So the old excuse “when my life gets crazy out of hand I don’t have time to blog but I will do it as soon as it settles down” just does not cut it any more because as I barely emerge for a breath of quiet fresh air from one twisted circumstance I straight away find myself in another. I need to write to process all the learnings plus, having chosen a life less ordinary where each day and month does not resemble the other, I need to record what has happened before the next life wave sweeps me completely off my feet. And yes, for those few who read my life ramblings and encourage me to keep writing, I know how much you care so this is for you as well as for me, thank you for your love and support.
Grateful for:
- Catching up with the most important people in my life. Nowhere is the saying more poignant than in this case of time spent together: it is not about the quantity but the quality
- Going from “what the hell am I doing here? I want to leave…” to “what the hell was I thinking booking an exit flight, I want to stay…” for the 5th time this year!! Note to self: it always feels like this when going from country to country, do not draw any conclusions and hasty plans in the first few days but give myself precious time to adjust. And just like I told one smart young man last year at the start of his location independent lifestyle: ” only buy one way tickets” it is time I heed my own advise and rather than try to save money by buying a RTW fare, simply manifest enough money to take me to my next destination whenever I am ready, and manifesting is what I do best.
- Noticing that Vanuatu hasn’t really changed at all, yet feels completely different. Which means that I have changed a lot, which I knew all along but still nice to get that confirmation.
- Most notable change that I have been consciously working on for a while now is the embodiment of the feminine and move away from the controlling masculine, turning my generational patterns around. I have it from a reputable source that the shift is noticeable and that my newfound magical powers are affecting those around me. There is still a lot to explore and deep rooted patterns to release, currently finding myself with nothing to say a lot of the time since what is there on the tip of the tongue is the old authoritative problem solving me. And hanging out with “manly” men for the past 2 months is also quite a novelty, it is like a totally new breed of human I have never got a chance to encounter in the past. Fascinating adventure continues…
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Among the most significant newfound feminine traits I am developing is vulnerability. And while in January I had to ask my friends to define what the hell does it mean to be “vulnerable”, right now it feels like not only have I really understood it, but indeed pushed the limits of it in the past 3 months. It’s only been 4 months into 2011 but the potent mix of “unconditional love” and “radical honesty” chosen as this year’s focus has really turned my life experience on it’s head, or more precisely from it’s head to the heart. Vulnerability to me means having a completely open unprotected heart. I allow myself to feel and love with abandon without any logic or restrain or thought about the future for the sake of just FEELing, then I go ahead and share it with other people with a sole purpose of EXPRESSing myself and not withholding like I have been up until now. In the process I have discovered the strength that lies within vulnerability – that of taking full responsibility for my feelings. Since I allow them, there is no one to blame, nothing to hope and wish for, they no longer depend on external circumstances or people but are purely the result of my choice to live with an open heart. And in it I have also found the ultimate freedom. Having achieved freedom from external circumstances and society programming a while ago, the last frontier is the internal freedom, freedom I give myself to feel and to be.
Living in this raw state produces a heightened sense of aliveness and receptivity in every moment and is the ultimate joy of life. I now find joy in sadness, joy in parting, joy in heartbreak, not just gratitude and contentment as before. I also feel that the more I move in the direction of recognizing my own Divinity, the more I enjoy rather than complain about the “negative” aspects of my Humanity. It all now appears as a necessary part of the tapestry of human experiences, the stuff that makes up this world of duality allowing me to experiences its richness. -
And just to show me that I am on the right track, while i myself at times feel like Alice in wonderland falling into a bottomless pit in the ground, the universe has been talking to me in songs in the past week! It is amazing this magical world I inhabit. First it was Garbage’s “if we sleep together, would I like you better?”, then “Goodbye my lover, goodbye my friend” by James Blunt and now, just as I am sitting here struggling to put my feeling experiences into words I am blessed with the following Enigma song:
Love, devotion,
Feeling, emotion.
Don’t be afraid to be weak,
Don’t be proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocenceIf you want then start to laugh
If you must then start to cry
Be yourself, don’t fake
Just believe in destiny
Don’t care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don’t give up and miss the chance
The return to innocenceI seriously can’t believe it, the universe is really trying to talk to me (I love these delirious days after a night of no sleep!) – now it is playing me “TNT for the brain”. That’s exactly right, exactly what It feels like, the brain has been blown up and now the heart leads, the brain is only a necessary tool to get me from A to B. Now if I can even do away with A and B and just BE…
- Pushing against the great wall of withholding. First, a fitting metaphor quote to describe the state of affairs: “Scorpio is a water sign and a fixed sign, like ice. And just like an iceberg people usually see only 10% of you.” Withholding had been my modus operandi my entire life and I can list numerous logical reasons for it, but the radical honesty challenge of 2011 is pushing me to express my feelings. And just yesterday I read an advise in the same book where I picked up that quote – to share a secret about myself to establish a more personal connection with people. So far I thought I am pretty honest and straightforward so let people ask me and I’ll answer but now came to realize that that’s the same withholding record playing again in my head. I need to volunteer secrets and stories from my past to establish more intimate connections with people instead of waiting for me to ask them.
- I received the best compliment in ages last week – “You know what your problem is? You live too much in the present!”… Halleluja, mission accomplished
- Rode a quad on a motocross track. Weird at first and felt quite out of control compared to the road bike but then so much fun! Thinking metaphorically about it, maybe that is what I need to have more fun in my life – that “out of control” feeling…
- Had a great conversation in the kitchen on the night of my departure – got to love those late night kitchen conversations, where they lack in continuity they make up for in depth and meaning and while answering a lot of li’s questions, leave you with more of them to answer at the end than there were in the beginning. That conversation made me fall in love and out of love and then in love and then out of love again with Vanuatu several times over. I can’t recall exactly where in that cycle the conversation stopped, and it might be a result of leaving way too little time for a visit this time around, but unlike other places that I have left this year which made me feel just as heart wretched, I was actually left with an urgency of needing to come back. We’ll see how long it will take to replace with longing for some other country.
- An important paradigm shift in relation to people inhabiting Vanuatu in general. The original reason I was not in too much of a hurry to come back despite of all its allure was my belief that Vanuatu just does not have my kind of people and my kind of activities. But I have gone through a complete shift in regards to my social needs starting last September. I am now starting to distill exactly what is it I need in people in order to want to spend time with them (which would in turn make it easier to draw these kinds of people to me out of the Ether): individuality bordering on eccentricity, entrepreneurial spirit, openness and honesty, commitment to personal growth and following their dreams (decidedly THEIRs, not imposed on them by the society). Not surprisingly, it does sound like a bit of a self portrait, as any other human I tend to want to hang with people similar to myself. It is just that if accumulating a social circle for most have been a natural part of growing up, for me comes as a revelation and a conscious decision now that I am approaching my 30s. And it was quite sensibly pointed out to me that relocating to Vanuatu sort of pre qualifies people for at least 1 or 2 of the characteristics of my “ideal friend” list. Makes perfect sense in retrospect, and as my favorite theory testing method of measuring against personal experience proves, indeed even in the short 2 weeks in Vanuatu, while I came to visit my favorite weirdo, I managed to meet a few others, which already puts the count at more than I have met in the entire 6 months in Melbourne. I have later expanded the theory to include a possible explanation for the phenomenon: while in first world countries we are heavily influenced by media and advertising (even being acutely aware of it I still fall prey myself), in Vanuatu it is almost entirely missing. This has always been one of my favorite components of Vanuatu magic, allowing me to remain with myself and extensively excavate my OWN needs and wants unaffected by external influences. And I have just realized that this lack of conditioning must allow more of the individuality and essence of every person living here to show up, compared to first world countries where people are continuously moulded into obedient consumers.
- Several of my affirmations have come true this month. I should write a separate article just on that process alone but suffice to say I am taking them quite seriously now and can’t wait to see what other limits of my beliefs I can push.
- One smart book and one smart man have rekindled my desire to master the art of conversation. Probably goes along with my conscious intentions in regards to my social life. Having focused my entire first decade of adulthood on mental and emotional internal observation and development it is time to step outside of my internal world and develop some externally focused skills.
- Saving the best for last, and to the suspicions of those who know me best of whether I fell in love, the answer is – hell yeah! It was awesome and highly unusual, as always. This one tops the weirdness list of my relationships above the “moving to another country with a guy I could not speak the same language with” and even “maintaining a love affair in complete absence of another person purely in my mind” due to the quite bizarre (for me) fact of having no sex involved. Having shifted my focus to the enjoyment of the feeling of love and having succeeded in largely detaching from the need for the object of my affections to be with me or return my affections or in any way be responsible for my feelings, I have enjoyed this experience immensely and it is still keeping my smiling and adds a spring to my step. Where the relationships of the past all had a sense of having lessons to learn or qualities to experience and store away later for my “ideal man” portrait or karmic obligations to fulfill, this one, in all its improbability, had me asking for the first time in the secrecy of my mind “can he be the one?” – I must be getting old… or crazy… or both! And even though he obviously isn’t since nothing happened, it did give me a sense that my ideal man qualities previously dispersed across several men are rapidly converging in one. At this rate, and with the completion work I am about to undertake in May, I will be hooking up shortly, even though it feels like the last thing from my mind at the moment. It has definitely come as a total surprise.
- Took me a couple of days to write up and polish my learnings. Felt quite clunky and hard to write and I even edited some bits which I never usually do. I definitely should not stop writing for more than a few days as it obviously straight away deteriorates my ability to express myself. And the therapeutic processing benefits of journaling are now more apparent to me than ever. What seemed like an overwhelming jumble of experiences is now all sorted, labeled and at peace in my mind. Releasing a nice sigh “Ahhh…”