It is currently the end of the year 2022. A year full of adventure. A leap into the depths of the unknown. And currently I am looking back on it. Where did my journey go, what did I experience and what am I wiser now? I shared a big chunk of it in the earlier blog posts "I quit my job!" and "Dark night of the soul." Here you will read about the promised golden core of my journey.
What I used to suppress comes to the surface with great force
What's truly going on with me? I have become more myself during this year. I have followed my inner "YES" to places previously unknown to me. I am more in touch with myself. My SELF. My BEING. That which IS. My true "I". My true nature. From the heart consciousness. At least, that is where I am headed toward. And with that, in fact, everything I have ever suppressed is rising up. Small and big things. Themes that are mine, from my childhood, past lives, from my young adult life. Things that are not mine. Themes from my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather, and even from people I don't even know. I get a chance to look at those things from my heart and my roots. Who and what am I? To choose what is and what is not mine. To embrace it and appreciate it. To be grateful for it. To give back what is not mine. The moment we have mastered this, seeing it, feeling it, letting feelings flow freely, embracing them and being ok with what is - then the feelings will also quickly fly through your system.
This is what's going on. And yes, that's a lot of heavy stuff all at once. But actually there is a gift in every message. And I got to open so many gifts this year. Unbelievable. As if struck by MAGIC, many a time I felt suddenly plunged into my emotions, with an experience or feeling from the past. I was allowed to cry about it, see it for what it was, embrace what was mine and give back what was not mine. Then in a few minutes, up to a few hours, it was over. It found flow and disappeared from my system. While some of the frustrations I describe here are different. They are full of living beliefs and lessons to be learned still. They are full of resistance. They keep knocking on the door. "Hey, can I go through now?" If the answer is "NO" every time, it keeps festering. But the more I sit down with it, the more I face it and embrace it, the more the weight comes off of it.
Some of the gifts I have been privileged to receive this year
I have learned what self-denial means to me, when I do it and how to stop doing it. How I get closer to my authenticity in this way. I learned how I am guided in this by my ancestors and because of this I feel supported every time I become aware of my self-denial and every time I have found my authenticity. Herein lies the gift that I have come closer again to my inner child who wonders in a contagious way, who is playful, curious, courageous and enthusiastic. In this I found the wondrous connection with nature, ancestors, nature beings, other beings of both darkness and light. The essence of my being is allowed to be completely who she is and express herself as she is.
It is not only possible, but necessary for that which I am here to bring. And there, I have subsequently found loneliness. When I am with friends or family, I feel incredibly different. This year, that feeling has grown stronger. I feel weird in conversations. If I let myself go and get all carried away, I don't feel comfortable. When I feel comfortable, I can't join the conversations. The conversations I would like to hold don't happen. I feel insecure and different. My perspective has changed. Yet I cannot express or defend my perspective. I simply do not want to. I do not see its meaning or function and therefore prefer not to engage in it. An obstacle I am currently facing, where there is undoubtedly a gem of a gift hidden within.
I learned about a trauma that stands between me and connecting with others that comes from my family rather than being mine. I could let go and transform this, so that it does not get in the way of connecting with others in the future.
I learned what conditional love means in my life, where it comes from and also when I apply it. A tremendously painful insight, but one that helps me make a choice every time. The moment when I say that anything you do is ok, while I do hold a judgment in the end. A "cold mother energy," as I heard Green Goddess (Oona Nijland) call it in a webinar. The flip side of this conditional energy is unconditional love, which I am closer to now than ever before by seeing and naming the conditional love in myself as soon as I encounter it.
I learned about my impatience and haste to achieve my goals. My obsessive and compulsive focus on my life mission, underneath which lies a foundation of insecurity about myself. In this area I am currently still learning, as I wrote earlier. Hidden within are the gifts of effortlessness, surrender and simplicity. And the gifts of gratitude and contentment, living in the moment, stillness and profoundness. From here I can manifest with my heart with complete contentment and gratitude for who I am and what I have.
I learned how this is more and more true: We are all now invited see how experiences in darkness and experiences in light unfold, play out. We may truly experience it, yet see how we remain essentially the same. We will not perish from it. This is the natural flow of life. The center of our consciousness has an objective viewpoint from which we can begin to be excited about our challenges. Our search for the light ends. We are both, dark and light. There is no problem that needs a solution. Experience. Then ask what the experience wants to tell you. What do you need? And give it to yourself.
Seek and thou shalt find! How my head only brought me more questions
There have been moments this year when I questioned my sanity. For real. My grandfather, my guide on my path, told me the following: "Promise me that you will not doubt yourself!" The words reverberate powerfully as I type it. So I do. Even though sometimes it is very tempting to doubt!
My head wanted to explore so much this year, so many answers and so much unfolding. It became compulsive and sometimes I already felt the search really wasn't necessary anymore. Many times I listened to that feeling. Then my head wanted more books. But my inner being then said "Everything you need is within you." So I laid down my books. The information didn't enter my brain anyway when I did start reading. As I signed up for yet another location to experience nature with rituals and gatherings, my body protested. I literally experienced how my old-fashioned perseverance no longer served me. The sun spoke to me afterwards "You have strayed from your path." Then I listened and decided to go back to what I was doing. Even though that felt slow, like I'm wasn't accomplishing anything. My head convinced me that I needed one more explanation, and then I would be able to have the ultimate answer, my ultimate working method, my ultimate offer. And each time it disappointed me, because each time I got more questions from my head instead of that ultimate offer, that ultimate direction.
In this process, I experienced how I fundamentally do not believe in myself. I believe I am not complete while I should be. I am not satisfied with where I am, what I have accomplished and who I am now, because there is always something bigger and better on the horizon. The foundation of our consuming society is a living being in my head. A saboteur, a gremlin who tells me that I must take one more course, because then I will become that authority who has something to say. More and more I listen to my inner guidance, which tells me that there is no need to seek more. I may wait until the light has given the plant enough strength, that the fruit ripens and comes within my reach. It takes time. It takes trust. All beautiful lessons that I put right in my inside pocket.
Connecting with beings, my natural wisdom and nature
The energy of nature increasingly urged itself on me during this year as well. I had noticed it somewhat during the summer. The wind, the water, the earth and the sun. The 4 elements. I can sometimes feel and hear them within myself. Sometimes the sun speaks to me - sometimes the wind. Above all, it gives me a wonderful feeling of being one with nature. It gives me valuable knowledge, which honestly sometimes I am not so sure how to put it or what to do with it.
And sometimes it is crystal clear, so I can use it very well at that moment. For example, the sun telling me that I have strayed from my path. Sometimes I get "permission" from a cosmic light being in the sky to "do something". That only got substantiated a few weeks later while "space holding" the reading circle I participate in, which was really beautiful. With this circle we read the timeline of our collective consciousness. I wrote a blog post here about one of the valuable and clear insights we gain in this circle. The feeling it gives me is like collaborating with nature and the universe. I can only experience this when I am really open to it and give permission for it, which I have been able to do more and more this year. When I experience such a connection, I receive and wait for the moment until it feels right to get back to what I was doing. Sometimes I have a conversation with the stars. Sometimes the trees make me laugh.
With my grandfather as my guide, I was allowed to connect with my ancestors and see what lessons they themselves learned on the themes I am facing now, as I described earlier. This past year I also spontaneously experienced images on topics that concern me now or that were coming from past lives. For example, I was walking along the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal and suddenly saw myself standing on top of a pile of dying people who had helped me up to the small window at the top of the gas chamber. I felt their love seeping through me and I felt myself unworthy. I could not accept this gift of life and love. The story continued as I walked out of the room alive and full of unworthiness and had to stand against the wall in the sunlight facing the wall. I was pierced in my third chakra area with an object and then raped. There was laughter. While I was experiencing these images, I was fine and we just walked along the canal quietly. I did have to recover from these images immediately after. I was shaking on my legs and gasping for breath. I did have tremendous clarity in the moment about who I am and what my reality is and what the vision was that I was experiencing. The message was that I was unable to see myself worthy of life and love, while I actually was. Everyone in there was equally worthy. So was I. I just happened to be the one with the opportunity to receive it. This experience was never processed and was standing still in time and space. By feeling through it with every inch of my body, experiencing it again, I can now start to be at peace with this worthiness of this huge amount of love within even the darkest of experiences.
It also happens more and more that I experience nature beings. Sometimes I see a clear image, and sometimes it is more of a knowing that they are there and then I also know approximately what they look like and what they are doing. They are such wonderful, playful, joyful energies! They are useful on the plane where I encounter them without really seeming to be engaged in it. They just ARE. And they seem to greatly enjoy working with us humans. One male being was even tremendously grateful that I was going to connect the world with them. I feel tremendously honored and am curious to see what lies ahead on this front. I also watched particularly joyful energy gather around a barge that was loading sand at the sand company on the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal. A man was wetting his barge with water that he pumped from the canal with a water hose. The moment he stopped, that joyful energy had calmed down again. When I focus on the treetops in the spring or summer, I see a lot of joyful, playful energy around the leaves in the tops of the trees. They really like it when attention is paid to them. This energy is felt within my skin, under my skin, in my heart and it feels like joyful bubbles in my belly area.
This year I often walked in wonder through my neighborhood or the city, and saw nature everywhere. I saw plants I didn't know before, which piqued my curiosity. I looked up what they were, I determined them, took pictures, sometimes just got excited about it, sometimes taking them home with me and incorporated it into products such as hair conditioners, skin oil, tea or a delicious dinner. These are moments of pure stillness and wonder.
I also took herbal journeys with Oona Nijland and with the Wildekruidenvrouw. How I felt at home, so special! It clicks very nicely into the path I am currently on. With them I learned to connect with nature and in particular plants, in an energetic and intuitive way. This already happened to me spontaneously and less spontaneously this year and now I have found a way to deepen this. On this plane, questions like "what does the herb, plant or flower bring to you? What do you really want to learn deep inside right now?" The wisdom comes when you open up to it, as I mentioned earlier. It's another piece of the puzzle to the path to natural wisdom and circling back to our true nature.
Connecting with others
I signed up for the Avani Autumn Retreat during the end of October. I had been following Avani on social media for a while and was extremely curious. Their offerings are wonderful and it sounded like a place I would like to create pretty much as well. Together with FreeFemales and De Middengaarde, I wanted to organize nature experience events, preferably for several days. And I wanted to experience what it's like to sleep outside in the cold autumn to see how we could facilitate something similar at De Middengaarde using their glamping tents. I was well mistaken. At Avani they have a large beautiful building with dormitories, which were comfortably warm. Were it not for the fact that exactly during those days it was 20 degrees Celsius outside and I would not have had an autumn experience - even with a tent.
The retreat took place around the new moon in my zodiac sign, Scorpio. A transformative moon phase. My period had also just passed, my very own new moon period. So my clarity was up and I was not at my social best. During the event I could only see myself in everyone I saw. Again as if struck by MAGIC. I saw people who were trying very hard to do their best, while being already enough, in plainness and simplicity. I am trying very hard to find myself and do my best, while I am already there and enough, in plainness and simplicity. During the retreat, nature called me to her. I secluded myself to be with the trees, with the fire and with the stars. The sun spoke to me that I was permitted to leave and if I did it would demonstrate self-love. It was a silent voice from within. Filled with wonder I was looking at a number of beautiful people during the retreat. In doing so I rejected myself harshly. I explained it to one of the ladies at the retreat and she said to me, "when you see beauty in another, it is also present in yourself." Beautifully put. I left early.
I am incredibly grateful for all the encounters I have been able to experience this year! The connections I have made, also through social media. All of them pure and beautiful people, who give me the feeling of support and strength just by being there. Thank you for being there.
Comments