March 15, 2011

I am. ⁰

by Mette • Okategoriserade

I am the one aware of the soft sound of the mantra filling the room.

I am the one aware of the fresh air, and the breathing,

the smell and the soothing texture to my skin.

I am the one aware of the posture,

I am aware of it all

simultaneously

witnessing

I am.

-mette-

March 8, 2011

Taking nothing for granted brings openness ⁰

by Mette • Okategoriserade

I sat in the sofa with my beloved discussing something when this was felt so clearly.  What we talked about, I ´m not sure of. But this remained.

I’ve been in different relationships, with very different persons. Yet, there is something that always showed up, and I was not even conscious of it.  The game of expectations. In one way or another, there was a mix of unspoken expectations going in both directions. It was either my partner expecting something of me, and taking things for granted, or me from him, or from my self. It can be like this:  ” If I do like this, then you must do something in return”.  Or, ” I expect you to behave in a certain way, have specific opinions about stuff, or treat me in a way that makes me feel safe.” In other words; “ I need you to play my game”. Even worse, is the feeling of love being taken for granted. As long as we played by the rules, everything went fine. But it did not in the long run. It cannot.

This is for sure, the only thing to trust in life is that it changes, and me with it.  So will also my needs, my behavior, my wanting and longing.

When I expect something, or take a certain reaction for granted, I build a box into which I place my partner, and my self.  It´s a dead space. Of course we can’t stay like this forever. Braking free will bring so much, and unnecessary, pain. Almost certain, it will be like a clown popping out of the box -shock, “BOOO! Got yah! “

So why build this box at all?

When talking about something difficult, one often feels unsecure, or vulnerable.  Bringing expectations into this is an emotional stroke under the belt, with a guaranteed reaction; emotional closedown.

If I’m with you, I cant be against you. Accepting the situation as it is, brings openness. This time, in this openness came love. Not for something he said, or did, just love for loves own sake.

This love I just cant take for granted.

It is a gift beyond value. Immeasurable.

It is the knowing we are one in two.

- Mette-

February 28, 2011

Questions and Reflections over a theme: Choice. ⁰

by Mette • Okategoriserade

Is there anything called right or wrong choices?

So often we hear, “I hope I made the right decision now!”

But, is there any real choice at all?

No one else but me can know if the roads I have taken in life have been Right or Wrong. And what is the scale for measuring? If you look really closely, and in full honesty, are there anything called right or wrong choices? How can one know for sure what is right? And who is to decide?

I wonder, is there at all a choice? Or even, is there anyone choosing?

Often we think we are making a choice. And it has to be the right choice.

My experience is that life itself gives me the directions. Life is playing its game through me. I am just a stage for it all to take place. If I am not the one choosing, who is then? No one. It is all just happening. So how then can anything be right or wrong?

We want to believe that we are making choices. Important, well considered choices.  Our ego wants us to think so.

How many choices can you with absolute honesty say that you have made in a 100 % clear conscious knowing, and with every option taken into consideration? May be it is just me, but I will have to answer; probably none.

And even if I try to imagine,  how can I possibly know how it will turn out to be?

“It is difficult to predict. Especially the future.”

To me, “choices” is a simple respond to where the energy seems to move. What I may call a choice, or  “my choice”, is simply an answer to the “best” or “easiest” or most tempting or less negative direction. I dare to say, we are responding in this way, knowingly or not. Our mind, or our ego, translate this into “my choice”. But it is not our mind choosing, it is the emotions speaking through the body, and very often run by old patterns such as shame and guilt, unworthiness or fear.

My life is in no way unique. Just like you, I have walked the paths life has given me. Some paths were not so easy or pleasurable. Do I regret? No. How can I? Those paths are the ones that have made me the one I am today.

We all have to live life as it comes to us. Anything else is impossible, so why fight it?  By surrender to life, I find that life is almost magical, and way beyond my control.  In the surrender there comes a bi product called love. Love to life in all its forms and variations, and with this comes a deeply felt gratefulness, also for the more challenging parts.

Then the question will be; how true can I live this life? How true can I be in life, and with life?

- Mette-

February 8, 2011

Original Sin ⁰

by admin • Okategoriserade

I once read a book by a psychiatrist saying that basically all human communication can be traced back to the question “Do you love me?”. The longing for love, to be seen and accepted, is very deep in most people. Another doubt that might be even deeper and connected to the longing for love is the existential feeling of guilt. I say “existential” because I am pointing towards a deep guilt without any specific cause. Sometimes this is described as shame, when guilt is connected to who I am. Some Christians would probably say “original sin” as a name for this existential guilt or shame. Of course I don’t believe in the biblical version of Adam and Eve but I feel it says something about the existential dilemma of guilt.

To me there is no doubt that society and many of our relations as human beings are based on a sense of guilt or shame. Maybe more than we would like to think. How many times have not my actions being based on a sense of guilt and how many times have I not been hiding behind different kinds of masks and not showing my self out of shame? No matter how good or how hard we try, this sense of not being good enough, being wrong, ugly, unworthy or some other feeling connected to guilt and shame remains as a doubt lingering deep down, at least for me. I don’t know how it is for you, but it seems to be a part of every day human interaction, maybe so “normal” that we might not even notice it.

From my own experience I am prepared to say that guilt is one of the fundamental driving forces behind separation and human alienation and yet the cosmic joke is that it is nothing but a believe. Our true nature is innocence and we have nothing to be ashamed of …

Romanesque Arches
(trans. Robin Fulton)

Inside the huge romanesque church the tourists jostled in the half darkness.
Vault gaped behind vault, no complete view.
A few candle-flames flickered.
An angel with no face embraced me
 and whispered through my whole body:
“Don’t be ashamed of being human, be proud!
Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.
You will never be complete, that’s how it’s meant to be.”
Blind with tears
I was pushed out on the sun-seething piazza
together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Herr Tanaka and Signora Sabatini
and inside them all vault opened behind vault endlessly.

Tomas Tranströmer, För Levande och Döda

… but at the end of the day, do we actually dare to be innocent?

Who would you be without any shame or guilt?

Richard

February 6, 2011

Primal Contraction ⁰

by admin • Okategoriserade

Almost every primitive life form has an instinctual reaction in the presence of a potential danger, it contracts. Just think of the polyps of a coral or a snail. I bet you have some child memory of touching the antennas of a snail and watch them contract and if touched more the snail totally contracted and coiled up inside the hard shell house. Then, after a while, it relaxed and came out again and continued to do it’s snail things as if nothing ever happened. This is a sound and normal reaction that will help the individual life form to survive. It is basically nothing more to it than contraction and expansion, contraction and expansion. The very heart beat of existence it self.

Strangely enough there seems to be a very deep resistance within the human psyche to this natural contraction. We call it “fear” and we don’t want it. Contraction becomes an indication that something is wrong and the mind starts to analyze the cause of this unpleasant feeling of “fear”. Usually it goes one of two directions to find the scapegoat. Inwards, blaming us self for contracting because we feel we should be open and available, or outwards projecting the cause to something outside, usually a memory of a situation or a person that has hurt us in the past. It becomes a circle of instinctual contraction and storytelling in the mind that enforces the contraction in an on-going loop instead of relaxing again when the danger is over and go on with life just as the snail in the example above.

I more and more feel that this primal contraction is the very foundation of the sense of separation and for many people it seems to stay in a more or less chronic state of contraction.

So what is the remedy? First let me say that this is a quite new and on-going exploration for my self. I have no easy answers and not much is written about this in the spiritual literature. Mainly they are circling around the thinking (mind) and emotional (heart) levels of identification and the instinctual contraction I am talking about here is millions and millions of years primal to emotions and thoughts in the evolutionary memory we all carry in the cells. With other words, there is basically nothing we can do about this contraction. It is purely instinctual and has nothing what so ever to do with will. What I find helps is to be aware when it happens and not starting to fight against it. Just simply allowing and noticing what is happening in the body. If possible I can slowly move in and out of the situation and feel if the contraction is changing. Usually the instinctual contraction triggers a lot of thoughts, stories in the head, around why this is happening. Simply noticing what kind of stories I am telling my self without judging them. And of course I am judging the thoughts and emotions, then I notice that as well. Allowing everything to happen and being aware.

What can be done with the primal contraction it self? Basically trying to do anything with it, is what sustains it. I would say that this is the utmost surrender. Surrendering not just on the level of the mind and the heart but also on the most rudimentary physical level of life and death.

My advice? Be daring and yet gentle to your self, be like a snail, and one day you might find your self not using the shell house as much anymore.

Richard

February 1, 2011

In Disguise ⁰

by admin • Okategoriserade

Now I have discovered,

once again, and very clearly this time, how love is hiding.

This weekend life gave me an excellent opportunity to see this. But as always,I needed some time to figure out what I was witnessing.

Sometimes we have strong feelings coming through our system, sometimes it is blurred, we are not in touch or we simply have not so much going on. Sometimes you have no choice, you´re just in to it with all there is.

Now I have witnessed the transformation of fear. A fear so strong that it made the body shake and tremble. In the beginning it was felt as pure, bodily fear. The body was responding to the minds story, the well known story of no survival. Step by step processing this, allowing the fear to be just what it is, and nothing else, slowly made it soft.

Allowing the feeling is trust. Trust is accepting. Accepting is welcoming. Welcoming is compassion. And in this the fear dissolved. And then, at the end, when the body realized that the scariness was all created by thoughts, a relaxation so deep, so profound came through that one could almost touch it. And with this, there came happiness, and with this follows love.

And this is the crown jewel that is for true residing in our hearts:

Every emotion and feeling, however awful it may seem to be, is love in disguise. It all boils down to this; there is nothing but love. Behind the veils of not seeing, or allowing the feeling to fully show itself, without interrupting half way as we do by habit, we find love hiding, always.

When the feelings are felt, there comes peace. A peace so deep, that love is arising as effortlessly, joyously being.

The passion of Christ.

Thank you, Love.

Mette

January 31, 2011

Body and Beauty ⁰

by admin • Okategoriserade

This painting of Gary Hernandez touches me deeply and I am happy to find it beautiful. Happy because the body I meet in the mirror after my morning shower is quite “Buddha like” as well if you know what I mean. The image in the mirror somehow doesn’t seem to fit with the image how a body should look like to be attractive … and yet I find Hernandez woman in the picture very beautiful. I am totally happy to be embodied and the woman seems to be that as well. There is no shame in her presence. The challenge arises when different kind of body images and believes starts fighting each other in my mind. Different voices and imprints from growing up. The good old split between the beauty and the beast, and we all knows what breaks that spell in the story. It is as like the white dove in the painting truly sees and receives the woman without any preferences around beauty and she allows her self to be totally seen as she is. Well, that’s my interpretation of the image above … what is yours?

Richard

January 29, 2011

Conscious Loving ¹

by admin • Okategoriserade

January 18, 2011

Fierce Love of Longing ⁰

by admin • Okategoriserade

FIERCE LOVE OF LONGING

I will speak of the fierce love of longing,

but will you listen?

This love that I know carries the darkness in its womb. This love that I know drives you into the darkest corners of your most forgotten and forbidden dreams and longings.Into the madness of your mind, and leaves you crawling on the floor,

And still you ask for more.

This love carries in its womb the pain, the misery, the lifted fist, the sacred battlefields. It will haunt you until your bones tremble with fair and you are to weak to resist.

Not until you open your fist.

Because you know, deep down in the core of your heart,
that this is what you asked for.
This love of longing gives no mercy, no turning back.

Left is but the raw sense of a living crack.

Not until this, will the tears of real love run from your eyes.

~ mette welhaven næss ~

January 16, 2011

Awakening ⁰

by admin • Okategoriserade

… to the true nature of your being.

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 ~