After our wonderful hut tour, we arrived back in Varna. Artha started a yoga teacher training and I lived the city life in Rosinante right on the beautiful city beach.
Artha wanted to focus on the yoga teacher training and I could understand that very well. If I had been in her shoes, I thought, I’d have wanted to do the same thing. I lived on the city beach of Varna for a week and found a wonderful little beach that felt like a little natural paradise in the city life. Like a little oasis. I enjoyed living on the city beach and Artha and I met up occasionally. As I write this, it feels like at the time I was pushing far away any thoughts or feelings that might prevent me from enjoying that life. It feels like my love for Artha made me feel this way. I wanted to stay by her side. At least for my ego, that seemed to be the most important thing. And as I described in one of the previous posts, I lived that aspect of myself like anything else. I didn’t push Artha too hard, but I still told her how I felt. I never said it had to be how I felt, I just wanted to be pure and honest.
The yoga teacher training was intense and Artha felt like she couldn’t do it wholeheartedly, while at the same time wholeheartedly living the connection between us. She felt that our connection and the dynamic between us were of a very different kind of energy than this profound personal training. I absolutely felt the same way. Although I didn’t like it, we decided that it would be best for her to focus entirely on her training and for me to continue my nature and travel life. I didn’t like this. I felt that once we put some physical distance between us, it was far from certain that we’d see each other again. We both said that we’d like to see each other again when Artha finished her training, but deep down I doubted it. I just felt that she and I carried this brilliant impulse within us to live our respective lives as holistically as possible. Although my romantic love and ego wanted to stay by Artha’s side, I didn’t know if we’d meet again as I continued my journey. It just felt uncertain. Basically, it was like everything in life. Uncertain. Unstable. My ego just wouldn’t accept it. It was only soothed by the fact that the moment I left Varna, Artha and I were firmly convinced that we’d meet again in about two months.
From Varna, I drove to Strandzha National Park. On the way there, I felt torn. I still didn’t like putting distance between me and Artha, but at the same time it felt good and like I was following an inner urge to get going again. To go somewhere without a fixed destination. To go into nature. To stay as long as I want to. To do the things that feel brilliant to me. I remember riding Rosinante very fast down a dirt road that went through a forest, having a lot of fun. At one point, Rosinante even got a little air when she jumped over a small bump and the wheels squealed. Part of me felt free. When I thought about Artha, I felt like I was losing something.
The mountains in Strandzha are wonderful, magical and pure. I parked Rosinante right in the forest and spent all my days outside exploring nature. There were all sorts of things to explore: ancient ritual sites, shrines and all the marvelous and calm beauty of nature.
I felt wonderful, natural and free. And deep inside I suddenly realized that it’s like so many people say: when you let go of a loved one, you experience pure, deep, unconditional love. Not the romantic ego love that is craving for this and that and wants the person you love to make you happy. But the pure love that wants the person you love to be happy. That steps back and throws light into the blurry self-centered perspective of the romantic ego love. For me, there was no doubt that I wanted Artha to be happy and live what felt genuine to her in every moment. And for me, I wanted the same.
Artha had the idea of spending a few days in the Bulgarian mountains: enjoying nature, hiking, chilling, and sleeping in the mountain huts. She wanted to show her brother the mountains, and when she asked me if I would like to accompany them, I was immediately enthusiastic about the idea.
We packed our backpacks and took two trains from Varna to Dobrinishte in the Pirin national park. For me, it was the first time I went hiking and mountaineering with a big backpack, and when we got on the train, I felt that I had taken too much stuff. The train was super cool. In Germany, it’s super rare to get a real train. A train that makes noises, rattles in its own beat over the rails, and lets its horn shout before it passes a street. And after we changed to the second train, it got even better! This one got really, really slow and crawled up the mountains at about 40 km/h or less through tight corners, forests, past cliffs and the views were fantastic. We saw a beautiful sunrise and the ten to eleven hour train ride felt like a good transition from the city to the mountains.
From Dobrinishte we hiked and hitched to the base of Mount Bezbog. When I had been on that mountain with Rosinante, I drove all the way to the Bezbog hut (open the post about that), and this time we hiked there. It was interesting to feel the difference between these two ways.
We planned to stay one night at the Bezbog hut, but since it was still quite early, we continued on our way to the Bezbog summit. I loved how easy and straightforward we made this change of plans. Lake Bezbog was as beautiful as I remembered and the weather was perfect. From Bezbog peak we went to Polezhan peak. And there we changed our plan and headed for Demyanitsa hut.
But instead of taking the main trails, we chose the more direct route. The view was breathtaking, but as time went by the path became more and more difficult and the trail markings became less and less. We climbed down over large rocks and loose, icy slopes. We lost the trail and it took us hours to cover a few kilometers. It felt exciting and super adventurous. But I noticed I was unfocused and slipped a little several times. Artha and her brother felt the same way, and we all felt the hours we had already hiked. But as the sunlight dimmed, we had done the tricky part and I felt very good. At this point, I felt super good with my big backpack. It almost felt like a part of me.
I had never hiked in the mountains in the dark before and felt like would prefer not doing it. But as darkness fell, it felt super easy and it was nice to explore the mountains in a different way. The sounds felt more intense and it was wonderful. When we arrived at the Demyanitsa hut, we were tired and super hungry. The hut seemed empty, but then we met a woman and were overjoyed to find the kitchen still in operation. The bean soup, the fries, and the bread tasted so good… At that point there could not have been any better.
After a refreshing and vital night, we continued our journey. The next destination was the Vihren hut. On the way there, I felt the connection between Artha and me change (as I described in the last post), but this time I felt very different about it. Instead of thinking and in a way telling myself that it’s all good, I felt pure compassion for her and me and a strong equanimity. Before it had been feeling like I was calming myself with thoughts on mental comments. Now it felt pure and loveful. I felt happy about it. Relieved and happy. But a part of me was desperate to share this new way that felt so healthy and good. And the person I most wanted to share it with, I couldn’t reach out to.
On our way to Vihren hut, we came along beautiful lakes, peaks, and trails, took breaks to meditate and the weather was still perfect.
The next morning, we got up very early before sunrise because the route we had planned was the longest of our mountain tour. I had never seen a sunrise while hiking up a peak. It was wonderful! The sun crept slowly over peaks, her light cast moving shadows on cliffs and slopes, and the colors and their changes were magnificent.
When I had been at Vihren summit on my own, there had been absolutely no view (open the post about it). This time we had a magnificent view and even better, our route took us to a neighboring peak where we had a gorgeous view of the rock face of Vihren Peak that I loved so much. From there, we took a route along the most beautiful ridge I’ve ever seen. I love ridges and hiking on them. This one was fantastic!
Our route took us down the mountain to Yavorov hut, where we spent our last night in the mountains. The next day we hiked to Razlog and spent some time there until our first train would leave. There, a funny thing happened. It seemed to me that Artha was opening towards me again, but I still had the impression that she was looking for a fight or something. It was strange, but interesting. In the end, we had a fight. But a completely over-the-top, silly one that was more fun than anything else. And it felt liberating and compassionate. And again there was this transformation of heavy energy into something else.
We took the slow train down the mountains and it was super cool again. On the train that took us back to Varna, we slept for most of the ride.
All the days of this trip I felt super fit and like I could go on and on. I thought about what it would be like to travel with a mule again.
When it came to spending time together and showing romantic love, I was all in. I did seek to be close to Artha and learned that she needed more space than my ego was feeling to give without struggling. I believed that the general circumstances put some pressure on our connection as well. I was in Varna because Artha was there. If we hadn’t met, I most likely wouldn’t have been there. We spoke about this, but I thought it was just something “hanging in the air”.
Sometimes Artha built up what felt to me like a heavy energy and it felt like the interaction from her side switched entirely. From what I felt was loveful, warm, and close, she switched to ignoring, cold and distant. Sometimes just from one hour to the next. That triggered a lot inside of me. In times like this, I felt like I was losing her and that unique connection between us. I could not get through to her and a part of our connection got interrupted. Fully connected we looked each other in the eyes for long moments and it felt like I could look right into her. Seeing her completely as she was. Feeling everything there was.
When our connection got interrupted like that, we did not look into each other’s eyes. It just did not happen. A part of me did not want to have this. It felt like a threat to me. I was struggling with this switching between us and with me getting triggered. And I realized that my perspective was at first very self-centered. These occasions let me think about how Cori may have felt when she had been visiting me back in Greece (open blog post “There is no love left”). It felt like I switched places in something very similar.
At first, I felt like I was responsible to help Artha, to heal her from having that heavy energy. That is a pattern I was feeling and following for a whole lot of my life and still, it is present inside of me. Maybe it’s one of the patterns that let me suffer in my life the most. Throughout my life, I felt so often responsible for the emotional states of others. That let me feel like I have to do something to help them. And I think that it was only to feel better for myself. I was mostly rejecting bad feelings and negative energies. I just did not want to have them around me. I started a long process of letting this pattern go long ago, but during that time with Artha, it felt like I profoundly experienced that I was really allowed to let it go, that it did not have to be a part of me. But even after realizing this, it was not easy to let it go and still it sticks with me. But I felt like I did a big step. And one thing that changed my perspective on that pattern was, experiencing that in the end, there was nothing that Artha would need any healing for. That I was thinking she needed to heal started to feel encroaching and self-centered. Partly I just wanted her to not have this strong energy to spend time with her and enjoy the light and deep energy between us. But the times when my pure and egoless compassion for her felt stronger than the cravings of my ego.
That time did let me experience and learn how much heavy energies can help and heal if I let them. How wonderful it is to welcome and accept these heavy energies and let them transform themself into something else.
Disregarding the healing that took place in me, I still felt the demanding romantic ego love inside of me and I was struggling a lot with how to deal with it. I thought letting it all out felt encroaching and self-centered and I thought suppressing it felt wrong and unnatural. I just thought so much…
During that time I was reading the book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki (via Google you’ll find a pdf of it). I had read it years ago but back then it did resonate with me at all. But at the time in Varna and on the beach, I connected very strongly with it. I loved how it was trying to describe the non-dualistic nature of “everything there is” and how straight, pure, and “Zen style” it was. And especially the repetitive style I liked. For me, it felt like this book was trying to help its readers to not think so much but instead trust in themselves and live more. What is more, it described a lot about the “big mind” and the “small mind”. Basically, I understood, that the big mind is living without adding stories to the things we are doing/ living and the small mind is the part of oneself, that tends to add thoughts and stories to everything we are doing/ living. So the big mind sees and lives things “as they are” and the small mind adds delusions to that. These delusions then are causing suffering. Although I had read similar things hundreds of times before, something inside of me started to change those days. Somehow a seed got planted in me at that time. From then to now, my perspective about all of this has already changed and at that time back in Bulgaria, I only got a glimpse of it. But that glimpse felt good and healthy.
It felt like I experienced seeing the concepts in my mind differently. But just a tiny bit. Like I was able to open a door just a tiny bit and got a tiny glimpse of what was behind it. I was aware of some of these patterns and concepts before but now my belief that they were ok and I did not have to suppress them. Instead of analyzing, trying to understand, and changing them as I had in the past (see the last post), I started to accept them more as what they were and live them.
This experience let me start to change how I dealt with whatever was arising from inside of me. I started to open up to myself. It felt liberating. I think, I always had been a very authentic and pure human. But the glimpse through that door let me see that the authenticity of my past was like an idea or a concept I had come up with and which I had been living and sticking to. Like I had been living in a frame made by myself.
I started to partly let go of some mental concepts that made me feel unnatural. Following them let me feel like I was holding back a part of myself. And this part was mostly the one that I was suppressing because it did not feel “right”, “mindful”, “spiritual”, or “healthy” to me. When these parts had arisen before, I was suppressing them with my thoughts in a compassionate way. I was thinking something like “nice that you are here mind pattern but I think you are quite unhealthy so please go to sleep or away”. Now I started something in the direction of acknowledging, respecting, and accepting them as they were. In a way, I tried to live all of myself and not only the parts I wanted to have. But it was just a tiny step and it was irritating, weird, and demanding.
Being as analytical as in the example of the last post felt unnatural as well. It felt like coming up with concepts to explain concepts. Like stacking up concepts of and for the small mind high in the sky. I felt like being more direct and more natural. Less analyzing, more living, trusting in myself and seeing what would happen.
When my ego was demanding things, I told Artha. I tried to do so with as much love and compassion for her and myself as I could. So I did not act like an unleashed “ego devil”. At least I think so. It felt good and healthy and like I really could have a look at what was coming up from inside of me. The holding back and thinking about these things which I had done before, started to feel more and more theoretical and unnatural. But at the same time, not holding back most of what was coming up felt self-centered and still like I was managing it with my thoughts.
A lot of the time, I was thinking a lot and still the romantic ego love felt partly unhealthy and I was struggling to accept it. But I felt that that glimpse through that door opened up a deeper, more healthy, more true, and more natural perspective on a lot of things. And the unconditional love and deep connection between Artha and me felt so strong and unique…
