When I was not in Varna, I spent my time at that magnificent beach, which Artha and I had discovered on our trip to the south. This place was just perfect for beach life and life in nature. I found an awesome spot for Rosinante right between the beach and the sand dunes.
Every morning, I took a run on the beach, through the dunes, and through the forest. And these mornings were super magical: when the sun hit the ocean wafting clouds of water emerged from it to dissolve shortly after in a soft breath of the wind. There were only a few other people from time to time and life there felt good, calm, and profound. For one week, I had neighbors from Germany and France who lived about two kilometers down the beach. We had nice and interesting conversations about the minimalistic and cheap car life.
For weeks I switched between Varna and the beach and it felt like this life at that beach allowed me to deeply feel, digest, and process the experiences of the city life with Artha.
As strong as the unconditional love and connection between Artha and me was, as strong was our mutual triggering. Sometimes it felt like the universe had brought us together to let us grow with each other. That we just were the perfect match in all regards. Including our triggers. The energies between us were so dynamic and strong… I remember that I told a friend that with Artha and me everything was possible. Even killing each other I could not rule out. We were never aggressive toward each other, but it just felt like really everything was possible.
Artha and I had profound conversations about our feelings, emotions, past, triggers, and everything else and this exchange felt so intense and healing to me than very few things or times in my life had been before. I believe that it felt like that because this unconditional love and compassion between us was always present and undoubted.
For example, I described to her how some of my triggers
in romantic relationships had been working. A big part of my life these patterns had been very strong. At that time in Bulgaria with Artha, the triggers did not go so hard and mostly the process stopped pretty early in this cascade of emotions, triggers, and thoughts.
But still, I described the whole thing: I was feeling very stressed for a good part of my past. These stress levels went up and down like waves. The reasons for feeling stressed may arise when I was adding a lot of ego stuff to the things I was doing and experiencing. When I was feeling stressed, a habit/ mechanism/ pattern got triggered more easily. But most easily it got triggered when a deeply loved person changed the behavior she is showing towards me in a way that my ego perceived as negative and unpleasant. When my small ego added stories based on my fears to this change of behavior the triggering got intense. The closer I felt connected to a person, the higher the potential of the triggering to happen got and the higher the potential of strength got. I thought it was like that because the fear increases if the ego feels like there is more to lose.
Once triggered, I felt insufficient and like I was not capable of being right, doing things right, or being enough and therefore I felt like I did not deserve the love of anybody. If I did not recognize and accept this arising of doubt, I was feeling like I’ll lose the love of the other person. Mostly this made me feel sad. It triggered a fear of being alone and not loved in me. When I was not triggered, I felt not strongly dependent on external love but when I was triggered, this feeling of dependence arose strongly.
I was starting to feel annoyed by this feeling of my inability and that started frustrating and stressing me. And this stress even triggered me more. I was losing the love and compassion for myself which added to the triggering and a whirlwind of heavy energy caught me.
Shortly after that, I was transforming/ projecting this annoyance from myself onto the other person. So I start to feel annoyed with the other person. I started to search for “mistakes” the other person made. For something that my ego resonated with and that made it feel attacked. It felt like a protective mechanism to make me feel better and somehow tell myself that it is not me who is wrong but the other person.
From there on a part of me was searching for mistakes and “wrong” things about the other person. The perceiving of the behaviors, opinions, and basically everything I had loved about the other person, would now turn completely. I was getting annoyed by basically everything the other person was doing. I got mad at her and sometimes I even started to hate her. Sometimes I recognized this unfair twist and that did even add strength to the trigger because then I was feeling mad and annoyed by myself as well.
A part of me started searching for reasons that would show me that I did not like or need the other person. So that if the other person would leave me, I would be fine with that and I would even appreciate it. A part of me started to persuade itself that I did not want to have whatever relationship with that person in the first place.
I was starting to reject that person to protect myself from getting hurt if she would reject me. So basically this whole thing seems to be about the fear of getting rejected, not loved, and being alone.
When or through what I had established this mechanism, I don’t know. I think at least a part of it is like a basic human pattern that gets pushed by the small mind/ ego.
Right now as I’m writing this all of that sounds so analytical and thoughtful. Like desperately searching for an intellectual, logical explanation that gives a sense to whatever happens. And I guess, that at least partly it was exactly that.
Artha and I were opening more and more to each other. And it felt like this opening would never stop. Like we dived together into each other and everything was possible. And this process felt like healing unhealthy patterns and concepts nested deep, deep inside of me. But it was very challenging and demanding as well. Sometimes I felt I would like to flee. I thought about running away from everything and just continuing to travel somewhere south. But at the same time that did just not feel right. And I loved Artha so much in so many ways and that strong connection between us felt so unique and profound.
To be continued…