Aug 11 2024
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The Fall / The Jump

Thoughts walk my brain and

emotions cycle on dry roads as

indifferent, green, a tree stands

not even trying to speak

in-human vegetal beast

above crusty paved layers

the pain encapsulated, carried

sneaks, sometimes, underground

in soil, soft and golden

it sits, the pain, – my

heart in the void wrapped

in fire blankets.

Black birds in flight and

My thoughts up there so cold &

sober, as indifferent, blue the sky I

once signed my name across

as I lay on the Nice beach

is what I will inhabit now

if only for a brief moment.

Without a parachute I stand

on the verge of the ever-vastest

& happily proclaim: ‘Take care!’

as I catch air and air

will only touch me.

But I, the real I (?) stood by the side,

would never dare to smear myself

with paint, would rather put on a tuxedo

and white gloves, make the in-pieces-lady

whole a piece of art completed under

my control. The shape of a body hovering

between death and life, the leap

off an old suburban house – a comment

on the Front Page of a mock Parisian daily

France Soir by an Olympic diver in his prime

– hold for me no interest, and yet he dives,

(at last) into his birth-water.

Frozen in meditation space I jump my

silent mind blending with the red, I melt

through the pain pavement & ‘I’, ‘the real I’,

who refused to ‘paint himself’, would

only paint the sky, is but a crow

at the fun-real funeral in a tux & gloves, not

even the owner of the Work of Art – a Silver

gelatin print – belongs to the artist estate &

Harry Schunk the man who took the photograph.

But new bloodstained tree roots, gold veins

with sweet worms massage sun penetrated

soil to tell my tale.

Nov 05 2023
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It’s TIME! Vidyanand Explained

Growing Up

There is an ancient knowledge regarding the truth of reality and our non-dual nature. And more and more people are tuning in to it. Swami Vidyanand is one of many teachers well versed in the ancient knowledge, and he is keen to show us how to practically live it.

Vidya Goswami was born into a lineage of renowned Bhakti yogis in Datiya, Madhya Pradesh, one of seventeen recognized sacred Tantra centres in India. His mission has been to accumulate knowledge and to share it. But do not think that this is all complicated, the red thread is utterly simple: Be Happy!

Any class always starts with ‘Happy!’ and ‘welcome’. Vidyanand makes one feel welcome, and wanting to be welcoming, from the heart. He talks about there being traditional methods of meditation, most of which he knows well. Bathed in spirituality from birth, his first master was his father, Dr. Sri Harihar Goswami, a prominent spiritual speaker who offered Satsang based on sacred texts of ancient Indian philosophy. The growing adolescent soon spoke alongside his father, teaching about the Vedas, but he felt a lack of direct experience and set out on a quest to find answers to the questions: ‘What is the Divine?’ and ‘How can I experience the Divine?’

Aged sixteen, Vidya met a famous enlightened white Tantra master, Shree Swami Ji of Pitambara Peeth, who recognized the teenager as a seeker of the divine truth and invited him to stay. The boy felt an extraordinary energy emanating from the master and accepted. Sitting next to him, he felt the energy run through his own body and experienced unknown levels of joy, but the master said, ‘This is not it, this is just the beginning.’

As Vidya continued to experience high levels of awareness and Samadhi, Shree Swami Ji of Pitambara Peeth, in July 1978, encouraged him to use the name ‘Swami Vidyanand’ in honour of being a knower of bliss and what he explained as a mission to experience and deliver right knowledge (Vidya) carried on through many life times. The master encouraged him to experience different systems of yoga and spiritual practices in order to gain further knowledge to share with others.

Swami Vidyanand apprenticed under enlightened yoga masters such as Swami Satyananda, founder of the Bihar school of yoga, as well as anonymous ascetics in the Himalayas. Swami Satyananda confirmed the name Vidyanand, adding before it a Sri to honour the active crown chakra and divine light connection, in May 1982. Complying with the requirements of ordinary life and accepting the demands of his parents, he got married and continued on his spiritual path, with his wife’s support.

Four Traditional Yoga Systems

Understanding that meditation is not separate from yoga, at Mahavira temple near Sonagiri in Madhya Pradesh, Swami Vidyanand experienced the Jain dharma. He learnt meditation techniques to connect with the eternal physical consciousness. The Jains worked hard, through asceticism, to know that the body is not what we are.

Today all kinds of Jains exist, also those who refuse to put in particular effort, or who don’t see suffering as a means to an end. Some focus less on scriptures, and more on living, with all the suffering that this indeed entails.

The Jains were certainly on to something with the total abnegation of suffering and violence, avoiding killing to the extreme. The Naga swamis, tens of thousands of naked masters living together, were exotic and interesting, but on the whole, Vidyanand concluded that this type of meditation was not very practical, and his heart and mind, both, remained full of questions.

Vidyanand went on to experience the life and teachings of the Buddhist dharma. He absorbed much knowledge, including of Vipassana meditation, in various monasteries. The traditional Buddhist meditation, also including the vein of S.N. Goenka’s method, was certainly a useful tool. Buddha handed down the knowledge of Vipassana meditation for us to know that we are, also, mistaken to identify with our thoughts. Rather, they can be seen as clouds floating by on an endless sky. Nirvana is the aim, with the threat of escapism in bliss.

Still feeling compelled to learn more, Vidyanand attended Satsang with Swami Rama, the late founder of the Himalayan Institute. He also learnt esoteric meditation techniques from Tibetan masters. All the while, Swami Vidyanand continued to travel and share his knowledge and experience. In Punjab, he taught yoga in a temple and took part in a TV show on yoga.

In Rishikesh, he stayed at Sivananda ashram and mastered the practices taught there. Learning about Vivekananda’s teachings and a third large traditional meditation system known as Raja, a knowledge-and thoughts-oriented mental meditation, experiencing the mental body was a powerful milestone. Pondering, ‘Who am I?’ removed all veils, and the one reality revealed itself. Vivekananda, with his non-dual understanding, tells us that we are all that is and, with many others still teaching, points to the liberation that this knowing brings. To be in the world but knowing one is not of it. That can only make one ever so happy, right?

As modern human beings we tend not to lead monastic lives, and yet the purpose of this life is to awaken to our true nature, or real Self.

Next, Swami Vidyanand settled in New Delhi with his family. Invited by the Oberoi hotel chain, he started teaching courses there, such as ‘Yoga for Perfect Health’. Simultaneously, he studied a fourth traditional meditation system, that of Adi Shankaracharya, an eighth-century Indian Vedic scholar and teacher, who stated that we need also find our purpose in this world with regard to all the truths spoken. The point is not to escape into a state of bliss, to entirely lose ourselves as we reach upwards to the higher dimensions. Rather, he indicates, we may open ourselves to the higher powers and entice them into ourselves and manifest them here, on Earth.

Discovering the Integral Yoga

One day a new student attended the class and Swamiji Vidyanand felt a bright energy radiate from her. Intrigued, he learnt from her about mystic visionary and revolutionary freedom fighter Sri Aurobindo and his collaborator Mirra Alfassa, known as ‘Mother’. When, at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in New Delhi, Swami Vidyanand laid his head on the Samadhi, he felt the connection with the true eternal consciousness that he had long yearned to experience directly.

Perhaps Shankaracharya had come the closest to the thought of Sri Aurobindo. Vidyanand explains, ‘It’s as if from this point on that Sri Aurobindo’s teachings may appear. His teachings take off where the more traditional teachings end.’

‘For unification is a necessity of Nature’
– Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo created the Integral Yoga, which, unlike other yoga forms, did not aim for the liberation of the individual consciousness. Rather, Sri Aurobindo referred to the liberation of the individual consciousness as a necessary precondition for the Integral Yoga. Aimed at bringing down the Supramental Consciousness into matter on Earth, this yoga does not dismiss the importance of the body, but rather the opposite. The body is the vehicle. This resonated with Swami Vidyanand. The idea that individuals can choose to consciously take up their meaningful place in a progressive cosmic unfolding felt true to him.

Through the guidance of the Mother, who transitioned from life in her body in November 1973, Vidyanand’s aim to establish expression of the eternal consciousness in all four layers became clear. He thought of this as Transformational Yoga. Continuing to learn the methods of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, and, at the same time, teaching ashram devotees as a service, Vidyanand changed his orange Swami dress to white. He also became a lifetime member of the Sri Aurobindo Educational Society. At the Center of Behavioral Health of the Hong Kong University, Vidyanand not only taught Transformational Yoga but also undertook research on its health benefits.

Founding the Transformational Yoga School

In 2004, Vidyanand founded SriMa International School of Transformational Yoga®, as a tribute to Mother’s (SriMa) direct guidance. By 2008, he had founded Yoga Alliance International® (YAI). By now, having trained more than 1000 teachers in Transformational Yoga® all over the world, Swami Vidyanand has moved the SriMa headquarters to be near Pondicherry in south India. He is situated on the outskirts of Auroville (www.auroville.org), the community that Mother founded in 1968, based on Sri Aurobindo’s teachings. Pondicherry is where Sri Aurobindo settled as he withdrew from his political mission to free India.

In 2014, Vidyanand founded Meditation Alliance International® (MAI), which is now present on all continents. In 2015 his first books were released, Self-Transformation through Transformational Yoga and TIME Meditation. Continuing to improve the quality and spread the knowledge of authentic yoga and meditation around the world, he delivers his specialized Grand Master courses and such in his trademark gentle and joyful manner. The most often repeated words during any of his classes are a ‘Welcome’ and ‘Happy’.

A Meditation Alliance International® course level lasts for ten sessions, each lasting two hours. Students are asked to practise meditation on their own and to deepen the theoretical concepts studied in class. All along, training in yoga asanas is also provided. This helps purify and awaken dormant energy. Dynamic meditation is an integral part of Vidyanand’s approach. According to him, asanas, mantras, and breathing and meditation techniques all help purify and clear blockages of the chakras. This in turn leads to stable emotions,a focused mind and increased spiritual well-being. We are active agents in our own evolution, or could be, at least.

Time Is the Key Illusion

It may seem that meditation is different to yoga but there really is no boundary between the two. Yoga and meditation are inseparable practices, each serving the purpose of the other. Swami Vidyanand’s system of TIME stands for Transformational Integral Meditation Education but might as well be abbreviated as True ‘I’ Meditation Experience, as that is what it all boils down to. But it is no quick fix, the purification of oneself.

Only once we have removed the impurities of our body, mind and emotions, can we open to the higher knowledge. Just as we may realize that we are not our body, our thoughts or our emotions, Sri Aurobindo pointed out that we may in fact become the instruments of the higher knowledge, call it the Divine, Brahman or whatever you prefer. Perhaps the correct way to look at the perceived constraint imposed by time, is to ponder how much of one’s time is spent in true identification with all that is, as opposed to one’s limited sense of self.

Swami Vidyanand felt very connected to the Mother and that she is the force behind the Transformational Yoga that he founded, and which in turn led to TIME. He felt a kind of love and devotion towards Mother and Sri Aurobindo, but saw the danger of creating a religion out of the teachings. A devoted bhakti meditator concentrates on the love for Buddha or Krishna or Mother, or whatever the focus. But, as Vidyanand points out, this should be but a means to going beyond self.

If one remains focused on the object, this still fosters a limited idea of self. ‘The real self’, he points out, ‘is one with all that is, so if one stops at this level, in this type of meditation, there will still be a sense of separation between self and that which is worshipped, and so this cannot be the end of it.’

Says Helen Simons, a London-based psychotherapist who attends Vidyanand’s courses online, ‘Of the many practices I have engaged in over the years, TIME meditation surpasses them all. It is “effort free” and yet so profound.’

Swami Vidyanand feels that the time is ripe for the spread of TIME, for more beings on Earth to evolve into the next layer on the spiral, for as many indigenous peoples and seers would confirm, time is not linear but rather moves in circles, and whereas it may seem that we are at times stuck or revisiting the past, we are forever moving upwards, by being able to open ourselves ever more up to becoming vehicles for the divine force.

Meditation Is Not Concentration

Many are very good at concentrating. But if we concentrate only on things outside of ourselves, we risk losing a lot of energy. It is possible, instead, to release and generate energy and to welcome it from the higher dimensions. Meditation does not equal concentration. Rather, meditation has everything to do with concentrating on the self. Mother insisted that by keeping the energy active inside the body we can bring discipline to the physical cells, as well as to the emotional and mental levels available to us. We can even facilitate a connection with the source of love at the psychic level.

This is not religion, but practical science. It is not make-believe—all is connected. Our imagination can be applied to guide the physical, and the best starting point is to truly and honestly be with what is, in the moment.

Whereas many focus on the chakras of the body, Swami Vidyanand adds the horizontal layers, or sheaths (koshas in Sanskrit). TIME is a practical system for experiencing the four outer layers and four eternal layers, also called apara (untransformed) and para (transformed) dimensions of the self.

True meditation leads to increased levels of energy and to the experience of real freedom and peace—a feeling of deep inner joy. False meditation leads to loss of energy and boredom. Asanas and dynamic meditation help us recharge before meditating. As we meditate correctly, the energy flows more freely and is even generated.

Becoming aware of our various self images and almost endless number of personalities, we may see through the illusion that they constitute. By doing so we may experience the Source, our one true identity. But the point is not to lose ourselves in the bliss experienced at this point. This is also transcended when we find our aim in life, which must link to expressing true self in the world.

When you forget yourself and concentrate in and on the world, this is called Maya, or illusion. In this state, you forget who you truly are and are hypnotized to believe, e.g., that ‘I’m a Hindu’, ‘I’m a warrior’, ‘I’m a poor person’, or whatever else your father, teacher, or others, may have told you that you are. Several conditions come together in the mind, to make you forget the truth about yourself and instead follow whatever is suggested to it.

This is a very unbalanced life and it can be quite aimless, or the aim is inherited without questioning. As a result, one whose parents are doctors may assume, ‘I will be a doctor, too.’  ‘The true purpose of meditation’, explains Vidyanand, ‘is to give clarity about your real self, through experience, or, perhaps, to spend more and more time in correct identification.’

What Is the Purpose of Meditation?

According to Vidyanand, even after having practised all four traditional types of meditation, some aspects of purification remained missing. Swami Vidyanand set out to integrate all systems, in order to help meditators get to the root of the issue: How to know our true nature?

‘For we have two minds, one the surface mind of our expressed evolutionary ego, the superficial mentality created by us in our emergence out of Matter, another a subliminal mind which is not hampered by our actual mental life and its strict limitations, something large, powerful and luminous, the true mental being behind that superficial form of mental personality which we mistake for ourselves.’
Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (The Double Soul in Man chapter)

Already well aware of the self being two, or dual—the untransformed and transformed selves being our reality—reading Sri Aurobindo inspired Vidyanand to develop the TIME Meditation system. The aim is to help integrate two into one.

Vedic science agrees: one self is born and dies; the other does not. And, as Vidyanand knew already, there are four outer (apara/impure/untransformed) and four eternal (para/pure/transformed) layers or dimensions of self, and of course the chakras, the seven main energy centres of the body, are also relevant to any attempts to transform the self. 

Chakra is the Sanskrit word for ‘wheel’, and each chakra can be imagined as a wheel of free-flowing positive energy. But this is where the work has to start, as purification and meditation help ensure that the energy is, indeed, flowing and not stuck. We all have kundalini sleeping inside. How to activate it on all four levels, in all four bodies (physical, emotional, mental and psychic)? It starts with becoming aware of and very clear about para and apara nature.

Transformational Integral Meditation Education (TIME)

Being aware of one’s self and one’s four bodies is possible at all times; this is dynamic meditation.

Still meditation, the other mode, doesn’t require much time to be effective. One can sit for a couple of minutes every day, at a fixed time if possible. Just after waking up is ideal. The only thing to ‘do’ is to observe what is going on inside.

Having gone through and mastered the four traditional meditation system approaches, one is ready for the integral and truly transformational meditation. It is all to do with energy and stuckness, and making ourselves aware of the higher purpose of our life from morning and remembering it before falling asleep. Purifying ourselves, creating inner space to open up to the infinite higher dimensions, the eternal consciousness, helping spread whatever knowledge ‘we’ happen to ‘gain’.

In order to radiate perfect balance at every level, Vidyanand suggests that we need to start with being perfectly honest with ourselves and others. This will be the most perfect way to allow and facilitate the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. This does not happen by denouncing the body, but by being fully present and alive in it. Only then can we find a way to be perfectly honest with ourselves. Yes, we are not the body, but the body is an important vehicle, and it is in life that we have the opportunity to transcend its imagined limitations.

TIME, in short, aims to establish a durable contact of the lower consciousness with the eternal transformed dimension. Cleansing is done for energy to rise, naturally and harmoniously, to enter the space created. The higher chakras and dimensions of consciousness are always in an active state but remain inaccessible to a person with too much energy stuck in the lower chakras.

The Four Steps of TIME

  1. Purification by removing impurities present throughout the layers that prevent progress. The practice of meditation allows oneself to reveal the desires specific to each body which are, in fact, impurities that create stuck energy around the bodies and impair one’s progress. Practising asanas, a dynamic meditation, is the main method.
  2. Relaxation of desires, e.g., that divert the concentration and lead to tiredness at all levels. When one focuses on the outer world and forgets about one’s true self, desires for luxury, comfort (physical), excitement (pranic), progress, success (mental; measuring, comparing), and even for expressing and receiving love (psychic), and so on, appear and need to be relaxed.
  3. Generation of energy. Starting with STILL meditation, sitting in a comfortable position, spine straight, a perfect way to start the day, then move into DYNAMIC meditation – aim to be fully aware in any situation of day-to-day life.
  4. Communication with the Eternal consciousness (still meditation). Making oneself aware of the four bodies at play, one asks: ‘What is the purpose of my life?’ ‘How can I make today a progressive day towards my inner self?’

Every chakra is the creator of a particular body and is part of a complete network of energy that also relates to the koshas. When one is aware of the four layers of existence, both in the untransformed and transformed dimensions, real TIME can begin, and that at a time when many scientists point to the time-space continuum as our possibly most deceptive illusion.

In July Vidyanand (‘Happy’) will be giving his 200 level International Yoga Teacher Training Course at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch. More information here (scroll down on page): http://www.sriaurobindoashram.net/

www.srimatransformationalyogaindia.com, www.meditationallianceinternational.com, https://www.vidyanand.org

Make TIME for Being Divine!

Petra Mo was born in Sweden and has an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management. She has practised many different types of meditation and yoga and, in 2012, left her corporate sustainability career to settle in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India. Currently a student of Swami Vidyanand, she is an ‘Aurovilian’ willing servitor of the divine consciousness’ and works with sustainable enterprise and as a writer under an activity registered with the Auroville Art Service.

Aug 06 2023
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I Came to Auroville to Disappear

I was born in December 1973, three weeks after Mother passed.
I remember sitting in the forest as a kid and realising that I existed. And, later, learning about Buddha and Jesus. The thought appeared that their message was that we are all alike, and can all experience what they did, though I did not yet know what that meant.
It was an idyllic childhood, on the south-east coast of Sweden, near a town of 50,000 people. My grandparents had a farm and I would ride, swim in the ocean, play outdoors. As a teenager there was some drama, not caused by me, but the experience made me observant in new ways, sensing a gap between ‘Petra, the persona’, and ‘who I really am’.
Around that time a photo of Varanasi stirred something in my soul – the colours! In 1994, I took a gap year from university and travelled to Nepal and India. Seeing the genuine smiles of people owning little, I sensed a relevance to my feeling that prosperity does not equate peace. When I was 25 my father died very suddenly, aged 45. Many strong synchronicities surrounded the event. When I saw my first dead body, his body, a real knowing was that the spirit was no longer there, but could not die. My eye sought the window, a tree outside, a bird on a branch.
Fast-forward some years, I had made many trips to India, met a Buddhist teacher, taken up and dropped careers, travelled, had a kid, sat many ten-day Vipassana retreats, got married, had another child. My husband and I wanted to escape the ‘rat race’, supermarkets with packaged foods, and the corporate life which I felt had everything to do with greenwash. I craved real change, and India was on my mind. My husband didn’t want to leave Europe but I just knew I’d one day live in India and didn’t fret.
Luckily my work kept bringing me to India and during one trip I visited Auroville. Having previously rejected the community as too ‘new age’, I was getting interested in the concept and by January 2012 we moved here. I dusted off a booklet by Mother that I had picked up during my travels, on work. We settled in vegan community Sadhana Forest and survived diarrhoea and incessant mosquito bites. We had determination, discipline, and some funds, and yet it took grit to stay on. Auroville was no utopia, and yet it was perfect. I volunteered for Mohanam, Bamboo centre, Lively, Housing service, Entry and so on. We ran a school and started a kindergarten. I taught writing and created a student magazine, wrote for AVToday, then MAgzAV, worked as a ghost-writer and kept drafting novels.
Aware of the dynamics of ego, working as a mere receptionist in companies that former university batch mates of a prestigious degree were climbing the various ladders of, I never regretted chucking it all in, pension and all. I had failed to change the corporate world from the inside, perhaps better change from ‘my inside’ instead? As I read Sri Aurobindo, something clicked. This was different from the ‘escape’ from suffering indicated by Buddhism. It had everything to do with embodying and manifesting on earth, instead. Having always considered life as integral to consciousness, it was a relief to read a kindred spirit. Life and spirituality no longer separable. I was paying more attention to instinct and intuition and wondered why Tiruvannamalai, abode of sage Ramana Maharshi, was situated so nearby. But I trusted what was supposed to find me would. Then, one day I observed my hand reaching out for a book, bewildered. I just knew I would read Perfect Brilliant Stillness by ‘david carse’. A Canadian carpenter, Carse ‘lost his mind’ during a ceremony in Peru, and his investigations led him to Advaita (non-dual) teachers in India.
I read the book many times over, sensing that it came from an ‘awakened’ state, which he had somehow stumbled upon and enabled by allowing for a full-blown ego death. I think that at some level I sensed that all that I had been learning and practising up until that point was but a kindergarten, if not a useless stage. Maharshi was, of course, long gone, but I listened to Mooji on YouTube. Refusing to give up trying to ‘get it’, one afternoon, it was seen that even that most cherished ‘I’ – that ‘spiritual Petra’ was an illusion. In that moment of utter surprise ‘I’ was transported out of my body and yet remained in it. I was everything that was, for one whole afternoon and evening. There were only lightness and no judgment on anything or anyone I crossed.
It was a completely different state and, of course, a thought entered the mind, ‘How do I make it stay? ’’I’?’ yup, ‘I’ was back in action. But then again, also that is ok. It is not about grasping, even for being without grasping. There is only Grace. These days I work with an Auroville natural dyes unit that employs 100 people, explore the Tamil bioregion, practice yoga with Vidyanand and Gala, keep writing, and love Auroville as much as I ever did.
Feb 14 2022
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Musings

When I became a Mama, part 2

The baby’s heart was being monitored and all seemed to be stable. As the waves washing in over me seemed to get more and more powerful and threatened to wipe me out I imagined mastering a rowing boat to manage to survive each one of them. The monitor showing the contractions might have made it worse but was something to stick my mind to in order to cope. Hour after hour spent trying to remain on top, not get dragged under. T was running to fetch me glasses filled with crushed ice and water, a shuttle on patrol, like a life guard roaming the coast to keep me safe from harm.

A midwife I wasn’t so keen on attended to me but nothing much had happened before the next shift was on, something to appreciate about time dragging. After the next midwife’s shift though a student midwife showed up and immediately impressed me. She brought a carafe full of crushed ice and water, streamlining what turned more and more into a kind of waiting for Godot, the pain intensifying becoming unbearable. And the pain truly being felt as unbearable at 7cm of dilation I requested the pethidine injection as it is the optimal time for administration. I had detailed in my blue notebook that I might consider it, aware that I find pain hard do handle, and it was even more intense than anything I could have imagined.

After that a period of some rest followed, relatively speaking. The pain of the contractions was hardly noticeable and mainly they were identified by the peaks showing on the monitor. Father and mother to be and child to be born got a bit of respite. The child had not by far been moved into position, had not descended far at all and I was put on a drip to make the contractions stronger. At this point I had totally surrendered to the care of the hospital, thinking they know they’re stuff, they’ll make sure he gets out one way or another. I realised there was no point in lamenting the intervention-free homebirth in water that I was clearly not going to have, but to just be in the moment, be with whatever was, accepting and trying to be supple.

Again the pain was intensifying and I found myself breathing like a maniac and roaring to be able to stand it. At 10cm dilation I asked for an epidural injection, although he child was not yet in position. What else to do when the pain is cutting you like a knife? This was my last resort. I thanked the divine for that injection to the spine. Although it clearly slowed down my work to push due to me no longer feeling the contractions, I figured Junior – as I had started to refer to him – would find a way. I had not slept for two full nights and was anyway too tired to do any pushing, I told myself. And when the doctors arrived they agreed. Also, I was not fully dilated and the child was positioned too high.

By Monday morning I was guided to the expulsive breathing which is only advisable after full dilation. But even imagining that I was sitting on the toilet, used to constipation, helped in the least. This was when the doctors started discussing suction, forceps or a caesarean. At this point I surrendered even more deeply. Anything would work for me, I just wanted to see this creature eye-to-eye. Of course I preferred not to deliver by caesarean, I had read about the hormones kicking in to accelerate breastfeeding during vaginal delivery and so on, but even this I accepted (just give me my child!) Before being rolled out of the room I took some deep drags of the laughing gas to manage the ride. Entering the operating theatre I was convinced that I was heading for the knife. It’s ok, I thought to myself, at least today the baby will exit my womb and enter this outside world. But I was a little bit afraid.

In case of a caesarean or any surgical intervention it is standard practice to top up the epidural. Unfortunately the thin tube in my back did not work but the procedure had to be redone, which is always a risk, and especially during intense contractions which can cause movement. I sat folded forward over an orange pillow to keep still, by now with legs quite immobile as a side effect of the pain being blocked. T was dressed in protective clothing, video camera in hand, another protective gear to hide behind. Contrary to my expectations something was moving after three expulsive breathing rounds. I thought the doctors were only joking with me whilst preparing to raise their knives when they said that all that was required was a small cut, an episiotomy, which I had studied about and agreed to, and the baby would be out.

By now there was a protective sheet up so I couldn’t actually see much but had a sense of one of the doctors putting a foot up against the bed to pull and I could feel with my hands on my belly how the baby was being sucked out of me. A moment later a motionless white sturdy back was facing me as the baby was put on my still somewhat protruding belly. The baby was immobile and emitting no sound. His density was familiar to my hand, as was his shape, but why was he so white and quiet? The people around us remained calm. His heart was beating only moments ago, I told myself; he’s fine. But the next few minutes were a torture performed on me in slow motion. I could see the doctors and midwife and student midwife set to work cleaning airways and his body. They were padding him with a towel, rubbing him to keep him warm. At one point, if I remember correctly they were even holding the still seemingly lifeless being upside down and slapping him lightly. By now, I was panicking inside, thinking that to this there is no surrender, whilst being emptied of the placenta and having my cut stitched up. Surely T was in his own crisis, photographing his way through it. Why was the baby emitting no sound?

Then, a gurgling emerged, and finally a forceful belly-cry, the sweetest sound I had ever heard in my life until that point. I cried with relief if I wasn’t already crying before. I was filled with joy and rolled out of the surgery. Soon Junior was placed on my breast and gently suckling my nipple. He was so beautiful, a thick black waft of hair and already inquisitive eyes. T was there with us for some time and then went back to the house to catch some sleep having welcomed this being, this magical new person into our lives. Only the day after did we start to call him Milo, and before long he went by the name Smilo.

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Feb 11 2022
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Musings

When I became a Mama, part 1

As I write this, on this day, my eldest son’s 18th birthday, I have opened and am translating from the Swedish of the moleskin diary that a dear Italian artist friend gifted me with soon after his birth. I write for him. At one point his Swedish was very sound, now only the base remains, mainly thanks to the many fairy tales read to him, but ok, he speaks English and French too, what to do? Here goes.Monday March 15th 2004.

It is morning and T has taken M so that I can sleep a little, in our lovely house in Dalston that we are renting together with a couple of friends. Our boy is five weeks today but I feel I got enough sleep last night and I want to write about the birth, as I remember it, so that he too can “remember” it, and I, because we do forget. Last night we were breastfeeding, M and I, at 4am and 8am and he woke up a little in-between mainly to be comforted, but more on such detail later.

On the morning of February 7th, a Saturday, I awoke as usual. The night before we had been to watch a documentary by a neighbour friend about a man from Nigeria who had finally been granted the right to stay in England. A, my hairdresser friend who I got to know because she was cutting my hair at about the same three month level of pregnancy, came along. I had nothing planned for the weekend, was hoping to give birth but not believing I would, at least not in a concrete manner (believing, that is), although my belly was by now so huge that even perfect strangers would comment, “you’ll pop any moment now”.

As I went to the bathroom, on this early February Saturday morning though, I noticed that the mucus plug – the collection of mucus formed in the cervical canal in early pregnancy to prevent bacteria and infection from entering the uterus – had been released from duty. The blob in my underwear was proof, my cervix was preparing for labour. This was quite a sign and I thought to myself, he’ll be out soon. A bit of reading in one of my many books on pregnancy brought me back to reality; sometimes another couple of weeks, or more, shall pass, after the mucus plug lets go of its outpost. I was disappointed, yet hopeful. What to do?

I phoned my own mamma back in Sweden. She told me that the boy would definitely be out before midnight, as all of her own five offspring – me the eldest – had been following a schedule of twelve hours exit following the loss of the mucus plug. It was a funny coincidence that also this, my own mucus plug, had evacuated on a Saturday morning, just as had happened before I was born. My mum reiterated that at 1.13 on that same Sunday morning in December 1973, I was born. Thus convinced, I started to frantically clean the entire house. I was planning to give birth at home and needed the nest to be tidy and spotless, both. Our housemates left the house with one of their brothers, visiting since some time, and a friend from Barcelona.

Having showered I dressed in a very nice top, gifted by a friend, and felt proper and ready. The inflatable pool, too ready, waited in the roomy bathroom for the first drops of water to enter it, although I had to admit that my scattered, pain-free contractions were few and far between. Only after the full day had passed did they start to become somewhat more frequent and regular. But although they started to have an interval of only eight minutes, they remained weak. Still, on my mother’s advice I contacted the hospital. A tall, strong black midwife came to examine me. She concluded that not much was happening with me opening up, but after her departure I imagined that the process was speeding up a little.

From midnight onwards my contractions appeared some six minutes apart, but they were easily manageable, not overwhelming me at all. They were waves rushing in over me, a beach, a stranded whale, a woman both scared and excited to become a mother, finally. I counted seven deep breaths – in and out – in the interval between each contraction. It would enter, take me hostage, and then depart. A mass of water surrounded me, wanting to take me over, and another still filling me up. My best friends were a hot water bottle and clary sage essential oil, along with my breathing.

In the middle of the night I poured myself a bath, forcing one of the housemates to venture out into the garden, fumbling in the dark, to pee. The bath was more a tool of distraction than real pain relief, although it offered some. Sunday morning midwife Jean turned up unannounced and uncalled for, but it was a positive surprise, another time killer. I guessed it was part of their network routine, following my earlier examination, and it came across as real care. She examined me and declared only 2.5-3cm of dilation. At least, she said, we can now establish that you are indeed in labour. To me it seemed like an unfair amount of pain to have gone through for such meagre results. The contractions continued and I was told to phone once they were appearing with only three minutes of space, or when they were decidedly more painful.

By Sunday afternoon indeed the pain increased. So much so that the TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) machine delivering its mild electrical current through sticky pads attached to my skin no longer seemed to deliver any relief at all. The electrical impulses meant to reduce the pain signals reaching my brain through the spinal cord no longer managed to do so, and my muscles remained tense. I started to dream of receiving some laughing gas. My mother advised me to exaggerate a little and, as I phoned the hospital, I did. Within an hour a midwife appeared. Sitting opposite me on the living room sofa, she took in the view of my enormous belly and the less enormous me. After some time, she did the internal examination in our bedroom.

I had the impression that she was rummaging around a little too much, or not too much, perhaps, as I sensed that it was her intention to break my waters. And break they did. I was feeling very tired by now, after so many hours of contractions. She told me it was a big child. With the most of the water evacuated, clearly most of my huge belly was child, not water. Perhaps based on this assessment and that of my relatively small frame and narrow hips, she also concluded that the meconium – normally the first stool after birth and if released before t a possible sign of distress – clearly present in the released flood from within, we would need to go to hospital. The expectant father to be turned off the water that he had just started to fill the homebirth pool with and, instead, called the ambulance. Not that there was a rush – this was the procedure for transport to the hospital.

By this point I was appreciating the thought of an ambulance arriving. The promise of laughing gas outweighed the weight of the loss of the dream to give birth at home, in water. It agreed that it made sense to properly monitor the baby in me, in case he was really in distress. Too much time had passed with too little progress, although I felt pleased to have spent it at home as opposed to in the hospital environment. Part of me suspected it was the forced breaking of the water that distressed the child, but what to do, what was done was done. My lover and best friend of the last five years had to obey my various commands, and, running around, gathered clothes, cameras, and so on.

I was starting to feel like a woman in labour, a somewhat loose conglomerate of limbs and panics. Slightly excited and anxious I did remain calm, as per my innate composition and nature. Texting our housemates I informed them that there was no longer any need to stay away and give us the space, we were off instead. At 4-5cm dilation I was hopeful that the arrival of our baby boy was imminent. Presenting water soaked pads as evidence, slightly meconium-green tinged, I was soon waddling towards the ambulance, only making a detour to the dustbin. Perhaps somewhat irrationally I felt those pads could not be left the house. The female ambulance driver commented that I was the calmest one she had ever welcomed into her vehicle before a delivery.

Three full bags stood on the floor of the ambulance next to us but after driving a block or so I realised that the most essential item had been left behind – my blue book, my notes for how I wished the delivery to go – and we turned back. My man hurried inside and returned with it. The contractions intensified but the laughing gas helped. Before daring to leave the ambulance I took a few extra deep drags and as I sat in the wheel chair entering the hospital I was in a good mood, almost laughing. The building felt entirely new, as if I had never been there before. This was an entirely new event, but I felt safe, unafraid. Soon, we were installed in a small room. There were no windows and it was hot but I was satisfied with the bed and the laughing gas, felt I had all that I needed with me, there. Or so I thought.

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Feb 07 2022
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Musings

On Masks and such

On my route from Auroville to Pondicherry sometimes it happens that I get stopped by the police. Or in Pondicherry. In the past it didn’t happen very often but since the first lockdown, yes. Mask control!

I got stopped so many times. Most of the times I was wearing a mask but then they’d ask for my driving license> Once I have showed that, they get me on not having brought my bike papers (working to put it all in an app), or for driving the wrong direction on the road – sigh – how else to drive in India, come on, the police do it too all the time.

But I have to tell you that the other day when two policemen tried to wave me down, I had already decided NOT to put the mask. Instead, I just kept driving and I said to them “NO!” as if talking to an unruly child. And then I had to drive really fast, thinking maybe they take chase (they didn’t), chuckling to myself at my small resistance born out of a big frustration.

Today, driving, I didn’t want to repeat that so when one policeman waved me down, wearing an ultrathin surgeon type mask, me none, I stopped a couple of metres before him (Socially distancing!) to put it on).

He asks:

– So why you only put mask on now you see me?

– Because I don’t want to pay you 100rs; for days I’ve seen very few people wearing masks, including the police, and I don’t want to breathe all this carbon and we’ve all had this virus and we’re fine.

– What virus?

– Me (staring at him to see if he’s kidding, blank stare back): Nevermind, here take the 100rs, you know most countries are stopping this now…

– If you want to complain you go collectors office.

Me (putting my signature on the challan): You know, now I’m touching this pen that you and everyone has been touching… (only a blank stare by policeman), nevermind, I get it, you’re only doing your job, you have a nice day now.

I am thinking I should go to the collectors office but also that I don’t have the time. Thinking, what a bizarre encounter, really.

Everything we see is obscured by an illusory veil of separation. But it is no silky, soft thing, no, it is wrapped tightly around our minds, restricting the ability to senes the unity of all life.

It is immeasurably strong, overpowering us, forcing us to continue to create, preserve and destroy a universe of our own impressions. We are caught in an illusion of our own making, a victim of our own imaginative construction with no way to gauge the extent to which we are captured.

Nor can we easily remove the veil because we ourselves are the cause of it. There seems to be no way out. Sounds almost like a horror movie, but perhaps we can look at it as a tragic comedy, or a comedy.

This is the daily scenario that we all face whether we know it or not. If we do not recognize this, if we don‘t remember that this is the basis for all conflict, then we will lose ourselves in numberless illusions that others out there in the world are affecting our lives.

But the truth is that there is no one else but the soul. The truth of the soul is that we are all one. There is no other.

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Feb 05 2022
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Musings

Inner Knowing

I was born in Stockholm to two young adults. This was an unplanned pregnancy, and, as I later found out, it happened the year before the year that abortions were made legal in Sweden. Either way, I think I was a correct keeper, as my parents went on to have four more children together. At the time, in 1973, my dad was doing his military service and my mum was staying at her parents. They lived in a 1950’s planned concrete suburb south of Stockholm, Skärholmen. Always a bit of a wild child, my mum worked at a hair salon, sweeping up hair from the floor.

Her parents lived on the seventh floor, with a balcony overlooking the other similar high rises and gypsy women walking around wearing big puffed up and flowing black skirts. My dad’s parents ran a farm north of Stockholm. When I was one year old they moved to Öland, to the country side, and supported my parents’ move to Kalmar. My dad worked at the same technology firm as my granddad and we settled on the outskirts of Kalmar, an idyllic small town of 50,000 people on the south east coast of Sweden.

This was where I was sitting, surrounded by the forest and the trolls that I believed in, when I realised that I exist. Trolls are present in many children’s stories in Sweden and I was, I suppose, on the verge of understanding that I was actually, contrary to my feeling thus far, a being separate from my mother.

If I remember correctly the snow stood as tall as me. And if I remember correctly I veered off from the path that led from the shopping centre, where my mum had most likely bought grocery and gossiped, and wandered off in between the trees. The knowing: I exist. I really am in this world, a separate being, but also an intricate part of it all.

Sweden snow

Some years later we moved further out from Kalmar, to a new kind of suburbia springing up. My dad’s parents had helped with the down payment for the fabrication of a standalone wooden house. It was snowing when we moved there, the construction being behind schedule and my dad doing a lot of the work himself.

I immediately made two friends. My neighbour Åsa lived next to us. As I arrived after the school start however, I was placed in the parallel class. But in Åsa´s class was also Louise, and we three became a troika of sorts. The three musketeers, Louise’s flamboyant dad would call us. Some years it snowed so much we had to ski to school.

All in all, my childhood was almost picture perfect. We didn’t lock our houses or our cycles in those days. The social democrat fabric of Sweden indeed catered also to those not from the higher strata and I experienced no lack although my parents were never wealthy. They had some idea to live off the land and we had a large vegetable garden with rhubarb, strawberries, potatoes, and so on. There was a compost heap and our smallish lawn was surrounded by ‘vinbärsbuskar’.

School was always enjoyable to me. I accepted the challenge with gusto, liked to compete with the other high achievers for the best results. Socialising was no problem, cushioned as I was by my two close friends and my loving parents. Two younger sisters had entered the scene three and six years after my birth and, at times there were disputes but I recall unconditional love and parents keen on world peace and equality.

I also remember sitting in my room one day, decidedly pre-teen, suddenly knowing that Jesus, whom we had studied that week, was just a “normal” guy. It was as if, at that moment, a conduit was lit up from belly to head, that what he represented was available to all and therefore to me also. It almost felt as if I had stumbled upon a secret and I kept it as such, sensing that no adult would really want to talk about it like that.

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Jan 31 2022
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Musings

When Frog appears it’s time to sing your soul song!

The tarot reading had said that the full moon would show me an animal sign. And then a big fat frog jumped and crossed my path near Revelation forest.

When Frog appears it’s time to sing your soul song! I read. It seemed I needed help in belting out my truth, who was I to disagree?

That frog taught me to embrace my voice without shame and helped me to jump from one spot into another, insisting on my right to be heard. It told me that it was there to help me feel strong and to guide my spirit.

Frog spirit brings us into a deeper connection with our feelings and our various perspectives. It can support our ability to purge the “dis-ease” of negativity from our lives, be it spiritual, mental or physical. At the time it was all connected, leading up to my separation, as my right shoulder was frozen. Now it is my left shoulder playing up, giving me pain, time to pay attention again.

Unable to endure a toxic environment, frog challenges you to release emotions such as anger, hatred and bitterness. These only hold you back and can even appear as black spots on your aura. Emotions that only decrease our natural protective and intuitive abilities need to be worked through and let go of, with the best approach normally being acceptance rather than rejection.

Frog spirit often comes to people who are not taking care of themselves the best way they could, be it relating to diet, exercise or any other lifestyle indicator. In other cases it may relate to a relationship on which you’re spending too much energy with too little return, even if that may sound crass.

In either case, frog appearing tells you that it’s time to step back and consider new ideas and outlooks. This can be scary but think of it as being a tadpole about to grow into something new and wonderful.

It was after a late night talking session with a friend that the frog crossed my path and I was tired. The same conclusion then as now, that there is way too little output in terms of work than I feel capable of (actually) creating. I can still only conclude that I am perched between limitation and infinite expansion and possibility, a choice between two modes of being. If it is a choice?

Back then, I didn’t feel that I had a choice, no energy to try to figure out a plan of action that didn’t consist of smashing all that had been built, a home, a life. But then, perhaps that is when solutions appear. No idea, no plan, and maybe the destruction of something but still there would be life. Maybe even more of it.

I was always satisfied. More or less. Until I wasn’t. And tarot cards told me that what I needed to know was that a tsunami would clear the slate. Perhaps an onslaught of emotion? A wakeup call rushing in, threatening to submerge me. The answer to what I needed to do, according to the tarot, was: cave, sanctuary, to write on the wall, to create… and then, on my way home that fat frog leaping. I sang on my bike. I started to accept my feelings. I spoke, even when I didn’t know exactly what would come out.

The next day, a fat black feather spotted in the bathroom assured me that my beloved departed ones were looking out for me and protecting me, too. I continued to work on my book, editing, editing. So many times I almost gave up on it, but it is going on.

To flow with life doesn’t mean that all you ever dreamed of has happened and keeps happening. To flow with life means to flow with, not flee from whatever (challenges) present themselves; instead to accept. Is that what can bring more happiness and joy?

Having wished to manifest a transition to a friendship only, though, it happened. This helps when the feeling is strong of having let people that I care about down. I forgive myself, applaud myself, for walking the path that my heart dictated, not what would be the “right” or honourable thing to do.

We have to listen to our hearts, because they point us back to source and being in tune with source, how could we not honour that?

Freeing myself of something, the mask dictates support sometimes. Whether it is a belief system or a physical love, it can be a release to tie the scarf around my face, and need to smile to no one. At times I need that freedom, although most days I lament the loss of freedom.

We can’t set our minds, our hearts set themselves.

My mouth full of cashews I am a cocoon of deep love.

My imagination is nothing but images decoded, are rambling rumbles and rumbling rambles of my heart. I don’t want to sensor them, nor will I.

I have to speak my truth, don’t I? Even if no one will listen or understand.

I can be silent too, no problem. To need nothing and expect nothing; is that perhaps the best freedom of all?

With the wanting anyone (or particular ones) can grate my heart into shreds at any moment.

Then I wish, instead, to be seen by my mirror and be loved, all of my deformities included.

Fear can stop you loving, love can stop your fear, Morcheeba sang, isn’t that the truth?

Meher Baba makes it very clear: “Thought has to be made use of in order to overcome the limitations set up by its own movement; but when this is done, it has itself to be given up.” Maybe I will speak a little more about his views on the Oneness that is in my next post.

I may be quite brief in my dives into the past two years, digesting what was going down. But I am clear that there is one theme: Oneness. When we identify with that, all is clear, no frogs even needed but most likely they will still be there, in the forest. What is my soul; its song? Each day a new day to discover.

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Jan 28 2022
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Musings

Are we still in a lockdown? On boiling frogs and other

It is time to get back to this blog. As the last post, just before the first lockdown here in Auroville, India, focused on the owl, in this one I choose to zoom in on the frog.

So, just before lockdown I found myself inhabiting a very simple wooden house in the forest. With its outdoor shower and compost toilet, fully solar powered and with neither fridge nor internet, I soon marvelled at how much I was, indeed and in line with some much earlier indications, finding myself in exactly the right place at the right time.

Here, I don’t want to go into any depth about the process that moved me out of Sweden, and subsequently out of the global corporate rat race and into community and nature, but it is all linked and quite clear that it is the kicking out of comfort zones that keeps broadening life. At least for me, other than experiencing death in its various forms, is what has turned life into the growth-inclined and soul-evolving kind that is the only one worth living, at least to me.

It was not as if I could have rationally planned to get out of yet another one. I didn’t know there would be another zone, or mode of being, to get too comfortable in. The comfort comes with a caveat; we tend to fear stepping out of its embrace. A past one had been staked out to contain me being employed – I pushed out. And soon before the lockdown, as it happened, I pushed out of another one – that of being in a relationship as opposed to being on my own. I had been in relationship, pretty much consistently, from the age of thirteen.

Again, it made no rational sense to leave. “I” was against it, the internal debates intense. But then as Eckhart Tolle would probably have asked – who is this “I”? As it became evident that the “rational I” could not win the argument, I had to admit that it was a feeling of being out of (my) control that was most interesting. Even in the most painful moments I had to admit that I would probably receive lessons much needed for me to keep discovering (my)self.

When I was studying poetry back in England in the early 2000’s I wrote poems based on Yves Klein artwork Leap into the Void. But it is something quite different to be the person in the picture doing it. But what to do when we feel we have no choice but to let go of the river bank and to flow with the wild river? Isn’t it almost as natural as the fruit letting go of the branch of the tree, which is what was observed as an example of no separate self. The branch is the fruit is the soil that is shall yet again be and it can’t even be called a conscious choice. Maybe, turned on its head, it’s rather like being a frog (finally) getting out of a boiling pot.

There is a popular parable, of a frog in water that is only gradually being brought to the boil. It shows that changes that may seem sudden have most likely been creeping up on us. The parable goes something like this: If you were to chuck the frog straight into a pot of boiling water, the frog would immediately jump out. Instead, the best way to boil a frog is by putting it in a pot of water that is still only comfortably tepid, not too hot and also not to cold. In this way the frog will feel comfortable in the water, slowly warming up along with it. Then, by the time the frog feels that it’s getting too hot, it has to make sure to jump out before losing consciousness and being unable to do so. Now, will it?

If I look back, now, on my life it seems that its first act has a lot to do with being in slow boiling water. We gradually get used to everything that we are experiencing and creating, in a way building and fortifying our lives and ourselves with it. But at some point we may need to get out, be it to shrug off self-limiting patterns or to leave behind what no longer serves a purpose that aligns fully with our lives.

Even the tiniest baby step, the dipping of a toe in the waters of transformation, can feel huge and overwhelming. And yet, there will likely come a point, especially if you start to feel the heat of the boiling water of the pot that is your life, that you’d better face the music and get out, or die. This does not refer to a physical death but to succumbing to stagnation, for example, a stopping of real soul growth.

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk more.
~ Erica Jong

Again, if you imagine being that frog, it might be that you don’t really feel it’s necessary to jump out. After all, there is no sense of burning. The pot is familiar, we still feel comfortable in it; we know the patterns of the inner walls. Until, one day, it gets a bit too hot and you start to fear for your safety. At some point that leap must be taken, or you’ll face death, you just know this. It’s not necessarily stagnation that you need to escape. It can be anything that you realise you’ve stayed in for too long, or just long enough already, e.g. a belief, or a habitual pattern that is in conflict with what your heart / soul wants for you.

Of course there is free will and I can choose to remain. That is also fine. That is. But if I do feel the boiling and take the leap, I might experience that as one door closes a new one always opens up, or that the wild river is taking me somewhere so much more interesting than the riverbank I was clinging to could ever be. Or I will never know and always wonder.

Speaking of that frog, are you one that escaped the pot? Whatever the boiling water represents to you, did you get out of act one alive? Or, if you do have a feeling that it is boiling but you did not yet get out, perhaps you are taking a few first baby steps, crawling perhaps, and pulling yourself into becoming the toddler, imagining being a young child grown up enough to walk into the second act of life.

A woman is like a tea bag – you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

During the second act of life, more mature and hopefully wise, it can feel like I have to shed a lot of what I used to take as being me. With a lot of aroma and flavour oozing out of every pore of me, I accomplished a lot but feel that I have more to give. Likely with a different focus than all of my previous endeavours have required, I need to recalibrate the compass, redirect the (relation)ship that is my life.

Feeling safe and secure and less scared in the ever hotter water, an image might flash before my inner eye; that of a shrivelled up corpse at the bottom of a pot. The understanding that this avatar will be of no use to anyone and that staying is not an option. It will always be better to jump out of the pot (of self limiting beliefs or whatever) than to stay and be boiled alive.

More about frogs and their symbolic meanings in my next post.

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Mar 24 2019
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OWL

Yesterday I was seeing owls. One sitting inside the trunk of the Banyan tree near the Matri Mandir in the morning, and then one flying right in front of me, driving through the night. “Death, in symbolic terms, simply means “transition” – it’s just a one state of energy changing into another.”
https://www.whats-your-sign.com/animal-symbolism-owl.htmlAnimalSymbolismOwl4.jpg

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