You zoom in. The dandelion flower coming through the concrete. Pure creation against all odds. Let me show you what I mean:

When we assume different perspectives, we learn to see the world in various ways. Let me use the following picture as a guide to applying different perspectives in your daily life:

Derived from the description of this picture, you can already gather one peace of information. The guy in front is me. There is me sitting in a tree, barefoot, relaxed, with arms crossed and a hat. I am looking down to a fellow student and human, of possibly similar age. You can tell that I am high up in a tree. You can also guess, that someone else is taking the picture. The scene we are able to see now is what the hidden observer saw when he captured this scene. So there are three perspectives - at least - which you can imagine right now. If you do not mind I will take you along on a little adventure inside of you head. Please envision each perspective.

1. Do the easiest one: Imagine you are the person who is taking the picture. For that you need to consider the height. We were about 10m high. Are you sitting or standing, what do you think? Imagine the whole scene. Nice. See its beauty. Take in every detail.
2. Imagine you are me. Imagine how you are looking at the person standing at the bottom. Be aware of the height and the narrow branch you are sitting on. Pay attention to your bare feet your glasses, your bracelet and your watch. Consider the person taking the picture. I'm sure you can see yourself holding the camera, nesting in the corner of your vision. Feel the warmth of the South African climate. Feel the strength of your legs and the courage of transcending your fears and climbing to this spot. Can you see it?
3. Now for the person standing on the bottom. Imagine the angle from which he is looking at us up in the tree. Imagine how small we must seem from down there and how high up. He is standing in the sun. Imagine the feeling of the sun on your skin. Imagine the scene of one person taking the picture of someone sitting on a branch.
4. I think you are beginning to understand what I mean. To every scene there are uncountable perspectives to consider. When you learn to see every situation from different perspectives, you learn the most essential skill to change yourself.

I would like to show you more of my pictures. In each picture try to envision yourself as me. Also try to imagine being someone who is not me and is observing me taking the picture in this moment. You might be a person, a leopard or an antelope, or just the wind...

Before I close this article with the most important part - the conclusion - I have one more thing to mention. When there are so many different perspectives to every situation, then there must be one that allows you to see the beauty. Are you able to see the beauty in the following pictures? Try hard if you struggle. Use my previous advice and imagine yourself as someone that finds whatever you are seeing beautiful. Think of reasons that could pinpoint the beauty.

Now that you learned how to recognise different perspectives and find beauty in strange and dead things, what do you do with this ability? Well I can tell you what I do with it. Meditation teaches you one thing. To sit still. Yes, also. It mainly teaches you to observe what is happening. As you sit still with your eyes closed you do not engage in anything that is going on. You do not judge and you do not actively think. When there are words or sentences forming in your mind, you simply see them as things that are happening. Just words. The train-of-thought is passing you by, but you do not get on board. You are simply someone watching the train go by in the distance.
When you learn to observe and to take different perspectives, you can begin to apply them to yourself. Imagine you are in a tight spot or you are facing a difficult situation. You don't know what to do. Imagine your situation from various perspectives. How would your friends solve this problem? Would this even be a problem from a different angle? By learning to do this our life becomes much easier. Maybe we don't like ourselves when we look into the mirror. Imagine how your parents would see you, or your partner. How would someone see you that truly loves you? Don't you think he would like what he sees? There is beauty in everything. There is beauty in yourself. Learn to see it inside of you, by learning first to see it in the outside world. Learn to step out of yourself and see things as they truly are. Learn to take better pictures yourself, by training this. Observe the world that surrounds you and look for the beauty.

Reptiles

There is one class of animals out there which for some reason I really enjoy. I cannot tell you exactly why, but I simply love reptiles. They are often named as stupid animals, that only work on reflex. I believe they are exactly not stupid. They are one of the most intelligent animals that I have come to witness. When a snake wants to bite you, it will. When a crocodile wants to eat you, it will. It almost seems like there is no hesitation. They make a decision and act on it. When you hesitate you might be dead. When you look into the topic of Zen more deeply you will come across phrases such as:"When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep." What does this tell you? As you learn to recognise your own needs, you will be able to act on them. Zen is a Japanese art of spontaneity. Being spontaneous means that you act on an urge that is so strong you cannot ignore it any more. When you know for certain you are hungry, you eat. You do not prepare to eat, but when the right time is there you simply do. That is what reptiles do. They have an urge and they act on it. There are no half-baked attempts to pursue a victim or go for the kill. When a snake wants to eat it will do everything in its power to accomplish that. It doesn't mean they will always succeed, but they will certainly try their hardest. This is my introduction to reptiles. Now I would like to share some stories with you, about my experiences with reptiles:

While I was staying in South Africa, I lived on a small game ranch, called the Mogalakwena River Reserve. It was located up in the Limpopo Province, which is very close to the border of Botswana. As this place was full of wild animals, such as giraffes, different types of antelopes, leopards, ostriches and all different kinds of insects and reptiles, I often took my DSLR camera for walks to take pictures. This one time I went for a walk along the river and very close to the lodge I spotted a Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus). They are giant lizards, which can grow slightly above 2 m. Their tail is made for swimming and very strong. I was often told, that they can break your bones easily when you get too close. Normally they are very shy and as soon as they spot you, they make a run for the water to dive. Well this specimen was perhaps a little more used to humans, as he lived closer to the lodge. As soon as I saw him or her I crouched down to my knees readied my camera and started walking towards (let's call it a him) him. Ever so often I started to take a lot of pictures, because as soon as I got some centimetres closer, I got so excited that I made it this far without chasing him off, that I took even more pictures. In the end I managed to get as close as the picture you see, round about 2 m I would guess, as the zoom lens I was using at the time has a minimum distance of 1.5 m. This moment was very special, because I felt a deep connection to this animal. Although I did not touch him, he allowed me to come this close. He accepted me and showed no signs of fear and neither did I. Thank you for this special moment.

There is another very special encounter I had with a reptile, this time a Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus). Well actually there were two incidents, which I memorise very clearly. The first one happened at the bridge, which you can see in this picture (To give you an idea how big the crocodile is, the bridge was made for cars to drive over and you could drive over it very comfortably with a jeep.):

Somehow I like to think that this crocodile was a female. I am not quite sure why I think this, but it is what my feeling is telling me. If I remember correctly, we were coming back from a walk and there it was. A giant of a crocodile, roughly 4 metres long. I had my camera with me and as everyone took their binoculars and camera to have a better look and take pictures, I started to get closer. Somehow I have a natural ability to tell how close I can get to animals, so that they won't bite. It is essential to be very calm and not be afraid. I did not want to hurt her, I simply wanted to have a nice picture. As you can see on the right side of the picture there is an edge. My intuition told me, that if I would come from that side I would be safe from an attack, because the crocodile would not come for me without having a direct shot. So I got closer and closer and when I was as close as 3-5 metres I took this picture:

Nice shot right? What did I learn from this situation? Today I released an episode called "Friends" and I talked also about trust. As I was getting closer to the crocodile, the other people were at a safe distance, being worried. Later one of these students told me that I did not know what I was doing with reptiles. The truth was that I knew exactly what I was doing in these moments, only some people trusted me and others did not. If the student that criticised me would have wanted to learn from me, she could have asked me how I did that or if I was not afraid. Instead she told me that what I did was wrong. In my opinion she is not a friend that I want to invest a lot of time into, because she is holding me back. She does not trust my intuition and my abilities. She points with her finger at me and says that I am acting irresponsible. Only I was responsible for myself. I knew how far I wanted to go and I knew when it was time to retreat and I did exactly that. I am glad it happened the way it did, because today I can write about it and share this experience. Trust yourself and do not let others hold you back.

The second incident took place while I was doing some fieldwork. At the time I needed to measure the vegetation for my vervet monkey (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) project. To give you a tiny bit of background about what I was actually doing in South Africa I will tell you at least this much at this point. I spent roughly two years in South Africa to obtain a Masters of Science degree in Wildlife. It is a research degree and what you need to do is find a project and collect data for about one year. You then analyse this data and write a dissertation on the topic. My Topic was "Feeding ecology, habitat use and activity patterns of the vervet monkey, Chlorocebus pygerythrus". So in order to know what was available for the vervets, I needed to assess the habitat. For that I assigned randomly calculated plots in the vervets home range and counted every species of tree and shrub which was available. One of these plots was directly next to the river and about 200 metres away from the lodge. I wasn't doing the habitat assessment alone, but with one of the students who wanted to learn more about plants and the vegetation. While we were still at the lodge we saw a giant crocodile floating around in the river, but didn't think much of it, since it was not moving very much. As you can see in the following two pictures, crocodiles can be very stealthy. One moment they are in plain sight and the next moment they are gone:

As we arrived at the plot I wanted to get a better overview of the situation. There was a gap of about 3 metres where the vegetation had been cut away and you could walk directly to the rivers edge. At that time of year water levels were quite high and the water was on the same level as the ground where I was standing on. I only remained standing there for about 2-3 seconds and walked away. As I turned my back to the water and walked towards the other student she said something to me:
"Eh, Chris?", she asked.
"Yes?", I replied.
"At the spot where you were standing a crocodile just came up."

I turned around and there it was. Exactly at the spot where I was standing a couple of seconds ago, there was a giant crocodile making some sort of snapping movements with its mouth in the mud. I might have mentioned in my podcast that Africa changed me quite a lot. This moment was life changing for me. It was the first time of my life that I came this close to death. I often wondered what would have happened when I would have stayed only one second longer on this spot? I often said that I would like to have a time machine and the ability to freeze time. I would go back to this moment and just keep standing there to see what happens. Only I could freeze time if I was about to get ripped to shreds by that crocodile. The funny thing is, it did not really scare me. It excited me. This situation was quite thrilling and a very intense experience. I also feel like I wasn't alone in this moment. I know in my heart, that I needed to learn this lesson and that one of my angels was watching over me, to help me leave at exactly the right moment. This is why I urge you to train your intuition. Listen to your heart and you will not be eaten by a crocodile.

Captured memories

To introduce this Blog I would first like to talk about memories. What are memories? Are they something that simply happened and is now over? Something from days past, soon to be forgotten? One thing I realised during my life is that everything that happens is important. Every breath you take and every smile. Every tear and every discussion shape the way that each of us sees the world. Your memories are what reminds you of your experiences. Experiences are lessons of life that nobody can take away from you. Even if you think something is long forgotten it will remain inside your heart forever. Very often we are stuck in the past, because we feel like we made a mistake or someone hurt us or did us wrong. The truth is that there are no mistakes, there are only lessons. Whatever happens, happens. When we feel guilty for something we did, we are trapped in this moment forever. The solution to freeing ourselves from the past is to acknowledge what happened and look at it from an outside perspective. What do I mean with this? When I am angry and I shout at someone who has nothing to do with this, I hurt his feelings. When I look at the situation from my own perspective, I only see my pain. I will see my anger and I will see the guilt for hurting someone else. My emotions cannot dissipate, because I believe that there is no other way. I am angry and I am guilty. Let me introduce you to another way of dealing with this vicious cycle:

Who are we truly? Are we what we did or what we will do in the future? I say to you that we are neither. We are the decisions we make in every single moment. Often people are talking about free will. Often when I am sad I forget the feeling of happiness and I curse the world for my situation. I rage and I swear and often I am angry at god or my destiny. In these moments I forget that it is my decisions that led me to exactly this point. It is not god that made me shout at someone, it was me. Every situation is a collection of events that are based on our own decisions. As long as we keep making the same decisions, we might not see the hidden message or the room to grow. Someone who always finds himself in a terrible relationship, may not realise that it is his/ her decision to be in a relationship in the first place. So instead of continuously deciding to jump from one partner to the next, we could step back from the situation and give ourselves the advice that we would normally give to others. When we start to listen to our inner voice, we are not depending on the opinion of others any more. Instead we will be the creators of our life. We will make every decision very consciously and see the lesson that every experience offers. Memories are remnants of past decisions, nothing more and nothing less. They are the truth of a time which is now in the past. Looking back we should see what truly happened and not look at our pain or suffering. Seeing a situation for what it truly is grants you the ability to free yourself of suffering. Imagine your life as a collection of pictures. Each picture represents a memory, which is essentially an experience, which is something we can learn from. How many memories have you captured so far and what are the lessons? Next time you feel sad about something that happened, or guilty, or angry, remember these words. Try to see the lesson and learn from it. Maybe next time you will decide differently and smile to yourself, for then you truly know that you have changed. You know you have grown.

The entanglement of human relations

Once upon a time there was a woman, who lived in a remote village. A woman unlike any other that has ever lived in such a place. She lived her life in happiness, when she was happy. When she was sad, she was happy to live her life in sadness. Both seemed equal to her, as 'both form life', she thought. Only the people she lived with did not understand this. As they knew how happy this woman could be and how much love she could give, they could not understand that someone like this wasn't always happy. 'She is too extreme', they said and started talking behind her back. Stories started to develop and people were wondering, if she might do something unexpected one day and hurt herself. 'Somebody this unstable is not trustworthy', they were muttering and their hearts started to fill with fear. The woman did not know anything of this and continued to live her life in a respectful way. When she was sad, she considered the other people and kept to herself, as not to spread the sadness to others. When she was happy, she engaged in conversations and listened to the stories of everyone. One day however, the people of the town gathered in unison to talk to the woman. The fear for her safety had grown so much, that they needed to address the woman's lack of stability. So they confronted her one morning and asked her if everything was fine, or if she needed help. It was not a particularly good morning for her, but as she knew how to deal with her own problems, she replied 'I'm doing fine'. She had learned already long ago, that the people in her community were happy when she was happy and sad when she was sad, but sometimes she could not help to feel sadness, so she started to always say that she was fine. The alternative would be to share all her problems with others and that would lead to even more disaster. She did so in the past and it worried everyone so much, that she stopped sharing her emotions and learned to keep them for herself. This way her sadness was hers, but with time she also learned to keep her happiness to herself. She had made the experience, that when she was happy, people sometimes tried to take it away from her, only because they were not happy themselves. When she was sad, nobody wanted her sadness somehow. So she kept both to herself, just in case. Several weeks passed after the villagers had openly asked the woman how she was doing, before they gathered once more. The woman had been very silent recently and they were even more worried by now. As she was standing there, confronted by everyone, she knew that something was off. Soon enough an elderly man started talking to her: 'We are worried about you. Sometimes you are happy and sometimes you are sad. It seems you lack stability and we are worried that one day you will harm yourself, because you life in a world of extremes'. The woman looked at the man and was speechless for just a moment. What should she reply to this? She knew that people won't understand her feelings. She had tried explaining her view of the world many times, but no-one could understand her. In the end she stopped. She thought everything was fine the way it was going. Keeping her distance and finding bliss in her own universe. Now that she was standing there confronted with the people she grew up with, she realised something very important. When you live in a community it is about the connections you have to every single one of them. She kept to herself for too long and this is how suspicion and fear started to develop. Most people in this world live their life's from moment to moment, dwelling in the future or in the past, depending on the situation. She had learned to live in the moment and let go of everything that happened and everything that might be. For a while now she was uncertain how to talk to everyone in the village, because she did not know what to say. She did not want to dwell in the past or the future and for this reason she had distanced herself from the people she used to call her family. Seeing them all gathered around her made her realise that they did not want to harm her. They wanted to help, but they did not know how, because she did not let them. All these thoughts happened in a very short period of time and after she had considered the situation she said the following words:" Thank you all for reaching out to me. I distanced myself out of fear of being rejected, but now I realise that I do not need to shut myself out. When I am happy I shall share my happiness with you. When I am sad, I shall share my sadness through an expression of happiness. I am glad that I live amongst all of you. Thank you." In this way she learned to live in the moment even when sharing her emotions with others. When you talk about your feelings, you are right there in the moment with a person you love.

The SUBway

A work of fiction, created with my mind. Words flowing freely typed with those fingers of mine. I am thankful for the chance to be creative. I am grateful for the courage to show myself to others. The following is a dialogue inspired by a TV series which I like. Which one you may guess on your own, or simply use it to be inspired yourself and start your journey. Do you have the courage to board the subway of your consciousness?

I am standing in the subway minding my own business, when I am suddenly approached by a stranger.
"Who are you and what is your purpose", somebody asks me out of the blue.
"I am me and my purpose is to be alive", I respond.
"Well how can you say that so casually and expect me to believe that you mean it? If your purpose is to be alive, then why do you sound so dead?", he phrases his follow-up question, which kind of hits the spot. I feel caught, but of course I cannot tell him that, because then he would be right. So instead I come up with something else:
"When you put it like that, there is certainly a point to it. Only I am wondering myself now, why you came and asked me this in the first place. I barely know you and you simply expect me to open up and tell you what I really think?"
To tell you the truth, his observational skills are very accurate. Only usually, nobody is that honest to a perfect stranger. I am lying to myself, only I can't admit it to him. If I were to admit that I am lying to myself, I would have to admit that I am not exactly telling the truth here. I could say now my ego won't let me, but ultimately it is my decision to lie to myself and be dishonest to others. The problem is, most people do not have the slightest idea how many people are dishonest. Not on purpose, but because they are literally incapable of realising that they are being dishonest themselves. So even though he shoved it right into my face, I simply move around like a wiggly fish and avoid his question altogether. Searching for reasons to not answer truthfully, so I don't have to admit to myself that I am lying. Lying to myself, to him and to everyone else.
"I am simply suggesting here that there might be a certain sense of freedom in admitting to yourself that you are being completely irrational and dishonest to somebody you do not know. What exactly is the point of doing that I wonder? You have never met me and there is no reason for you not to trust me or share this very unimportant piece of information with me. My point is, if we are indeed strangers, which we possibly are, since we never met before, then what is the point of being dishonest? What is the point of avoiding a direct question with a lie? Have you ever even considered the possibility of being honest right now? Or are you so in the habit of hiding your true self that you simply keep lying? For all you know I might be your next best friend, or someone who just wants you to be happy. You simply assume the worst and hide behind your own painful past instead of opening up and giving someone you just met a chance. Every stranger is an opportunity for a fresh start and a possibility to create yourself anew. You now had the perfect chance to step out of yourself and be the person you actually want to be. Someone honest and truthful. Someone who does not have to say he is fine, when he is not. When somebody asks you a direct question, is it not better to just answer it and let him deal with the response? By creating a lie you hide behind something that has no future, because when you are not honest you have to keep changing yourself in order for people to like you. Ultimately you will forget who you are and become somebody you think other people might want. Is that who you want to be? So right now I am going to be very generous. I will give you a second chance and hope that you will take this as a lesson to learn from."
He paused for a second and then...
"Who are you and what is your purpose?"

THE END

The child that forgot about heaven.

Have you ever wondered where children come from? No? Well, I did and I would like to tell you a story. A story so beautiful and sad, that you might cry. Or laugh. Or smile. A story which is perhaps designed to cause you to react to it with your true and honest emotions.

Once upon a time there lived a woman. Her name was Lily. Her beauty was so astounding and honest, that any man who cast his eyes upon her could not help but stare. It wasn't solely for the way she looked, but mostly for her heart, that her beauty was so radiant. Lily grew up in a very loving and caring environment and learned about many useful things early in life. She knew how to eat right, to comfort her stomach with delicious foods. She knew how to prepare meals that you could only dream of. She knew how to take care of her body and how to make it so that the skin would be soft and shiny and very nice indeed. Lily radiated what all women have inside of them. She radiated love, softness and strength. What most of us have forgotten nowadays is that a woman once used to be gentle and kind and that women have a very important job on this planet. Women above all are able to love. They are able to give so much love that you might wonder where all of this love is coming from. As women are miracles of heaven, of course their love also comes from heaven itself. It is a gift, so that any child born into this world may grow up in an environment of love. This specific and very fine woman knew all of this and thus she was waiting for her husband to appear. Despite what many women around her were doing, she did not engage in any intimate relationships with men. She new that her body must remain pure, for every time a man and a woman come together to celebrate love, they exchange their energies. A part of the man's energy will flow into the woman and she will be connected to him always. Now imagine having mixed your energies with many different men. That must be very confusing indeed. Gladly enough this woman knew all about this, so she was patient and learned to wait for the one man that could make her heart flutter and shine like the sun. For the sun is made of pure love and not of gas, as modern science likes us to believe. One day a man appeared at her door and requested to speak with Lily. His name was Jacob. He had seen her the previous day and her beauty had swept him away. When his eyes found Lily walking across the street, he was speechless. He had never seen someone like this. It was not the way she looked on the outside, but the way she was shining from the inside, that he was unable to think or talk or take his eyes off her. So there he was, standing in front of her house and wondering why he was even there. Despite the fact that he felt madly in love without even knowing anything about her, he knew one thing for sure: "I love this woman and I want to marry her and devote everything that I am, everything that I own and everything that I can give, to her. For she is the love of my life", or so he thought to himself. Of course his future wife did not know anything about this and neither did her aunt, who went to fetch her. When finally the time to wait was over and the door opened once more, there she was, looking at him with keen and curious eyes.

"Good day dear Sir, I hope you don't mind me asking, but do I know you?", she asked him bluntly. He stood there with his mouth half open and did not know what to say. Poor fellow. When ever you will stand in front of your soulmate, you will understand how he must have felt.
"Excuse me, Sir?", she asked once more. This seemed to bring him to his senses, for her voice was so sweet it spoke right to his heart and he remembered why he came to this house in the first place. He thought to himself that any woman who could make him feel this way, is surely worth making a fool of himself. So he once again found his courage and said:
"I'm so sorry, I must look very shifty, standing here staring at you. My name is Jacob and no, Madam, you do not know me yet, but I would like to change that if you let me. I saw you the other day walking across the street and something struck me, that I could not explain. My heart was suddenly beating very fast and I could not take my eyes of you. I have traveled far in my life, but never have I met anyone like you. I would be delighted to tell you more about myself if you would agree to join me for a walk, tomorrow at sunset".

The rest is history one might say, or maybe part of a different story. This story is not so much about the love of a man and a woman, but it is about a child. Let me just briefly tell you how it went with Lily and Jacob. After spending their first evening together, Lily already knew in her heart that this Jacob was a special man. He was different from everyone she knew and he reminded him of someone, only she could not remember ever meeting anyone like him. After many more such evenings and many conversations had passed, Jacob finally asked Lily to marry him. He had set up shop in a nearby village and was able to provide for a family. In other words, he proved his honesty and his strength to work hard for something that was precious to him. For he was a smart man and as such, he also knew that the man needs to provide for the family, as the woman will need all her strength and love to feel safe and to raise their children. After many moons had passed, Lily was about to give birth to their firstborn son. His name came to her in a dream and she had no doubt that "Gabriel" would be perfect for him. Both, mother and child were very healthy and I would love to tell you that after Gabriel was born all lived happily until the end of their days. Sadly this would not be how things went and I am sure you are already able to guess what I am about to tell you. Gabriel came into this world just fine. He knew in his very soul, which is the foundation of every living being, that he was looking forward to meeting his mother. He was already so excited to meet her while still being inside of her. Mother and child had often communicated with each other, for both remembered how to use telepathy and talked to each other without words. This is by the way a much simpler form of exchange. Words are often unable to truly convey what we would like to express to the other person.

Gabriel was a very bright soul. Very curious and very loving. Easygoing would be the right word to describe his very being. As Gabriel's soul reincarnated into his body, everything felt so warm and nice. He felt so welcome by his mothers spirit that he was overflowing with joy, knowing that one day he would meet her. He did not understand how it would work or what exactly would happen. The only thing he knew was that he was wanted and loved. This feeling of comfort and protection was more than he needed at this moment. No cold breeze and no hunger. All he knew was comfort and love. Quite the feeling to imagine isn't it? No wonder we humans crave comfort so much. You could say that this feeling of comfort and love is a present from god. As we dwell in our mothers womb, we learn to feel what it means to have everything and to just be happy. The thing to life is that in order to appreciate its richness, we also need to experience what it means to leave this comfort and learn to see the beauty in everything by being thankful for our very existence. Now it was time for Gabriel to leave his comfort bubble and enter a world that needs to be experienced.
Can you imagine how confused Gabriel was when he took his first breath? Suddenly everything was so loud and bright and simply alarming. He could not help but cry for his mother. Babies are very well aware of the energy of their mother, as they have lived so long inside of her. They can recognise their mother by her heartbeat, her smell, her touch, her voice and also by her very presence. So Gabriel knew that the person who was holding him now, could only be his mother. Time to snuggle in young man, for this woman holding you right now loves you more than you can imagine. A mothers job is to love her children, Lily knew that and she was very thankful to see her beautiful child cradled in her arms, seeking protection and comfort. There was nothing in the whole world that could have made her more happy than this very moment.

During the first 5 years of his life Gabriel grew to be a curious little boy, who discovered the world anew every day. He could ask his mother any question and she would answer him with the voice of an angel. For Lily understood that children see the world in a different way than most adults do. Children have an open mind. They do not pass judgement yet. You wonder why that is? In order to judge you need to have an opinion. When everything is new, it is hard to have an opinion on a lot of things. This is why it is good to listen to children and learn from them, because they see the world as it is and not how they would like it to be. Children are a present from heaven and they still remember how angels look like and how "pure bliss" feels like. Of course this also depends on the child and the people that surround it. In a loving and caring environment, children can prosper and grow well, like plants in a well maintained garden. Like flowers, children need love to grow and Gabriel had all the love he could wish for. His mother always found the time to listen to him and answer his questions without passing judgement. He was a very lucky boy and Lily was a very lucky mother.

As for Jacob, he felt like the luckiest man alive. He felt so blessed with his beautiful wife and his beautiful son. Sometimes he sat alone at night watching the stars and felt so happy that he could not help but cry. He did his best to provide for his family, because that is what a man must do. In order to receive such a present from heaven, a man must follow his path and provide his family with everything they need. Hard work cannot buy love of course, so his main job is be to make his wife happy, so that she can care for the children and love her husband in return. Women have a way of caring for others that is beyond anything a man can wish for. Men have the ability to work hard and earn a living. Now you are probably thinking "what an old-school thing to say", right? Maybe it seems that way from today's perspective, but when both man and woman work, then who can pass on their love and knowledge to the children? That said, get out of my story and let me finish!

Where was I? Right. Everything was going well and everyone was happy, but when did Gabriel forget about heaven? Well there is one thing that makes us forget about heaven more than anything. Hardship. When we are faced with difficult times and nobody is able to understand us or wants to listen to us, we tend to forget where we came from. This is what happened to Gabriel. One fateful evening, Lily and Jacob prepared to go to the next village, to attend a funeral of a distant cousin. Jacob was at the time sick with the flu and he needed to rest. So as any good parent would, Jacob and Lily asked a friend of the family to take care of Gabriel for the evening. As these things tend to happen, Jacob and Lily never returned. What exactly happened to them nobody knows and even if I knew, some things are best left unsaid. What is important for this story, is that Gabriel never saw them again. No goodbye, no final hug, no words of comfort and no chance to realise what happened. They were just gone. Like a snowflake getting caught in the heat of a fire. How do you tell this to a 5 year old child? Poor messenger, I pity you. For Gabriel (or how his mother used to call him - Gabe) his parents were his whole world. His happiness, his grief and his comfort. Whenever he felt sad he could talk to them and they would simply love him like only a parent can and he would be fine again. Tell me, how would you bring him this message? How can anyone in the world understand how it must feel for him? Everything you knew since you were born is suddenly different. With one sentence his whole world suddenly changed.

"Gabe? There is something that I need to tell you. Your parents did not return from the funeral. We believe they are dead."
Is this something you say to a 5 year old boy? I wouldn't know, for luckily I never had to, but just try to imagine the pain and the sorrow that he must have felt when he heard those dreadful words. A heart breaking a thousand times might describe the feeling that Gabe felt in this moment. I believe it could have been fine if he would have been lucky afterwards. If there would have been an aunt or an uncle or somebody else who was able to love him like his mother did. To just love him for the beautiful child that he was, with all his thoughts, beliefs and feelings. Not everyone is as understanding as your own parents, however. Gabe was a special child and being brought up by Lily he never had to hide his thoughts, or the way he saw the world. For Jacob, Lily and Gabe the world was full of wonder and beauty. They were able to see beauty in a grain of sand. Can you see the beauty of creation in a grain of sand? Can you see the beauty of creation in a fingernail? Can you see it when you sit on the toilet? They could and it was beautiful. Gabe soon came to realise that not everyone was like them. Some people only see pain and suffering. You could tell them about beauty and they would still find something ugly in there. You could point to an oasis and try to make them see how perfect the whole scenery is. An oasis would not be an oasis without the deadly desert surrounding it. An oasis is a paradise, where everything you need is available, surrounded by a world of suffering, heat and deadly venomous animals. Possible starvation awaits anyone who leaves the oasis. Still, there is beauty in the desert and there is beauty in an oasis. You could say they are both metaphors for life. Do you live in an oasis or in the desert? Wherever you live, can you see beauty? Do you believe the desert is ugly to a serpent or a Bedouin? I think not. If there is one person alive who can see beauty in something, there is beauty there. You only need to know where and how to look.

What followed now were hard years for Gabe. He needed to leave his home village, because nobody was willing to care for him there. His family was always considered a bit odd and most people were concerned with their own families and children. So Gabe moved to his uncle in the next village. Here life was very different from what he knew. His uncle was a hard man. Unlike Gabe, Uncle Peter did not grow up with a loving mother. He was beaten a lot by his parents when he was a child and yelled at for every noise he made. Uncle Peter certainly did not see the beauty of life. Gabe often wondered if Uncle Peter knew what beauty was in the first place. Luckily Uncle Peter was not a violent man, so despite his lack of emotion he never harmed Gabe physically. at the age of 7 Gabe was sent to school. Whatever anyone said about the necessity of going to school, he felt that it was a dreadful place. Sitting all day long on a chair and repeating whatever the teacher said to you. In the beginning, Gabe tried to be happy and active like he used to be with his parents. He tried to make everyone laugh by drawing the attention of the class. Falling from chairs on purpose and making jokes. Only he learned quick enough that this kind of behaviour is not wanted or tolerated in a school. After he was first punished with cleaning services and later with the cane, he soon learned to behave and became very quiet. His Uncle Peter did not make things better for him. At first Gabe, who despite the loss of his family did not loose his positivity, tried to warm up to his uncle. He soon learned that there was no room for positivity and cheerfulness at his new home. Whenever Gabe wanted to play and made some noise, his uncle sent him to his room. Although Gabe was trying his best to be happy, it is not easy, when everyone around you is trying to make you sad. Not with words, but with their actions. Children learn what is right and wrong through the way they are loved. When a child does something and his parents use violence to punish it, a child does not feel loved. In this way children learn how to "behave", by doing things that will make other people love them. Gabe now learned that everything he did was wrong. He wanted to make people happy, but that too was wrong. Nobody wanted to be happy it seemed, so they destroyed the one thing that could have shown them the way to happiness. When you are being called strange, weird and crazy too many times you start to believe that you are all of that. Surely, all these many people cannot be wrong? Something must be terribly wrong with you when everyone thinks so. This is how the world works nowadays. When you have something that others do not have themselves, they either take it away from you or they destroy it. Do you see yourself in this story? Can you understand how Gabe felt? He became a very quiet child from then on. The lively and loving boy who liked to make people laugh was now invisible. For when nobody can see you, you cannot do anything wrong. His own cloak of invisibility made form the fabric of silence. I can feel what Gabe felt, because I have felt it too. In a way the story of Gabe is my own story and the story of many children I never met. I know that it makes me sad to write about this, but it also makes me realise something else. Gabe's story is not over yet and neither is mine. When everyone pushes you into a corner and wants you to believe that you are weird or sick or simply just wrong, then you can submit to them and become very depressed. Or you start to fight against these believes. You begin to rebel against the masks that people are wearing. You start speaking the truth and begin to seek out the people that think exactly like you do. Do you wish to know how Gabe's story continued?

Gabe was quiet for a long time. He was so quiet that people did not even remember he existed. He became a shadow of his former self and everyone believed that this is the way he is. This quiet cute little kid. They remembered his former strangeness only fondly, because now he was just quiet. "Finally he fits in", is what they would think. When Gabe became a teenager he did not even remember how it was to be different. He was who he was. Silent. Quiet. Invisible. His opinion was not important and he rather said nothing than to say something wrong. Sometimes he had to answer, because he was asked a direct question. His standard response was "I don't know". The easiest thing to do is to avoid speaking your mind and people will start to leave you alone at one point. Would you rather live a lie then to be yourself? Saying nothing means you do not have to lie. Hiding for such a long time still makes you desperate for love though. You want to be liked and you want to be loved. You want to be accepted and appreciated. You want to be embraced and you want to be touched by someone. Only nobody ever does that, because they don't know how and you don't know how to say that you need a hug so much that it hurts. Whenever Gabe met someone he liked, he became the person the other one wanted. He learned to hide his true self, because he learned that he was not the way he should be. So he fulfilled the needs of others, hoping to please them. Only this kind of behaviour does not go well for long. When he met his first love he was quite happy to have found someone he could finally touch and hug and love. He was so happy that it must have been overwhelming. When you are someone who is able to love, you want to shower your partner with love and not hold back. Only for most people it is too much at once. They are not able to accept this kind of love, because they are not able to see the beauty of it. So every relationship that Gabe went through ended. It wasn't his fault, but his girlfriends always found things that he did wrong. He snored too much. He did not clean this or he did not close that. Meaningless things that are simply human. So they pushed him away, because they were not able to see his beauty. After having lived a life of ups and downs and struggling to find someone who was able to just love him for who he was, he realised that it wasn't possible. Gabe realised that people are unable to love and therefore he needed to learn how to love himself. He lived for such a long time in the dark and waited for somebody to love him, that her forgot about the love inside of him. He forgot that nobody needs to give him love, for he always carries it with him. He forgot that he can share love when he wants to and he forgot that he is at all times loved by his parents. He forgot the love of his mother Lily and his father Jacob. He forgot about love and he forgot about heaven. He forgot about his heavenly father and his earthly mother. He forgot where he came from and he forgot where he will return. Now let us explore briefly how he started to remember...

Do you remember how I told you that hardship is the one thing that makes us forget about the beauty of life? Well, Gabe endured many years of hardship and suffering. When you forget who you are and where you come from, when you forget to love and what it means to be loved in return, you suffer. When all this pain comes from forgetting, then wouldn't remembering help Gabe to realise who he was? The thing with hardship is that on the one hand it can bring you pain, but on the other hand there is beauty and love. When you flip a coin it can land on either side, there is no way to choose right? Right? What if I told you that you can choose? When you flip a coin and it turns out to be the painful side, don't you think it is possible to see the beauty in it? After all it is the very same coin. When Gabe grew up, just before his parents vanished he learned what love is and what it means to have everything you need. As he grew older he learned what pain is and what it means to be rejected. What do you take as a point of reference? What happens to a coin when you erase one side? Then you have half a coin you could say. The coin is not complete any more. When you take this coin as a metaphor for life, then all the ups and downs, the beauty and the pain, they are all part of the same coin. Sometimes we spend too much time on one side of the coin and only see the beauty. Then we trip and terrible things happen to us and we only see the pain. Why not remember the beauty and look at the pain as a reminder that we should be thankful for all the positive things we were able to experience? To remember the beauty of life, is in a way a choice. Only we cannot do so unless we are ready for it. To prepare ourselves and to make it easier to remember we need to collect as many positive experiences as we can. We need to leave our comfort zone and challenge our fear. When we have the courage to take the coin into our hand and look at both sides equally, we hold the key to the beauty of life in our hands. This is what Gabe did. He collected so many beautiful experiences that he remembered where he came from. He remembered the love of his parents. He remembered heaven. Now let me ask you a question? What is your story and can you see the beauty in it? Can you flip the coin?

THE END

Fearful Planet - The Story to the podcast series

Hi. My name is Dave and I would like to tell you something about my life. I am not quite sure where to start, but as any good story it should probably start at a very important point of my life: The day I lost my virginity. Wait! What? That's actually not what I wanted to say....

Let's try this another time. Beginnings were never my favourite as opposed to endings, maybe this is why I am writing to you now. I feel like I am at the end of something. The end of my patience maybe? The end of my wits? Or maybe the end of my life. To be honest it is hard to say at what end exactly I am at the moment, for there are a lot of things that are ready to end. The current situation of the world is quite strange. Maybe not from your perspective, but from mine it surely is. When I was in school, back in the old days, I used to read dystopian novels. Or rather had to read them, which I did not always do. Have you ever read 'Brave New World'? Quite an interesting piece of literature if you ask me, which most people don't seem to do. Reading it during my childhood was a bit confusing to be honest. No child at that age really understands what is going on. I read it a second time when I was about 2 decades older and found that it was very intriguing to me. Scary, but also very true. The funny thing is that when you are reading a dystopian novel, you do not actually think that your life is like this. You read it and mumble to yourself that whoever lives in that world must be awfully sad or frustrated. These types of novels give you a sense of "Thank god I am not one of them", or "I am so glad that I live today".

Let me tell you something. Please listen to what I have to say. I am being serious here. We are now writing the year 2055. What happened in my lifetime is something that you should know about and that you should learn from. I deeply encourage you to look at what is happening in your society right now and ask yourself if it is possible that something similar is going to happen to you....

In the early twenties we got word of a pandemic. A global virus that was supposed to kill everyone, unless we started listening to the government and doing as they said. At first it was mainly the masks, then came several lock-downs. Everyone around me was panicking and out of fear they stayed at home. I quickly realised who the friends were that I wanted to spend more time with. I could sit here now and say to every one of them "I told you so!" But I don't want to be such a smart-ass. Only: I told you so. Well what did I try to say? Right: As this so-called Virus was approaching I already had a sense of foreboding, that whatever they made it out to be, wasn't exactly what it truly was. When these things were happening I was reminded of a movie I had once watched, "V for Vendetta", which more or less depicted what was happening on the whole world and in my own country during that time - and is still continuing. I tried to talk to people about my concerns, but the majority was so deceived by the governments propaganda that the only thing I received was anger. Anger, disbelieve and frustration are strong signs for fear. Fear. The driver of humanity. You think stuff is looking bad now? Try 2055. Let me tell you what happened.

It was a lovely morning in spring and.....well that is not what happened. Well it did happen, but it is not what happened to me and also a bit fine-scaled for this kind of story. Let me bring this all into a broader picture. Hi, I am Dave and this is my story. The end...

Still there? Well then you really must be interested in what happened and I feel ready to continue. It happened like I pictured it and how I saw it coming. My own dystopian novel became a reality. I write these lines from a hidden place. It is of course so hidden, that I almost forgot where it is and I will certainly not try to remember it for the sake of this story. Important is that I am hiding. Do you remember how it was to play hide and seek when you were a child? I do. I am playing it still. Sometimes your hiding place was so good that nobody would find you right? The thing is that if nobody finds you, they might either have given up or they are still searching. So what to do? Come out of your cave to see whether it is safe, or stay hidden to score a win. Whatever you do you are in a nervous state of "am I going to be discovered or have they forgotten about me". I feel a bit like this, all the time. So these words might well be the most insane account of anything going on, or plain truth. I know from some secure resources that the situation is still hectic, but I haven't checked myself out of fear. That is the crazy part. The reason I was hiding in the first place was that the fear governments were spreading scared me and I hid. I became so afraid of what they were trying to do that the only way out was a way in. In where? Into hiding actually. Well, what a giveaway!

Back to what actually happened. Everything went nuts. After about a year of announcing the pandemic people were made belief that the only viable solution was a vaccination. The holy grail, so to speak, for anyone who was willing to survive. The problem was that the way this was schemed and the companies that advertised the vaccine weren't really reliable. One of them owned a large technological cooperation that was known to advertise and administer vaccines in 3rd world countries. Dozens of villages became infertile due to these vaccinations. What did they do? They moved on to the next poorly developed country and did the same thing. The problem was, that all this information seemed too far fetched for most people. Word like "conspiracy theory" and "lateral thinker" or "Querdenker" were used to denunciate people who even mentioned these kinds of things. Whatever you did, you were not allowed to question what was going on. Whenever you asked questions about the validity of the pandemic people got angry. Me being a writer started to produce novels and tried to talk about this topic, but nobody - except for other so-called "conspiracy theorists" listened to what I said. I am speaking to you now, because you might do better than me. You might have the wits and the know-how to change something and not stand quietly while the government takes away your freedom. Although there were a lot of concerns previously on data collection, these seemed to no longer exist in the face of the so-called pandemic. Wherever you wanted to go you either needed the vaccination or a test to verify that you were not infected with this "deadly" virus. I can tell you already that it later turned out to be fake, only at that point the governments were already past the point of peaceful negotiation. They had already caused so much damage that they were not able to hide from their lies and deceptions any more. So as most people to who are pointed out as the culprit: they defend themselves. The politicians tried desperately to hide the truth and cover up their crimes against free will and humanity. I would not still be hiding if my world wasn't a dystopia, so you might imagine what happened already on your own...

They used force. When a large number of people stood up to free themselves, the government used unprecedented force to push them back and destroy the riot. It wasn't even a violent riot, it was peaceful. Huge organisations however like to play dirty and user their power and wealth to manipulate and buy humans. So they had people hiding in the riot that suddenly started shooting at the police. The police and the military were then ordered to kill as many people as possible. There were more than 3 billion people worldwide estimated that day, who demonstrated simultaneously. Most of them were killed and the rest was imprisoned or went into hiding like myself. This all might seem a bit far out to you. Preposterous! An outrage! Liar! Are some of the things you are thinking. Most people that were to read this story would not understand the connection to their current situation, even if the same thing was happening to them. How can you lean back and what as people are being separated into "vaccinated" and "not-vaccinated"? Can you not make the connection to world war 2? Discrimination made righteous through solidarity. If you are not with us then you are against us and need to face the consequences. This is how it started. People at one point were no longer allowed to leave the house without a vaccination. Anyone who started talking about the immune system was cast out by his so called friends. Freedom of speech is nothing that can be taken away from you. When you live in a society where there are certain things that cannot be said, then you live in a society where freedom of speech does not exist. This is all I have to say. Pay attention to what is going on and do not close your eyes to what is going on. Governments know how to get what they want so humanity needs to be able to see through their schemes and build a better world. I believe in you.
Dave.

THE END

Disciplined beyond belief

One day I would be an old man, filled with joy. All the things I had lived through would amount to one hell of an experience. How did I know that? I just did. Looking back now I realise that everything I had ever wanted came true. Everything I had ever dreamed of became an actual reality. The only way of telling you how I achieved my lives goal would be to tell you the story of my life. Rather than blabbering on with an old man's voice, I would like to give you my younger self as a narrator. He was so much more energised and inspiring than this old fool already bothering you with his creaking voice. Let's see, where do I start? Ah yes, this is me at the age of 25. I had just finished university and couldn't wait to do something important with my life. This is the story of Brian...

I was standing on a very thin line, roughly two meters in the air. My focus was at a point in the distance. I felt a thought coming up about my open job application and I could feel my concentration and my balance failing me. Cat-like I landed on the ground. Despite my frustration of not managing to walk back and forth on my slackline like a squirrel, I allowed myself to feel pleased in the way that I managed to fall and land. An image of myself flashed up right in front of my inner eye, with me lying on my back at the same spot a few months back. A dog had come running towards me while I was on the line and it disturbed me so much, not knowing where it was, that I simply fell out of the sky and onto my back. I was glad to see the progress I made. This one time really taught me to stay focused on what I was doing, even while falling. I learned to trust my body and not hurt myself any more. Of course this change did not happen overnight. It took me years of training to do this. It wasn't simply about reading stuff about slacklining, but more about training your body to act automatically. The more your muscles, tendons and physique get aligned with what you are trying to accomplish, the easier it will become. I wish the rest of my life would be as successful as my workout. I just graduated from university with a degree in marketing. Only here I am slacklining instead of doing what I ought to do, which is applying for jobs. One would have thought that after graduating I would be looking forward to working and earning money. Only that isn't the case at all. What I feel like is doing what I want. Only what do I want? I want freedom. I want to relax and I want to live a happy life. Right now when I try to do something that makes me feel happy, I feel bad instead. Not because it isn't what makes me happy, no I love slacklining. The problem is that every time I do something fun I feel bad, because I have this nagging feeling I should be doing something else instead. Only what I do not know. Is it myself that feels this way or is it an expectation thrust upon me by the whole world, especially my parents. What is all this nonsense about responsibility? Why can't I live in an adventure story and do awesome stuff all the time. Instead of doing something which would bring home some money I rather do everything else. Why? Am I an idiot? Am I a good for nothing? People say I lack discipline. I don't even know what discipline is. If discipline means getting up every day and doing the same thing, then I do not want it. "You need stability in your life" they also like to say. Only looking at the people that say these things doesn't really encourage me to get any of that. Earning money until my hair falls out and my back is broken is not something I look forward to. So what to do? Slacklining isn't really something I would like to do for a living either. I have the feeling that as soon as I would earn money with that I would not be happy any more. Almost like I would be selling my soul. So here I am feeling like on the one hand I am doing what I like and on the other like I am running away from my problems....

Ten years later:
Another monologue at the age of 35. My name is still Brian (some things never change) and here I am ten years ahead in the game. The game of life, so to speak. What is there to say really. You could say I found something that I never looked for. I had all these things that I thought I could do, while not realising that they weren't really what I wanted to do. They were just myself trying to run away from myself. Who am I really and what is my purpose in life? These are the really big questions that I started to ask myself at some point. I also realised that whichever path I was following it maybe wasn't my own path, but the path of expectation. Expectations of others make us chase false dreams and it took me a long time to disentangle myself from those expectations. Within 10 years I learned so much about myself and I also learned about discipline. In my younger days, fresh out of uni, I simply hated the word discipline already. From someone who loves everything spontaneous to go right away to someone who is disciplined is basically impossible, let me tell you that. So what did I do to achieve my goal? What is my goal actually? I won't tell you my goal just yet, but I will tell you what brought me closer to it. I looked at my life and tried to figure out the things that I really love. Sport, being creative and food are three very important things that I cherish in my life. Oh and of course: sleeping. I love to sleep. Being creative, doing sports and cooking are hard things on the body when you do them with passion, so your body needs to rest of course. I realised at one stage that doing it all at once would have been impossible, so I took steps to get there. First one thing and then another. Make as many experiences outside of your comfort-zone as you can and learn from them. Observe yourself and be patient. Only with patience can you reach your goal. When you are impatient you will be frustrated. See the progress you have made so far. Maybe you can do 50 push-ups yet, but at least you can do more than before. More than before, that is a kind of rhyme. You try to change everything at once? Good luck. That is where impatience will get you. Frustration-town. Angry-Village and to a place within yourself that you did not think existed. If you cannot have everything at once you will be frustrated, because you really, really, really need everything right now to be happy. What a stupid thing to think, say or believe. Telling a child to be patient is like telling a puppy to stop running around. There are so many things happening around them that are new, they cannot help but go crazy once in a while. Everything is so exciting and new and so forth. The more experiences you make the calmer you will become. You will realise that things will eventually happen, maybe not right away, but they will happen. I am now at a point in my life where I did not accomplish everything I wanted to have. I do not have my own house yet and I do not have my own camper, but I have a regular income with things I like to do. When I was younger I could never have imagined how doing what you love could create an income. Everyone in my surroundings simply works to have money. Sure, a part of me also works to have money, but there is also this other part that really loves what he is doing. I did study marketing, so I know how to create a market for something. In this case, for myself. I started to figure out what I like the most and think about how I could make money with this, while still enjoying doing it. I figured out that the only way of loving what I do for the rest of my life is doing it with passion and being consistent. Learning along the way and improving myself. To be inquisitive and to learn from others. In other words I learned to be disciplined with the stuff that I love. Discipline for me means not giving up. To really and truly master whatever you are doing and than incorporating it into your daily life. What was also important to me was doing something that I could be doing everywhere on this planet. Something I can carry with me and that does not keep me bound to a single place. I wanted to do something where my experiences could flow into and that will be appreciated. What that is is not for this story, but I am sure there is something in your life that can give you that. Thinking back on all the stuff that you loved already during your childhood and considering the possibilities of growing with these things will help you find what your goal in life can be.

Once more I jump ten years in time and speak to you from my 45 year old self. I have a house and I have a family. I have two beautiful children and I am already at this stage full with joy. I regret nothing that happened in my life and I can tell you that everything you live through is important and valuable as long as you are willing to learn from it. I gave my life a meaning, but starting to pursue my happiness and by asking these important questions. Once you start asking yourself the question of what you actually want in life the avalanche is starting to tumble down the hill. Have you ever looked at the life of a tree? No? It starts as a sapling, possibly full of insecurities. How high are the chances that the seed will even take root and start it's journey towards the sky? Very slim, I suppose. Only one in so many seeds will eventually become a tree and see what surrounds it outside of the forest. Without the other trees shading it and giving it nutrients the sapling will have a hard time growing. It needs the protection of the forest to grow big and strong. Every year the little tree will have to face the seasons and use what it can to survive. There are weak trees and strong trees of course, but there are also the outside conditions which will impact the seeds life. Maybe the seed is taking root on a substrate poor in nutrients or maybe he is taking root in a paradise? Both can be a challenge, because who knows if that paradise will last forever? Humans might come and destroy that paradise or a drought might challenge the young tree on its path to heaven. Whatever the seed starts out with, it needs to grow in order to survive and it needs to be patient. At the age of 45 I have grown into a formidable tree you could say. I have learned that the flow of time does not destroy us, but it helps us grow. Often we are told that from the age of 30 on your life will end and you will become wrinkly and old and your body will start to decay. We are told that we are at the height of our physical endurance somewhere in our twenties. These are all lies, meant to challenge ourselves. We can get angry now at society that it tells these lies, but anger is a waste of energy. You can simply see through the lie and write your own story. I started a regular practice of Yoga, sport and meditation in my early thirties and I benefited greatly from it. I am as agile as a Kudu and I feel as strong as a lion. What I can tell you from this point of my life is that it is patience you need and the belief in something beyond the power of Man.

Good day young traveler on the paths of consciousness. I speak to you once more at the age of 65. Many moons I have witnessed. I have been seasoned with the spices of life itself. What I can tell you at this stage is that when you are a seeker, you cannot help but seek. I remember a time when I was missing something. I was ever searching for this or that and I would not be satisfied until I found it. "It surely is coffee I am craving" I would think. After I drank the coffee I felt at bliss for a while, until I realised that it wasn't that. It also wasn't the banana, or the cookie. What I was seeking was love. The love of a woman, for I am a man. What man craves most beyond anything is someone to fight for. Someone to challenge himself for. Someone to protect and to be strong for. If it weren't for my wife I would never have gotten to write these lines today. My wife completed me and helped me to be strong. Always was I searching for this one thing that would make me whole. When I found her, we couldn't be together all the time and whenever she wasn't with me I felt like something was missing again. My lesson was to feel complete even when I am alone. To feel whole, because I found her. Knowing that she exists is what helped me to do what I did. My entire life I could have searched and despaired, until she found me and chose me. You probably think this sounds very simple? To feel loved in this way is simple, when you can. Can you love someone like this? True love is hard to find and I searched for a long time until I made a very important decision. I decided that I would let love come to me. I decided that I would not struggle any more to be loved, but to be who I am and not bend myself to my own greed so that someone would come and love me. I simply did what I liked to do and at that moment the right woman came into my life and decided to love me. She decided that I would be her man. The woman chooses the man and not the other way round. When you look at nature and you observe birds, it is always the male that dances, so that the female may recognise him as her mate. It is the woman that makes a man complete. Until you have found that part in yourself that is searching, you may search. Only when you stop searching will you find. The rest happens by itself!

THE END

The Story of the Old Man

Once upon a time there was a man. An old man. Not as you imagine an old man, frail and rickety. The man in question was not a victim of the local orthodox medicine and therefore, wasn't 'treated' most of his life with unnecessary drugs, which have more side effects than benefits. NO! The man in question was a so-called 'savage'. Or, as he would probably call himself, a human being. Most of his life, this man, who was a human being, lived where he was born. In the jungle. At this point it is worth mentioning, or suggesting in a well-intentioned manner, that it is not at all relevant to the course of the story where exactly this was. In fact, as I write these lines, I ask myself how much nonsense a book can really put up with, without losing its seriousness.

Where were we? Or rather, where was I? Ah yes. The old man in the jungle:

The old man in the jungle had already seen a lot in his long life. What exactly would probably go beyond the scope of this book, not to mention the patience of the reader. Patience is actually something to linger on for a moment and to raise the question, how far you might stretch the patience of the reader in any creative work? I am drifting off again.

Relatively near the end of his life, one of the younger jungle dwellers asked him a question: 'You? Old man? Can you explain to me what fear actually is and how I can stop being afraid of fear?' This was exactly the question the boy asked the old man in the jungle.

The old man thought for a moment and then he began to speak. 'That is a question I cannot answer in a few sentences. I'll have to elaborate a bit, so make yourself comfortable, young one.'

'You are very lucky, because I have been thinking about this very question for many years. Why are we afraid of fear? In fact, I only found the answer after years of observing the milksops. It seemed to me that every time I led a group into the jungle, the participants were very nervous. I made it my business to observe this more closely and to pay attention to exactly what kind of questions they were asking or what was making them so incredibly nervous. In fact, the jungle itself, is quite a good example, which I will bring in due course.'

'First of all, though, I want to stay with the milksops, because they helped me understand fear better. Through the white man, I have learned to see fear from a completely different perspective. I am very grateful for that. Fear itself, I have come to realise, is that which is hidden. When we don't see something or feel that something is there that escapes our view, we are often afraid. However, there are other things to which fear can attach itself. For example, it is our experiences that can be a breeding ground for our fears. Before I confuse you with my explanations and you can no longer follow me, let's stay with the unknown for now. When we are in a situation where something unknown confronts us, we are nervous. This shows itself internally, through a spreading restlessness, or externally, through trembling or similar symptoms. Whenever I led a group into the jungle, there were some who were very calm and mastered every situation with flying colours. Others, on the other hand, were very upset and would jump out of their skin and flinch at the slightest noise. They were extremely tense and expected to be attacked by a jaguar at any moment. 'Why is this so?', I asked myself? My understanding is that it has to do with our childhood on the one hand, and our soul on the other.'

'Some people come into the world and are very calm, while others are constantly crying. Then there are those who sleep all day long. There are also those who can't see enough of the world and want to touch and examine everything. That's the way it is and parents who have already become parents several times can certainly confirm this. No child is like another. All are different, all are individual. This is important in order to understand that there are different perceptions for each person and that you cannot lump all people together. Nevertheless, I believe that our childhood has the strongest influence on our development and on how we deal with fear. At this point I would like to talk about experiences. Experiences cannot be conveyed through words, because you have to experience them. However, you can lay a kind of foundation for a positive experience or even a negative experience. This foundation is something we can create through knowledge. The more we know about the world that surrounds us, the better we can deal with new situations.'

'A person who knows nothing about snakes will probably be very cautious in dealing with them. He does not know how to judge them. If a person is taught a lot about snakes, he can use this knowledge in an encounter to better assess situations. This enables him to have a positive experience. This experience will accompany him throughout his life and he will be able to use what he has learned in other situations and not be afraid of new and unknown things. Now imagine that I would only tell you the scary stories of snakes. I tell you how the venom of a snake can kill you within minutes. I teach you that snakes are very scary and I only use stories where there is no good ending. So I create a very bad foundation for your first encounter with snakes. You will probably be so afraid before your first experience that you will not be able to approach the matter neutrally. However, this point of view is not a neutral position, but a distorted truth. Looking at something from only one point of view is very one-sided and creates a false picture of the world around us. It is better if I tell you the wonderful things about snakes, but also make it clear that snakes are wild animals that do not like to be touched. I can also tell you about the poison of the snake in a positive way. How sophisticated the composition is and how the snake helps to maintain the balance of the jungle. If nothing dies, then no new life can arise. Nature depends on the balance between life and death, otherwise we would eventually suffocate in living organisms. How are we to live if we cannot feed on other living things? Plants live to the same extent as animals and both need each other to exist.'

'So my first message is, that it is our knowledge, that enables us to assess a situation in advance.'

'However, knowledge that is only conveyed through stories or books, can create a false picture. We rely too much on the experiences of others and miss the opportunity to verify this knowledge. A human being is born into this world, to gain experience. By educating myself and gathering a lot of information, I can more easily have experiences and learn from them. This is possible, because experiences allow us to verify what we have learned before and to experience it with our senses. Every person perceives the world in a different way. Therefore, it is indispensable to have experiences in order to recognise life for what it is. A person who spends his life in a single room, reading books, may know a lot about the world and life. However, this knowledge is limited to theory. In practice, this person has no experience and cannot report on how it really is. Try talking about love, with a person who has never loved. This person probably has an opinion about love, but you will realise that he has no idea what he is talking about. You are too young to have felt the touch of a woman. I could tell you now how wonderful it is and how unique the feeling is, to be so close to someone. However, you will not be able to feel it until you have experienced it yourself. However, at this point I can move on to my next message, because the second message is this:'

'Our experiences allow us to validate what we have learned before and to look at our knowledge on a second, deeper level.'

'This closes the circle, because we have now experienced for ourselves what we have learned before. When we interact with our world in this way, we are in a constant learning process, because every situation is made to test our knowledge and to learn more. I have learned through the milksops that the world outside this jungle is governed by fear. The white man has access to a seemingly neverending source of information. They call it the internet and I have been told, that it is easy to get lost in it. Many people live their lives mainly in this sea of information and withdraw from the world. It seems to me to be a double-edged sword. Anyone can read up on anything in an instant and add it to their knowledge. However, this knowledge is of no use if you don't experience it yourself.'

'Now I have talked a lot and you are probably wondering, what all this has to do with our fears? This already brings me to my third message:'

'Fears can reside in places where our gaze does not look at the whole.'

'Looking at the whole is a skill that enables us, to see a situation from different angles. I am only afraid of snakes, when I focus on the negative aspects of these animals. If I get to know them and recognise their beauty, I also learn to look at snakes in their entirety. If a person has no or only bad experiences or opinions about snakes, the only thing that will help, is to broaden this spectrum. Gaining new experiences is helpful to be able to look at what is causing the fear from a different angle and thus face the fear. Suddenly one is able to judge the situation not solely on the basis of one experience. You can now use a whole series of experiences, as well as the knowledge you have gathered, to get a picture that is very close to the truth.'

'I already said at the beginning of my story, that I would make a transition to our home, the jungle. At a first glance, the jungle is very confusing. If you look at it from the outside, you will see, that you can form an opinion about the size of the jungle, but you have no basic understanding of what the jungle actually is. Seen from the outside, it is a seemingly endless sea of leaves. Just as you cannot explore the ocean by looking at its surface. You have to dive in a bit to get a better overview. But to understand exactly what the ocean really is, it is eventually necessary to explore its deepest depths. It is the same with the jungle. If I only look at the outside, I will not learn anything about the jungle. However, if I stand at the gate of the jungle and want to enter, I notice that it probably takes me a little or even a lot of effort, to take the first step. Why is this so? When you are outside the jungle, you have a pretty good overview. You can see the trees and you can roughly estimate, how far it seems to stretch out. Once you enter the jungle, you quickly realise, how easy it is to lose track and get lost. You become aware of your vulnerability. In the jungle, there is also an interplay of light and shadow. Some places are so overgrown, that you can hardly see your hand in front of your eyes, even in broad daylight. Behind every tree there could be something unexpected or unknown. Each step could be the last. For us, who have already spent our whole lives in the jungle, this is not particularly frightening. Of course, we can still have experiences that push us to our own limits. But on the whole, little can surprise us, because we have learned to find our way through the tangle of vines, trees and shadows. We have gained experience in the jungle, that allows us to see it from many different angles. It is much the same with ourselves and our fears.'

'Quite confusing, isn't it, my young student? Imagine yourself for a moment. From the outside, you will see your skin and your hair; your hands, your smile and what is visible on the surface. As I have come to learn, the milk-faces think, that this is all there is. They think, that we are what we see in the mirror and everything that is going on inside us, is just digestive processes or something like that. In fact, it is quite different. A person is like the jungle or the ocean. If you look at it from the outside, you can estimate quite well how far it stretches. Through my shamanic training, I have learned, to dive into my innermost being. As a shaman, I have the task of exploring my darkest corners and shining light on them. This enables me to help others on their path and take them by the hand. Not everyone is so daring and dives into the jungle or the depths of the sea, voluntarily and without help. Some of us need a guide, to help us gain experience. To do this, it is essential for a shaman to first explore his own inner self. Once he has gained enough experience within himself and brought enough light into the shadows, he is able to help others to do the same. However, it is not the same with us humans, as it is with the sea or the jungle. We cannot simply dive into other people and illuminate them from within. Exploring a single ocean can take more than a human lifetime. If we try to explore the depths of other people as well as our own, we will never get very far. Moreover, we deprive others of the opportunity to gather their own experiences and keep the knowledge of how to go within for ourselves. What we can do, however, is create the right environment in which every soul, who is ready to dive, can learn to do so. Some people need a lifetime of support and progress sparingly, while others just need a little help to get started and immediately begin to explore the very depths of their selves.'

'Now I would like to bring everything together to ensure that you do not miss anything.'

'My story had three messages. The first message was, that our theoretical knowledge enables us to assess situations correctly in advance. The second message was, that only by gaining experience are we able to apply and truly understand what we have learned before. The third message was, that fears can reside, where we do not have an overview of the whole. So far so good! If we now relate these three messages to ourselves, we realise, that we can learn a lot about the world by acquiring knowledge. By gaining experience, we learn to integrate and strengthen this knowledge. If we now dive into the world of our emotions and fears, we gather many experiences. We thus learn to look at our innermost being, not only from one perspective, but from many different ones. As I explained earlier, you can dissolve fear by having new experiences or by broadening your perspective. This is what we have to do within ourselves. Our inner world is like a jungle. Behind some corners there may be hidden treasures or even great darkness. Exploring this world and illuminating it bit by bit, enables us to find peace. When we have explored our deepest depths, we have dealt with all the things that were previously hidden. We have brought light into the darkness.'

'If courage and confidence are associated with light, then fear and despair are found in darkness. The gift of light allows us, to overcome the darkness and free ourselves from all the things that cause us fear. Your real question was how you can learn to stop being afraid of fear, right? Fear is all that is unknown. By educating myself, collecting experiences and looking inside myself, I recognise the true nature of fear and thus learn to no longer be afraid of the unknown. Because the more experience a person gains in dealing with their own fears, the easier it becomes over time, to look at them from different angles. It also enables you, to use these experiences and recognise your fear before it takes possession of you.'

This ends the story of the old man. I think you know by now, that old men from the jungle know a lot about fear. If I were you, I'd take a break or never look at this book again. You still have a chance to keep things as they are and look at the jungle from the outside.

The moment when you leave the known behind and dive - be it into the sea, the jungle or yourself - is above all, one thing:

And so the journey begins...

God's rational mind

Lifeless are my hands after creating the world. It seemed so empty. I was empty. I was so empty and I wanted to feel love. I wanted to feel alive. Love. 'What is love?'', I often wondered as I walked amongst the world that I had created. I came to no answer, because the world I had created was empty and so was I. I was empty and I was lost. One morning I awoke and an idea had struck me. Why not take something from within my body and create something that could love me, that could bear me children and bring me happiness? Only what? What could it be? I walked amongst the world that I had created and I tried to figure out what it is that I was missing. I could think of nothing.

The land was rich and full of promise and yet I was empty. Everything was there. The water was there and the trees were there. Animals were there and life was happening all around me and yet I was empty. As empty as my heart seemed to be. I looked for a missing part, but the further I looked, the more miserable I felt. I began to wonder if what I was seeking even existed and I had to think of that idea that I had, to create what was missing from a part within my self.

Could it be done? I could not tell. While everything that I had created was so stunning and perfectly chaotic, I longed to be a part of it. I could look at it and I could feel pride, but I could not partake in the creation I had manifested. My resolve to go through with my plan, to create something to love and to cherish became final and I reached within my self and I took a rib from the body I had created for my self in order to experience the world I had made. I wanted someone that was like me, similar, but also unlike me. I wanted someone to spend time with that could make me feel things, that could bring me the gift of emotion. I kept looking at the land and I saw that what was giving birth to the creation and what kept it going, the principle of chaos, was not my doing any more, but something else. When I had descended to earth and created a body made of earth around me, I could no longer control my creation. I became a part of it.

Now what must I do? Create something that will fully make me a part of this world, so that I can live as a part of my creation. I looked at the hills and I saw luscious curves and gentle softness. I envisioned what I saw and tried to shape it according to my own form. I took earth and water and my rib and I formed a body. This body would be a vessel for the mother whence it came from. This body would be a vessel for the chaos that created this vastness of life on earth. This body would be known as woman and I shall henceforth be known as man.

Now that I was no longer alone, I could look at the beautiful woman that I had created. She was wild and full of love. Sometimes I have to admit, that I got a bit scared of her. Me the creator of an entire world, got scared of his own creation. Whenever I felt weakness inside of me, this woman would rage and storm like the most vicious of beasts and make me wish I would have never shown weakness. She would batter me with her fists, until I remembered once more, that I was a man and a creator. I would remember my place and I would take her gently into my arms and calm her with my voice and my strength. For a woman is as gentle as she is wild. She is chaos and love. She is pure emotion. She knows nothing of the rationality of men. When the ocean is storming one must seek cover, or conquer it. When the wind is howling, you need a good and sturdy house with a strong foundation. It is right to fear a strong woman, but what a woman fears more is her own chaos. You have nothing to worry if you know how to be strong. Just remember to be strong at all times, or your woman will have to remind you of your strength.

THE END

A moment of fear

For me, one of the scariest thoughts in the world, is to never find true love. When I found it, I didn't know what to do with it, because I never learned what to do with my self. I loved and it hurt. I screamed and I shouted and I tried to run away. Love was stronger. Love has courage, but fear has not. Fear is a coward. If you have love, you have the balls to do what it takes to open your heart. You will suffer and you will cry, but you will love.

A gust of wind on the inside.
The trembling of leaves.
A fire is burning,
followed by silence.

From the moment I met you,
I was afraid.
From the moment I let you
go, I was in pain.

I feared it was the last time,
I would ever see you.
Before I really got to know you,
I knew what fear was.

I discovered places in my self,
that nobody could have told me about.
I realised that the world is as bright,
as I feel about my self.

From the moment I left you,
I was working to get back to you.
I knew I had to change,
and change I did.

Unvaccinated

I feel it, deep in my heart. The noose is being tightened. Good thing, I have learned to preserve my breath. Good thing, that I remember how to trust, when the fear gets too much for me to handle. God catches me. Every time. Thank you.

Fear is what I feel. Fear!
My nails gone from biting.
I am eating myself, from fear!
I am afraid of my opinion.

Afraid to be punished for free will.
It is a decision, they say,
while tightening the noose,
while closing us in,
in a circle of fear.

The weak ones crumble before my eyes.
My family gave in to the pressure.
All but two now, tasted the lollipop,
lured away from the truth with a needle.

I must not bend my knee!
I must stay true to myself!
If I fall, all is forgotten.
If I fall, all is lost.

Everything I said, will be void.
Everything I wanted, out of reach.
If they attack me, I will smile.
If they try to break me, I turn to god.

I am brave.
I am truth.
I am faithful.
I am strong.

I am all of this, when I stand.
I am all of this, when I smile.
I am all of this, when I trust.
I must not bend the knee!

The Beginning!

Pandemically speaking

Recently I feel like everything is getting worse. I have no idea what the future will bring, but I know one thing: I will not remain silent. What is happening worldwide is a scam, laid out by governments, to trap us into buying more products. If you are not able to see this, then walk away. Do not attempt to stop us, for we will succeed. God is on our side, because we fight for what is right. We fight for freedom and we fight with our hearts and without violence.

One virus to kill us all.
one virus to chase us.
One virus to make us all
buy their vaccinations!

How do you sell a product, my dear?
Well, all you need is a tad bit of fear.
You season their hearts with troubles
and wait 'til their anxiousness doubles.

Then what comes next is even more mean,
but to get what you want it's needed, it seems:
You take away, what they like the most.
They need understand, that freedom does cost!
The price is nothing, but freedom itself,
but to understand that, they need to be brave.

So ask yourself my dear little friend,
where is it, you want to stand in the end?
Freedom is there, where your heart is.
What they have to offer is heartless.

If we remain silent, all shall be lost.
Freedom is something that comes with a cost.
What that is is for us to decide.
I know for myself, I don't want to hide.

I shall pay for my freedom with bravery,
by standing against, what I don't want to be!
I swore to stand against evil, I did!
I shall fight with words, against what hid
in our very own governments!

When this fight is over, they need make amends...

Favours to ask:

Often I feel unable to say "No." when somebody asks me a favour. Quite recently I have a lot of stuff on my mind. I have things to do, even though I am at home. I have no time to do anyone any favours. This is what inspired this poem. Learn to say "No.", even though you might feel like you're letting someone down.

I hate to tell you this, but I am done running your business.
You want something done?
Do it yourself.
Your world might turn around you...
but let me tell you a secret:
Mine is not!

Strange is the world
busy at times
sometimes quiet.
Forgetful of the past
embracing the moment.

Only humans cling to what has happened and to what they wish to be.
With their words painting false realities of problems unheard of by nature.
Endlessly sharing their troubled mind with anyone who they find to listen.
Why not look at solutions for a change?
They never learned how.
Why not start now?

be quiet.
be still.
and grow.

Responsive Responsibility

Responsibility can be like a conversation with yourself. There is nobody to answer to, than yourself. You are in charge and you are responsible for your own life. Start asking questions and you might manage to write your own story.

What was that?
A scream? A beam?
Who am I?
A human? A True-man?
Have I lost myself?
Have I found insanity?
When did this happen?
What happened?
Did anything happen?
Or nothing?
How did I get here?
And when?

I choke and fall asleep again. I feel like I am dreaming. Dreaming of a world in Chaos. Dreaming of prison.

Am I still dreaming?
Or am I awake?
Who's asking the question?
Where did I come from?
And where did I go?

Everything is black. I scream, but I cannot hear myself. I am lost. I am alone. I am forgotten. I'm sure!?

Am I dead?

The truth is, it does not matter.THETRUTHISTHETRUTH
THETRUTHISTHETRUTHRight now, nothing matters.
Answers will come, if they must.THETRUTHISTHETRUTH
THETRUTHISTHETRUTHIf they don't, they won't.

I wait.
I am patient.

Answers will follow, when I lead.THETRUTHISTHETRUTHISTHETRUTH
THETRUTHISTHETRUTHISTHETRUTHTo lead, I need to be responsible.

Responsibility.

Almost sounds like a curse.

THETRUTHISTHETRUTHISTHETRUTH
THE END

By myself, rather than alone.

Recently I was faced a lot with myself. I spend quite some time alone and I am still learning to deal with it. It is not always easy to walk your own path and to learn not to be dependent on others. Letting go is probably an essential quality, while learning to be alone. Anyway, I wrote a poem on this:

Alone I sit in my room.
Alone.
Alone I sweep with the broom.
Alone.
No one to talk to, when I'm alone.
Alone.
No one to walk with, when I'm alone.
Alone.
Others trying to be in my company.
Alone.
I tell them to leave me alone.
Alone.

Sadness is trying to build up inside of me.
Alone.
I tell it to leave me alone.
Alone.
My concept of happiness is bound to the presence of others.
Alone.
When I'm alone, I feel alone.
Alone.
Just a word.
Alone.
I can only be with myself, when I'm alone.
Alone.

No other thoughts than my own.
Alone.
No other dreams than my own.
Alone.
My focus is on me alone.
Alone.
Trying to understand 'alone'.
Alone.
I have so much to give to myself.
Alone.
There is so much love for myself.
Alone.
To feel this, to see this, I need to be alone.
Alone.

THE END

Creativity is like a river:
When you leave it alone, it flows.
Other people are to your creativity, as a beaver is to the river.
Once they begin to settle, they may stop the flow, or give it a new direction.
You may decide who is who, or how long you allow them to stay.

As I was waiting...

Sometimes I have the feeling I am waiting for something. Waiting for a call. Waiting for something to happen. Often I wonder, whether I have a reason to wait or if I simply hope, that someone will call me or that something happens that will bring change to my life. I dedicate this poem to all those that wait.

I sit alone in my room
as I wait.
For what do I wait?
A call!
Who is going to call?
Don't know.
And when is he going to call?
Don't know!
The only thing I know is:
I am waiting.
Waiting for someone to reach out.
Waiting for someone to shout:
I love you!
Who me?
Yes, you!

But what if you cannot love her back?
What if you're waiting and nobody calls?
Don't know!
All I know is, that I'm waiting.
Something is about to happen.
And then...Ring Ring
I fumble for my bag and grab my phone.
I answer: Hello?
Somebody misdialled.
I sit in my room and I'm waiting...

Knock! Knock!
Who's there?
Time.
Time who?
Time you just ran out of while you were waiting!
Ah, that one.
Don't disturb me, for I am waiting.

He said he was sad

Today I walked through the park, leaves rustling, wind blowing and raindrops falling. These are the words that came out of me. They were inspired by something that I realised. Do not tell people what they feel, because you either do not understand or it is not your job to tell them. Whenever we tell others what they feel, we might....just read the poem ;)

I hear people that speak of my sadness,
my sorrow, my grief and my fear.
They claim in my eyes they can see this
and tell me what they need to hear.

I listen, but know that I feel this;
I hear, though don't need to be told.
All those words are they needless?
Whatever, the dice have been rolled...

Sadness I get from my father,
sight is a present from god.
Seeing comes when you are further
on your path to god and all.

A child's longing

Hello you. Yes I am talking to you. Sorry to disturb you while being busy with your phone. I thought this might be of interest to you. Stop wasting your life in that virtual world and start living before it is too late...

As I sit I watch and listen;
in the distance a hint of sunlight.
Rustling leaves that shine and glisten;
a promise of rain in the distance.

A girl in pink desperate to play,
with adults consumed by their phones;
uncaring, unmoving, forgotten the day
that humans were free in the present.

Pictures made to capture
a smile which is frozen in time.
People that live are now statues
inside they're no longer alive.

Rooftop poetry

I remember one morning last year very vividly. I was sitting on top of a roof and simply observed what was happening below and around me. This is what I captured.

The school bell rings,
birds chattering under a clear sky.
The turmoil of passing cars
and inside the longing for silence.

Over the rooftops I sit
and observe humans like ants, moving about
About what they make their business,
"Terribly important",
is what they say when you ask them.

Fear makes them run
until their hearts can no longer
and then...

Stop.

The bubble is growing...

Some lessons are learned by leaving everything behind. Sometimes we need to jump in order to find new ground. This poem speaks of change and the courage to look for a world beyond the one we already now. Do you have the courage? I believe you do.

Climb a tree,
jump a rock.
Do everything you did
when you weren't part of the flock

Fenced up, no way to escape.
Let me tell you something:
It was all fake!

The boundaries, the rules, the regret.
The fear when you got tucked in bed.

It was all a bubble,
but what if the bubble burst?
The fear of going back,
it couldn't get worse...

The bubble gets bigger,
more now fits in.
Suddenly you find it,
the space to grin.

To yourself
and to others.

The woman

Many moons ago I was slacklining in the park. While I was busy with preparations a woman sat down on a bench. I started a conversation with her and for the first time in my life I understood what it means to see yourself in someone else. I knew that the woman was me and I was the woman and that both of us are a part of everything. This is the true meaning of 'oneness'. Being connected beyond words, through our love for each other.

I sat and talked to a woman.
The woman was talking to me
and while I talked to this woman
I saw this woman is me.

Her fear, her pain and her sorrow
this all I felt in myself.
I know I still love her tomorrow,
her joy and all the rest.

The healing itch

I would like to share a poem with you which I wrote on behalf of mother nature. Often we consider animals as disgusting or cruel, because we believe that they wish to harm us or make us sick. I myself do not see these animals in this way. I believe that everything which mother nature gives to us is a present to help us heal. Every so-called 'sickness' is in my understanding a form of healing.

What makes a ticks bite itch?
Is a mosquito an evil snitch?
Why is it I want to scratch?
To what does this feeling attach?

When a wound is crusted it heals,
then also the itching appears.
So what is the difference I ask?
Only in truth may I bask.

When something is itching it heals,
for both wound and ticks it appears.
Some beings are not what they seem,
or rather:
They are what they've always been.

Estrangement from nature has brought
and festered in unpleasant thought.
Please look for yourself and feel,
all nature wants is to heal.

Letter to a loved one

Part 1

Part 2

Healthy ignorance?

What do most people, including me, have in common? When there is a problem, we do everything we can to ignore it. Even when our dear ones - or perfect strangers - point their fingers on something, we tell ourselves - and others (but mostly ourselves) - that it is not true. We might even admit that we are not exactly living healthy. Only we will make ourselves believe that we cannot change it. Phrases, such as "I know I do not eat well, but I do NOT WANT to change it", are only too common. I hear them everywhere. Through my open mind and the training of my consciousness and intellect, my sharpness and clearness of observation have increased - check out my blog entry (Click this link to get to the just mentioned Blog article. Please excuse this very long and unnecessary link description.) for more on the topic of observation. I am able to watch and interpret behaviours that are not healthy, very easily. The problem lies in the observed. As I mention it there is discomfort and ignorance. Ignorance by choice, not fate. Change is a decision. Make it and live!

Sparkle, sparkle little star,
please remember who you are!
Long ago you fell to earth -
memories erased at birth.

Is this how you want to live,
Running errands, getting stiff?
Please remember, move yourself;
else you will destroy your self!

Can you make your body bloom?
Do you take the time to groom?
Everything you need to do,
make sure to take good care of you!

Do not close your eyes to health,
cancer is what grows in stealth.
Act before it is too late
How you lived, is how you ate.

Alone

A poem inspired by my current situation. I realised something which I needed to put into words. For so long have I looked for love and acceptance in others. I wanted to be understood. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to be trusted. Only that others cannot give these things to us. We need to find happiness in ourselves and not in others. When we are pushed away, let us not look in ourselves for the mistake. We are good the way we are. Having realised this is the first step to liberation and freedom. We are not the mistakes of others.

How often I wandered these empty streets?
Trying my best, fulfilling my needs.
To make others happy, seems important enough,
but trying is trying and life can be tough.

Some act like they mean it, they play the good friend,
but when you are honest, they slap at your hand.
Your intention was good, you just wanted to help,
but some of us suffer, they don't want to be held.

So alone now I stand, writing these lines
and realise something that others helped find:
We cannot seek wholeness in others, I see;
what needs to be done is to find it in me!

I am who I am, only I know my truth.
To love myself, is to be who I choose.

A dream

This poem is quite special to me. It has great meaning, because it came out of me after my first 'spiritual dream', so to speak. This is the first time I met a part of myself in a dream and therefore a great lesson. Recognising yourself, is one of the most important parts of your spiritual journey and it begins with discovering what is on the inside.

I saw a man in wrinkles,
that finely lined his face.
His figure tall above us all,
he seemed to rule the place.

He spread a mood of hatred,
directed towards me;
my form it felt uncertain,
my heart felt jealousy.

Come he did by night
and with him he brought friends.
see I did by light;
learning never ends.

The ugly man was me,
I know it in my heart.
To be completely free,
I need embrace that part.