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A more natural approach, letting go and Zen (October 2022)

Continuation of the previous blog post.

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…

Mutual triggering, pain patterns, and the analytical way (October 2022)

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…

Letting in another way of love (September 2022)

Artha and I kept in touch while I was at the seashell beach and after some days, I picked her up again and we headed south to chase the sun.

When we met again, it felt all so familiar and I enjoyed driving around with her in Rosinante while we kept deepening the relationship between us with deep conversations.

We found a fantastic beach, which should become my favorite beach in Bulgaria later. It was a very long beach with sand dunes and a vast area of nature. On one side was the ocean and on the other the woods and we lived in Rosinante right in between. When we arrived, the waves were pretty intense and high and we had so much fun letting us roll around by the waves.

Artha and I went for long walks, enjoyed talking and being in silence. And I felt that something was getting closer between us. One evening, we were walking along the beach and the sun was just about to set when we came along a small bench. Like pulled by a magnetic field, we sat down close to each other on that bench, witnessing the sunset, I turned my head towards Artha, and when our eyes met so did our lips. As strong and deep our connection felt from the first moment when we had met at Beglika, as strong and pure felt our kisses. We danced slowly under the light of the moon and the stars, got closer and closer and everything felt as natural and familiar as it could be.

After some days living in Rosinante at that big beach, we continued our journey south and visited the ancient site of Beglik Tash. We hiked and had a good time and after some days we headed further south and found a small and beautiful beach. We moved into Arthas tent and again, enjoyed the minimalistic beach tent life. We picked herbs, fruits, and firewood when we were taking long walks along the coastline, lived outside, met lovely people, and had great conversations. I enjoyed how we dealt with the change in our relationship. When we both recognized, that we overdosed some parts of it, we talked honestly and openly about it and everything kept feeling natural and authentic. We were flowing together.

One day while walking along the coast, we found that one part of the cliff looked very nice for climbing. After having a closer look, Artha was the first to go up. It was not an easy climb but it was about five meters high and when I saw Artha trying different approaches on the party slippery and crumbly sandstone, my heart was beating so strongly, that I had to concentrate and focus strongly before taking the climb by myself. In the end, we made it and were completely ecstatic about it.

After nearly a week on the beach, we went into the magical Bulgarian mountains and found an awesome spot there. We spent the days in the woods, picking mushrooms and nuts, listening to nature, and having a magical and spiritual time. We visited the nearby village and talked with the people there for hours. I could not understand the Bulgarian but Artha translated parts of it. It was a lovely time. The people in the village seemed to be very grateful for the time we spent with them and gifted us a lot of fruits.

It was nice and interesting to observe and feel how the relationship between Artha and me was changing and how we were together when there were other people and of course when we were alone. For me, it felt like the pure and unconditional love between us got enriched by another form of love. A love that was less deep but, more vivid and in a way stronger. Like a love that was pulling us close to each other. That love satisfied something inside of me. And all the time something between us was changing. We were opening up more and more toward each other and I started thinking if that process would ever gonna stop. There was a strong, powerful dynamic between us that manifested itself in all kinds of ways. It was magical, felt authentic and loveful, and strong.