flume

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Everything posted by flume

  1. @CreamCat I think I can relate. You’re becoming the observer in relationship to everything in your life. I think intimacy entails that you have something you want to share with people. There’s an exchange happening, we’re all mirroring each other all the time so we can define ourselves. But you’re just becoming empty. You don’t feel connected because your ‘self’ is taken out of the game and it’s all just happening. You’re becoming a tool of God. Being isolated can be healthy but it's you who has to feel that difference. Maybe you need it to foster something great. In that case, give yourself some time and try not to judge yourself. Eventually, you’re gonna feel pulled to get out there and give something back. Because on the long term you don’t want to keep yourself cut off from others. By what you’re going through you’re actually gonna be of great help for the people around you. Your acceptance means that you have no (or little) selfish reactivity or agenda. You’re gonna be able to see projections much more clearly and know where to help.
  2. They don't win. I can recommend reading ’Lost Connections' by Johann Hari. The book talks about what our materialistic, scattered society is doing to our mental health (with lots of scientific proof), and possible ways to get out of it. Anyway, there's a chapter called 'Disconnection from meaningful values'. It talks about how we nowadays we are shifting from having meaningful values (doing something because we love it, things that give us flow-states), to having junk values (or extrinsic goals: giving us validation from the outside). I'll just quote you some lines I underlined. “Does achieving extrinsic goals make you happy? And how do they compare to intrinsic goals? The results, when we calculated them out, were quite startling. People who achieved their extrinsic goals didn't experience any increase in day-to-day happiness – none. They spend a huge amount of energy chasing these goals, but when they fulfilled them, they felt the same as they had at the start. Your promotion? Your fancy car? The new iPhone? The expensive necklace? They won't improve your happiness even one inch. But people who did achieve their intrinsic goals (being a more loving father, playing the piano, etc.) did become significantly happier, and less depressed and anxious.” The book states that “materialistic people, who think happiness comes from accumulating stuff and a superior status, had much higher levels of depression and anxiety." “It really did seem that materialistic people were having a worse time, day by day, on all sorts of fronts. They felt sicker and they were angrier. They experienced less joy and more despair.” We're being told happiness is reached by being able to buy lots of nice things. It's like junk food. It appeals to the part of us evolved to need food. But we don't get the nutrition we need out of it. Instead, we literally fill ourselves with toxins. “The first is that thinking extrinsically poisons your relationship with other people.(...) and they found the more materialistic you become, the shorter your relationships will be. If you value people for how they look, or how they impress other people, it's easy to see that you'll be happy to dump them if someone hotter or more impressive comes along.” “If you're doing something not for itself but to achieve an effect, you can't relax into the pleasure of the moment. You're constantly monitoring yourself. Your ego will shriek like alarm you can't shut off. (..) Materialism leaves you constantly vulnerable to a world beyond your control.” “When they talk amongst themselves, advertising people have been admitting since the 1920s that their job is to make people feel inadequate – and then offer their product as the solution to the sense of inadequacy they created.” “We are being propagandised to live in a way that doesn't meet our basic psychological needs: to feel connected, to feel secure, to feel valued, to feel we make a difference in the world. So we are left with a permanent, puzzling sense of dissatisfaction.” Just some food for thought :-) All the best!
  3. @CreamCat You’re not alone feeling that way. The same thing happened to me when I started meditating. I wouldn’t say you’re doing something wrong if you’re ultimately feeling more connected to people. And you do, don’t you? I remember I started to feel equal openness to everyone, like some sort of field where everything/one is equally welcome. I had a hard time ‘ranking’ people or having any preference at all. All was fine. It’s difficult to describe but maybe you’re experiencing the same thing. The question is: Does it feel bad? You’re not obliged to be intimate all the time. (At least physically, or do you mean something else like not being able to open up to people?) There’s a good chance you’re just establishing some base ground for accepting and acknowledging all people equally. From this new vantage point, a lot of new and good things can happen. So maybe you’re doing things just the right way:-)
  4. @carlowillo Your videos are great! Having tried some editing myself at times, I see that it must be a whole lot of work to make them. Keep going :-) You have like the perfect voice for these kinds of videos!
  5. @Wisebaxter Such a good question! I think for myself I’d call it mind or body, rather than active or passive. And what you call collective unconscious I might call intuition. For me, it depends on the question. In general, I let intuition decide the general direction of my life. By this I mean the big questions like where I wanna live or who I wanna be with. Then I let my mind figure out all the details because it’s really good at that ;-) It’s pretty difficult to get in touch with your intuition though. Leo has a video on it that is really good I find. It’s like raising a tiny, fragile plant under a ton of concrete blocks of thinking mind. So it takes some time, but it works. Nowadays, when I’m making decisions that go against my gut feeling, I’m having dreams every night that are trying to warn me about the decision I’m about to make. Pretty awesome! We’re usually very much focused on our thinking mind and, as you said yourself, it tends to get rigid the more you try to force it. That’s especially true when it comes to creative tasks. So if your question is not one with two or more options but rather an innovative one, you’ll wanna find a way to empty your mind as much as you can to be open to all kinds of thoughts and possibilities. If writing is your thing you can try creative morning papers, where you just sit down first thing in the morning and write two pages. It doesn’t matter what, you just don’t stop until two pages are full. It’s gonna be silly and you can’t think about it. It’s like opening the flood gates and writing everything that is on your mind. You’ll feel beautifully empty afterwards, very spacious and open - so perfectly set up for a creative task. There are also great meditations that teach you on how to peel back the layers that clutter your mind. I actually just did that the past 30 days. You can send me a message if you want to know more details about it, I can talk you through it :-) I think whether you focus on thinking or feeling, both are great, and both are somewhat true. A good way to notice the difference are gratitude lists for example. I’ve been doing daily gratitude lists for 1,5 years now and I used to always think about what I’m grateful for. I’d write down things like “I’m grateful that my co-workers are so kind to me” or “I’m grateful for having had a good night sleep”. I’m guessing you can think of 3 things in your life that you’re grateful for. At least I hope you can :-) Do it now. Before you keep reading think about what you appreciate in your life. Now try and close your eyes, focus on your breath for 3 complete breath cycles and then say out loud to yourself “Who or what do you appreciate most in your life right now?” Don’t expect an answer right away, just drop the question into your body and see what comes up. Try not to think about it, but just feel what the question does to you. Do it now. When I do that, the answers tend do be a lot more body-focused and now-focused. Thing like “It being a good temperature in my room” or “Silence”. Doesn’t mean one is more true than the other. It’s just a different focus. Hope this helps :-)
  6. @CreamCat If you’re ‘undeveloped’ you’re gonna have those difficulties in all areas of your life, this doesn’t just apply to relationships. It’s for sure gonna be painful if you haven’t developed beyond your neediness for the other person to complete you. But so often, people don’t even know that they could feel better, they just think that that’s how life is. (I know I did too.) Yes they suffer, but probably not as much as you think from your perspective. So not only society is pushing them, they’re pushing themselves too because they think it’s gonna bring them happiness. "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." - My boy Jesus In my experience, you’re automatically gonna attract people with the same level of confidence, emotional stability, etc. anyway. So I think it’s not that common that those things don’t match up with your partner. But, even if you’re very ‘developed’ relationships are still really tricky. It’s always easy to see those things from the outside, but when you’re in the midst of it it’s a different story. I’m not really contradicting you btw, just doing some mental processing over here I think I basically agree with you. I’d rather walk alone than walk with a lunatic. No need to be perfect though. Once you're at a certain stage, relationships can be a great tool in your personal development. @Arcangelo Thank you for letting us know your perspective. There are other perspectives Pushing things away at any cost can also mean that there is something in you that you don’t want to deal with. A partner can show you a lot of things that you didn’t even know were part of you, so a relationship can be really rewarding. I think you can develop yourself being single. You can also develop yourself in a relationship. So can moving to a different country, raising children or taking care of your father help you with growth. It’s all yoga, if you make it so. LOL @Shin I just wrote all this just to see that you’ve literally said everything I wanted to say in one sentence. Haha, what a joke. I’m gonna post it anyway. So yes, basically, forget what I said and remember this: Marriage is silly if you’re silly
  7. I'm a bit hesitant to take any stands on this topic but you might wanna check out Paul Verhaeghes work, especially the book "The end of psychotherapy". I have to say that I haven't read it myself yet, but a lot of my professors that have been working with children with ADHD for a long time are looking up to his advice. You can't deny that there's a cluster of symptoms, and maybe there is a biological disposition that can play into it, but it's probably much less relevant than we are lead to believe. Same as depression. Remember: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
  8. @ThinAir haha ok passt danke, he i leg jz auf, tschüssi!! @Grant NZ thank you so much for sharing so detailed. What you're saying makes a lot of sense. Really enjoyed reading it. I'm still a bit spooked out because it felt so foreign. I'm curious if it will ever happen again.
  9. Ok, I have no idea how to describe what happened last night, I can only try to say what it felt like. It’s like free floating negativity was looking for a host, grabbing me to do it’s thing “through” me. Work it out. I felt like tense balls of dark energy were nesting in my left foot, left hip, lower belly, left shoulder and elbow. Out of NOWHERE After some time, they spread out, not being so dense anymore, covering pretty much all of the left side of my body (not my neck and face). My breath was super short at this point, no belly breathing but not only chest either. More like short exhales at the point where my ribs part. Later it felt like these parts were dying away, just getting less strong. I could still feel the left side of the body from the outside but not from the inside. Couldn’t really move it. Not a sudden death but fading/rotting away, going all dark. Then weird tingles all over these places, like when your limbs fall asleep, after some time. They started to form little deliberate moving forms, like small worms moving in imperfect circles, then there were some shots of electricity between those points. That felt super pleasant, almost orgasmic but I only noticed them shortly after they happened. At that point I fell asleep because I was so exhausted. Thank god someone was with me. I don’t know how long it all took? Maybe 1h? The weird thing is, I didn’t even feel too bad. I was in pain but it psychologically didn’t touch me. Yes, I was concerned to wake my neighbours but I could laugh through it most of the time. I was a bit scared/confused because I couldn’t let it ‘out’, I didn’t know how. It didn't feel like mine, I didn’t know what ‘it’ would do. And all that time there was nothing on my right side. I’m actually feeling really good/ calm/ in touch with myself lately, I still do. So my question is: What was that about? I literally feel like someone has/ should have done an exorcism on me. If it has anything to do with awakening? it didn’t feel like that energy was mine at all. If this was kundalini, isn’t it supposed to work through the spine? And leave you really energised? Thanks to anyone who can give me some guidance here. I just want to understand what is happening, please.
  10. Ugh! Beautiful thread. I'll add some of my favorites that aren't mentioned yet. All from Walden: "Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while i drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains." "In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness." "Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces." "Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are for ever on the side of the most sensitive." "Not till we are lost - in other words, not till we have lost the world - do we begin to find ourselves, and realise where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations." "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to it's dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust." "Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour." "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." "It is life near the bone where it is sweetest." "The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it." "The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
  11. "We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
  12. I’ve never been completely raw for a long time but I know the more raw food I eat the more energised I become. When I eat mostly raw, it’s like I wake up with 5 energy drinks in my blood. I feel out of this world. Almost to a degree that it’s uncomfortable because I don’t know what to do with all the energy. If I wouldn’t eat root veggies and grains to ground me, I think I’d literally fly away. I’m thinking it could be good for long mediation sessions as raw food is usually easily digested and leaves you feeling light and with a crisp mind. As @Michael569 said, on the long run it’s gonna be difficult to get everything you need as such a diet is not nutritionally adequate. Especially protein, calcium and zinc. If you wanna be serious about this, maybe get some raw protein powder and supplements (and do a lot more research on it). It’ll be hella expensive too! I only do it in the summer when I’m able to grow most of what I eat myself. I also couldn’t do without warm, cooked, spiced food when it’s cold outside, but that’s just me. If you do it, you’ll have to eat a lot, eat often, chew a lot, pay a lot. You can for starters try to maybe eat one raw meal a day or just incorporate more raw fruits and veggies in general and see how you feel. A combination of both works best for me. It’s not true (from my research) that eating a vegetable raw for example is always better than cooked. Cooking makes some nutrients more absorbable and others less. It’s just different.
  13. I see lots of (good) advice around here concerning fasting, gym programs, food plans, etc. All of this is great if you’re trying to loose some pounds and get into shape. But if food is anything more than nourishment for you, if it consumes your thoughts and you’re stuck in cycles of restriction and shame, sometimes for years, then the problem lies somewhere else. Simply put: If you eat in response to negative emotions, health advice is not what you need. The only reason why you’re carrying excess weight is because you think you need it. It serves you in some way. Think for a minute about how being big/ overeating serves you. There’s reasons there. Here’s some reasons why you might be carrying excess weight: Nothing/ no one can hold you, so you must hold yourself, sooth yourself. Maybe you’re afraid of people hurting you. Paradoxically enough, in our society being fat is a great way to hide. The opposite sex won’t be interested in you, so no one’s able to hurt you. You’re protecting yourself from the attention of men/woman unconsciously. Maybe you hold on because you’re afraid you’re gonna be denied at some point in the future. If you have an eating disorder, your relationship with food equals your relationship with love. What you might have learned in early childhood is that you need love so desperately to feel soothed, but it's scares. When you get it, you can't control yourself around it because there's such desperation for it. And when you do take it in, there’s a consequence. You feel guilty, you over - indulge, it’s poisonous. What happened when you showed negative emotions as a child? Were they validated? Hell no. You were taught they’re not tolerated. You were conditioned to deny and reject them, to run away from them and fill the pain in an ‘acceptable’ way. You’re probably still doing that. Think about when you started gaining weight. Probably something significant happened. A difficult relationship with food is a good indicator for sexual abuse or other severely traumatic childhood experiences. It could also be more subtle than that. I know for me, I always felt like I need to take care of my own needs, that no-one is looking out/ providing for me. I can’t be sure that there’s food for me when I’m with my parents. Basically I can only trust myself and I’m scared to be left alone to die if I give some of that responsibility away. That made me greedy and controlling… It’s disgusting, I used to hate that about myself. I can hide it and I learned how to be generous with others but it’s much more difficult to let loose with myself. You must learn to see that being overweight/ binging is serving a purpose. They actually tried to make overweight people to stop overeating/ loose weight and a big number of them fell either into brutal depression, panic or rage. Some of them became suicidal. You might have looked at that problem in the wrong way all together. You don’t need to be told what to eat, you probably know perfectly well what to eat. You need to be listened to and understand why you eat. Being overweight is a signal. It’s trying to tell you something. It’s not a problem in itself. Stop asking what’s wrong with you, start asking what happened to you. It’s not a problem in itself, it’s an indicator. You need to heal. Just as a personal example I’ve been eating healthy pretty much all my life. I love cooking and have a passion for food and working out, yet still I gain weight when I’m (too) alone. If I don’t have people around me I can rely on it just happens, even though nothing about my eating changes. I get into a weird obsessive spiral as soon as I think about it too much, my relationship with food changes completely and then it’s all downhill from there. It’s my way of coping. It could just as well be cigarettes or drugs, it really doesn’t matter. There’s probably so much more to say about this, but who cares. The most important thing is that you get help. If you’re an emotional eater and if any of those things ring true to you, get help. You’re trapped and you’re not gonna get out of this alone. The first and most important think is to talk to someone about it. Just talking about it has a significant potential to better things. Don’t lock it away! Find a member of your family or a friend that you can fully open up to about this. Or go to a therapist. Talk to someone face to face, not on the internet. Feel free to send me a message anytime if you need someone to talk about this, I’m happy to listen. I mean it, don’t hesitate. Please. Just. Fucking. Talk. To. Someone. DO IT!
  14. @billiesimon I’m terribly shy as well. Meditation helped me a lot to find an inner ground that can’t be shaken by the outside world anymore. It’s still small but it’s growing everyday. I can recommend ‘The Six Pillars Of Self - Esteem’ by Nathaniel Brandon to learn and practice inner stability as well. You might come to a point where you genuinely don’t have to rely on other people’s opinions about you anymore and it will be much easier to be authentic in social settings then. If you have to retrieve till then, let yourself. There’s a time and place to get back out of it and there’s a good chance you’ll love and appreciate people much more once you do. Buuuuuut…. You can also dance around shyness and other obstacles quite a lot. I do that all the time. It’s like a blind spot. Especially when you’re alone, you might not realise a lot of things that are actually standing in your way. So I’d say it’s a good thing that you recognise where you’re ‘stuck’. Of course to learn you must also practice. Commit to doing something to push yourself out of your comfort zone everyday or every week. Don’t overdo it, one step at a time. Maybe you’re also just not excessively social. That’s fine. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Many self help teachers portray the outgoing extrovert ideal, but that’s not the only valid way to go about life. (Read ‘Quiet’ by Susan Cain if you identify as an introvert) Together with mindfulness mediation and challenging yourself regularly, these books might make you more comfortable to go about social situations your way.
  15. I was fully awake all the time, until it wore off and I felt those little 'worms' moving inside of me. Then I was falling asleep slowly. The shocks woke me back up a bit but I was quickly gone. (What the hell, I just typed the first sentence, made a mistake and wrote 'worms' loving inside of me instead of moving inside of me. Even the first time I tried to correct it, I typed it wrong again. Then my brain skipped a second and I felt a weird shiver in my body. Hahahaha literally laughing out loud right now.) To be honest, I'm a bit scared of that. But you have a point, seems to be a good gateway for these kind of questions. Thanks! Haha I'm not ready to die
  16. If she's leaving you for that you don't want to be with her in the long run anyway. Woman have to work on themselves just as much. It doesn't all depend on you. Maybe they go for them first because they seem secure and confident. But I'm guessing they're not staying for long. And if they do, then it's probably not very fulfilling. I'd say most relationships are actually very unhealthy. So don't use them as an indicator. If you want a woman to provide you with an open heart, you'll need to provide her with a sense of direction and confidence first. It's all about being able to give and to receive. It's a beautiful game. The good thing is, you can get there. I'd say stop hiding. You have one life. Try and be yourself. See what happens. If you really wanna be happy, there's no value in hiding :-) Easier said than done, I know! Good luck :-)
  17. Thanks for all of your replies. @SunnyNewDay @ThinAir @Natasha The thing is, I literally don't really feel different or like anything has been cleared at all. Maybe at some point I'll understand what it was, now I'm just puzzled. It felt like someone elses emotions that just needed a body to work it out. I never heard about something like that though. @Flatworld Crusades I say 'dark' because it was physical pain in my body and it felt super dense and stuck. Before my inner eye the colour black came up. Not necessarily evil, more like 'hurt'. @tsuki Because I don't really know where to start. I thought maybe someone had a similar experience. How can I work through something that isn't mine? It literally just happened 'to my body', it didn't touch me. It's gone again as fast as it came.
  18. @billiesimon @Psyche_92 I get that it might seem sadistic, but I think it’s something else. The truth is, most woman have probably been in the situation where a guy left them right after having sex. (Or whatever other ego - gratification they needed) They liked them for their shell and threw them away afterwards. Going through that makes men seem very untrustworthy. I’m guessing that’s where that behaviour comes from. It’s such deep suspicion that you’re basically always on the lookout for what the other one needs from you or wants to get out of being with you. (I think this problem runs much deeper than that. In a sense ‘love’ is always tied to ‘getting something’ for most people. Maybe we just pick up on that immediately and get defensive. Non - neediness is probably the ultimate goal. But let’s not get into that now.) So to get these urges under control might be really hard but you’re probably gonna be a ‘one in a million’ kind of guy and lots of good things will come your way in return. Woman want sense of continuity, groundedness and direction, not only in sex but also in life. It’s just much clearer to see during sex initially. What you get in return is an ever giving heart and compassion that can heal you deeply. Of course, you need to be vulnerable enough yourself to receive those things. It all comes down to inner stability, a sense of centeredness that never goes away. A still, deep ocean, grounded in itself. Without that taking over your humbleness, openness and vulnerability of course. It’s a difficult line to walk, but it’s possible. It’s something you’ll become better and better at anyway if you do lots of personal development work. So in a sense you don’t have to worry about it. There’s no way you can fake that anyway.
  19. @DrewNows I understand where you’re coming from but that just wouldn’t work. You have a fundamental connection to your parents, they birthed you. You’re loyal to them no matter what. It’s not always a good connection, but it’s a connection nevertheless. They’re not gonna accept a guru. Taking children away is the total opposite of moving towards love. They did that a lot years back (and still do). They saw that it didn’t work. Taking them away is/should be the very very last option you consider in case of emergency. Whenever you take people’s choice away there’s resistance anyway. And I’m not sure that there’s any greater pain than having your child taken away from you. Work with the parents, not against them. Raise their consciousness and help them to be mindful. They genuinely want the best for their children, they just don’t always know how. Lots of things they’re doing well. If you’re not willing to see that, you’ve lost them already. Raising children is a lot of work too. There’s a good chance you only have the endurance to do that for your own children. If you really want them to express love and creativity, you need to be present with them. One guru (or even many) is not gonna cut it. Also not sure if no contrast in human beings is what we’re looking for? Aren’t we here to experience what it means to be a separate human being? (I don’t know, just thinking out loud :D) I like to think that you need to develop fully as a human being first in order to let it all go again. And that means a secure background, knowing where you’re coming from. Imo taking children away from their family would probably leave both side in despair and would move everyone even further away from holism.
  20. I don't know. How could I? ;-) I'm just speaking from experience. You can trust your books if you want to. Obviously it takes more than a bit of humour and social skills to land a woman. I know you know but I'd say try for yourself. Put in the work and report back to us in 5 years. The moment you stop needing their approval is probably the moment they'll all come flying towards you. The energy of an authentic, developed, confident, loving man (or woman for that matter) is insane. It's like a magnetic pull you can't resist ;-) Works like magic. Maybe check out this post: All the best!
  21. @arlin @jbram2002 As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think you can separate looks and personality so easily. How you feel and think about the world and yourself reflects in the tone of your voice, your posture, if you make eye contact or not. Your outside reflects your inside. Not in what colour your hair is, but in the way you carry yourself. Nothing comes ‘first’. And even if, good looks might give you a slight advantage, but you can’t hide being boring, arrogant or a macho for long. I like to believe woman pick up on that in no time. Probably men do too. Also, we make out our mind about someone in a matter of milliseconds anyway. You can’t go about attraction ‘the wrong way’. It’s nothing you ‘decide’. (My theory, not truth) Well said! :-)
  22. Hi @Shaun, I've experienced that on a small scale before. It feels terrible to let things go that you thought would always give you refuge and joy. Like everything is emptiness. Sometimes creativity and joy comes back three times as hard at the end though, and you'll suddenly want to create for different reasons. So I'm glad I didn't throw out all my gear yet. You sound very drained though and I sense a strong wish to connect. Isn't there anyone on this forum living in your area? Maybe check out this site too: https://spiritualcrisisnetwork.uk Must be hard to feel like this for many months. I wish you all the best!
  23. Curious if maybe some of you are in a similar situation and this resonates. I’ve been living abroad all of my adult life. I moved 5 times, new people every time, new languages. Everything I own fits into one backpack. Always ready to move. Meeting lots of people but never really making lasting connections. I barely have friends at all. No real responsibilities, no one responsible for me. I feel like that’s the dream that is portrayed to/by my generation. If you can afford to see lots of the world, you’ll somehow be happier, know more, be more mature than the rest. And yes, travelling taught me great lessons: Taking responsibility for my life, being alone with myself, taking in lots of different ways of living, being open minded. It always felt very ‘me’ to have all my options open. Move on impulse, take risks. Somehow though, over the years, I felt more and more like I was fooling myself. Having nothing and nowhere to hold onto left me feeling alienated. Lost. Like having no roots. Like floating through space. Naturally I was thinking about ending this adventure and going back home. I pushed that thought away for years. I somehow have this image of myself travelling the world. Tons of options, hundreds of voices in my head. “It’s just not the right country. You haven’t done it long enough. You’re just scared of really being alone. Don’t risk getting comfortable. If you go back, you’re missing out on great lessons.” So I found myself standing in front of my next decision: I am moving again. What country is next? Or am I going home? What to do when there’s hundreds of voices in your head? Here’s what got me out of it: Intuition. Leo has a video on it where he talks about how the right choice (or your intuition) doesn’t defend itself. It’s an idea, standing surrounded by stillness. No strings attached. Look and see how all the other options have lots of “because” surrounding them. Believe me, I’ve made tons of pro and con lists in my head, about all sorts of things. For me, it never led me to the right decisions. This simple trick really works if you’re somewhat in touch with yourself. When I finally decided to go back home I broke down in tears. I’m so happy I’ll be close to my family again. Do you ever feel pulled back to where you came from? Enough individualism for me at the moment. I’m excited to be part of a community again, ready to serve. Finding fulfilment in living for others. I couldn’t admit for so long how dishonest I’ve been to myself for many years. My ego is huge when it comes to this whole travelling thing. Like really huge. I can see much clearer now how it’s just hurting myself. Of course it also pains me to admit to that and finally putting it down. The dream I thought I had. But what I’ve recently felt more and more is that there’s nothing’s really “out there” anyway. “I’ll be happy when…” literally never works.
  24. "The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." - Henry David Thoreau
  25. @Shin Haha I actually just did a couple of weeks ago when I signed up here.