A roadblock shaped like a goddess
Or the circumstances of my death
This post is part of a series and will make more sense (I hope) when you read the previous writings first.
While writing the second half of the symmetry thing, this kept sneaking in. Rubbing its furry little tail against my face. Like our cat insisting to sit on top of my iPad while I am typing. Despite putting this aside several times, it was of no use. This one needed to be held.
Connecting more to the creative meant moving away from the commercial. In this world they seem to be in opposing directions. Choosing to address the more difficult and darker aspects of how I had organised my life was like randomly loosening the nuts and bolts of the contraption. No surprise things started falling apart.
Flatlining
Between building the cardboard city and the weeklong inner world retreats lie seven years and a slow earthquake. The big shake.
While the 2008 crisis first left my shop unscathed, we started flatlining two years after. And the cardboard-city-Christmas-silence was the first warning sign things were turning sour for us. The other omen was me growing a beard.
My childhood feelings of being incompatible were surfacing. While I turned inward my outer life collapsed in slo-mo. Or was it the other way around?
You can hover a long time on being four months behind with mortgage payments (despite the increasing aggressive tone of the letters sent). You can sell your belongings, cut costs, try setting up exciting new features for customers, rearrange the hell out of the available elements, you can fight the incoming wave with all your might but at some point you simply drown.
Planning a collapse
And we had concocted such a failsafe plan to get out. Because we did see it coming. I was wide awake to the rapidly changing finances but wasn’t able to anticipate the societal response to us announcing we wanted to stop, to get out. We changed course and naively thought people (customers, suppliers and friends) would support our genuine search for a better way to live.
Nobody came along. Of course not. We were heading the other way. It was just us facing the loss of our home, selling the car, the piano. Giving away most of my books.
I tried to concentrate on just the teaching. Without the pressure of selling products. But the ‘old’ mailing list I had was useless. It came down to starting from scratch. I made it last for another two years. And month after month I grew more certain I was on my way. Connecting more deeply to myself, my process and to the people attending my workshops. Yes, I did find other souls. Not nearly enough to keep the worldly business afloat.
The last workshop?
In the Dutch language my retreat was called ‘binnenwereld’, and it was the last workshop I organised as a business. Well, much later I would do a few more that packed a punch you could say, but lets not skip ahead.
I tried to register the Dutch term for Inner World Retreats, and discovered another website with the same name. I contacted them to ask if they would mind me also using it.
'Where are you based?’, the couple asked. It turned out they had set up camp less than two kilometers from my space. Goosebumps. We agreed to meet.
He was a shaman. The dog they brought was a blue eyed wolf. The three of them listened while I explained what I was trying to set up. The couple looked at each other and nodded. The dog had already approved an hour ago and was asleep by then.
'Maybe you should attend our session next week,’ they suggested. A weekend retreat centred around Ayahuasca.
I do not smoke, drink alcohol very moderately, and have never been attracted to doing drugs or regular medicine for that matter. Even while —as a musician— I grew up from a young age amongst users, heavy smokers and people dependent on a few drinks or some amfetamine, before being able to perform.
But this was lying on the path like a bulging wallet. Ignoring this clear offering would go totally against my inner guidance.
I said yes. Ten days of abstinence effective immediately. No sex, no substances, plant based food only.
The weekend was intense. Snorting pure tobacco as a highly sensitive? I don’t recommend it. It was a well organised, good ceremony, they did nothing wrong. Preparing their own medicine, and taking their role as guides seriously and there was nothing recreational about the whole setup. I drank the most awefull liquid ever and have never been as sick as that night. I fought against loosing control with every fiber in my poor body. But I died anyway. Surrender.
Was I high? Nope. I was sick as a dog and felt the weight of my expanded consciousness as a crushing boulder the size of a house. Painful clarity. The afterglow lasted for more than a year before it faded.
Yes, the multidimensional patterns weaving through your vision are soothing. The soundtrack from the speakers unfolding to a triple stereo, wide as hell, and the silence inbetween songs was like a growing abyss, a torturing belt around my chest of tightening vertigo. And when I finally was ready to go in, the high speed slideshow of my life punctured me like rapid gunfire. It really does flash. Not before your eyes, but right through. My whole experience up to that point was pushed down my inner throat in a few seconds. Forcing me to look over my shoulder and see what I had been, and done, weighing all of it scrupulously, undressing it to the bare skin. Connecting the loos bits to a very familiar pattern.
And there I was, naked, right in front of that huge overgrown jungle gate. A feminine entity blocked the entrance. Towering and silent. Without a word she reminded me of what lay behind me. Of the how I had tried and she nodded, that’s your how, it sounded in me, don’t go through here. Keep going as you were…
That was it. I woke up sick. Barfing my lungs out. It was morning. What had felt like no more than a minute had devoured half the night.
I didn’t do the second session of that weekend. Mama Ayahuasca had been very clear. Pointing toward the path I was already on.
Finding the entrance to the inner realm without the exotic, without the dependency, without the need for the supernatural to step in and enhance the mundane.
That is my both hands approach. My naked performance. What I had tried to find was in my hands already. That’s what I was trying to do. And I still am.
It is incompatible with a world that teaches the opposite. This independence pushes you to the fringe. If you are not a customer, not a consumer you become invisible. On paper I belong to the very bottom of the European standard, to the very lowest of incomes. A nomad with no direction home. I have collapsed and avoided the rush. We have stood in line at the foodbank. We, our family of three were homeless a few months after.
I wasn’t bankrupt. I just didn’t have anything left of economic value. We had each other, and we dicided to not try and work our way back in. We would keep going in the same direction. Open to whatever where and who it would lead us. The settled life had ended. The journey only just begun.
I want to welcome all those new subscribers that joined the last two weeks. Finding readers is so good…and please keep responding. Don’t forget to comment, like, share and re-stack. Kick that algorithm.
A separate thank you to C! You know who you are and I want you to know how deeply I appreciate the generosity.
There are now 122 of you receiving my scribblings, of which 22 are payed, and an incredible 4 of you are full Guardeners. Yes, going payed really makes a big difference at this end…
Oh dear me, the vine! Sounds like she had her way with you and then spit you right back where you had already been. Stay true to that vital, creative heart of yours. This world needs the purity of your fire.
There will be more to this story, yes? 🙏🏻