Discovering unconditional love and new friends (September 2022)

After our gorgeous days at the beach, I brought Artha back to Varna and headed north along the coastline of Bulgaria. At the Beglika festival, I got some recommendations for nice spots at the beaches and so I started exploring. Like most of the time, I had no plans but a rough direction. But this time it was different. I felt like I did not want to go so far away from Varna. I guess, at that time, I would never have gone south to Turkey and left Bulgaria.

I found a very nice beach of seashells. The whole beach was covered with seashells! I never had seen something like this before and found it interesting. In one direction was a long cliff perfect for walking and after one kilometer in the other direction a small boardwalk started. I had calm walks, some french fries and enjoyed my time there a lot.

One day a French family arrived and after getting to know each other, we spent some evenings together. We talked about life in cars, France, Germany, Bulgaria, freedom, music, and everything else. the father used to play the guitar and his wife and daughter were singing along. They gave me a little concert once and I loved it. I told them that they really should practice playing and singing the theme song of the movie “The Last Unicorn”. Mhhh. I’ll ask them if they did. They just wrote me, that they found a good old truck in France and will now start to convert it into a home and go to Marocco next year.

Making a lot of electronic music on my iPad I more and more thought about getting a real acoustic instrument. I had been thinking about that for a long time but for some weeks the feeling grew stronger. Maybe a Handpan, a flute, a keyboard, or a Didgeridoo?

During that time, I felt something had changed inside of me. Of course, everything is always changing. But, you know, sometimes it just feels like something changed and is different now. From my perspective right now as I’m writing this, I have different feelings about it than the ones I had back there at the seashell beach. Back there, I felt like something big and heavy got lifted off my shoulders. And without that heavy thing, I profoundly experienced that there is unconditional love. And with that, I mean real unconditional love. The love, one can feel for someone else without any expectations, without any doubt, without limits. Studying a lot of Buddhism, the idea/ the descriptions were very familiar to me, but it felt like I did not let this unconditional love I was always feeling for certain people because with it would come a burden. The burden of having to feel that love forever and the burden to show and deliver it constantly. It’s crazy to describe and in a way it does not make logical sense, I guess. But what is the logical sense when it comes to feelings? And especially when it comes to love?

This change inside of me opened and brightened my heart. I don’t know how that time with Artha at that lonely beach contributed to that change, but I’ll be forever deeply thankful for it to have happened. Or maybe it did not happen that time. Right now, I feel like this opening of myself for feeling and living pure love and compassion is happening all the time but at the seashell beach I just really recognized it. Experienced it.

I had profound and honest conversations with my best friends back in Germany and step by step I opened up more and more. I let go of fears about expectations and burdens and made myself vulnerable by telling them that I indeed love them.

In one of my last posts, I wrote about the time I had together with my friend Michele. In that post, I wrote that I love him. Before the opening that I’m trying to describe here, I would not have written that. I would have felt like I can’t do that because it would force me to feel and show that unconditional, limitless love forever.

The most profound conversations I had with Cori. I can’t remember that I had such honest, pure, profound, and loveful conversations in my life. We got to know and love each other back in Germany and always had a joyful, loveful, compassioned, and deep time together. Before I left Germany, we traveled a little bit together and she visited me back in Greece. That time in Greece was partly very exhausting and challenging for me. You can read about it in the older posts. Later, in July and August, I felt a distance growing between Cori and me. At the seashell beach, I experienced the love between us in a very different way. I felt how unconditional and pure it was. That it did not know any measurement of distance. Cori had experienced that for a long time like that. I just felt like I opened myself and allowed myself to feel it. To take it from her and let myself feel it for her in a pure way that does not need any explanation.

Some solitude and connecting to the Heart Sutra (August 2022)

After Beglika, I felt like I want to have some time on my own again. And so I went east and south. More into the mountains and there I discovered something profound.

On my, way I met two friendly border policemen. I can remember that I felt somehow reserved when meeting or encountering the German police. But since I left Germany, that changed. These two guys were super nice and mostly interested in Rosinante and how the cabin is attached to the pickup. One of the guys showed me enthusiastically photos of the self-build modifications on his jeep.

I found a super nice, quiet, lonely place on top of a small hill. I observed a couple of times before, that after more closed places, I like to go to more open ones again and vice versa. It’s interesting. After all the impressions of the Beglika festival, I enjoyed being on my own. Reflecting on the impressions. Feeling how they changed me.

At that place, I rediscovered the Heart Sutra, and this time I connected so strongly to it. It was magical. The Heart Sutra is kind of a summary of everything Buddhism is about. It’s profound and beautiful. I felt like it was absolutely what I in a way needed at that time. Sounds like attachment, right? And in a way, it was like that. One of the things about the Heart Sutra that I love most is that it states that the world as we perceive it is illusional and that Buddhism and the Heart Sutra itself are illusional as well. So it states that attaching to itself is not a healthy way as well.

If you like to get an understanding of it, make sure to check out these two episodes of the Zen Studies Podcast:
19 – The Heart Sutra Part 1: Introduction to the Most Common Mahayana Text
20 – The Heart Sutra Part 2: Line by Line Explanation, Continued
And if you feel like talking about it, write me on WhatsApp.

I did a hike in the area around my home and then I felt like contacting Artha and asking her if she would like to meet again.

Flow, new friends, writing, and music at a big lake (August 2022)

My idea was to drive from the car service in Plovdiv south in the mountains. But because the friendly mechanic recommended me the area and lakes/ reservoirs from Batak to Dospat, I went there. It was just a little further west and I felt like it would be nice to stay sometime at a calm lake in the mountains.

The lake was really beautiful and its appearance and the weather changed every day. It was so nice to witness these changes and I had a very calm time there. After I had faced my boredom and experienced kind of a liberation from whatever I somehow felt I should do and not do, and getting rid of the stuff, I felt very easy.

During my time at the UFO, I had got more and more into writing a lot of micro and short stories and I kept doing that. My love for writing, especially with making up all sorts of universes and the simplicity of writing got deeper and deeper.

At the lake I did come up with a story, that I only built in my mind: I did not write anything down. I just repeated it over and over again in my head and every time I did so, it was changing. I feel, that all stories are somehow alive and keep on changing but that one was and still is as alive as a story can get, I think. If you like to have an experiment, just try it. One of the good things about it: you don’t need anything apart from yourself and you can do it everywhere and every time. For me, it felt like having some kind of a pet or a weird type of companion. Now that I’m thinking about this story, I feel like it is more a real memory than a story I’m remembering.

In addition to writing, I did make more music on my iPad, again. This was super nice as well and both, writing and making music, felt very free to me.

But the most beautiful at that lake was, that I met a lovely and gorgeous family. They were living in their big van and traveling around for months. We had an awesome time together and a lot to share and feel. Playing with the kids was so creative and free. I loved it.

One day, they told me that they had been at a festival about music, nature, and spirituality some weeks ago. I had been looking for exactly that kind of festival in Greece and Bulgaria as well. I missed it just for a couple of weeks. But they told me, that in just two weeks there would be another festival of the same kind at one of the smaller lakes just a little further south and up the mountain! I was super happy about that and appreciated how things were developing/ flowing.

And this festival… Let’s say it will have some impact on me and my journey…