I dreamt that I was to die. Having no problems with this, I sat down on the bed, stroke my hands over the bed spread a few times to make it look nice, to prepare. Looking at Richard, knowing he was the one to kill me, and that this was all ok. He shot me right in the forehead. Nice and clean, no fuzz about it at all. It was supposed to be this way. I died. I fell backwards on the bed. No blood shed. ”I” was dead, but yet not. The consciousness was still there.

I awoke. Feeling calm, actually, knowing I had just been killed, sort of. The dream has followed me during the days. It might sound strange, but I am very pleased with the fact that I dared to be killed! In many dreams during the last years I almost got killed in one or another way, for just to wake up in that moment right before, terrified or at least afraid.

This was just so right. This was so filled with trust.

A blow in the head, right into mind. Mind all gone, no ”right or wrong”, no judgments. A ritual killing, performed by the man who loves me the most, out of love. By a man already awakened.

In fact, I think this is just fantastic, don’t you too?

Still waiting to die to my self, though… to have the courage to stay in that state of no mind… long enough. To make it real for real. Not just as glimpses or a memory… but the inner knowing, saying I’m free, and know this to be the truth with all of my existence.

In the Durga Sadhana group I am participating for the time being, a question was given:

”Why are you here?”

-Yes, why am I here?  -Why am I in this group of women? -Why am I in this life, on this planet, together with this family, these friends?

There is no one right answer to this.

Why am I in this life?

Today this is my answer:

I am here love to awaken to itself. No more no less.  I am here for all the wails of mind to fall in order to distinguish the false self from the truth.

I am here for love to recognize itself in the creation called me.

I am here to embody the feminine and the masculine in the play called life, and to recognize this in all my being.

Illustration:

“Creation of the World ballet, photo by Maiseenok.

Durga the Goddess is for sure riding that tiger now, right into my life, right into my being.

There is a struggle within.

So damn much attachment! Oh holy shit!

But that’s how it is. Can’t make it nicer than it is.

Surrender… I know… I know…

A devil inside saying:

Kiss my holy ass – surrender! Nooo way! You gotta be out of your bloody mind!

Embrace & Kiss that devil? … yak!

The devils name;  ”I want it my way”.

Yes, the ‘I’ for sure ‘s got an agenda, totally crashing with the insight from yesterday:

As long as there is the sliiiightest bit of an ‘I’ having an agenda, or a wanting of an outcome,  even though disguised as a non-selfish-very-kind-to-humanity-kind of- agenda,  more karma is created.

Fuck those insights! Grrr! –makin’ya caught in your own trap, sort of.

Resistance. – here we go again.

I’m so fucking pissed off by all the times I gave in, for the sake of the so-called peace of house. Didn’t bring you much relief or happiness, did it? Nope! Only suppressed anger.

But; if I have no goal, what is there to fight for? Nothing! What’s the use then, to speak ones longing, to try and make changes for the best? No use at all…. You Might just as well end the party here & now. Right? Yep….or I don’t know…

Letting go of the outcome of it all? Sigh… can’t I just have it a tiny-winy my way, please…? How can I aim for a goal, and at the same time let the outcome be open, with no attachment to any kind?

Sayin’ what?   Can’t hear you…

Fight, the word fight. Wrong attitude.

Growl….!

Who’s there speaking now? Oh…. So tired of all these voices! Sigh.

Say welcome to “The One who knows”. -

Hallelujah, so you’re on stage now too… 

Oh, Shut up will you please? I’m tired of you Devil now.

Dearest, will it make you happier getting it your way? Do you know for sure what is for the best? Do you know better then life itself? It’s a hell of a lot of ego here, do you see that?

Devil speaking: I hate all those questions! Why do you listen to them at all?

-NO of course I don’t know what is the best, but I think I do.., and if I do not TRY, I’ll never know, will I?

…Blah blah blah….

Mindstuff.  -Ok I see that.

What’s the opposite of Fight?

Peace?

Yeah. Peace. And what is peace?

No two.

So it is, darling.  And how do you find this?

By not fighting. Meaning: surrender. Letting go of the shape of the outcome. But still do what feels right and follow my heart. And listen.  HOW the h…DO I DO THAT with all these voices inside?

You are doing it already, right now. This is how it is, love. Bring it all to the Goddess.  Offer it to her feet. Let her feed her tiger with it all. With all those demon voices, all the false selves. It’s her job, to restore peace inside. And you know, peace inside is peace outside. Go undress your false selves, let them crumble in her presence. Let it all fall aside, inside. You can be with it, I know.

Have trust. 

Illustrations used in this post:

“Durga the Goddess” By Heike Becker.

“Struggle” by Keith Burnette

Feeding Tiger : unknown.

I’d been cleansing the body for a week. Felt that I needed to do so, to raise the energy again. Maybe that was of help too. Well, I don’t know for sure.

Anyhow, I came home yesterday evening, needed to dance & to meditate, ending with sauna, to get all the encounters of the day out of body.

Then I saw or felt a “grief-line” going from my fathers father, to my father, to me, to my son… Totally accepting this, releasing with a deep sigh and soft tears.

Later, I was going to bed, thinking about sex, actually… but that was definitively not to happen! Now came the time for the spiritual cleans, the healing of deep wounds.

-Before I continue, I have to praise my beloved Richard, whom with his presence meets everything that comes, openhearted. He was with me in this too… I love him endlessly! -

What was to be released came from the depths of my being, from the core of my backbones, from my heart. I neither could nor wanted to resist it as it unfolded itself. 


The trauma of my grandfathers death- whom I never met-, as he drowned during the WW2, his ship being hit by a missile in a convoy attack. I felt his shock, the drowning. I drowned. The fear, the pain, and the physical clinging to something while going down… into the waters…. and finally; death. 
”I” was dead. Breathing stopped. Slowly, slowly I came back to my self again… being held by Richard. After a while I fell asleep in his loving arms, quite exhausted.

It was a strange night, dreams of light and darkness at the same time.

Only this, darkness and light.

Today I feel much lighter, but I am also very tired. It feels as if I’ve been working overtime! But also, for the first time in weeks I feel a new kind of energy. An energy with more outgoing direction than before. More alive. A relief.

The sorrow and grief of my father… of loosing his father while still a young boy.

The mourning widow, my grandmother.

The grief of my father when divorced, not being with his children, “Loosing us”.

My own and my brother’s grief for “loosing our father” in that divorce. (we saw him rather seldom)

My own grief and my youngest son’s grief for loosing the daily contact, as he lives with his father.

My 3 other children’s grief after my divorce from their father, years ago…

My prayer is: 


May these broken hearts be healed for all generations to come.

May it take what ever is needed. 


Amen.

When you’re on the top of the mountain, you have to climb down again.

Silly me hoped to stay up there, detached from the world, feeling all fine, in love with the experience of ’the moment’ and detachment. That’s not the way it goes. That’s just half the journey. I had to come back to meet the world. And this includes meeting grief.

It comes as a wave, rolling into my consciousness.

Grief.

Months ago there was a friend saying to me; “You act as if you are all happy and fine, but you are not”. I didn’t like what I heard. Of course I was happy ! – , but my father had died not long ago. Somewhere inside I knew he was right, and somewhere inside I knew that it was not only because of my father. I just did not want to look at it at that time.  I was too busy with being happy, I guess.

It came knocking when I least expected it to.

I do not know what it is about any longer.  It used to have a name, like ‘death’, or ‘separation from my beloved ones’, …. But now there are no names any more.

Just this; grief and love. Hand in hand they walk, comes visiting my heart and body.  Turns away for a while and comes knocking again.

In the beginning it was mostly dark sorrow and grief. I cried silent tears, from my eyes and from my heart. I quite felt heavy inside. Tired. Oftentimes I did not even notice its appearance. Not until Richard said “Oh, there is so much sorrow in your eyes”, and yes, it was. It was right there, all the time, yet often invisible to me.

In a way I felt trapped. I thought I had mourned what was to be mourned so far in my life. But apparently not. I have come to understand that a lot of what have happened in life I had not mourned. There was no time for that back then. Life had asked of me to cope with daily life’s struggles. I was tangled up in relationships, broken relationships, broken dreams, new love affaires, children and childbirth, just to mention some of it, and the struggle for food and living, having to be strong.  And yet I was a bit surprised. And as it persisted on staying, I wondered; for how long will I have to mourn? For how long will this sorrow stay with me? I did not know. I still don’t. I only know that something is changing.

I decided to befriend the grief. To make friends with mourning. Because who knows; maybe it will be like this for ever, so I might just as well stop fighting it and get used to it’s presence. I do not know exactly how, but I guess something happened when I saw that grief and love comes hand in hand.  Once I felt the softness of grieving it was no longer so heavy. I could in fact in a strange way enjoy it! It is the language of the heart.

The deeper the love and affection is, the more grief. This is natural, isn’t it? If I don’t love, there is nothing to mourn either. No loss, actually.

So I addressed my heart, and welcomed grief as a sign of love. Oh, I love so very much! So therefore, maybe, I have to grieve very much too?… until it is all dissolved. If it ever will be. Then one day I sat contemplating this love & grief-thing, suddenly I was not able to find any address, no sender, no reason inside. I could no longer tell if the sorrow I felt was mine or Richard’s, or from the collective field. And how to tell the difference, really?

In my heart and consciousness they both arise together. I can no longer distinguish the one from the other. Grief comes as the shadow of love.

Once again it turnes out to be a lesson of love. 

-m-

A love letter. 

What is the most important in your life?

To me it is love.

It is the only option.

To me it is to over and over again recognize love, in life and for life, and love for the sake of love itself.

Over and over again to reawake the dormant feelings and the deep nourishing contact with my heart, this contact that in our society so sadly all too often is forgotten, neglected and refused.

I must admit, like everyone else I tend to slip out. To forget. To move into the realms of mind and daily life’s quests. Life gets a bit flat then. And I get a bit cold and distant. I tend to slip out for not to feel. Not to feel the grief and sorrow residing beside love. Feel the sorrow of separation.

I love so much, and I love so deep. For a long time I was bathing in this love. I was so fortunate to live in this love of no separation. It was so incredibly fantastic, so alive, so fulfilling. Now it seems like sorrow follows love, and now is the time for me to dive into this sorrow and grief.

I love my kids. More than I will ever know, I love my kids. I really hope they know… They represent the most important. Just by being, they represent love. Not for anything they do or say in particular, just by being. Not only are they of my flesh & blood… in each and every moment of time they are my heart. When I see them, embrace them or talk with them, my heart fills with love and I know I am the most blessed.

I love my parents. Despite what ever has been between us of difficulties during life I love them. They have done their best. Sometimes I sure wished for something else. But for better or worse, they are my parents, and that’s enough. I am truly grateful just because they gave me life.

I love Richard, the man in my life. I love him deeply and beyond words. Over and over again meeting him beyond the world of separation, in the great heart. I never knew how it felt to be so loved, so wanted and welcomed. Even if I make mistakes, try to escape from feelings, or feel like failure, he is there, and from moment to moment, new chances are given, cracking my heart open with his love and presence. I am the luckiest woman.

What ever happen in daily life fades towards this; to over and over again realize and reawaken this love. The love that brings no two. The love that brings truth to surface. Also the feelings of longing, separation and grief.

Have you ever loved so much that tears run from your eyes? Now tears of grief run down my face and open up to love. A love that is almost like a new born baby, so utterly vulnerable, in need of care and warmth. It comes as new each time. This sorrow visiting now is not really dark and heavy, because there are lots of love and tenderness to it. Yet I tend to run away. Because it makes me feel so very vulnerable, it makes tears fill the eyes. It is difficult to meet the outside world in that state, even though I feel like I lie to people when I hide inside an unseen protective shell of efficiency.

How can love also be filled with grief? I do not know. But right now I cannot really separate the two. It actually feels like the more I love, the more grief I will encounter.

So God, if you’re there listening: please, even if grief and sorrow are the followers of love, please; I will always ask for more of your love, until everything is permeated by your presence. Even the darkest corners of separation, grief and sorrow.

-m-

The thinking mind freezes the natural and ever changing movements of life to dead objects, framed pictures, to hang on the wall as a collection. But life can never be captured and framed as memories. Not even the memories categorized as me and my life. As David Whyte puts it in the poem below:

“Life is no passing memory of what has been
Nor the remaining pages of a great book waiting to be read”

When we look at life through the lens of “me” we project that feeling of separateness on every life form and we perceive a world of separate individuals. When the lens of “me” relaxes and we sink back into being, the world changes and is experienced more as a living weave of interconnectedness. Even more relaxed there is really only one life moving, expressing as all this diversity, and you are that life. Not as an idea or a philosophy but as an existential truth, without anyone in particular experiencing it. It simply is.

Awakening is the opening of the eyes behind the lens of “me”. Or to be more precise, those eyes were never closed. That seeing was simply identified with the narrow lens it was looking through.

-r-

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
The passing light over the water
And I heard the voice of the world speak out
I knew then as I have before
Life is no passing memory of what has been
Nor the remaining pages of a great book
Waiting to be read

 It is the opening of eyes long closed
It is the vision of far off things
Seen for the silence they hold
It is the heart after years of secret conversing
Speaking out loud in the clear air

 It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees
Before the lit bush
It is the man throwing away his shoes
As if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished
Opened at last
Fallen in love
With Solid Ground

 ~  David Whyte ~

First of all, enlightenment is not an escape from pain and suffering. Quite contrary, it is a deep dive into the core of suffering until you can’t separate your self from the experience of suffering. It is total intimacy. To be more precise, the resistance to pain is the very cause of suffering. We could call that separation. The no to what is, which splits up reality into a sense of a “me” that resists an experience. The other way around, without separation there is no suffering. Pain, yes, that is an inevitable ingredient of life but without separation, without rejecting what is, there is really no suffering to be found in the very moment here and now. To suffer you need to resist what is and create separation, the sense of a me, and then create a story around this me that are suffering. That is what Buddha called “dukkha” and he discovered that the remedy to suffering is the realization that there is no me, that separation is an illusion. That doesn’t mean that you move away to some higher state of consciousness, it simply means what it says.

But what about all the people that are suffering in the world? Children that are starving and being abused, wars and violence!  Well, sitting under a tree and meditate will not help anyone but from “no separation”, from a total intimacy with what ever moves in life, even with sexual abuse, starvation, war and violence the chance to help is so much greater because you move as a natural response of compassion and not from resistance or rejection. Because you have realized that there is nothing separate from you and this is felt as love because essentially everything is who you are and you move as an ongoing recognition of that.

Maybe this still pisses someone of but remember that it is not some philosophy, religion or lofty spiritual discourse. It is simply a direct experience on the nature of suffering and the only way to know if its true or not is to check it out for your self … as a real life investigation!

-r-

“What is it that WE really want, the both of us?”

For those of you who know our story, I know this may sound pretty peculiar. To others it may even sound strange, as if a theme at all to consider. To us it was, to me it is.

This simple question dived deep into our consciousness and created a lot of changes.

To me this question contains a new way of being in relationship with my beloved, and with my self.   I have of course been in relationships before, I’ve been married, been living together, been a lover, you know the story. And all the way I either considered it being a ‘we’ or I longed for a ‘we’ to happen.  I was just so wrong! Now I am quite astonished; How can I, after all those years, have missed out on anything as simple as this?

I guess I know the answer; I was not ready to dive deep enough. I was living in my dream of a ‘we’, in what I thought was a ‘we’.  In the projection of me. Now I see that the truth was far away: In all my relationships, I have lived a ‘we’ from the ‘me’ perspective. It has been two ‘me’ trying to be a ‘we’. No wonder there were misunderstanding, misbelieves, insecurity. Two ‘me’s can never be a ‘we’! Two ‘me’s will always seek positioning, they have no other way than being in opposition.

I have had many thoughts about what a ‘we’ is, but never been able to feel the ‘we’-energy. Suddenly this feeling arose as from nowhere… it feels to me like a solid energy inside. Round, heavy in its lightness. Physical, yet not. A safe place. A wholeness inside.

First it came as a meeting of two ‘me’s. Then it changed, and become a solid we-energy.

I must say; I cried. I felt overwhelmed. Shaken. In the beginning it was difficult to admit the failure, that I had missed out on the whole game of relationship ALL the TIME! And my ego-mind did not want to change. I could hear myself talk as before, from the me- state- of-being-with-you. Even when we physically and in fact had done things together, I managed to say; ”I have done”….  So Totally Embarrassing! How I step on the man I love, out of habit, out of unconsciousness. How the mind excludes. Guilt and sorrow hand in hand. Richard; I’m so sorry, for what I have said and done that might have hurt you. I really don’t mean to. I really don’t want to. You are my perfect Guru. I love you as I love life itself.

The depths of this ‘we’ continues to astonish me. It is pushing me over the hilltop. It ended up as something the mind do not want to accept; the falling away of the ‘we’.

Two days ago, in the evening, enough trust was there. Once again feeling into the ‘we’ – energy it started to change. The ‘we’ melted away. Into a solid “no-we.” No me. No we. Into oneness. I felt happy. Not for anything. Just a quiet happiness. Mind said; “I guess this is dying. “

The next day reactions came; ZIP! I was in a state of protection and fear, disconnected. Feeling outside myself, trying to cope, to pull myself together. No good strategy! Richard came home. I guess he has an emotion- x-ray- radar inside. Pinpointing me again. Tears again.  I started a conversation with my mind. Assuring it that it would not be left alone, kind of.

The ego-mind went frantic crazy; “ Ok, I can accept a ‘we’ if there is not to be a ‘me’. But not a ‘we’ either? NO WAY!  I will give you a hell of a lot of everything you don’t like, if you as much as TRY to exclude me from the show! I will give you sadness, frustration, anger, depression, everything! No Problem!”

Phew. That’s the case. Thank you. Falling into peace again.

That night when I closed my eyes I had a hard time knowing if the world was still there.  I felt his body with my hands, but it was all as new. The memory from the eyes was gone. I knew he was there, as before, and yet, not. When closing my eyes the world disappeared, it ceased to exist, and I knew; the world as I knew it, had all the time only been in my mind.

A funny situation in all this; I said; “I love you” to Richard. And I really had to laugh, it was such a comedy; there was no one there to say this to. No other “me” part. No one outside of me. He was not apart from me. The “we” was total, an empty space of aliveness. The words kind of lingered in this empty space, trying to return back home, but there where no one to greet them welcome here either! What a funny situation; saying “I love you” to no one and my self at the same time!

What is a relationship when there is no two?  What am I when the world is not? No wonder the mind is afraid. It is dying. This is the dying of the world, as I know it to be.

I bow to life and death in all of its greatness.

No I have some Temple stuff to tend to. Thank you.

-m-

I have had no real connection with sound before. Sound was very often too much, annoying, disturbing, unpleasant, — or of course, very pleasant for a while, as for everybody else, music can make me feel good, or give other emotional reactions. I love dancing. I know of and have even tried sound healing. But this time sound was so very different.

We were heading out to look for new speakers for our group- and Temple rooms.  I went along, for a nice trip to town, Christmas shopping, etc. I was not sure of whether we would bring any speakers with us home. I did not expect this to happen as it did. I expected in fact nothing.

We listened and listened. To one, two, three, four, five different speakers with or without sub woof.  I started to understand something about sound. They were all Ok, in different ways.  Not easy to choose!

Then, in another room were some other speakers. Not of those “elegantly fitting the room” kind of speakers, but Solid, Black. The sales man placed the CD, the same song came out. Something I’ve never experienced with sound before started to happen. I had to turn away, embarrassed. Trying to stop the reaction. No use. I was cut open. Tears running down my cheeks. Not possible to hide, I did no longer want to either. I could not. The whole body reacted and I got so warm! Off with the scarf. Off with the coat. Off with the inner scarf, off with the jacked. Every cell of my body reacted. The sound made me tremble inside, feeling so vulnerable and so alive. So deeply moved. No resistance left. By that time I knew, this was The Loud Speakers! They were talking directly to my body. A special frequency hitting, cutting open, going straight to my heart.

I did not care about the cost, I thought they might be very expensive, but what the hell… I didn’t care.  It was in fact the other way around, they were the cheapest solution of what we had listened to and looked at as solutions! Oh, what a lucky day!

We paid and walked out. I tried to talk about this to Richard, very difficult as tears run down my cheeks once again just by opening up to this.  So he talked and I listened. To ideas of speakers “talking to the mind” and speakers “talking to the body”. I had never known! Now the body knows, now I know.

And the ball continued at home. No dinner yet! No way! Connecting speakers to amplifier. MORE MUSIC! Oh lord! - what a world of sound! First carefully… same reaction when a certain frequency hits me. A certain base. Tears again. Heat again. Then, louder and louder. Dancing! Vibrating!  I was pulsating with sound!

I could no longer tell the difference between me and the sound, the sound out there and the sound in here. Being sound!

Turned it to its max. Silence in the sound. “… like a virgin”… I cried, like a virgin freshly opened to love.  I felt the house vibrating, the floor, the heavy brick walls. The roof.  I was one with the house. I just knew, the house was happy! Alive with sound! The sound filled all three floors. It must have sipped into all the corners, the dead zones.  Next day the upper floor that have felt a bit “dead” had gained life! We could actually feel it.

Well– night came, and Making Love came.  Mmmm— what a joy! The energy was … wow… the sound coming from this body was så much richer, so much deeper, with no emotions attached, just pure bodily sound! How wonderful! Richard said in the morning, making love was like making love with another woman, with rounder hips! The energy in the body is so very female, feels like a “growing into something”, a bodily womanhood.

Meditating this morning I heard new sounds, deeper base levels coming through, and the vibration from the speakers and my out breath hit the same level, or frequency, pulsating, vibrating together.

What a joyous feeling!

I’ve found “my sound”,

I’ve found my OHM.

m-

I was raised to be independent in terms of income and working situation. My mother divorced when I was just a little girl, as I remember, my brother and I was for several years the only children at our school with divorced parents.

My mother lived alone and worked hard to support us, and to make sure we had a nice home and everything needed.  I learned how to twist the money to make them last.

I graduated, started teaching, and was soon in a secure job. I married. I left that job, after many ifs and buts, to be home with my three children. It was not very easy to say goodbye to the self-image of the independent one.

I divorced.

I started working again. I regained my self -supportive -independent-self-image. In many ways it grew stronger than before. It had to. I had to survive and support my children, give them a nice home at their mom’s place.  Story in repeat, just another actor.

Life went on. I quit job, I moved, got a new job. Came back, found new jobs. I managed. It was though oftentimes, but I managed. I was economically independent. Not rich, far from, I had to twist the money to get by.

Well, I have moved again. Now I have no income. This has been quite ok for a while, just because I have been floating on the extras caused by a successful real estate transaction. Looking into my bank account now, I almost get depressed, a bit worried at least, as the figures I see is not exactly increasing. Soon we have to live on one income only.

This situation brings forth old and rather well known ghosts from the psyche. Usually they have come one by one, speaking to me one by one. Now they come in herds, with voices like a repetitive choir!

I feel guilty because Richard will be the one provider with all the economic responsibility.  It is not fair! A voice inside saying; this was not the deal! But actually there was no such deal, or was there? I’m not sure. Confusion ahead!

Punishing my self; may be I have not been good enough at promoting my self? Getting clients, or go out and about applying for jobs… I should have done more… sigh.. !

But, Helloo’o! it is not that easy! Wake up! The Self justifying Voice.

Childish voice vs Adult voice, as this one;  a very well known one: “One has to work!“ And work has to be hard, one has to deserve the income, may be by being exhausted, or bored or what ever.  Against the childish voice screaming in opposition:  “ It can’t be so! It must be possible to earn money AND to have fun and not get passed out!

Voices at war.

And I don’t know which to listen to.

And I don’t know which of them is true.

Most probably none.. .. and therefore .. well…. You know, the show must go on! And on, and on, until I get so tired of it all that the mind just collapse.

Richard said something. He is so wise sometimes, or very often, in fact.

“ You know, it is about giving it the right energy. Just like when we arrange events. “

Yes, fine, but how to give energy to something that is not yet there? Hmmm…. it has to be to the willingness itself, then? To the idea of me having that particular kind of job that fills my days with pleasure and ease, and makes me satisfied and not exhausted, and brings me enough money too.  It will have to be to give energy and light to a dream that I have yet not fully seen, to make it come true, to make it alive.

Can I surrender into the not knowing of how this will turn out? Can I let go of the wanting to control it all? Can I fully let go of the old patterns of fear that runs the show and image of independency? Am I able to trust that life has so much more to offer if I just don’t hang on to it all?

To be honest, I don’t know yet. I can only try. I really want to know if I can.. .. Oh!… a very tiny, soft little voice comes saying; “yes, I can.. I believe I can…”

Can I let this voice in and let it grow strong? Strong enough for me not to silence it?

It is a bit scary giving up control…

m-