Søkeresultater

repost written 2021 I used to retreat to a place of one From where it wouldn’t matter so much what happened out there I would be protected against rejection I would feel home with this deep inner connectedness Even though the world out there had separation, conflict, walls I had access to a world without walls A world in which I could travel by going inwards I could experience it all from the inside I could experience you all From the inside No need for talking No need for dialogue No need for …you I used to hide my needs deep inside a cosmic castle In the dark starry night Floating a midst everything While legs on earth felt unreal I would feel myself different Not of this world If you reach far enough inwards Far enough away into denial of bodily existence A preferanse of beyond If you float to other galaxies and star systems What you find is At some point the end Even here Ends do exist In the midst of endlessness And when the cosmic castle With my needs inside Evaporated and disappeared Over the edgeless edge I knew you are a universe of yourself You to And you And the love that I didn’t share Still had to bloom A rose would rise so tall so tall into the vast night In all directions towards past and future It would rain down as tears from within the hearts of everyone that learns to grow through love When we meet on a dusty road Somewhere When past and future collide I promise This time I will not retreat to reach for you through the invisible realms of oneness No Who am I to say I do not belong? Standing here receiving this air into my lungs? How could my bodily existence be anything else than part of it all? Instead of retreating I will look straight at you across the abyss between our universes I will breathe to my belly and reach out my hand There will still be blue sky above us Birds flying Trees Winds Flies And if you reach out your hand to And our fingertips touch It could be the end of one circle and the beginning of a new One where we lean in Deepen Listen to our longings Let ourselves fall Closer To our shared ground Cause not even universes exist by themselves alone do they?

Written 12th of July 2021, reposted in new website 2023 Re-turn One time more than you leave Return to the place of possibility To what you know in your heart of hearts that you are here to dream Let the tears flood your eyes and your heart soften once again Re-turning towards what calls you Into life Into action Into the movement that is yours to make It is what doesn’t fade. It is what keeps calling What keeps singing a melody that makes your heart ignite What keeps you away from dreaming your life Living your dream Co-creating closer to your true dream The fear of failure? The fear of success? The lack of mirroring? What is the movement that is most scary to make? Because that is the one your whole being needs An outreach Beyond Self preservation Into aliveness Co-creation The true potential of DREAMING

Written Feb 2021, repostet in new website March 2023 The frozen wave is finding her way back to see that she was always water The soul is malleable impressionable formable And part of her - Frozen as a structure Being what she had to be In order to feel safe There was nothing I didn’t see There was simply not seeing And seeing that The pressure of being perfect The squeezing of myself into a position Taking it to be me Because it always was Just in the form of ice

Written Sept 12th 2020, reposted for the new website 2023 Deeper than the stories we tell ourselves, are the stories held within our bodies.. the ones who shape who we take ourselves to be. Embodied existence is absolutely magical in this way…our bodies are living stories formed through life experience.. As a child is growing, her perception of the world is forming, and the perceptions in return shape her…come to live under her skin…A human being cannot come to be without this amazing interconnectedness of all things.. cannot come to be separate from the movements of sense impressions, touching, smelling, sensing, seeing.. being held in someones arms, lying on the floor, touching the carpet, sensing light play in the trees… hearing sounds, sounds becoming words, words being carriers of meaning. We are being shaped by the words we hear, the meanings we absorb… how meaning come to live in our bodies.. as streams of images, thoughts, feelings… so inseparable from the very fabric of life We are embodied stories, written in bones and flesh and blood, dancing to the rhythm of our heartbeat : Your ways of perceiving shapes your body which shapes your way of perceiving.. My ways of dividing lives under my skin.. are embodied and held within me as physical patterns creating filters through which I perceive my relative truth.. The way your shoulders climb towards your ears.. My way of breathing and not breathing… Her way of holding emotions inside by tensing all the muscles of her stomach.. Stories. Stories that can be traced back to lived life experience…experience that shaped you, shaped me, became part of our beloved embodied form…earth life now and thus part of our journey. Because, remember: this form is not a thing.I am not a thing. You are not a thing. Not even your body is a thing. Not the earth. Not the universe. Rather an embodiment - Of personal stories, collective stories, stories of the evolution of life Stories of minerals Stories of stardust… Memories through which we grow and evolve.. Going deep, deeper in Into the poetry of life in all its forms Until we see the beauty in the midst of it all.. And the beauty of human existence That we are gods.. not always knowing that we are gods.. Wanting to change our outside, the other, the problem.. End the war with bombs Often co-creating something that we do not really want to create our creation, our becoming, apparently being beyond our control.. How can I have respons-ablity - ability to respond… when my becoming is not my own? If the body is an expression of personal and collectives stories..it means that wrong perceptions can live through us, shape us, and shape the world… we can become the embodiment of a problem so big that we can’t find our way out of it..and everything we do or do not do reinforces it.. Or Going deep deeper in Into the poetry of life in all its forms ultimately a mystery.. A mystery of Past and future Embodied at all times NOW An awakefulness in the midst of it all… Self recognizing existence with the capacity to bring light Right there where it is needed Right to the place where stories can be retold or redefined Myths can take a hold or dissolve.. To the place where truths are being written in stone or melted transformed into golden fluids.. To the place where harsh words can be sent out as wounding arrows or taken to the heart as wounded children.. children of misinterpretation delusion separation longing for home.. And as I feel in my body the impact of violence Through generations And bring a light to the suffering It informs me.. makes me wiser As I breathe old stories are released to the earth Dripping through my tears Flowing through the rivers of energy released through my fingertips as the dam is breaking As I open to receive fresh and ancient stories closer to me than my own heart are flowing in And with them I return Welcome back sister! As love As freedom As a web of silk threads Present in the breath Present in the illuminating light Connecting it all Nothing being left outside Will you receive the creative potential in becoming ? The story being invented now. The way you stand on one foot Like a three connecting heaven and earth.. Yes it is part of telling a new story.. As I look at you it lands in my heart and connects me to the wholeness that we are you participate in a story the evolution of consciousness.. human beings waking up to what more it can be to be a human being.. Awake in the midst of this magic and malleable fabric Where meaning and matter are one.. a dimension of intent …. of creation.. Saying yes I can! I want! I wish! To co-create this story through wakeful presence embodied inquiry … I am! Open to perceive new truths Tell untold stories Perceived through full body awareness Divisions, separations, misunderstandings and wounds held lightly Like abandoned babies finally again in the arms of the beloved True Mother Father Let us dive deep into understanding the subconscious choices - the ones that keep creating suffering in our lives. Let us dive deep into trusting that integration and wholeness come with understanding. That it is possible to under-stand everything, if we love it enough. Let us dive deep into receiving the freedom within the blessing and the curse of life.. that perceptions, interpretations and thoughts, actually matters That what we give ourselves to eat determine what we become… And as we bring a light upon ourselves - unpacking embodied stories We can see what our bodies are made of.. we can open up what is, and follow the threads back through the layers … acknowledging that embodiment means the potential of embodying more and more refined essential truths, less and less obscured by wrong perceptions… Being present with wonder and curiosity there is gravity in the truth beyond truths. Diving deep into the promise that this embodied existence is the ultimate challenge for an artist.. Unpacking our stories is shifting the lenses, and shifting the lenses the one who is looking is also transforming.. Dive deep into seeing the beauty of this.. how each of us is a mosaic.. a continuation traveling flesh and blood and words through generations.. Beyond And when we recognize the stories living through us, to honor their poetry and let them come home. Just as if all of reality was one impressionable malleable magical self enjoying substance, not very unlike the clouds in the sky finally experiencing themselves from the inside.. from the perspective of soon-to-be-water herself.

The «suchness» of this moment, in its simplicity, in its mystery, is always present… All and everything Or neither An opening and not A doorway and a closed wall.. A mystery that cannot be divided This is the place of embodied inquiry There is stillness. A quiet neutrality, and in the belly, a bit below the navel, a concentration. A sense of being present as myself. For a week now, I have been immersed in a Diamond Approach retreat, inquiring into the mysteries of being alive. Through direct experience, becoming more aware of the how precise discernment and articulation can support us to be who and what we really are, while also being reminded about how the wholeness that I am, (including all descriptions, thoughts, and stories), simply are what they are,-on one level it can all be seen as poetry, as flowers in the garden of appearance … And now this quiet peacefulness.. you know the kind of peacefulness that comes after, when you have finished a project or the guests have left? Today I do not want to fill the emptiness, instead I will dive into it, digest and reflect, but maybe even more than that, just be. There is a stillness in just being, a sense of emptiness, and in the midst of this emptiness a movement is happening, as if the dimensions and layers that have been lifted out and experienced, now magnetically are floating back into their right place within the wholeness of being… A relief. A simple sense of self with a center in the belly. A warm loving field, being vast and pointed at the same time, and in an inexplicable way interconnected with the sense of emptiness and stillness that pervades the rest of the body and the physical space I am in. I am aware of how usually, I am sitting here, in the middle of a story. Life on one level, is a narrative I tell myself, about who I am and what the context of my life is…. Some stories bring me closer to truth , while others don’t. In this moment, wholeness is calling on me to let go, let go of the stories, let go of what I think I know. I see how the storyteller in the mind keep telling an old story, and that in this moment it is disconnected from the truth of my direct experience… The silence that I hear right now i powerful, louder than any story, and yet it is funny… such a strong habit of weighting the narrative being told more strongly than my present moment experience. Not now. The stillness is remarkable..And today I choose to give it value. Value as what is real, as what is actually here…and as I sit and listen into the moment it is like packing out myself… the direct experience of myself … I ask: What is the story I tell myself about my experience in this moment, and what is actually here? And with this question it is very easy to see the main character of the story about this moment… how she is present as a veil, as a movie, a layer, while deeper that that, there is stillness. As I look through the movie into the open consciousness that is the screen behind it.. the storyteller becomes more and more quiet.. There is a simplicity in moving and doing, with no apparent doer .. action happens spontaneously and feels free and light. I find myself by my desk with a blank page in front of me… find the sound of fingers dancing on the keyboard.. A slight sense of unease, an emptiness that feels abit hollow.. and then within the silence a solid density becomes present in the belly. I am here unwrapped from the stories. EMBODIED INQUIRY Instead of letting the words hide what is there in direct experience, as we normally do in habitual awareness: analyzing, labeling, interpreting, evaluating, taking positions towards, the practice of embodied inquiry does the opposite: it is using the discriminating capacity of the mind to actually recognize what is present in experience.. It is coming to tell a more true story, a story that is in alignment with the experienced reality. It is sensing, listening into the present moment, and recognizing what is there with as much precision as possible. In that way words become a tool of unwrapping what is, instead of covering it up. One may ask, what is the purpose of all of this? Why does it matter anyway? What is the point about examining ones experience so thoroughly? Can´t we just relax and enjoy? From the silent sense of self in the belly it does actuallyfeel like I relax and enjoy… Ease, simplicity, peacefulness, stillness, the creativity of writing.. The case is when we are engaged in the storytelling of the mind, the essential qualities are often not accessible to us… Why? Because instead of being in touch with ourselves, relaxing in the depth of the moment, we are watching the movie.. listening to the story, often replaying the old recording about who we are.. As I (and many with me) see it, the fundamental problem in our society, and the root cause of dis-ease, is the disconnection from the dimension of being. We have lost touch with our inherent wholeness, and in many ways come to live outside of ourselves, - In the narratives, in the descriptions, labels, ideas and stories that surrounds our being.. Even more: we live in a society that validates this disconnection, approves of it, and finds it normal. Many of us do not really know who we are anymore in the dimension of being… Having grown up and adapted to a world that emphasize doing instead of being, we learned to compromise our authentic connection to the present moment. Violence, addiction, loneliness, stress, hostility, poverty and war, belongs to a story with no roots in being.. The practice of embodied inquiry is a practice of connecting to our true selves again.. Finding our way back to the wholeness in which we are deeply interconnected abiding in the simplicity of being.. If we want to live happy joyful lives and contribute to the wellbeing of ourselves, others and our planet, we need connection to our deeper being, and we need to be able to live more from this recognition in everyday life. One of the last things said in the retreat by Almaas was: «Let me change your mind». He talked about how difficult it is to change the old ways, neurological pathways put in place in early life, creating the foundations for the stories we tell about who we are.. Even when our experience tells us something else, even when we wake up to our essential nature, recognize ourselves and life more in its depths, the old stories keep being told, and we keep loyal to them, making it so difficult to align our way of being in the world with what we actually know about ourselves.. For some it might sound like an awful lot of work, however soon one discovers that there is an intrinsic joy in being curious about what we are. Can it be the mystery itself enjoying hide and seek? Maybe that is why we can love it so much..:) The wholeness that we are is not something that we connect to, or finally get in touch with, it was there all the way.. the undivided wholeness in its mighty simplicity never left us.. is here unconditioned, unconditionally offering us a portal home through any and all experiences. Even in the moment when the mind is dividing, concluding, labeling, analyzing, and thus disrupting the felt experience of wholeness, wholeness IS here, and within that wholeness, I exist wether I experience it or not. For me, on some level knowing this, is the beginning of embodied inquiry. Knowing that even though my experience in the moment may be of a separate self, of a worried mind, if I feel flooded, hurt, scared, empty, or I feel joyful, still, powerful and free, I am present within the wholeness that I am.. Through through embodied inquiry, in movement, singing, writing, the sensing, listening and relating, we enjoy the adventure of being alive, while the old pathways, ( put in place very early and being shaped in relation to our early childhood experiences and the atmosphere of the environment), are being gently replaced with new pathways of being… This is the purpose of embodied inquiry.. to nourish pathways of thought and action operating from a place of connection to our essential depths.. When we can sense and recognize the wholeness that we are right here, right now, no matter what our felt experience is in the the moment, this is the beginning of empowerment and liberation. It gives the trust to explore, be present, find out for ourselves: Who am I beyond the stories of myself that I learned from society? Who am I beyond the stories that comforts me and tell me about my value? Who am I beyond the beautiful narratives about my true nature? Who am I when I reconnect to the wholeness that I am, and let life unfold from there? Our true power, intelligence, love, and deep knowing only exist because we are inherently part of the whole… (Not even part… Because this kind of wholeness is not a wholeness of parts, parts belong to our way of dividing, more accurately is: this wholeness right now is a poetic wholeness beyond our descriptions of it, beyond our stories…. BEYOND THIS STORY AND THIS ONE… I have been reminded about how words can be present as a sort of veil…between I and life, between I and the wholeness that I am… and non of those..words are descriptions, dividing and fragmenting the felt alive experience of this moment… I remember now, that knowledge divides, creates thousands of narratives, images and descriptions..stories kept alive when we believe in them, feed them out of habit, descriptions of reality ..dividing fragmenting.. again and again… Other peoples stories, other peoples narratives, some of them give a feeling of belonging.. while they also separates us.. makes us grow.. Some of them are beautiful about being, about essence, about true nature.. Stories of exploring and discovering, stories about the sacredness of body… they are narratives… and somewhere along the road I had forgotten that for a while. Now I remember that my life is my narrative. The world is shaped by our narratives… I want to tell a story about dropping in. Beyond this story and this one Into the one that expands through my central channel as I speak, the one that travels on my breath, and the one that dances to the drum of heartbeat…. 💗 The direct naked truth of this moment.. the wholeness that we also are, can not really be touched by any of them…

“ Prolong not the past Invite not the future Do not alter your innate wakefulness Fear not appearances There in nothing more than this” Ram Dass She sits on the table next to me, a girl, 8 years or so. Our eyes meet for a short moment, and yet in this second, there is a touch into the vastness of the universe...someone recognizes herself enough to keep looking and looking again. As I understand it, we are both sensing the mysteriousness of being, right here, in a coffeeshop filled with summer tourists… And now her father comes back, with one beer for himself and a coke for her. She smiles at him as she receives her soda, and then disappears behind his big back. I cannot see her any more. Left by myself in the corner in a sofa, I look around in the room and I keep thinking, behind each of these surface human bodies, eternity hides.. I’ve been on the road for two days. Traveling from the east to the west of Norway. The trip is doable in one day, but I go slower, moving through inner landscapes as I move in outer space. Life has been such a celebration of light, nature and togetherness for the last month. Now there is a change of season..I am traveling alone and instead of sun, friendship, laughter and warm sea, awaits work in front of a computer….I know myself. In a few days I will be okey, I will find a yes inside to what I need to do, still right now it feels like I just left behind me the source of all joy, all play, all light and love and celebration, and it feels like an emptiness is digging a hole in my chest.. I know this hole is probably a doorway to myself and yet.. I try to avoid it. try to fill the emptiness with music, with talks, with food, with thoughts.. the more I avoid the feeling of emptiness the more a fog thickens between me and joy.. it gets thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier.. until finally with the support of grace I am able to stop avoiding the emptiness and just face my moment. The memory of another Carved out as a sculpture in wood Is inhabiting my inner space.. Subconsciously I cling I jump I try to attach myself there Wanting to be held In a soft safe embrace But being repelled Not seeing grasping like this is the grasping for a ghost.. It brings relief…there is genuine joy in seeing the activity of the mind for what it is, and seeing, implicit in the activity, the hesitation to be completely unapologetically alive, as myself… Seeing this, in the midst of all the noise, here I am .. visible, unprotected, vulnerable and true….There is a smile surfacing from deep inside.. A joy …! Where did it come from ? It came from the moment of truth.. A recognition of what is here, an allowance .. It came from letting go into seeing and with seeing a letting go What I held onto was not the joy, was not the love, was not the beloved.. it was a formation in my mind.. Seeing this I can remember… I am here to dive… I am here do dive as deep as I can into the experience of being human I am here to loose and refind myself a thousand times I am here to experience the beauty and the madness.. Experience it fully, fuller, deeper… Love and loose myself … living an artwork ..forgetting and then re-membering that the painting is alive… Love and loose myself like the water within the clouds always shifting and changing… coming to belive in a pink cloud castle Love and loose myself And rejoice in finding myself again inside a new formation Celebrate in every interaction in every touch Of love Vulnerability And now the father packs the bag.. the girl looks at me again from behind his back. A little smile. They leave the room. Two bicycle helmets are dangling on the fathers big back now, as they are going out to continue their adventure together for yet a while. I had a father to. I still have one, even though he passed on.. As a girl I used to walk beside him, our feet pointing out like two Charlie Chaplins as we walked together down the road.

The days are long, warm, and sunny. With a loved friend I walk close to the water, feeling content in just being. Floating with the sea and the wind and the sky. Mind is fairly empty, silent, relaxed…it is enough to just be. Watching the shifting formation of clouds in the sky, floating on my back in the warm sea, and resting on warm stones. I am content deep inside. I am where I am. It is thrilling to be alive…and what makes it most thrilling these days is this sense that life actually is making sense… I am in touch with a deeper sense of perfection and mystery, a wonder that loves to wake up in the morning ready for the challenging play of being fully open to discover what that means to be… And in the presence of a kindred soul I whisper deep knowings into space, and laugh with A tender heart, an open spacious mind, a belly right here, present with solidity, power and grounding support to stand up for the truth of being A being in the world and not of it Aware of her wondrous nature The rightness of her experience The thrill of the journey… The truth of loving it The truth of wondering The truth of letting go into the perfection that we are and that likes to hide within the safe discontentment of complaint.. Letting go of the familiarity of the merged mind hidden within the shadow Created by the light That I also am The last month one thing has become more clear to me: Saying yes is to be on the point with life… It means practicing the courage TO BE where I am, feeling what I feel, and inquiring into what my heart actually experiences, NO MATTER what it is, and to let actions arise from the unknown, as a surprise party… What I see, is that when I go to depth of this practice of being where I am , I actually arrive in the acknowledgement that being where I am is being who I am.. It means a basic trust that in the midst of everyday life, in the midst of habitual structures, in the midst of the soul’s journey of discovering what it is to live as a true expression of being, I can trust my essential nature to be what guides this unfoldment … with perfection…and encouraging my true action, aligned response from a place of freedom… I can let go of control The free The me Beyond concepts Is already co-creating Functioning On the point with life In the making of the poem In the touch of the brush on the paper I am home

The seed: “She wears a blue velvet dress and a blue velvet coat. It is stars in it. I lie face down on my stomach, feet in the air, hands folded together in front of my heart. There is an increasing sense of Her. She becomes more and more tangible as standing out from the darkness that is her home. Her breath, her moves are filled with care. Careful she is, like the one you can never grasp. When let alone, not interfered with – she comes out, unfolds like a princess, a shy princess of the night. If you want her to do something specific she freezes in a no. When nothing has to happen, carefully and with care, she breathes out. If you really mean it, that nothing is demanded from her, she might dance to you. Just love.” Spring is happening, and it brings a smile to my face. A smile in seeing the fresh buds opening their faces towards the sun. And the joy of the warm sun on my own face, me to, a bud opening up to be nurtured, to grow and become with the new season. It has been silent from me here on the blog lately. Silent, but not because I haven’t been active, but more because I have had a lot of my awareness in my own practice. Focus has been in practicing and creating rather than sharing. I guess quite similar to the silent life happening within the seed deep in the earth before you see a seed growing out, into something else. Around Christmas, I engaged in the inquiry of finding a word for the new year. The word that I came up with was FOUNDATION. I have spent a lot of time nourishing exactly that, rooting myself in my own practice of meditation, creativity, inquiry and body awareness, and as I write now, I can feel how the continuous practice is rooting me deeply in the soil where seeds of a happy connected life can grow and bloom. And something else is blooming too… For a long time my creativity has wanted to take form as the sharing of an online course, exploring life and being. However it has not been easy. I think anyone who has ever tried to bring some of their heartfelt gifts into the world, can connect when I say that you need to face some obstacles on the path!? :) For a long time this course has been hiding in there, also as a seed, a vague possibility of sharing something deeply meaningful, and honestly I have gone through some phases being quite avoidant and scared to even work at it! But now I can also see this flower is growing and taking its shape! 28 days Inside The Moment - a creative mindfulness journey, is in these days being received by the world, finding YOU out there, who feels sparked by the idea of deepening into being through creative mindfulness for 28 consecutive days! Just as you cannot pull the flower up of the earth, and push the becoming of spring into summer, neither can you force on yourself, «to just relax» «be happy « or «becoming the person you deeply know you are…» But we know the seeds don’t we? We can feel them in the depth of our hearts, speaking to us about what is possible if we just learn how to nourish ourselves in the right way, and find the way to let ourselves bloom… We carry in us a drive toward opening and expansion, but as a non-doing. It is different from the push from the outside. This is more like the necessity of a bud to grow and bloom. There is something in us that refuses to be limited by the parameters of the mind. It says: “My value is not in what I deliver…as if I was a smoothie machine. I am here to experience this moment. Be in it. Awaken the frozen rose. Let her dance…” I bumped into this sentence today, and it communicates it so clearly: “Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.” (Karen Ravn) As I see it, a daily practice of embodied inquiry and mindfulness offers that ground, the ground from which we can reach and grow, seek and go, look deep and see, dream and be… The creative mindfulness course invites a silent celebration of existence, and a big yes to be present with the play of aliveness as it happens inside and outside of you. In our personality we have so much resistance, habitually we often avoid the present moment, and as long as we do not give ourselves the time we need in practice, the joy of just being, just cannot bloom in us, simply because we do not nourish it. (The course offers daily creative mindfulness exercises, inquiry and body awareness explorations. Some of them you can bring with you out into your life, and practice in the midst of daily activity, others requires some time and space with a yourself, in a forrest, or on a yoga math. The course offers a practice that is easygoing, joyful, creative and adaptable to your life… ) The seed… Deep inside she knows that only a human that can follow her own inner flow, can nourish her flower; that just like you need to put a flower in the earth, a human being needs connection to her own inner ground for the seeds of her gift to sprout. It is nourished by the soothing connection to the natural world…. That longing inside…that drive that pulls us to practice, let us remember that it is bigger than any separate self. Practicing presence is engaging a bigger body, propelling us towards a more harmonious, cooperative, sustainable future, teaching us to grow into relationship with the living breathing nature and co-creating a more beautiful world. The seed… Her language is movement and her nature is movement. She talks through the movements we make. She has many voices. They travel - they connect. They make patterns in that space that can only be felt and seen with ones entire being. She abides in the unknown, and her expression is life… Remember: Releasing to ground is experienced as opening up to a deeper sense of self, that knows her belonging to the body of earth. Connection to space and ground, gives rise to fluidity, opening the tense holding patterns and blocked pathways, making creativity possible. From the connection to ourselves as ground, let us arise as fluidity. Let us participate in the world from a natural connectedness, finding a way to grow love, and “ be uniquely ourselves inside a sacred conscious circle” (Hartley, 2004: 23).

Dear friends, known and unknown, merry christmas! Do you sometimes wonder where you belong? I feel belonging is such an important topic in Christmas time. Some people go home for Christmas and love it, some people to not have anybody to go home to. Others have difficult home situations, and others again go home, just to feel alienated and alone with their blood family. Some people do not have a physical home. They are homeless, refugees, or just far, far away from everything that felt like home. The sense of being home is connected to the physical world, the belonging to people, places and things, but is even more connected to how these circumstances make us feel, and the inner state we experience as HOME. HOME as a felt sense is often experienced as relaxation, as feelings of safety, love, belonging, freedom; the sense of being one self and to be part of something bigger… a sense of connection in love and togetherness… This summer, I felt quite homeless one night, driving in my camper car, when this song came and wrote itself through me, reminding me about the possibility of actually feeling HOME, everywhere on this earth, in this moment, in this body, no matter where I am, or with whom… I`d like to share this song with you now as a Christmas wish, not only for myself but for all humans that live in the midst of this challenge; a fragmented human-world alienated from nature. My Christmas wish for each one of us, is that we find back to the nature that we are. May we reconnect to our intrinsic belonging as nature, in nature, may our intrinsic belonging to this moment, to this life, to this here and now under the stars, support us to find our way home, to our true home beyond all division. May each one of us find our place in the sacred circle of life. May we remember that we are loved and wanted, and that our participation with our love for this world, is greatly needed. —- home Do you sometimes wonder where do you belong Where is this place that you can call home You know home is a place where you can feel safe And you’ve travelled so far Orbiting this star But its hard to find in Feel at home in you skin In a world ruled by fear With fences everywhere Feeling you had to choose Between belonging and truth An impossible choice Leaving you without voice Being left in the noice And with to many toys With no place to rest Was the ultimate test Where ? Where is your home If not right here Under the stars Where ? Where is your home If not right here Under the stars Then you hear in the night A star shining bright Dont give up on your space You belong with your grace Find the place you belong Where you can sing your song And be happy or blue And be free to be you Where ? Where is your home If not right here Under the stars Where ? Where is your home If not right here Under the stars Home is this place that wants you to be you Home is this place that needs you to be true You have travelled so far to be just where you are Now let yourself rest Let this earth be your nest Where ? Where is your home If not right here Under the stars Where ? Where is your home If not right here Under the stars Between airplanes and cars Among struggles and wars In your soft human skin Let yourself feel the wind You were born to be here Touch the earth and be near In the night sing your song This is where you belong. —— Humanitiy Of Mother Earth —- Merry Christmas <3

I It is early morning, only 05.00 o’clock. I wake up and notice that I am awake. There is no need to go back to sleep. Instead I make myself a warm cup of water and sit down here with these words. I notice how much I enjoy the stillness, freshness, newness of the early morning. Yes honestly, most mornings I miss it. If I wake up I will turn over and make myself go to sleep again. Right now that all seems to me like turning away from life, from the awake moment calling to be received.. This early morning feeling, the arising of a new day…. it reminds me of the mornings when I visited Plum Village, a zen monastery in France. These fresh mornings. The early bell. Walking slowly between the buildings towards the meditation hall. Smelling the fresh air, feeling how the whole place is substantial with loving kindness, awake, fresh, calm, alive presence. And now, sitting here in my early morning in Norway, feeling some of this same morning magic, I want to tell you a story, a story about my deep friend Creativity, and how she gave me back to myself… For as long as I can remember, in moments of deep connection with myself, what awakens is creativity. Creativity is like this fun friend that comes to my house inviting me to go for an adventure. She looks a lot like me. Brown hair and big brown eyes. Her eyes are maybe a bit more shiny than mine, because she doesn’t have any fear, and I do have a lot of it.. apart from that we are quite much the same. Well, she takes me on adventures, and as I follow her out, maybe into the woods, worlds open that expand the universe. I see with new eyes, the trees become alive and start sharing theirs stories, secret doors open toward inner and outer worlds, music whispers in my ears about everything that is possible, and inside it grows, the faith and the courage to follow this creative friend, further and further into the forrest…. One day as I follow her into the woods, we play hide and seek among the trees, as we have done so many times before. She suddenly stops by a tall tree. “Just a moment” she says. Quickly like an animal, she climbs up, higher and higher until she disappears up there in the green leaves. I feel a bit lonely standing alone back on the ground. But I feel the moist ground and the deep smell of green and brown love I am surrounded with. She will soon be back, I tell myself, comforting. But the minutes pass, and she is not returning. I try to look up through the thick leaves but I cannot see her….But then I feel something landing on my head. I look up and see her waving… “Come!” I’m not that used to climbing trees, but when I feel guided by my friend, stuff like this, that I have never done before, often feel easy… as if I know it without knowing that I know it. I climb the tree, higher and higher… Arriving up in the top of the tree I find my spot on the branch beside my friend Creativity. She smiles at me and looks out over the landscape…The forrest is huge… trees in all directions as far as we can see…birds flying between them, sounds of wind… And far, far away some green hills and some snowy mountains behind them. “From up here we’ve got a great overview» she says. “But when you stand down there in the deep green forrest you cannot see very far ahead… It is easy to forget the freedom and spaciousness that comes with seeing the bigger picture… and still … that is what we choose…. Walking those narrow small paths in-between the trees, feeling small, and vulnerable in the midst of the big forrest…” It is true. It feels amazing to be up here, I feel so free, so happy, so unlimited! I imagine myself with big strong wings on my back, taking off from my branch, swirling higher and higher…with my friend beside me, dancing on the winds, circling the universe of unlimited creative potential and never ever coming down again…but she looks at me without any words and then it dawns on me… what I always know deep deep inside… I know….YES I choose to walk those narrow paths, because who I am is beyond limit, is beyond cold feet, hunger and loneliness…This beautiful and challenging human path is my chosen beloved adventure! As if she knows that I know, she says: “We will soon climb down. And from here you need to continue your path alone. I brought you here so you could see these things. So you could come to love yourself in the midst of your challenges and keep remembering who you really are. Now it is time to take some steps alone…it is time to find your own path…” We sit for a while in silence. I feel one single tear moving slowly down my cheek. It is finding its path as I need to find mine. And as it runs down my cheek it tells a story of love, truth and gratitude. I think to myself that I want my life also to tell a beautiful story every step of its way… She says “You know the signs on this path are like nothing you know from before …when we get down again from this tree, you will find a small path disappearing into the unknown. You need to follow this path as far as you can and then, you need to listen. Listen, listen with your whole being and let your path come to you…” “Is that my only option, I cannot go home to my comfy sofa?” I ask pretending to be funny. “…those other days, I have taken you for excursions outside your comfort zone, and you have been following me to build courage and stamina, and learn to follow the signs… You are ready now…you path is waiting for you..but know I am never far away. I am always right here.” She points up over my head, to that sacred connection that I do not know that I know that I know about. And I smile because still it feels reassuring, it feels as if I will be able to find some kind of ground right there in the midst of the mystery of not knowing.. We climb down from the tree. The forrest is dark and green around us. The sunlight that was so bright and invigorating up there in the top of the tree, beams down on us as if to remind me that it is still there in the deep blue endless sky far above us, even if it is hidden behind the treetops and the clouds that inevitably will come. I look in the direction that the path is pointing. I see it disappearing only a few hundred meters in front of us… From there I will need to follow the signs… listen inwards for my path… What if I get lost? What if I misinterpret the signs? What if the signs are not to be trusted and lead me straight where I don’t want to go? As if she hears my inner dialogue she quickly turns towards me, and stand in front of me. She looks me into the eyes with this look that reminds me of who I really am, and while she holds my hands she says. “Yes, you will get lost,. Yes you will misinterpret some signs. Yes you will be leaded astray and come to those places that you think are the wrong places…, but will you let that prevent you from following your path?” I know the answer. Nothing can prevent me…because I am my path… “Take care… she says. Look for me in the sun playing in the leaves, and hear me in the song of the birds… find me in the running water, and in the deep blue night sky. Know that when you choose your own path you are never alone..travel safely.” And with these words she turns around and walks away from me. The silence after her words is filled with the beauty of presence.

T Today I will share with you about one of the most fundamental changes/ shifts that I know can happen in a human being... The shift I am talking about is the shift from rejecting yourself and your experience in the moment, to welcoming yourself and your experience just as it is in the present moment. The more we know about the human psyche and the habitual ways of the human mind, the more we know how ingrained the habit of rejection is in our lives, and how subtle it can be. Actually our habitual selves, the ones we have grown to take ourselves to be, are being created on the basis of some kind of self rejection; of pushing away what is, rejecting part of our experience, hoping, wanting and desiring something different. The deeper we look into ourselves, the more we see the ways that we subtly reject ourself and our own experience. It can be quite painful to experience how harsh we can be to ourselves when we are caught in the movement of self rejection. Here are some ways that the movement of self rejection can appear in your life: 1: Never feeling good enough. Walking with the head bent, under a constant attack from the inner critic, telling you what a piece of shit you are. 2: Being engaged in a constant project of trying to fix yourself; trying to get rid of difficult feelings, get rid of anger, becoming more positive etc. 3: Believing in high ideals about how you should be, and work your head of to live up to the image of the perfect you. 4: Constantly comparing yourself to others, and working to improve yourself, in order to become what you think you think you should/could be in the future. 5: Identifying with your own inner commentator, evaluating and judging everything you say, do, think, feel, as either good or bad, right or wrong. 6: Living your life trying to fulfill others expectations or your ideas about others expectations. 7: Suppressing and ignoring your feelings and needs by being overly attuned to others. 8: Limiting your natural perception of what is actually going on in the present moment by tensing the body. This narrows your field of perception and blocks (rejects) your sensitivity. 9: Flying away in daydreaming and avoiding to show up to the actual reality and challenges in you life. 10: Carrying all your uncared for feeling around as bodily tensions and wondering why you are having this stiff neck for so many years. 11: Ignoring or suppressing you light, creativity, joy wisdom and strength, holding on to a small and incapable, or isolated/separate version of yourself. 12: Splitting of your strength and power, identifying as all light, kind, happy and flexible, while projecting a lot of "bad" on others / the world / society. 13. Being unhappy with what is, wanting everything different. Hoping and desiring for what you want in your life, while rejecting what you already have. What is your particular/ obvious favorite self rejection strategy that I did not mention ? ( There are probably as many ways of rejecting oneself as there are human beings on earth...) No matter in which way the habit/ movement of self rejection sneaks in on you, what all these ways have in common is that what is not taken seriously, respected, cared for and loved is YOU and your actual experience in this moment. More often than we want to admit, the truth is that what we actually feel and experience is hidden even to ourselves. While we pretend for ourself and others that we have it all together, inside we may feel very different, maybe scared, vulnerable, small and incapable, and we do not want to even know about it, or at least not show it to others. At the same time many of us are afraid to step into our own light. We hide our creativity, wisdom, and sensitivity, and avoid our own strength and ability to say yes and no. Said in another way, one strong tendency in the world today, is for people to deny both their vulnerability and their essential being, and live in the surface realm with the focus firmly directed towards the outside world. Focusing on achievements, goals and fulfillments that are dependent on having the perfect outer circumstances, and then working to create them. ...and this is maybe the greatest self rejection of all: Not even looking in the direction of ourselves, in the direction of our own true experience, not recognizing the BEING that is always right here in the present moment. This is self betrayal and self abandonment rooted in deep childhood experiences. Being young children we chose to accommodate to the outside world in order to be cared for and feel loved. At some point in our very young lives, we made our sacrifices in order to feel that we belonged. What was sacrificed was often our connection to our true selves. Our own true sense of existence. Our own deep connection to the ground of being. Our true individuality. Our ability to know for ourselves through our own experience. Our knowing ourselves as creative, resilient and whole. We have good reasons not to feel the truth of our own sacrifices. They hurt. It is painful, because deep down our bodies still remembers the vulnerability that made us turn away from ourselves and look towards the outside, and the beauty of what was lost. We rather convince ourselves to belive that we never lost it, so we dont have to face the pain of being disconnected from ourselves. However resisting our state of disconnection is only going to make it worse.What we resist persist:rejecting our self rejection does not work. Subconsciously we may think that it does. It is a natural response to try to avoid unpleasant feelings and look towards what is nice and cosy. However, this is the strategy of running. How can we run from ourselves? It is not possible. The disconnection, fear, hopelessness, anger, shock and trauma will follow us around wherever we go, until we stop and turn towards it. Becoming intimate with yourself Now, the one solution to this situation is to stop identifying with the pattern of rejection. You will hear from all different sources of spiritual work that the solution is acceptance. Allowance. Presence. However, as long as this is not in our own experience, it is still just words, and may easily become new ideals to try to live up to while we keep rejecting what is. What is needed is practical down to earth practices that support us to fully meet ourselves just where we are right now, and being intimate with our own experience. That is giving yourself a place to land, giving your self a place to come home and rest, no matter what shows up as you in this moment. Because the truth is... you have a hundred thousand faces... For some reason, I`d like to share with you one of my favorite poems. Even though it is not obviously connected to the topic of self rejection, it feels relevant and opening to include it here. It points to the place in us who is able to embrace everything that we are: Please Call Me By My True Names By Thich Nhat Hanh Don't say that I will depart tomorrow--even today I am still arriving. Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hinds. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp. My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion. This poem is from "Call Me By My True Names" The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Where are your experiences coming from ? What are they? What if they all really are messengers, coming from the beyond: Messengers speaking the words of an ancient language, a language that your soul remembers and that makes her remember herself, as the transparency that she is… that you are. Our experiences.. they are not simple and straight forward… in their complexity is the poetry of aliveness. A poetry calling forward the artist in you. The one who does not need to measure or square things down, but rather senses with the totality of her being, and paints with a brush of kindness her image of what is. Life feels welcomed under her soft gaze, and it becomes a dance…. A giving and receiving, a sharing between the known and the unknown. A dialectic exchange between the given and the beyond. And in the midst of it, you. You know your life as beyond your labels of it. Because you feel it, under your skin. It moves in you. It moves you. You become it as you give yourself to it and let go….Allowing the opposites to exist and dissolve, as you dissolve with them, and what remains is this living poetry, this subtle undefinable aliveness that can not be boxed or framed. It polishes you, like the water washes over the stones, until your edges are soft and you look into yourself.. finding only your whole world right there where your heart used to be. And you breathe… the air that carries it all through the ages since the first morning light. You breathe and know that you are carried with the breath, that what remains of you is this that you lost because you could not grasp it, while it never lost you… it carried you through as it was always there offering itself to you. And so… this moment comes to you in its nakedness, as an offering, an invitation, a sharing. And you breathe into it. Tasting, smelling, sensing, feeling. Texture, shape, tone, movement. You are. In the language of sound and smell, feeling and sensation. The word unspoken but still heard. The invisible poetry. Seen unseen. A sacred impulse. AUGUST 17, 2018