[A few notes before you read. First, this text you are about to read is a straight lift from my diary, raw and uncut, so do not expect it to be sophisticated nor for it to be my "final" opinion on stuff ; Second, whenever I think an important detail or explanation was forgotten that would help the reader understand the context of the experience better, I have inserted it in square brackets, just like this bit you are reading now].

[About 30 participants, aged 16 to 30, participated in this experience. Some are life-long Buddhists, others are certainly not (like myself). Some have been in DCL for tons of other retreats, for some (like myself), it is the first ever retreat. Present nationalities are Dutch, German, Spanish, French, Belgian, English, Irish, Polish-Dutch and Italo-Dutch (guess who!).]

28-07-2011

After an 11 hour drive from Oegstgeest to DCL (Dechen Choling, a small Shambhala Buddhist village close to Limoges, France)  in the lovely company of two fellow participants, I am ready for it.

“It”… being = sleeping, of course.

After all the food was finished merely 30m after dinner start (merci Paris peripherique pour notre retard) but the girls and I managed to fight over some leftovers and satisfy some hunger. Just before hitting my bed…well actually, flimsy mattress in a tent (yuck), we sit around in a circle with some of the participants and, whilst gazing at the stars, introduce ourselves to each other.

29-07-2011

Its morning now and I woke up to the sounds of cows, birds and… woodpeckers?

Ahhhh I took a nice refreshing shower too though I need to walk a half marathon in order to get it but I guess it makes me savior it even better.

Few people were awake it seems, but walking back from the shower block for my tent I observe small groups of middle aged being yelled at by people in uniform, and sometimes repeating the very same phrase. Hmmmm, is the boot camp or peace camp? Anyhow, their program is different from ours… or so I’d like to think, because surely enough meditation & contemplation is what I came for, not brainwashing. OK, time for breakfast, the sun is caressing my face, it’s still hesitant at first and warming up, but it’s there. My dominant thought pattern: resistance. Perhaps it’s good, it means I can learn much, or at least discover a lot! For sure, I will be able to note down some “amazing discoveries” (those for which the 30 day money back guarantee is NOT needed!) in my diary and share them with you via the electric digital surfing highway known with the mysterious name of… WWW

The afternoon stays warm and sunny. We just wrapped up morning meditation session of 1 hour. I did 45m, because the first 15m were chanting. I have some reservation against chanting so I opted to skip.

Amazing… we have as per standard a 2.5 hour lunch break. No, this is not a typo.

I DO mean 2.5 hours… so I can once again practice the greatest and most and most ancient rite in Buddhism = siesta

In the afternoon we discussed the story of prince Siddhartha, which is a lovely one. As a child described it once very succinctly: “Buddhism is about a very skinny man sitting under a tree. One day he became very happy, started eating a lot and became fat!”

We were told about the Shambhala tradition in Buddhism, born by the courage of one man (ouch, this starts to sound like the trailer of the latest and greatest Hollywood movie!).

This man, a spiritual leader in Tibet, was chased out of Tibet in 1959, at 20 years old, leading his own party of monks across the Himalayas on foot and on horseback into India, later ending up in the USA. Having been instructed his entire youth to become a great leader, and already writing his own Buddhist views at the tender age of 8, he after his exodus decided to somehow bring Buddhism into the West (though many of his writings were lost in the 1959 trek and had to be rewritten). He tried to make Tibetan Buddhism tangible, intelligible and practicable for Westeners and, above all, non-monastic (i.e. no need to go into a temple and lock yourself up to follow his tradition).

Personally, my guess is that he understood, as a very young man, that the greatest curse of the Tibetan people will perhaps simultaneously turn out to be their greatest blessing. Let me explain. As by now the Chinese have swamped Tibet (a settlement practice which reminds me, at least on a surface level, of Israeli settlements in Palestine), and when HH the Dalai Lama will pass onto the next life, the 15th Dalai Lama will be “officially” appointed by Chinese, not Tibetans. That will break a strong, vibrant message and cultural-religious-political lineage that has persisted in the East for thousands of years. But in that curse, the blessing may be that Tibetan thinking, and Buddhism in general, will be forced to move elsewhere (too). What one can already witness now, that Buddhism is swamping modern societies, desperate for something “real” to believe in, is but a start I think.

Out of Tibet, into the world, just as Mount Everest towers over planet earth, so Buddhism can “conquer” souls through compassion, interconnectedness, loving-kindness and many other of its principles.

No, no missionary style conversion, just slow one by one conversion out of free will. Christians have done enough damage with that other “technique”, Buddhism has not a single trace of zealous evangelicalism as far as I can tell. Let’s see what happens, but much is already happening. So yeah, even if diluted by misinterpretation and ad-hoc or fashion usage by westerners like myself, it can be a spiritual bombshell for a world so desperate for … ehm, “change we can believe in” ? [Sorry, this last phrase was a joke, I actually really dislike Obama as a politician. He is just the prettiest face the US elites could find to mask a socio-cultural-military-economic system that has been in stall for quite some years now and will destroy itself probably still in this decade... but this is not the place to start this topic hahaha].

In the afternoon, I for the first time experienced a walking meditation.

I had seen some footage once and thought of it as something very special and mystical and, well, it’s just walking around, usually in a circle around your meditation cushions whilst holding your hands together. Hands in front of you, left hand goes as a soft first into the right hand, with the right thumb closing the gap your curled left index finger makes. You then keep your arms and hands at a comfortable altitude and walk slowly and controlled at the same pace as the others until instructed to sit down again.

I expected a whole lot and ended up very disappointed. Most interestingly though, what annoyed me most, well no, surprised me, was my own resistance to it. My thoughts were (blank) (blank) (“Why am I here again? Why am I doing this stupid walk?”) (blank) (blank) (“I am now gonna walk to back to my tent, pack my gear, get in my car and escape”) (blank) (“Pappa Smurf, are we there yet?”). All thoughts, except for the last one, were real thoughts, and repeated themselves quite a lot.

Luckily, it’s evening now and we have a campfire going on now, I ‘d better go over there and check it out. It’s slowly getting dark and I spent the last 1,5 hours booking my Arabic course in Lebanon and round trip to Beirut. Great, time now to enjoy some FIRE !
30-07-2011

I woke up pretty rested. I thought it was actually kind of warm. Hmmmm must be late. Crap, its 8:54. I was planning to jump straight into the 9:15 meditation. Guess what, NOT!.

On the one hand, I guess it is a good sign, my mind and body are “slowing down”, I am slowly really arriving in this place. On the other hand I already imagine Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of Shambhala Buddhism, which is the lineage/denomination my retreat centre follows, appearing in my sleep and chasing me on the Tibetan mountain tops trying to beat me with a stick in order to make me take the program more seriously. It makes me smile.

Anyhow, for now I have another serious concern to take care of – not having had my breakfast.

Oh Lord, so many thoughts. I wish I had had the opportunity to write stuff down like every 30m. I almost jumped out of myself in order to go grab a pen and piece of paper. I have no idea where or how to start, but chronology is always a good one for a writer, so let’s try. On a separate piece of paper, I jotted down the following chronology: (10AM) Sitting / WALKING + SITTING + MEDITATION INSTRUCTOR meeting / WALKING / (11:48) ESCAPE. Hmmm, very clear, brilliant hahaha.

So yeeeeeeeah, starting at 10 AM was great. I mean last time I had such a wonderful 8.5 hour sleep must have been more than a month or so ago. And after all, I felt no sense of guilt or remorse for starting late. So we start the meditation seated. I continue with my Zen style, it feels ok, just a few adjustments of my body are needed. After a while we did a walking mediation, indoors. So we all stood up, moved the pillows to the centre of the room and started walking slowly clockwise. It’s awkward and fantastically weird. My dominant thoughts: (blank) (blank) (blank) (slowing pace to check my balance, breath seems regular and slow) (“Hey, how funny walking actually is.” I feel my feet as their different parts tickle the floor and my shifting weight pressures them, I then notice my legs trying to find balance which seems much more difficult now I go so slowly.) (blank) (blank) (blank) (“Yuck, it’s bloody warm, let’s see if I can open up a window whilst walking”) (blank) (“Ah, Trungpa’s photo, how must his life have been”) (“Dalai Lama, touring the world for his lost cause, preaching “My religion is kindness”, I love that thought, it is utterly brilliant”).

We have to sit down again, the so-called Samatha (which is Sanskrit for = sit your ass down and don’t do anything stupid) and continue meditation. No problem, until a fly decides to test my patience. My dominant thoughts in those moments: (“Oh, it’s in my hair, bugger off”) (“I don’t move, fly does not move”) (blank) (Fly goes and comes back to sit on my right eyelid. “Oh come on can’t you find a more suitable spot to fiddle about with your little legs and tentacles?”) (To which the fly’s response seems to be to stick it’s middle finger in my face, though with my eyes closed, I could of course not see… but I could FEEL that it proceeded to walk around and fiddle about on my eyelid and eyelashes as if there was no tomorrow.) (blank) (“Grrrrr”) (blank) (“I should not be angry, maybe it is a reincarnation of some lama, not the spitting animal one, the spiritual human one”) (“Let’s try and be one with the fly and enjoy its movements”) (My eye starts producing tears by now as it notices something is wrong and my mood swings violently from resistance to acceptance of the situation, and back and forth, and back again) (“Shit, enough alright” and I shake my head violently) (“Pfew”) (blank) (blank) (“Crap, it has now landed on my left eyelid!!!!”) (I shake my head once more) (blank) (It now lands on my nose, I am fit to burst out in laughter) (blank) (I still feel like laughing, cuz my nose tickles like hell, but with some effort manage to keep it inside and not roll over the floor in hysterical laughter.).
Anyhow, time to meet my meditation instructor now! So I get called out of the meditation room for a chat. Great, it’s the man of the three, exactly what I had hoped. Not because I think less of the two ladies, simply because I find so few men interested in spirituality that I enjoy and value male involvement and energy in such discussions. We have a nice chat in which we discuss Zen Buddhism versus Shambhala Buddhism meditation technique. I tell him that going from hands in cosmic mudra (too hard to explain, you can find a photo online for sure!) to hands simply resting on my legs, I dislike, and the same for a light smile and closed mouth versus and open mouth. The rest of the differences I can cope with. I do find it difficult to make the switch though, it’s throwing 4 years of practice out of the window. So what are these differences? Going from closed eyes to open eyes, from locked body and knees planted into the ground to loose body and knees pointing horizontal or even upwards… He suggested me to have a clean break from my previous practice, to start anew, see it all with fresh eyes. I think I will try. As someone later told me, Zen and Shambhala perfectly illustrate that between Japanese and Tibetan interpretations, the main difference is being uptight and strict versus being more loose and relaxed. It makes me giggle, because at least one Japanese person I know is actually TOTALLY loose, as in, a loose cannon ball. Anyhow, that was an inside joke, no worries if it’s not funny.

So I go back to the shrine room (which is what the meditation room is called) and fiddle around a little with different positions. All feels kind of right except the two aforementioned issues: my hands, after every change of position, seem to want to go back to the cosmic mudra and my eyes, when I am focused, almost automatically wish to close. Luckily, I am put out of my mindfucking misery by a second walking mediation, again indoors. As we walk and walk and walk, my dominant thoughts are simply for the body. I pay even more special attention to my legs. I try taking bigger and slower steps with intention, tightening my every muscle to execute this as precisely as possible. Also, I really solidly plant my heel first at each step which should open the first chakra (which resides in your heel), which, among other things I suppose, is good for grounding. Airy fairy people like yours truly should benefit from that. I feel my bones, my ligaments, my muscles and their interaction which enables me to walk. It’s quite awkward to dissect a simple act such as walking into such detail. It makes me feel very, skeletal?

Now we go in to the last sitting meditation for the day and I am not really focused. I have many thoughts, all immediately addressed or followed up by others. Also, I just wanna write, my head is so full, I need to squeeze my soaked inner sponge in order to be able to absorb anything (a)new. Then, a bomb drops as three thoughts instantly manifest into concrete action. A girl is crying, I feel like handing her a tissue, the moment my thought arises somebody does exactly that. My legs hurt and I want to slowly get out of my meditation pose for a short resting pose (which is legs up and aligned, feet on the ground together and knees together), the moment the thought arises somebody does exactly that. I feel like leaving, my head is full, but we are in a small shrine room today and I do not wanna make a fuss, the moment the thought arises, somebody walks into the room, leaving the door open and making noise, my perfect excuse for squeezing out. As I leave the room, with an already full head, another train of thoughts overwhelms me: further. If many of my thoughts are in fact those of others, something I have started thinking some months ago but now manifests with such intensity, where does that place me? Where are my own thoughts? How do I recognize them? I want a gift, not a curse. I wanna understand what it means. Is it pure coincidence? Am I just making a big fuss out of it? This train of thoughts accelerates like a snowball and leaves me with a splitting headache, which slowly diminishes as I write up these words in my diary…

At lunch, I eat like a maniac, terribly hungry from having skipped breakfast. The afternoon meditations, another few rounds of sitting and walking meditation, are great. Not too spectacular for me though… but perhaps that is a good thing.

What is more interesting, between lunch and afternoon practice, I disappear into the woods with one of the fellow participants. We both felt like singing and so we did. [Some of you may have missed this, but I have been taking 6 months of classical singing lessons by now, as a tenor.] She is a singer/songwriter by profession, and by calling, I would add, so needless to say I was utterly… terrified, Rightfully so, because after some warm-up exercises on my end I let her start the singing and I was treated to a mindboggling solo concert, which me as solo audience enjoyed thoroughly. I sang as well. Wait wait, I mean, I sang TOO, not AS WELL as she did hahaha. But hey, the fact that I dared to sing after her at all was quite something for me. Let me give you some context here: if you are an upcoming MC and Eminem or Busta Rhymes just dished out a freestyle rhyme in front of that same crowd and hands you his still fuming mic, or if you find yourself wearing a tuxedo, behind the scenes of an Opera where Pavarotti was just performing an aria and asks you out of the blue to please take over… ehnm, you understand now what I mean by embarrassment? Anyhow, my poise, noise (!) and confidence keep growing, and my voice control too. I also manage to start finding my own variations/interpretations to great classics such as “Fenesta Che Lucive”, “O Sole Mio” and “Core ‘Ngrato”. I actually wanna try singing “Nessun Dorma”, but it terrifies me, let’s see when the courage for that will come up . [I will, later on towards the end of the programme!]

Later that night, I am beatboxing and freestyling with another participant, from English to Spanish, Spanglish, Italian and Russian. We are totally having fun, but my rhymes are still slow, the flow has gone solo, outta here, and back nono, slowly coming back, one day in the track, right back in my face, spat out through my mouth in craze… yo yo (I made this rhyme up as I am writing now haha). Anyway, It will not be till the coming days that my rhymes start flying out.
31-07-2011

There is but music in my head, and lyrics. Sadly, there is also restlessness, as I had an absolute crap sleep last night, waking up a million times, not on my mattress but next to it, feeling cold and somehow anxious. I hope it is the anxiety of a brain awaiting the destruction of some routine, some thinking patterns that are ready for the next level, in favour of my search for the self. [As the great Rumi says, “Our only mission in life is to destroy those inside barriers that exist between us and love”. Voila`, that is what I am doing here in my first part of my own version of EAT, PRAY, LOVE, where I started with the PRAY part…;-)]

Ow, but wait, behind me there are two people having sex in the tent. I guess they are forgetting about not being at home, but rather some place where their only sound proofing is a flimsy thin layer of tent. Haha, oh, what, they already finished? So soon a climax, gosh, amateurs…

So anyhow, where was I? The soul, infinitely wise (and a big crybaby at the same time, have not figured that one out yet) and your every cell, which probably contains the Alpha and the Omega about your life, and the universe at large.
Hmm wait, a fly was just crawling up my arm and then it started chilling on this very piece of paper I am writing on to which I said … ups, nothing, it already flew away. It’s so awkward, so check this. Some wise people told me once that the intention with which a name is given, along with the name itself, determine much of your spiritual path, and challenges, along the path in this life. So if I am named after St. Francis, why o why, among many other of his qualities, I am not just a little but totally and utterly lacking any basic communication skills with the animal kingdom? I mean, how hard can “flytalic” or “flyish” be? It drives me mad = I, lingvus freak maximus, have not even found one single animal language I can communicate in. Grrrrr!

In the afternoon meditations, not too many bombastic things happening… the only thing steadily growing is my back pain… the rest sort of comes and goes. [That “sort of coming and going” is actually one of the top messages and reminders of Buddhism, impermanence of everything / nothing is permanent, being the only certainty in the universe].

Euhm, I did do one interesting ad-hoc contemplative meditation which requires massive concentration, but I started it just before a walking meditation, so with the standing up and walking about part my concentration got messed up and I lost my zen… a bit, tried to continue it and somewhat completed it still. I cannot wait to soon ace it and repeat it till the end of times. If I learn to do this meditation properly, and I will, it is the most transformative meditation technique practice I have ever come across. So what is it? I will not tell you. I am not sure who is ready to hear such a message as the one put forward by this meditation. More importantly, I want to experience it first as wholely as I can, then it is the time to try and explain it if I can.
01-08-2011

Actually there was more yesterday. For example, during meditation I got really annoyed at some people seemingly unserious in the meditation practice. Walking in and out all the time, doing the walking meditation walking seemingly kinda half-drunk as if they had no real interest. Yes, it annoyed me, and at the same time not, because after these thoughts I started to observe the observer, me, and I disidentified from these thoughts.

It slowly made me laugh, realizing that later on, when I was called to fulfill my umzeh (timekeeper) and gatekeeper tasks during meditations, I chickened out citing attachment to my Christian tradition giving me a mental block in trying officially perform any Buddhist function. Ergo me, the fashion Buddhist and renegade Catholic, was being “holier than thou” about Buddhist rules and form…? Bhuahahahah silly me.

Ghanywaysssss… we later that night had a phenomenal camp fire with one of the participant dropping magic/philosophy acts, a heartwarming solo singer, a sensational sax player and a sing along crazy with some short & sweet songs.

What I enjoyed most was another exercise yet… improv. With 20 smth people around the camp fire in by now pitch darkness where faces are distorted and contours fade into a happy blurry patch. Everybody throws in a note, no matter what, no matter how long, the only instructions are to keep the same note and carry it with all the breath you have, and you may then start anew with the same, or another note, Silence, at first. Then a few people start humming, a first note is tossed into the fire by a courageous soul, soon more follow, the intensity and volume increase. Soon, everybody is in and the sax kicks in for a little improv on top of all the notes. Again, notes are dropped, this time it is the solo singer who does the improvisation, caressing and tickling the top of our notes with a sweet and comforting voice. It was downright magic, and the electricity and vibe of the group and this particular exercise cannot be described faithfully enough by the pen painting this paper with mere letters and words.

I am sure though, you imagination will do the trick.

Do you have the picture in your head and the sound in your ears? Good, now I can give you my approximation… I could only say it is savage like a sizzling and cracking tesla coil firing up and ready to jolt some object, gentle like a bumblebee hopscotching from flower to flower in the distance, mysterious like a night in the deafening silence of the endless desert.

Francescopod? No action for him yet. My time will come I told myself standing grumpy on the sidelines. Some people asked me to sing, but the whole evening was prepared without me so I felt it to be inappropriate to say “Hey by the way, I am going to wrap up your show now.”

Anyhow, back at the tents, Mr. Beatbox & I started beatboxing & freestyling. Have not done that in ages before that one other time a few days back so… jikes. Anoyhow, needless to say, I was back in the game, mastering my flow, not just so so, more like “hell yeah you know”, turn it up a little, spookier than… [composed these again as I write this down] ah crap, where has my mojo gone ? Anyhow, taking turns rapping and beatboxing in English, Spanish and Spanglish we entertained ourselves a lot, as well as an ever growing crowd, for quite a while.

If I am shaking now it is because I slept so little as my head is constantly producing new funky beats & sizzling rhymes, which is pretty cool if you ask me, but hey, even a flowmaster got’s to sleep… aaaaight? So damn it, be quiet now. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
4-8-2011

Two blank days just passed.

Not that there was not enough writing material, I just was unable to find time to write anything down till now. I choose to just skip and move on for the sake of this diary: SELECT – DELETE – OK

Well, ok, just a few highlights then. The children’s reign of terror has started yesterday (as our mornings, for a week, will consist in taking care of some children whose parents have come over for a retreat); there was a monsoon-in-Africa worthy thunderstorm in which I sang “O Sole Mio” in the pouring rain, and ran around and outside of the DCL terrain in boxer shorts, running shorts and running shoes like a caveman on a bad hairday. ; we enjoyed two phenomenal lectures, one on the Buddhist “4 reminders” and specifically in the context of romantic relationships and one on the concept of “doubt”, for the next talks I hope to have my diary around so I can take some notes and share. Very much regret this because they were very good.

So anyways, I did not walk out in the middle of a lecture to really write, but to read. To read though, I want an empty mind, so I squeezed my inner sponge into whatever you are reading right now… and I am ready. See you later.

I am off again into a book that is utterly, cosmically, mindblowing – Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”.

Every time I open it, it seems a different book altogether, and it’s not like years pass between one read and the other, I am talking about months, sometimes merely weeks. I am not sure any words, for sure not mine, can do this book any justice. Would crying it out for you do?

If love is “trembling happiness”, as Khalil Gibran says, and when we cry when we feel joy at the core level of our being, I could only cry it your way I guess.

If you are ready for any kind of awakening of your true self or want to get rid of some ballast you are, or think to be, carrying (which, I would argue, is the EXACT same thing), if you feel really want to be emotionally hung upside down and turned inside out, or if you simply like books that give you a smack in the face, look no further…. this is it.

For more info on Shambhala Buddhism vision:

http://www.shambhala.org/about_shambhala.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala

For more info on Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, here are two suggestions (do read the accounts of his death). Also, if you are interested, do read up on his eldest son, Mipham Rinpoche, current holder of the Shambhala lineage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chögyam_Trungpa

http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/chogyam-trungpa.php

Stay tuned for weeks two and three of my experience in Dechen Choling. I am still working on typing up the notes from my diary. So, till then, thanks for your patience and take care.

Ciao.

————————————————————————————————-

WEEK 2 = 5 August to 12 August 2011

[A few notes before you read. First, this text you are about to read is a straight lift from my diary, raw and uncut, so do not expect it to be sophisticated nor for it to be my "final" opinion on stuff ; Second, whenever I think an important detail or explanation was forgotten that would help the reader understand the context of the experience better, I have inserted it in square brackets, just like this bit you are reading now].

6-8-2011

A few evenings ago I had a beautiful conversation with a girl in my group.

I realized something special was occurring, which has happened many times before in my life, and almost every time it occurs, it grows in intensity.

In essence, this is what happens = someone talks, I listen, the person keeps talking, I listen, and on and on and on.

I sometimes snap out of my zen mode and ask a question, which I invariably regret (unless it is a simple clarification question) because it interrupts the flow of the person’s speech and the space of comfort and acceptance your silence provides. This space that with time elapsing becomes more and more profound, as emotions and thoughts grow in intensity. I just love this the more it happens, the more I look the person in the eyes and I wanna cry the person’s joy and pains as their story unfolds, but I do not, I keep my space and my peace (if I manage).

So anyhow, I never fully appreciated this process until just now reading again a passage from “The Power of Now” which states the following

“True relationship becomes possible only when there is an awareness of Being. Coming from Being, you will perceive another person’s body and mind just as a screen behind which you can feel their true reality, as you feel yours. So, when confronted with someone else’s suffering or unconscious behavior you stay present and in touch with Being and are thus able to look beyond the form and feel the other person’s radiant and pure being through your own.”

Wow, I am speechless.

It makes so much sense that my swelling tears are those of joy, love perhaps, because I see a flower blossoming. I am listening to suffering, hope, frustration, bitterness, appreciation and no matter in which cocktails of ingredients, I see, in Matrix-code fashion if you will, a parallel image of something much more true, much more real. Where the ego or mind of the person talk, I guess I can simultaneously see their immortal soul / beyond the mind, and time and time again, I am speechless, and more than once, overwhelmed.

If you are unsure as to what this is, or how it works, try listening in at a next conversation, and not utter a single word. Your ego/mind will present its usual thoughts, answers, questions, distractions, and will perhaps even start punishing you for not uttering them. Try to resist. Just smile, or nod, or shake your head when the conversation is directed at you. Others may make a remark about your silence, or look at you confused or even with disdain. More importantly, at some point in time, most of the noisemaking activity in your mind will (largely) stop. Enjoy the awkward silence in your head… and see what happens inside of you. If nothing happens, that is still good, as it will show to yourself that silence is golden sometimes.

———–

7-8-2011

Yesterday there was lots more meditation… duh !

Not much to share there. Just a few things.

During the last meditation I could not help but think of the indigenous peoples of our world. I guess, in these weeks, my lifestyle recalls much of what most people in history have lived like, and, in some pockets of the world, still do. I am not talking about poverty here, more about people who choose willfully a traditional/simple life, to live as their ancestors/people lived before them, and embrace it fully.

Although work wise I hated this experience, my first ever “serious” work experience was an internship for an organization aiming to be a kind of UN for indigenous peoples and first nations all over the world. The romantic notion of people knowing a land, and the flora and fauna on it, and treating everything in a respectful, dignified and healthy manner had fascinated me.

I guess part of my spiritual path has been about finding some meaning to this, and trying to learn from whatever bits and pieces of information I could find. During the meditation today, I simply dedicated some thoughts to that, telling the indigenous peoples and first nations that the time that the world will (once again) appreciate their wisdom, is near. I have no concrete evidence for this, it is a feeling, and it gets stronger and its encouraged by bits and pieces of information I find everywhere. Enough about this for now.

In the evening, something very particular happened (to not get your hopes up, it was NOT a majestic vision of a Native American chief telling me about the future of our planet). We went to a talk by a long time Buddhist who lives around here. Besides his musical barn which is a beautiful sight, he gave us a short talk about what Native Americans consider to be the 5 things in life that, when absent, cause disease in a person. I had no pen and paper with me, so sadly I cannot give you the nuances, which I really really regret.

In plain words, this is what he said. The 5 reminders were: honour your parents (somehow, no matter what kind of relationship you may have with them) ; honour the earth (pollute as little as possible, use only what you need and give thanks for that which you use) ; keep promises and vows you make (they carry strong emotional and spiritual power, so think well before you make/take/break them) ; develop your talents (do that which you love doing and do it to the best of your abilities) ; and, listen to your intuition (trust your other-than-logic thoughts, those which give you a good feeling).

My jaw dropped to the floor when I heard this message.

I was absolutely astonished that a list which on a level of logic/intellect feels so incongruent has nevertheless absolute emotional and spiritual coherency for me. I find it such a wise and simple formula and, examining myself through these five lenses, I notice that I found them important already without understanding this healing power, nor seeing the interconnection between them.

Wow, I can only say wow, and my recent leap forward in the last two categories (by quitting my job and going for my passions) cannot but feel terribly good.

Oh, I almost forgot. One or two days ago, I am not sure anymore and could not be bothered to find out, something magical happened = we had our “men’s circle”. After the women had an all-pink assembly in which they surely scolded and cursed men for eons to come and gossiped their asses off (J/K)… it was time for the men to… do the same?

Woooohaaa. I feel my inner Fred Flintstone coming up in a big ol’ yabba dabba doo. It was going to be a mighty and powerful experience. We did two main exercises. The idea of the men’s circle was simply to sit around with men of all ages, to exchange views and experiences on what it means to be a man, now, yesterday and tomorrow.

One exercise was to sit in a circle with 4 people in total and each take a turn to talk, whilst the other 3 remain in absolute silence, when the person with the talking stick recounts a day in his life with his father at age fifteen. It was sick, each of their fathers had an element my dad has too: loving to cook on special days, especially fish; being the exploratory driver of the family, taking to new places, eating new foods and many other things.

Some stories were filled with quite some tragedy, so much so that I almost felt guilty about having a good relationship with my own dad. Anyhow, I am neither responsible for their experiences, nor their emotions, so whatever they do with my story I cannot control anyway… so I just observed my thought and did not judge it.

[There is a great story on what to do with emotions = treat them as gifts.

Once upon a time in Japan lived a great samurai master. When he retired, he opened a samurai academy for young pupils. It was a fantastic place to learn about both the inner and outer warriorship of the samurai.

One of the pupils had never lost a fight thanks to his astonishing ability to counterattack any opponent by simply imitating, and instantly improving, the opponent’s technique. The only drawback was that he was unable to start a fight; he had to provoke the opponent into attacking first.

This young student one day grew arrogant and challenged the old samurai master to a fight, right in the middle of practice, in front of all the students.

Absolute silence.

In shock, the students looked at the scene unfolding in front of their eyes. The young student walked up to the master and tried to trick him into fighting,

He scolded at his teacher. No reaction.

He then spat on the old master. No reaction.

With his frustration growing, his desperation to fight brought him to even do the unheard of in Japan; he insulted the great samurai’s ancestors.

Still, there was no reaction.

Fuming with anger, he ran away confused, angry and embittered. The other students still did not dare to move, remaining in shock at what had just happened.

After some time, one of the pupils did however step up and asked in a trembling voice the question that was on everybody’s lips: “Great master, why did you tolerate such insolence from one of our fellow students?”.

The old master smiled and answered: “My dear students, if someone comes to you with a gift, and you refuse that gift… to whom does it belong?”]

I recounted the day my dad took me to Geneva to visit the Car Show. Not sure I was exactly 15, but I was certainly not older. It was a great day which I remember it with great fondness. It was (one of) the first time(s) a passion I have cultivated largely myself in my family was being honoured in such a profound way. It was fun, and we enjoyed the one on one time as well. I remember it as a very happy occasion together, and one in which he, even though not the biggest fan of cars, still chose to stimulate my passion and invested time and energy in it. When I think back of that, that memory tends to fade as a car-related memory in favour of a father-son trip.

The second exercise, pfew.

Let me sit up straight, before having the privilege of recounting it.

It was very very …. No good word for it hahaha. So I will first explain the exercise and then tell you what I experienced.

The idea of the exercise was to visualize the father lineage and feel its energy. You stand firmly on your two feet, take a few deep breaths, feel roots growing out of your feet, feel your masculine energy, whatever it exactly means to you. Breathe in, breath out slowly and intensely, increase that masculine energy, bring it to the surface. Then, visualize your father, or caretaker(s), behind you, at a distance you feel comfortable with. Feel his energy moving through you, feel the positive things that were/are there and which you appreciate from your father. When you have found and felt those elements for a while, visualize your father’s father. If you have no recollection of him, imagine someone anyway. Feel his energy moving through you, feel the positive things that were/are there and which you appreciate from this grandfather. Repeat for father of your grandfather, if you manage to feel something. Then, visualize your entire lineage, from the beginning of times. Feel all of your male ancestors. Now, if you are ready for it, slowly turn around and face them. Look at them, feel, and make any gesture or comment you feel like, then slowly come back to the here and now and sit down.

You may have guessed it by reading the exercise that it has the potential to trigger quite something, it turned out special indeed for me.

So now my experience.

My dad showed clearly. I pictured him right behind me, with a big smile, a very proud dad. So proud, that despite having his arms stretched and leaning on my shoulders already, he at some point steps up to me and hugs me from behind, very firmly. Shortly thereafter, he lets go. He takes a step back, puts his hand under his chin and gently scratches his beard, and nods, like saying “Go get them tiger, you do not need me anymore, you have all it takes”.

My father’s father was also easy to imagine. I remembered walking around in his house in Bra, waking up in the early early morning as a small child and following his daily round in his small greenhouse where he kept his collection of orchids. In each one of the rooms, we measured temperature, humidity and something else which I keep forgetting. We wrote that down in a notebook with utmost diligence. Then we would water the plants. I loved this all, it gave me a special way to connect with this kind, a bit mysterious old gentleman that I saw only a few weeks per year. My next thoughts were about his passion for traveling, and how I would have loved telling him that I went to one of his favourite countries, Yemen, and how cool it would have been to exchange stories about it. [Actually, now I think about it, one of the few complete self-invented phrases I ever pulled out in Arabic whilst in Yemen was to say that “my grandfather visited a long time ago, and that he was now with Allah”].

The father of my grandfather, not knowing much about him and not knowing how he looks like, I was unsure as to his energy but I for some strange reason could picture him very clearly.

When it was time to face the lineage, I was almost shaking like a leaf, but I was so curious, and already so full of energy and excitement that I went for it. As I slowly turned round, not to lose my connection to the ground, the pain I had in my left arm was increasing steadily, reaching almost unbearable levels [I have some blood circulation problems every now and then which cause my left arm to lose sensitivity, but now it felt also squeezed and crushed on top of that].

Facing my lineage was mighty. Just mighty.

I pictured a looooooong line of men going back to ancient times. This shape was a sort of S-like shape, much like the monument to the fallen soldiers in WWII in Bra’s cemetery. There was a dark space in which this happened, but the line of men was light and surrounded by cosmic flashes of light and each had their hands on the shoulders of the man in front. They were all staring at me.

It was silent.

I was unsure about what was going to happen, if anything at all.

At some point, they let go of the shoulders, faced each other. They then erupted in smiles, handshakes, hugs and kisses, whilst staring at me. They looked proud of me, very proud, and I was utterly amazed. I was so humbled, I felt like crying, I am now crying as I type up this experience. It was so beautiful I could almost not believe it, especially because I always question myself so much that I am never sure I can feel proud of myself, nor what my family thinks of me. Well, I know somewhere in the back of my mind that they are proud of me in most ways, but I do not always accept that feeling somehow. Then, I decided it was enough, I need to go back to planet earth, so I took a big big bow, smiled to my ancestors, and spent the next 5 minutes trying to revive my arm.

—

9-8-2011

We are almost halfway the programme.

I am happy because sleeping in a tent still sucks big time.

How could I ever miss waking up full of insect bites, shaking from the cold and/or with a back feeling like a plank of wood? Oh, and don’t get me started on the tent aroma… I could fill pages about the smell that accumulates in a tent, no matter how much you try to air it, but let’s not go there shall we? At the same time, there is something raw and pure about waking up at a time (more or less) and temperature (for sure) dictated by nature, it’s cool to take a dump in an eco-toilet that uses no water but woodchips to breakdown whatever comes out of you, and it’s cool in a weird way to be full of insect bites, much like wartime scars

Besides that, or on top should I say, it’s quite phenomenal to be here and live this lifestyle: wake up, breakfast together, activities together, lunch together, activities together, dinner together, camp fire together, sleep. I suddenly realized something yesterday evening when walking back from the toilet blocks to my tent and seeing the campfire from a distance: this is raw, pure community life. It’s an uncomplicated life, we all struggle with different aspects of it (the more so because most of us participants are city people), but at the end of the day it gives more peace of mind, a basic life structure and little to no BS distracting you from what life really is. I think our species must have started with some similar form, and many of today’s surviving first nations/native/indigenous peoples still do. As such, probably, it is not only the oldest but also the most sustained way of living in the world. I never thought the meaning of primitive and sustainable/advanced could be so close together.

During the latter part of yesterday afternoon’s meditation session, all the images that popped in my mind were about… girls. It’s funny that, in a week of letting thoughts run freely many hours per day, it has taken me so long to have this subject fly by on the mental highway! Yes, you will have guessed correctly that after that thought, my meditation practice did not bring me much further, ehm, spiritually speaking. By now, you are already wondering, I sense, whether I am hunting down the girls here… Well, not really, though I must admit that Buddhist girls are somehow very very cute and intellectually/ emotionally/ spiritually pretty advanced and therefore… arrrgh anyhow no matter what excuses I make up in my head almost no girl in my group passes the simple mathematical rule of girl’s age needing to be minimum of guy’s age divided by two plus seven. Ergo =  I tell myself “No, no, no! BAD FRANCESCO! Foei (this is Dutch and untranslatable, sorry!) ! Stay out of prison and keep your blood where it’s supposed to be… in your head!”

Shit, it’s 7:55, I really need a shower, I smell like shit and breakfast starts in five minutes. But first, let’s see if I can scavenge some more of those fine blueberries from the bushes around our tents.

I just had lunch now and I am really stuffed… AND tired. Stuffed from overcooked, unsalted penne with too much egg and a delicious vegetable sauce. The cake, some kind of carrot-walnut cake, was uberawesome

Kids were fun this morning. I read Peter Pan to them, but it was in French so I had to constantly translate for my grand VIP audience of two Dutch boys and two Dutch girls. At some point there were 5 kiddos, a cute French dude popped by (he looks like a carbon copy of Benigni’s son in “La Vita e` Bella”). He looked at the text in French, me talking jibberish in a non-French devilish tongue, looked at the text again, looked at me again with a face expressing “QUOI?” and slowly made his way out with his confused stare. Otherwise, let’s see, I was tossing about German kids, squashing a French girl and tickling her to an almost certain death, and marching outside with a drill sergeant and four kids (two being Dutch and needing my translation services).  YEAAAHHH kids rule!

The Daddy Day Care we have going on here will last another 3 days I believe. It’s pretty cool actually on many fronts: one of them is the reawakening of what is the most developed/stressed/exasperated/ready-to-explode part of my brain, my language centre. It will serve me a great deal for my coming months in the Arab world [in which I am giving myself a ridiculously little 4 months to learn MSA and two Arabic dialects].

Ow, I forgot to mention that we have silence day today! Starting with lunch, my entire group’s rest of the day is now silent until sunrise. Except for functional talk like for our cleaning tasks or to say “Hey moron you are standing on my foot” we are to be quiet. It’s a form of meditation almost, a challenge to the mind to not generate too much BS or risk leading to an explosion of the head, as the steam valve (= the mouth) is shut tight and not allowed to let any pressure out. Funnily enough the other groups in the village are not doing this practice simultaneously so both kids and adults have already come to me in the afternoon to say or ask this and that. If simple, I smile or nod. If complex, I smile/nod and make some gestures. If very complex, I stick out my middle finger.

That last phrase was a joke.

When things tend to be very complex, what I really do is I make a serious face and point to the sticker on my shirt spelling “ GOLDEN SILENCE”. It’s intriguing to be dumb for a day, and frustrating, and inspiring.

It’s late afternoon and there is a talk going on. For a change, I have my diary around. Yeyy.

[So, as also with the other talks I will record here, I try to write up as much ad verbatim, without interpretation and without summarizing. Sometimes I could not keep up and therefore you will notice some gaps in the various thoughts presented].

“So today we will talk about romance, sex and relationships right?

Let me start with basic goodness though. Basic goodness is basic being. Just being, and acknowledging that. What’s basic about it? It is something in us which is always there. It is not just physical, it is also mental. Why is it good? It is not good as in the opposite of bad. There is simply no better word than “good” in the English language. Humans, dog shit, thoughts, bodies, everything that is Buddhists believe to be basically good. With parts of the body, there is stuff we all share, like a nose, others, like sexual organs, are bound to the sex we are born with.

Talking about private parts, what is all the fuss about it? One day, as a little girl, I went into a toilet with a boy my age because we both were curious about each other’s private parts. We had a peek and were impressed. Once about to get out, there was knocking on the door. It was a teacher, there was no escape. We were caught and beaten by our respective parents. Such experiences, which we may all more or less have lived as children or young teens, make it hard to experience your body as basically good. It is simply the way it is, whether you like it or not. The reason we do not experience basic goodness is because often we do not experience it because of the chattering of our mind.

The basis of coming into this life is sex. Ergo, we are sexual beings, we cannot avoid it. If we deny it, we deny our own basic goodness.

I will talk about four things today; 1) Sex with love. 2) Sex without love. 3) Love without sex. 4) Tantric sex.

[Hold your horses dear reader, don’t you sneakily skip to part four directly…]

1)      When I talk about sex, it is not just the private parts coming together. It is eroticism, because when you look at someone it can trigger energy (ushering in a kiss or hug for example). Usually, we experience this as positive. Then our mind has thoughts, desires, it wants to do something about it, to prolong and sustain that feeling. So, when we care for and want to protect that other person, this gives an experience I would call sacred space. You open up, you surrender to that person. It opens up energy, time can stop for you. I think that it is something we inherently want. If I look at you nothing happens (chuckling by us!) but in another context, with others, it can happen! Then, you could fall in love. However, if one of the persons wants and the other not, the other becomes meat, selfishness may kick in and, well, you know the rest…

2)      One night stand. When you are young and cool it looks quite all right. So basically you wanna make love, but it is not going to be my partner. So far as you are young and clearly understanding each other’s “sex only” it can sort of work. Also, sex without love can give quite some emptiness. And, you know, sex can make babies… unwanted pregnancy creates issues for all three. Different reasons may exist for sex without love. It can be a sport, statistics with your friends, showing off or needing to feel “power over” the other person.

3)      When I was 18 I met a guy and we loved each other a lot, without sex. It was strangely enough fantastic. I am sure some of you will have had a similar experience. Also, in long term relationships, when people are married for a while sex often gets boring. Other things than sex can then be shared and cultivated instead.

4)      Tibetan monks and nuns learn how to integrate male and female energies in their own body. As such, they do not need a partner. Other tantric schools do “use” the body. It takes lots of training with the own body, then they use the body of another. All are still responsible for their own arousal, you go into controlling energies and coming to unification. Tantra is huge, tantric sex is tiny. There are many ways to reach that desired unison. What prevents a profound sexual experience? Not seeing the basic goodness in oneself and/or the other. This triggers possession, jealousy and can destroy relationships. In a wider context, Christianity did a lot of damage to sexuality as well, but in this day and age we can slowly work on repairing it.

Sex is basically communication with all our body and senses. Joy is an essential ingredient therein. Without joy in life, there is little. Don’t let yourself be pushed in sex, just feel and go from what the feeling tells you.”

——–

10-08-2011

It’s early morning and the silence round will finish as soon as I walk out of my tent to go brush my teeth.

I never thought it would feel not only nice, but even sort of natural.

And funny, funny as hell, Lord have we laughed.

Like a bunch of kids, and at the campfire yesterday evening too, just gazing at the campfire and at each other… utterly brilliant and, somehow, completely hilarious. Later I have a discussion about this with another participant. We come to the conclusion that silence is so funny because it forces you in the present moment when around others. You see, when out of words to convey a message, it is difficult to convey concepts, ideas and actions that refer to the past or future. As such, you tend to focus on the Now, and on the most basic of body language conversations, or simple gazes, to get your point across. This makes you super aware of your surroundings, as your other senses are on full alert. This, combined with the great vibe among our group, made sure that no person tripping, dropping a fork, making a funny face during meditation or doing anything other than being totally “normal” was spared from laughter. It also tended to go in waves, back and forth laughter, and then laughter about the laughter, and then people having to leave the scene because they get stomach cramps from laughing… and people laughing about that too! Crazy Buddhists, I love them, I love… us.

This afternoon, we listened to a recorded lecture by the Sakyong. The Sakyong is the current lineage holder of Shambhala. Yes, those of you who paid attention in the recount of week 1 will remember that he is the son of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, namely Mipham Rinpoche.

[Again, please remember I was taking notes, so that bits and pieces are missing and at times the text seems to lack coherence… well that is true, because I cannot always keep up haha]

“What our community, the sangha, does is ultimately more important than I, the leader. So, when people question my wisdom, my state of enlightenment, my interaction with other people etc that is totally fair. I will tell you more, I believe one can tell the greatness of a teacher by observing the students. Yes it is useful to have guidance and to learn from someone. However, the teacher/guru principle is not the continuity factor going forward.

In Shambhala we say “basic goodness”, which comes from the Tibetan words meaning “from the beginning” and “pure/good/complete”. As you know, I just completed a one year retreat and I thought a lot about it. My conclusion is that yes, there is basic goodness (he chuckles).

As things grow in complexity, we tend to look for complex solutions. Why not simple ones instead?

Television and other stuff questions our basic goodness, with lots of violence among others. There is a transition now though. I imagine a village, I imagine a group of people where one can ask; “Is life good?” This group can answer “Yes, life is good” and really mean it. Does that mean life is easy? No, it can be, but people still have tensions, relationships, parking problems, bad weather etc.

I will not always be here and not always will there be someone around to tell you that you have basic goodness. So what do you transmit? What do your heart and mind communicate every day? Reflect on that transmission, and learn from it. How does the mind think about itself? When you woke up, what did you think? Happy or not, confident or not… that has a profound effect on your every day.

We have so little patience these days… not even for ehm, slow internet! Things seem to be quicker and more under our control. But does it change the humanness? No. A thousand years ago or not is the same for the human mind or body, which still want to be in control.

Many people begin and stop meditation. Meditation does not do anything wrong… but expectations of its effects tend to differ.

Now I want to talk about bravery = warriorship in Shambhala. There are 3 kinds of bravery; in mind, in speech and in body.

Basic goodness may cast doubts. Doubt is a forked mind in meditation terms. If you want to feel, your mind has to be with you. You know that, because you know it is hard to feel two different things simultaneously. With meditation, we gain trust in our mind. The notion of warriorship means not falling apart in front of obstacles. So what causes doubt in meditation? We do a dance between conceptuality and real feelings.

This bravery has not just daring in it, it is also about sensitivity, gentleness, resilience, brilliance. So when something arises during meditations, when a thought comes and we believe it. So our goal with MIND is not to give into anything that is occurring. So how can you tell when you are clinging? You feel tired, anxious. In terms of SPEECH, bravery means being free of gossip. Gossip means words coming out in an uncontrolled way and diminishing the reputation of the person and/or hurt another person. When we have no bravery in speech, our life become like an echo.

With bravery in MIND, we obtain clarity. With bravery in SPEECH, truthfulness/directness. With bravery in BODY, its embodiment & strength. In the MIND, when having less bravery, we trust our thinking less and deciding what to do is difficult. In SPEECH, people do not trust us or we need more words to convey a message. In BODY, we become more scared, health deteriorates.

Being true with gentleness is important. In an aggressive and speedy culture we can present different methods or messages. So people may want meditation, spirituality from the East. So they add it to their lives. Fine if that helps. However, that is different, not a very genuine way of relating. If we cannot manifest it, we will not be here anymore at some point. Now we get science to prove mindful meditation works, something we Tibetans already knew (he chuckles). So far, so good, pfew haha! But also people believe soft methods do not work. But compassion goodness and peace are actually very strong. It takes a strong person to use them.

So it sounds good, but don’t get me mad with this! Nowadays we threaten people saying “Hey, stop doing that, or I will smack you!” I think it should be vice versa: “Don’t let me get more gentle with you, you will get really in trouble if I do that” (he chuckles). Basic goodness has no opposite.

As spiritual teacher and lineage holder, every day I get requests for prayers for sick and dead people, a constant reminder of the fragility of life. It is also patternless. Not only old people get sick and die.

Also, in modern, life sickness and death is often taking part behind the scenes, in a hospital, in a retirement home.

So when you get up in the morning give praise, you are alive, it is powerful.

Let it touch you, not to scare you, but to help you appreciate your life. It makes us deeper people, character, as opposed to shallow and superficial.”

——-

11-08-2011

Brrrr it’s freaking cold. Despite my two extra blankets, I still had a pretty rough sleep.

Yesterday at the campfire I gave two massages, trying to perfect an important art Also, I was beatboxing and freestlying in English, Spanish, Italian… and Russian. Surprisingly, the Russian freestyle worked out damn well, though I butchered the long words quite a lot in order to cram them into a funky beat.

Today I am going to sing that the closing ceremony of the parent’s retreat, so also the children we took care of will be there. I will have to sing in a pretty small room, one of the shrine rooms, which measures about 15 by 20 metres. I hope people will not sue me for damage to their eardrums afterwards… ;-(  Ok, gotta run now, it’s 9 and I have the last morning with the children to supervise.

We have a phenomenal talk this afternoon but I am interpreting for one of our Spanish participants, so I cannot write anything down. Anyway, the basic message was simple: to be in the Now, don’t make a storyline in your head, just be in the moment. For example, when seeing somebody on the street, your thoughts may start labeling age, appearance, etc, or the person looks like somebody we know, ah yes that asshole which still owes me money etc etc. Why all this jibberish? Just be. You know you can simply be by the manner in which you interpret say, a soft wind breeze. You can view it as a simple current of air. Or, you can look at it as the freshness of nature itself, a welcome cooling for your body, a reminder from nature to tell you “I am here for you too”, a caress from God to remind you that God is inside you.

Voila`, that is quite a different level of magnitude, is it not?

So, what happened at the big ceremony yesterday? Well well, quite a lot ! So as I mentioned, I was to start singing in a rather small room, with windows open, so people, with a prosecco glass in hand, would finish it up and slowly start walking inside. So I blew off “Fenesta Che Lucive” and the moment I opened my tramp the cocktail party came to a screeching halt as people flocked to the open windows to see who that goofy guy was who suddenly started singing in the shrine room. By the time I started “O Sole Mio” quite a number of kids had already entered and started, during the song, to jump on me, pull me by the arm and some even smacked me on the ass, others were softly hitting the gong beside me and stealing the mic from the ground, to which I thought “O Lord …Mio” but it actually made me laugh. So I continued the song with a slight giggle in my voice. Then, once everybody was inside, I sang a song for the kids, where I first asked the parents to translate the lyrics and telling them I would mime the text as I would be singing. Also, I told the parents, you know the song, like for sure, so whenever you recognize it, sing along! So I started … “Volare”, in its classical version (as opposed to the Gypsy Kings style version which is more commonly known), a typical song of which nobody knows how it starts, but everybody knows some of the words towards the end… hahaha. Whoaa, it was electrifying: I was singing in full glory, curious as hell when people would start recognizing the song, and when they did, it was a sing along craze, karaoke bar worthy!

Ok. You may ask yourself, why are these Buddhist peeps pretty serene, why am I so inspired? One small example will illustrate this.

After my singing, we had a big Asterix-style banquet dinner for all the villagers of Dechen Choling. One by one, during the dinner, many adults made a short speech, read out a poem or other.

One of the adults, a father to one of the little girls in my children’s group, was to perform a kata, a series of karate movements, in front of everybody.

As he mindfully and elegantly assumed his starting pose, out of the blue his 2 year old daughter walked up to him.

Nobody moved. Nobody stopped her.

Her dad had created so much tension and anticipation in the air by his first gracious movements that everybody was in a trance-like state.

When she was at his feet, no scolding, no reprimanding, no smacking… he tenderly picked her up, hugged her gently as if she just got out of bed at home, and slowly walked her back to the mother as he kissed her and held the free hand on top of her head as a sign of protection, and then walked slowly back to resume his kata. You should have seen it. It was, magical, and I do not think I am the only one who thought that, as everybody erupted in a wild applause.

I felt for that entire night, I cannot find a more suiting comparison, as if being part of an episode of Asterix. The final scene with the banquet, which comes back in every episode, where the whole village feasts and toasts and laughs and screams, everybody telling stories, entertainment coming from the various community members.

Luckily for me, one thing did not match; the bard was not punched in the face, tied up and silenced in our version… at least not this night

I mean, do we actually really breathe with any form of appreciation of what this act means or what it can do for us if we added that extra pinch of focus to it?

If the humming of our active everyday brain can be likened to that of the sun illuminating any day, does non-activity by the brain then equal sleeping through the night?

Well, maybe. However, we cannot easily steer that chaotic and creative act of dreaming. Also, the brain is still active in this phase, whilst what I am seeking to describe here is putting our brain to sleep, or least, more so than our body.

There is thus another way to having the sun set in your head in order to appreciate the inner galaxy’s glittering skyline and stars.

Please grab my hand and walk your eyes this way.

Breathe

Breathe in through the mouth, out through the nose a few times

Focus more and more solely on your breath

Now, for the continuation of the exercise, breathe in and out through the nose only

If you focus well enough, there is no space for distracting thoughts inside of you

Try again, again and again

Breathe more deeply and slowly at each breath

Your brain may resist, so observe its reaction, leave judgment aside

Breathe ever more deeply and slowly

Your brain is slowly falling asleep

At some point, the noisemaking activity of your brain will have ceased

You feel awkward as an unfamiliar and deafening silence takes a hold of you

Welcome

You are in the Now

Meditation can give you answers which your brain will never be able to. This is neither because it does not want to, nor because you have not thought deep and hard enough. It is not the brain’s fault that it is mostly designed for more mundane tasks such as keeping your body functioning or distinguishing the colors of the rainbow. Rather, the inner temple of deep emotions and spirituality is located in your soul.

If stars are bright at night only, a parallel can be drawn to the life of the spirit. To see our inner stars, we merely require a certain degree of inner stillness, which we can access by focusing on the Now, and using meditation as a gateway to it.

You will see these inner stars and may just gaze in amazement at them. The longer you are in the Now each time, the more stars you will see, and the more facets of known stars will be revealed. Their beauty may utterly shock you.

Some uncomfortable things may come up, whether sensations, visions or other. Observe, leave judgment on the seat next to you. Observe your judgment too, without reinforcing it. The process of your soul rearranging itself, allowed full expression in the silent Now, is quite a profound process. Fear not the dust these inner whirlwinds will throw on you from time to time. Smile, keep encouraging expression from within. You will slowly but surely master this art, capable of cuddling the dragons and demons that occasionally come to your inner surface.

At some point, you will start seeing inner stars more easily, even randomly during the “conscious” part of your day. You are bringing your subconscious up and close to the surface, and your instincts are becoming an increasingly vital part of your everyday life. Heed those (new) instincts, for they come from a good place inside of you. Instincts and deep emotions are the rational answers from the soul, as much as options and decisions are the rational answers of the brain.

Next time you gaze in amazement at a star spangled sky, remember your soul is just the same. The choice is yours of whether to let this preciousness permeate your every fiber, and if so, to tune into your soul’s frequency at times, listen to and heed its unique messages.

If you pursue this path, even with much practice, ego will still knock on your door, but its fists will make less noise each time, and the rope it laid around your soul will loosen and fade.

You may then smile and wave your ego goodbye, mindful as you slowly and hesitantly start embracing the previously hidden elements of you.

Naked and crying as a baby you are, in front of the eternal beauty of your soul.

Congratulations, you have been reborn.

The article is loosely based on insights from various introductory zen meditation handbooks, writings by Thich Nhat Hanh, and my own modest meditation practice.

Aaaa… blank paper !

I breathe deep, and I feel the scarexcitement of writers that were, those that are, and those that will be.

Scared by the uncertainty of their ability to honour the paper with a worthy representation of reality, of undressing the soul to its purest possible form; excited by a chance to wiggle away words from the Soul of the World with the soft and precise nervous motion of any great Mikado or Jenga player, and gently pin them down in a fabulous combination of reason, emotion and intelligence, a combination which is reveals itself slowly but surely, and of which you have total control, yet none at all.

I have been waiting for too long now to write these lines, which are actually a little reflection on my time in Romania. I have the feeling that if I do not write it now, my head might seriously start fuming (fried brain!) and explode.

Since more and more people tell me my posts are becoming horrible, annoying and generally wipe-your-rear-or-toilet-reading-material only, (LOL, actually, more precisely, I get more comments from people finding them a bit long), I will experiment with a long (shall we say, “director’s cut”) and a short (“theater”) version this time round. Let’s see how this works out! Obviously, I sincerely invite you to find the time to read my words, because they are an ultimate expression of my thoughts, emotions, actions and values. In other words, if you really finally sort of want think to read the short version, please do scroll all the way down to see my life wrapped in approximately 650 carefully yet clumsily chosen words, but, if you wanna be a good girl / boy, if your desire is to go straight to heaven, all you need to do is to carry on reading at this point, straight into this long version

I have tried to give the Director’s Cut (yeah baby !!!) version some extra flavour by inserting some hopefully relevant quotes from one of the greatest “unknown” peace philosophers of all times… you will see whom I speak of, real soon. I also included two little poems at the very bottom (after the short version of my post).

LONG VERSION (Director’s cut)

Simply put, from 10 March to 7 June 2009, I have experienced the most transformative three months in my life.

Before the recap of the events, a little summary of the preceding months, just to refresh our collective memory. So, remember I was coming from quite a long period of, some would say “inactivity”, I would call it “different activity”, after finishing my period as a United Nations Volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire from 22 October 2007 to 16 December 2008. Then, from 16 December 2008 to 10 March 2009, I was bouncing about in Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Yemen, and I was fit again and ready for some work action. Yabba dabba dooooo.

So, after scratching my head for a while and sending some emails back and forth, that was it, my next adventure would be Romania! Well, anyways, three months until going to Switzerland for the university project would be nice to fill this way right? Not much earth shattering could happen… or so I figured.

Hah, life is wacky, nay, beautiful. Yes, it sounds a bit used, overused, recycled, and whatever other word. Still, it is quite intriguing that life, even when it does not always provide you with what you want, or think you want, it is always, yes ALWAYS (try to swallow this concept for a while and experiment a little to see if your attitude to life changes for the better, I sure think so!) gives you what you need.

So what exactly has happened? A glimpse of the events…

Now that you have hopefully strapped your seat belt safely around you, and that I have taken you and the other screaming kids up, up, up higher and higher on the first and highest peak of the roller coaster ride, we are about to reach the top.

We are almost there… the ride is slowly becoming horizontal.

KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN!

Silence falls upon the brave roller coaster riders for a split second, as some realize they were not that brave after all, close their eyes, and others prepare a short prayer… all hold their breath.

This is it.

Ready?

Down we go… and remember to SCRRRREEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM !

Vegetarianism

First off, I became a vegetarian. No worries, I have not started painting yet (or I would start showing signs of being on the way to mass murder…ism , since ehm Hitler was a vegetarian painter). Eliminating meat, at which I suck cooking anyways, provided me with the drive I needed to actually really start learning about, and to cook, new ingredients and dishes, to refresh knowledge on nutrition, and to dig a bit further into how our meat is, shall we say, extracted, and what it causes to animals (suffering) and nature (destruction) alike. I think there is enough suffering and destruction already, both towards human and non-human living beings, so whatever I can do to reduce my footprint without ruining my health is more than welcome to me.

I must say that I have rarely felt so good about a decision in my life, and it was a decision that just came one morning because of some coincidences in my thinking caused some brain cells to formulate the new thought and send it round myself saying “Sure, well why not, let’s give it a go, let’s be veg and green and all hippie good!”. Reflecting upon it now, a rough two months down the road, it came as a natural follow up to my spiritual development and increasing concern on the destruction of our little planet. On the one hand, embracing life, unity, oneness etc. of all that is means eliminating categories in your head as much as possible. If not, if your compassion and love is partial, or if you will “sectarian”, meaning that you give it only to X and not to Y, only to your family and not to the stranger, only to your friends and not theirs, only to humans and not to other forms of life. So yeah, though I cannot yet claim to have a mind that is not “sectarian” at all, it is a nice step that I finally managed to include non-human living organisms in my embrace of life.

Wanna know something else? Ok, let me see how I can explain this in a plain way. I am not Saint Francis, although I am honoured to share my name with him and a couple of other hundreds of thousands of less holy people including yours truly … But I shit you not when I state to you that some kind of mini magic accompanies this new eating rationale of mine. I mean, since removing meat from my diet, the following stuff happens more and more: I automatically pay more attention to sounds of nature; it seems that birds sing louder, just as the sound of the wind gushing through a tree or plant finds its way into my being in a more profound way; all kinds of insects and birds flap about much closer to me than usual, if not sit on my hand for long times (this is not always fun!); I find more pleasure in and more often stop and stare at plants, flowers and animals (yes that includes dogs which I used to, and still a little bit, hate to the bone…); I end up always smelling every flower I see on the way from A to B; I go to extreme lengths to save helpless, yes and also PLAIN STUPID (!), insects and bugs stuck behind windows or in places in the house they should not be; and I totally lost my appetite to squash insects and bugs that are in my path.

Mmmmm, is this some kind of karma from nature bestowed upon me, or is it nature saying “thank you” for my efforts of attempting to ease my harmful impact on the planet? I dunno, but I’m utterly speechless as nature seems to suck me in and not let me go anymore, yet it is a warm and pleasant embrace in which I do not really mind to remain.

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

– Albert Einstein –

Law of Attraction / Power of Intention / Power of Now etc. etc. etc.

Secondly, and for those who did not notice yet, I became a freak of the Law of Attraction (also, as the title of this section suggests, that label can be substituted for any other concept aiming at explaining unity, oneness, mindfulness, positive thinking, creativity, responsibility, ownership of destiny etc. whilst simultaneously telling you not to take it as the Holy Grail, but a useful explanation of the world and tool for self-reflection and self-improvement). For clarification on what it is, a fairly uncomplicated path to walk is to … click on the free 20 minute trailer on YouTube, and you will get the idea rather well already.

After being tipped on the book (“The Secret”, which, again, is merely one of many books on the subject) and reading it partly in the Netherlands and the end in Romania, and seeing its movie in Romania, I have been on a little trip down the rabbit hole or, if you will, I have taken the blue instead of the red pill. If life is compared to a moving vehicle, I can now safely say that my life does not just unfold before me anymore as if I were the passenger (and still, I mostly enjoyed the ride!). I am learning to be more and more creative and design my life the way I want it to be, it is I in the driving seat, and the ride has never been better. I understand, and thank, those of you at this point suggesting me to take another pill to calm my delusions (!) of having for real been offered the main role in a sequel to Bruce Almighty. What I am trying to convey is, more than magic, the simple little things that can change when instead of running around like a headless chicken following our (mental or work) agenda, or no agenda at all, so from going to say, monitoring and steering 0 to 5 % of your thoughts to, I don’t know, 10%? Believe me it is tiring and may give a massive headache, but getting past that stage is when the fun starts. Every day is more amazingly filled with tiny little miracles and some greater ones then the previous day, and this process just does not stop utterly baffling me. I will just give you a couple of examples (and tell you the more personal and amazing ones in private . Also, after a while, in my case it was two weeks, it becomes more subdued in the subconscious as a process, away from the active, conscious level. Amazing events continue to happen though, and at an ever increasing pace. If you care, please find a little elaboration on this in a passage from my diary.

” Attraction seems more automated now. I spend far less time actively thinking of what I want, I feel happy more easily. I see more of the depths of what surrounds me which makes me feel amazing, which I believe should automatically attract more of what I desire, though I am not attracting it at a conscious level, rather at a subconscious one. I guess one of the great things about the Law of Attraction is that trying to steer you conscious level also brings to the surface more of the subconscious, or, if you will, it simply positively affects the subconscious by putting it more in line with the conscious. Then, by being more mindful in general, and in particular through meditation or prayer, one can access the subconscious easily and clearly check whether everything is indeed all right.

The pace at which things come at me is increasing rapidly, so much at times that I am dazzled in disbelief and shocked even, but grateful, yes grateful. I wish this flood to never cease, although I feel it has the potential to destabilize me. Yet, I prefer to be destabilized by too much “good” than by too much “bad” in life. “

Here are some of the (tiny) miracles: finding exactly what I needed when I needed it; addressing the right stranger (at the very first shot!) who just happens to have the right piece of information at the right time; the sun coming out whenever I wanted it to (not always instantly, but ALWAYS eventually) ; and, as a last one, not having a place to stay not even a week from my arrival in Cluj-Napoca and, instead of worrying about it, just being relaxed and “feeling” a nice place with nice people was waiting for me (and BOY did that materialize!).

So, let’s get to the more juicy examples. On a day I was on a bus back to Cluj-Napoca, on the phone talking to one of my best friends about how we both use Attraction in our lives and of course we discussed Attraction through all of our normal exchanges about family, studies/work, girls, friends, etc etc. We spoke in Dutch. After that, I called my mom, in Italian obviously, to see how she is. So we start speaking … and, just like with my friend, the discussion turned to the Law of Attraction. We discuss her recent visit to Japan, about her and dad and other family business. We talk about my blog, about my baby notions of Buddhism and how she could mainstream some of those notions in her Italian lessons for kids, then we turn to the theme of mindfulness. In the meantime, I get so carried away that I do not notice I have almost arrived in Cluj-Napoca. ALL OF A SUDDEN, some stranger, the young fellow sitting next to me, out of the blue, touches me gently on the arm and hands me a little business card with scribbled on it in English “Sorry I overheard your conversation, but I am very interested in those themes … Can I please have the address of your blog?”. As you may recall, I am still talking to my mom at this point, and after my initial confusion, as I decipher the words on the little paper, a smile paints itself on my face with such an enthusiasm that it feels as if I were smiling for the first time in my life. Simultaneously, from the shock, I also become a little silent as I struggle for the words for my mother who is wondering at the other end of the phone what on earth has just happened. She suddenly starts worrying but I tell her “nonono all is fine let me hang up now I will explain ok?” So as I turn my attention fully to the not-really-so-stranger sitting next to me, we are both a bit stunned and discuss about how coincidences are a figment of imagination, poor chisels for explaining a part / episode of reality that seems beyond the grasp of our logic, or even, of our fantasy. Most of the time we are smiling at each other in amazement, we quickly exchange some of our favourite writers and books, “The Secret” being the only one in common, and as he is getting out of the bus just a few minutes into our conversation (in the outskirts of Cluj-Napoca), we shake hands very warmly and bid farewell. Still in awe and a bit shaky, I call my mom back, since I knew she was still worried and explain her what happened. She could also not stop herself from laughing and smiling in utter amazement, and I felt her smile even louder than her profound, joyous laughter. Thus, my last 5 minutes of the bus ride, I am smiling in pure joy, and so is my mom, thousands of kilometers away, at the other end of the phone.

Once I arrive at destination, I go straight back to the office to work. It is a matter of a few hours until this newest friend drops me a note on my blog.

Oh, and this is not the only such occasion, even on the very last day of my first (and hopefully not last) “Transylvanian Transit”, on 7 June 2009, as I sit in the train that takes me through Hungary to Austria, a similar episode unfolds itself with a gentle girl sitting in front of me.

Other instances in which my thinking had some kind of influences are the following. Key here that, according to the Law of Attraction, in order for you desire involving other people to materialize, is that this / these other person(s) need(s) to have some degree of mental predisposition to the same goal. Which makes sense to me, or what I want would be pure manipulation of other people’s desires. So, here we go, I went to considerable length to swing the minds of two of colleagues/friends in Romania who were extremely negative on their study abroad possibilities in Italy and Costa Rica respectively, and they finally slowly, and with steps forward and backwards alike, changed their attitudes and their respective desires landed in their laps. Similarly, I worked a bit on a few of my colleagues were not expecting us to have a high number of participants for the trainings we organized and often vocalized this doubt, though here it was more me working on imagining the presence of many participants myself rather than confronting that attitude, which I did to a lesser extent. We had the most participants ever for any of this type of training programmes the institute had organized in 10 years. Obviously, these things are not my merit, but I am positively convinced that the positive, determined attitude that came out through me was of considerable influence in the final result. I very actively thought, felt and acted as if that positive future idea was already here at the present moment. That’s all, the alignment of thoughts, feelings and actions (and it is helpful if they are in line with your norms and values) in the most positive, vivid and creative way is for me a helpful way to describe the spirit of (using the) Law of Attraction.

Needless to say, I experimented on more personal matters, which I will be happy to discuss… in private

As icing on the cake, here is an excerpt from what I said to a friend in need during a chat (for obvious reasons, I have edited it slightly):

“… in any case, even if I manage to help you find it, you are the one who has to walk through the gate and I think that you are afraid (and I am too, I still am, but I am starting to love it) of your inner light, your good side. Like Gibran says, evil is nothing but good left abandoned and ignored as if it is true that good wins over evil, as all religions claim than it is natural that our good side is supposed to overshadow the negative one which is why many of us (and again, me included) are sometimes or always afraid of their good side. Because positive emotions are also strong, very strong and they can totally upset the thinking of a person. Today, after writing what I wrote to you before, I swear to God I feel like I am on some kind of drugs. I feel high, there is no other description for it. I feel high because I emptied my soul, I turned myself upside down and shook myself until everything came out but I am more happy than scared, so I know I should keep going. I am not sure if I am making any sense but yes I think positive is stronger than negative, and so are its effects on the person. Light of the sun blinds us, we cannot look at it all day, or we go blind; we cannot stand in the sun all day, or we will burn, but at small doses, when we feel like it we MUST allow ourselves to do something that we feel nurtures the soul, slowly slowly, and inspiration must come, whether in a day, a week,  month, or a year, we just have to sit and wait for the winter of our soul to pass and be compassionate with ourselves. I cannot teach more, I have said all I can, and I pray to God to give you the strength and courage you look for because I cannot, even if I was Kahlil Gibran himself, because you have to do it, not me, good luck my dear soul, I am cheering from the side and I swear I will pray/meditate for you each day before going to sleep. Because life has a special plan for all of us, and it is time that it should reveal itself to you because you are looking hard for it. Even Paolo Coelho says that sometimes God is very harsh with us and that, because God is both our mother and father, just like with our parents, we can ask for forgiveness but also for a sign, we can ask for a slightly easier road to walk. So tell God in your heart you want to serve, and an answer will come. God is part of the Law of Attraction, is Attraction. Good luck, good luck…. and as soon as you get “inspired thoughts”, as The Secret says, act on them, it is your only duty.”

And now, to end this little part, another phrase from our not-so-secret-anymore peace philosopher…

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

- Albert Einstein –

Sleep… yet not

Thirdly, I sleep five hours on average compared to my previous eight hours. I thought of why if I know of some people, including the dearly beloved PM of Italy, who can manage to have such a rhythm, why could I not emulate that? For me, it was hell waking up the first few times, it was very very hard and still, occasionally, I find it less than easy.

What seems to determine the success rate for me a lot is the aspect of the quality of my rest. In that respect, meditation, or simply a couple of very deep breaths to shut down my brain a little and calm my body before going to sleep and when waking up works just fine.

The whole concept functions well, but I do need a 30 minutes nap at sometime during the day! All in all, this leaves me with three extra hours to do three things I crave yet never find time for. For this reason, and in order to motivate myself for this sleeping routine, I came up with the activities of: studying languages (1 hour), reading books / articles (1 hour) and catching up with correspondence (1 hour). I am not that rigid in it in practice but I find it to be a useful framework. So let’s say that if you soon see my language skills evolved, my knowledge of the world improved and that I respond faster and/or more frequent to your emails/messages there is a great chance that it happened because of action I undertook at hours at which you are still sucking your thumb whilst holding your teddy bear and your dreams are taking you into the outer spaces of fantasy land.

Ah and yes, also, I am happy to put forward that if grammatically twisted, slaughtered and incongruous, wrapped into an overall babbling, stuttering baby-like uttering counts, I now speak Romanian as well. Next step is to take German to a higher level… no, not Swiss German that is, I have given that one up before even starting to think of the feeling of contemplating it God I loooooooove languages!

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

- Albert Einstein –

Next please ?

Let’s see, I worked in an amazing place, the Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR), full of young, friendly, energetic people, with tons of commitment and great ideas, which resulted in by far the most pleasing, personally and professionally enriching work experience I have had so far. Mmm, maybe this was because of also being one of the shortest (3 months)? It can’t be that simple though, I truly, madly, deeply enjoyed my time there.

Cluj-Napoca is a great city, Romanians are really neat people (yes they are, I think Italians need to visit to balance out our perspectives a little…), I had lots of sunshine and warm weather, a great and cheap apartment furnished with… two grand flat mates !!!, I  made some really amazing friends and had some phenomenal so-called “random” encounters. Ah yeah, and I met a truly precious woman. Well, you may inquire into that in person, there are more suitable places to nicely detail that, and in a more deserving and private pace than the internet.

So what’s up next, I hear you all acclaim? “Well, bring forth the drums please … !”

I will be working for the World Peace Academy (WPA) in Basel, Switzerland, starting from the end of June until I don’t know when ( www.world-peace-academy.ch ).

Also, and on the side but separately from the WPA, I will continue to work for my latest placement provider, PATRIR’s training centre called IPDTC. ( www.patrir.ro/training ).

Let’s see what these and other occasions will bring in the future… It will be a lot of work to do both, but I am extremely passionate about both institutes, so let us see what comes out of this…

The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.

- Albert Einstein -

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

SHORT VERSION (Theatre)

Pffff, in short, as short as I can, from 10 March to 7 June 2009 I have experienced the most transformative three months in my life.

So what exactly has happened? A glimpse of the events…

First off, I became a vegetarian. No worries, I have not started painting yet (or I would start showing signs of being on the way to mass murder…ism , since Hitler was a vegetarian painter). This provided me with the drive I needed to actually really start learning about and to cook new ingredients and dishes, to refresh knowledge on nutrition, and to dig a bit further into how our meat is, shall we say, extraction, causes to animals and nature alike.

Secondly, I became a freak of the Law of Attraction. My life does not just unfold before me anymore, as if I were the passenger (and still, I mostly enjoyed the ride!). I am learning to more and more creative and design my life the way I want it to be, it is I in the driving seat, and the ride has never been better. Every day is more amazingly filled with tiny little miracles then the previous and it just does not stop utterly baffling me.

Thirdly, I sleep five hours on average compared to my previous eight. It works fine, but I need a 30 minutes nap sometime during the day! All in all, this leaves me three extra hours to do three things I crave yet never find time for: languages (1 hour), reading (1 hour) and correspondence (1 hour). I am not that rigid in it in practice but I find it to be a useful framework. So let’s say that if you soon see my language skills evolved, my knowledge of the world improved and that I respond faster and/or more frequent to your emails/messages there is a great chance that it happened because of action I undertook at hours at which you are still sucking your thumb whilst holding your teddy bear and your dreams are taking you into the outer spaces of fantasy land.

Let’s see, I worked in an amazing place, the Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR), full of young, friendly, energetic people, with tons of commitment and great ideas, which resulted in by far the most pleasing, personally and professionally enriching work experience I have had so far. Mmm, maybe this was because of also being one of the shortest (3 months)? It can’t be that simple though, I truly, madly, deeply enjoyed my time there.

Cluj-Napoca is a great city, Romanians are really neat people (yes they are, I think Italians need to visit to balance out our perspectives a little…), I had lots of sunshine and warm weather, a great and cheap apartment furnished with… two grand flat mates !!!, I  made some really amazing friends and had some phenomenal so-called “random” encounters. Ah yeah, and I met a truly precious woman. Well, you may inquire into that in person, there are more suitable places to nicely detail that, and in a more deserving and private pace than the internet!

So what’s up next? Drums please … !

I will be working for the World Peace Academy (WPA) in Basel, Switzerland, starting from the end of June until I don’t know when ( www.world-peace-academy.ch ).

Also, and on the side but separately from the WPA, I will continue to work for my latest placement provider, PATRIR’s training centre called IPDTC. ( www.patrir.ro/training )

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Whoa I am empty. I think I will sleep for a week now.

I look forward to continue my learning because of, with, and for you all.

Feel good, big hug,

Fra

P.S. Before going of to bed, I just share these two of my latest scribbles with immense pleasure. Feel good.

APPRECIATING LIFE

Praise Good;

Praise Indifferent;

Praise Bad.

Each carries a valid message.

The first is to be prolonged and savored, for now, as well as for hard times ahead;

The second enables us to praise the many little things that are going just fine;

The third denotes a compassionate patience for our soul’s winter to pass, gearing up for its imminent summer.

WORDS ARE FREE

An urban legend and bitter practice haunts the world; It claims that words are chained and owned by single being.

The Universe weeps, the Soul of the World despairs, Source Energy feels depleted;Whence do humans gather to “copyright” things so sacred as a valid combination of letters?

All that is, has already been. What we find, we rediscover. What we discover, is a journey of the soul; For it has dwelled beyond right and wrong, in a lush field of truth, where wisdom plays forever with souls who seek her.

Words indeed come to humans, yet they result from encounters with friends and foes; Time with parents and siblings, reflections within heart and soul.

Set words free, and they shall return to you a thousand times richer; Having traveled in and out of minds of all four corners of the earth, through life’s happy smiling faces and those awash with bitter tears.

The day feels just amazing, although at 06:00 in the morning on a Sunday you catch yourself thinking “This better be good or else…”.

Anyway, useless thoughts, for a wise person once told me every minute you spend in sadness, frustration or worry is a minute life will never give back to you. This is not a tragedy, it is a stimulus to put your time to good use for yourself so that you may inspire yourself and others by your inspired thoughts and actions.

We gather at 07:30 at the train station. I try to chat with my taxi driver, as I have noticed they talk a lot so I wanna get a piece of the action. Sadly my driver speaks zero English, and I find myself back in Yemen trying to explain at 04:00 in the morning that I am grateful to be here and that I have one brother and that I am 24 years old. In Yemen though, I had at least some vocabulary, here, close to zero.

Anyways, once at the station I meet two of the girls and after half-assed tired greetings we patiently wait for the rest of us to arrive. Ah, I did not mention yet where I am going to: we, me and seven girls are going to the countryside on a sun laden day to spend a day in nature, life really sucks … The girls, except one, will be horseback riding for most of the time, whilst us two will just be chillin’ in the grass, skipping back and forth between states of volleyball-sleeping-reading.

We arrive after one hour of talking and joking, and find the farm to be right next to the railway station, not the long distance walk I am preparing myself for mentally hahahaha. But it is great, we all play some volleyball to get our tired bodies into at least some kind of active state. Besides a BIG dog trying to kill us all and destroy our ball everything is juuuuuuuuuuust fine. In the end of my day though, my ball will be destroyed, not by a king-size-dog-wannabe-horse-maybe but a little sweet cute 5 year old girl called Francisca (Universe what EXACTLY are you trying to tell me by this?). Happily living in ignorance and bliss of not knowing the future we play and play until the time comes for the 6 brave heroines to bid us farewell and mount their noble stallions.

Us two left over look at each other and decide to live life as it is intended to be, by laying down on the ground, soaking up the sun, listening to nature and … reading a book (yeah exactly, maybe not what some of YOU where thinking eh?!). Every now and then we put aside our respective books and discuss the Law of Attraction, methods and usefulness of meditation and other things in life. I also keep interrupting her (poor thing, I am sure would she have had an axe she would have probably taken a swing at my head) reading because I am reading “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran and I cannot help myself from the pure excitement. Mmmm, it is amazing, the sun is intensifying its hug around us as the hours tick away.

I start reading “The Prophet” and I cannot believe my eyes I am so humbled by his eloquence at dissecting the laws of the universe, the high mountains and deep shadowy valleys of life, in such beautiful, rich and concrete language. I am mesmerized and I cannot take my eyes off the book, and I am so grateful to have attracted this prime example of writing style into my life. To say I am merely “inspired” is a near insult. Let’s say that if I manage to arrive at an ounce of the wisdom of his combinations of letters and words in a phrase, my writings will be amazing.

At times, as my senses are fading, I become one with the book as if some vortex is sucking me into it, and I wonder if I am not reading passages taken from the Holy Qur’an or another divine revelation, because the flow, pace and balance of thoughts is so precise, so powerful, that it seems impossible to have been written by a human. I have no choice but to halt my reading occasionally and stare blindly at the page thinking “I cannot believe I am reading this”. His words dance with the subtlety and grace of a phenomenal ballerina performing her masterpiece, as she swiftly yet silently tip-toes her way around drawing baffled gazes from a crowd in awe, in a silence where one could hear a pin drop. I can picture him writing the book, calm on the outside with his soul on fire, probably unable to sleep through most of the phases of writing. For how can you sleep, Mr. Gibran, a “pirate” of the soul sitting on a chest of diamonds, gold and silver. Thank heavens he wants to share though … I will discover later tonight that he says he had the book forming in his head for some 12 years. Well, it makes sense to say the least.

I mean, if you can compose such passages as follow, you have obviously understood a thing or two about life:

“And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. You are eternity, and you are the mirror.”

“No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.”

And from other books, I just see these online now:

“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.”

“Love is trembling happiness.”

“I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.”

“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”

I mean, do you imagine? And it just goes on and on and on like this, pffff.

Guess what, I dare say something bold: this is not even the best part!

At some point, one of us starts to read a passage out loud to the rest of the group (which has in the meantime returned from horseback riding). I have practically finished the book already, but am happy to hear it again, for true wisdom cannot tire the soul the least. Whilst some fade in and out of sleep, and despite the occasional chatter, we are all glued to the lips of the occasional voice repeating the magical words of the Prophet. None of us being native English speakers, we may have butchered the text a little, but trust me when I say the shockwaves of wisdom that are emanating and amplified by our reading engulf all of us with their full force and tear-drawing truth. I do not remember the last time I read a book this way, but at different intervals, as the words uttered by different tongues hum around and inside my brain and into the world, I am sure the grass is pleased, and so are the trees, and so is all life around us. Any and every true celebration of life is bound to amplify goodness somehow, I tell myself. I feel a strong emotion even hearing the words a second time, that feeling of “standing on the shoulders of giants” one can have feeling the depth of the accomplishments of humankind, and the strange and amazing knowledge that we haven’t got a single clue as to where the top is!

Well, at some point, it is time to go. As we walk down the hill back to the train station I ask Francisca as to what happened to my ball and truth catches up with me. You already know of course because you had the luxury of a small peek into the future! I smile, I will get myself another plastic-fantastic ball. We buy our tickets for the way back that seem to be handmade and autographed individually by the ticket clerk and wait outside. Laughing about the experience and recalling different aspects of the day, we gaze at each other’s lobster faces, full of a bliss that comes so easy for those living in the city after an intense day of countryside pleasure.

On the train ride, I hang out of the window with one of the girls, and we discuss the depths and highs of the soul and exchange our pieces of knowledge in order to enrich each other’s toolbox. It is great and uplifting, and I know it will do us both good. Some knowledge we internalize instantly, other we ridicule, oppose or simply swirls around like a sandstorm until, one fine day, by itself or some major event, it will settle and come to life. We talk long about the darkness of the soul and how it has affected us in different ways, but there is also much positive coming out of our lips. I leave the train elated and enriched once more, I hope she does too.

Once we take the train and arrive home, I quickly grab a shoarma because GNAMMMM I am whsoo hungwy huh wu cant hia wha I sai wet me swawwow this AAAAA chunck of meat now you can hear me better!

So I go into my building and into the house and take a well discovered shower. Crap I really look like a lobster… AND a monkey at the same time. Well, my face is tanned though which is great. I am now only 80% white chocolate instead of 95 % .

It’s the end of the day nearly.

A new week awaits me, full of bliss, sunshine and wonderful little miracles. I cannot wait. Though I trust life knows what is best for me, I want to practice attraction, so I will now meditate about what I wish to attract for this week (even though, as you will see from the next passage, I change my focus totally ahahahah).

But first … some music, yesssss I am dancing like a savage in my room and smiling smiling smiling my ass off! The African music takes me back through my flatmates and friends in Cote d’Ivoire, to the beats of the drums I used to play, to the many nights in clubs and pool parties, it’s all a big happy blur in my head. Never did nostalgia feel so good. Puffff.

Time to rest now, I meditate a little. Not too much though, as I already meditated today in the hills at some point. Mostly, I simply give thanks for the day. I run the day back in my head and try to appreciate all that was and all that still is with me. It is so easy today, I think of the touch of the wind on my face during the train ride back; the sun that sheds so much of itself for me this day (a bit too much thank you!); the quietness of nature with her wide palette of majestic sounds; the grass I feel walking around barefoot, a little pleasure I have almost forgotten about; and many other things.

I am not sure why life is treating me so nicely. I have gotten past the point of believing I do not deserve it, because it has always blocked me from true appreciation of myself and the things that matter in life. We DO deserve a good life, and we DO deserve a 5 star treatment of ourselves. Still, I know all of us here on earth have to undergo lots of tests from life, and that the next one is never far away. At the same time, I am confident more than ever that one will never receive a test she/he cannot pass if their soul, heart and mind join their body in the struggle. That would be cruel. My thoughts in this area will hopefully develop in the near future. Or maybe I can take a shortcut by reading more of Mr. Gibran’s work  hehe.

Anyways, I am so happy that instinctively, from my half-lotus position of meditation, I bend forward and kiss the ground, trying to somehow appreciate my blessings even further. Unsure whether the nasty dust on my floor which cleaning is long overdue brings bliss, I still feel happy, elated and connected to the world.

As I slowly crawl into my bed, my final thoughts are for those family and friends who no longer walk this earth. I sometimes think of them before going to bed. You never know whether you will wake up the next day, who gives you that guarantee? Thinking of them gives me strength and renews my appreciation of life. It used to scare me the first times I tried, but I have overcome that. So look at them, feel their love, their energy, and tell yourself that your next day you will live as if it were your last. Tonight, I look at them one by one, and I know they are there somewhere, cheering me on in my efforts in life: spreading the joy I spread beyond across the universe, and looking at me with an encouraging smile as well as a soft a tear in their eye when the darkness of my soul at times overshadows me.

I know there is no end to cycles of joy and suffering in this earth. Its just that we all know suffering, because we have many words for it, we dedicate a lot of time to make ourselves and others suffer, we tend to focus on it around us and in the world and … hell it comes easy! It does not mean it may not be what we want though, it may just happen for a lack of self-knowledge. And here Mr. Gibran can add some intellectual weight to my ehm…. intellectual “featherweight”: “For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?” I KNEW it damn it, I have felt for a number of years now that evil is some kind of sick fantasy, a brainchild of our fear and anxieties, a bed-time story that keeps us stupid and ignorant from our true potential. At the same time, some form of it is always lurking around the corner, waiting for our misstep. Still, there is no such thing as an evil person, there is such a thing as a person who her/himself and/or by doing of others tortures her/his soul so badly that good cannot breathe and it suffocates whilst it stares you in the eye asking why and you have no real answer to give as you desecrate the temple that houses your soul. You know what? I even think, and sorry for maybe twisting certain religions a little bit, that there is no hell, that the person upstairs loves us badly and cannot possibly endure our suffering in eternity. How can a mother or a father with the knowledge of forever damnation of even a single one of their children even live with themselves? Hell is a product of our imagination, coming from that same root of evil. What an insult to good, to think that evil is also carried forward in the fields of eternity. Ok Francesco, BREATHE NOW, …. Aaaa thank you for this kind reminder, well, that’s just my two cents.

Right, I was talking about thoughts of suffering and happiness. We had suffering so, I think that, when thinking happiness, we are often very childish: as a small kid we cannot explain what makes the lollipop tasty: but guess what, eloquence and veneration for what is good we can learn, it can be cultivated, rotated 360 degrees to try to understand how to savor it as we improve that which should be the single most natural thing in the world = our ways to generate and sustain happiness. I guess our need to cultivate it is also our gateway to really taste it, for would we be happy from cradle to grave, none of us would know the intense satisfaction and joy that kindly allow us to open the exit door for the demons that leech onto us and tell them we can dispense with their services thank you very much. We thus falter at times, but when at war with ourselves, at some point, we are bound to learn that it is a battle of mindfulness, or loving-kindness as the Buddhists would say, a struggle of joy and pleasure to unlock all the treasures hidden inside you. Yes I know what you think right now, but we all know the dirty little secret of struggle and difficulty, but why rub it in, what is it worth versus dedication to the discovery of beauty, yes, even in the midst of suffering? For, if “Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror”, and “You are eternity, and you are the mirror.” … ghallas, that’s it, what more do you need to know I ask you?

God / universe / Allah / Law of Attraction / Mother nature / Buddha / Jaweh and all other names you may have been given and which I have not had the pleasure of encountering yet, let the joy that is inside me and around me keep me on this high wave so that it may flood the lives of others, and may their waves of happiness crash onto my shores, whether in my sickness or health of the body or soul, they will be welcome always.

For I wish to share the joy and share the suffering, to live a real Buddhist life, or, as the Muslims would say, to live Is-Lam, “to submit to the Law of God”, which we do by default anyways since we are her/his Creation and play within the boundaries of the infinite and limitless.

May these words cause little ripples of (confusing?) positivity throughout, and may the karma/attraction that comes from it flood my mind with stronger, more eloquent and yet new revelations.

Every day of learning is a pure blessing.

La Vita e` Bella.

Dear friend, thank you if you have read to this point, and managed to follow me through an intense day of living. It means the world to me to have you around in spirit and thought, until I have the pleasure to embrace you again someday, sometime. I feed onto the souls of all I have met, for you have unlocked all the treasures I possess, and encourage me always in the digging process that will last all my life.

P.S.

This one is for you Mr. Gibran

DIVINE HAPPINESS

God was ecstatic and grateful,
For after infinite loneliness in time and space,

Suddenly thinking of humankind, flora and fauna,
Everywhere, and in a multitude of varieties and forms,

God was crying of happiness, and unable to contain the emotion,
Burst into the stars, the planets, and all creation that surrounds us.

God is scattered in and around us,
Let us be good stewards.

Dear people,

Do not worry, I am not suddenly going to give weekly updates. Although I love you all massively I am way too lazy for that (unlike in Russia where I did manage 3 months long to write every single week!!!!).

Something bizarre has happened to my life since I started reading a certain book just a few days ago. I could hardly even believe a book would ever come by that could top Coelho’s “The Alchemist”.

Though it does contain a similar message, it is much more profound, clear and applicable to daily life… and I started doing just that, with mind blowing consequences.

I would ruin it by trying to describe it further, so folks, if you have 20-25 minutes to spare all by yourself, make this small time investment of watching the following video made after that book (you can always get the book later if you want!).

Please do yourself this favour. It will be one you will not regret, trust Frankie on this one.

Enjoy using the Secret (and be a bit persistent if it does not work straight away!),

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b1GKGWJbE8&feature=channel_page

Many hugs from Transsylvania,
Fra

P.S. If you are short on time you could start at minute 3 and end at minute 20, the gist is in those 17 minutes …
P.P.S If the link does not work please type ” The Secret: 1st 20 minutes “ on YouTube and it will come up

It seems my periods of silence on this blog become longer and longer, but now I have lots to tell hahahaha. So voila` a little update here from London, where I just concluded a week long workshop on adult education (23-27 February 2009). My flight leaves in a few hours and my lovely hosts Chiara and Ceri are out partying so, sad as I am not being able to join, I do have the time to FINALLY post this story. Thanks Chiara and Ceri for having me over and bye bye!

… Where was I? Aha… After 14 months for the UN in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), filled with most enriching life experiences, lovely new friends, beautiful beaches, bombastic parties, smiling and talkative villagers, and a small little taste on the Dark Continent, I felt ready to move onto something else.

So, in December 2008, I left.

On 16 December I said goodbye to as many people as I could but, shamefully, I was made to work almost my whole last day which made it impossible to salute about 1/3 of my friends, namely those from the village (as parts of the UN HQ in Cote d’Ivoire are lovingly known), which really saddened and frustrated me.

Once home I finished checking my luggage to make sure I did not forget anything (but of course I did anyways hahaha), there was a little sweet good-bye cocktail in my house and an even smaller but sweeter good-bye committee that would accompany me to the airport. The committees’ faces full of sad smiles with Roberto, Gurdeep, Verane, Shahzad, Farice, Ludivine, immortalized in a blurry picture from Shahzad would have been engraved in my mind the whole trip long, were it not for some old a**hole in the airport who during my check-in cut the cue in front of a young girl to line up right behind me. My comment to his action being other than polite and polished, the old man became furious and grabbed me in my face with one hand. I told him to pull his hand away asap please but before having the pleasure of removing the hand myself a few bystanders rushed to the scene and separated us. Strange how at 24 years old, for the first time in my life, I was actually feeling the need to smack an old man (and maybe even enjoy it). Funny (and tragic sometimes) how angry moments can make you lose years of careful shaping of your character, norms and values in the blink of an eye. Anyways, I was so tired that I did not care and went to my gate.

And then … “… I put on my blue suede shoes and I, boarded a plane tadadadadadaaaaaa and I was walking in Memphis”… actually, I was walking in Bologna and took a train to Modena, where my brother (Marco) was at the time living. I was so destroyed from my last two weeks of goodbye dinners and parties that I was sleeping insanely long hours and, even when awake, I was as reactive, speedy and attentive as a 95-year-old, much to Marco’s simultaneous amusement and frustration! As soon he was off from work, we went to visit some relatives in Milano, which was great. We had not seen them for quite a few years and it was great to be reunited once more. Thanks Alfredo, Eugenio, Paola, Roberta, Chicco, Franco, Laura, Nilde, Antonietta, Milly, Alessandra!

On 22 December I went with Marco to Bra in the northwest of Italy to visit my closest relatives and celebrate Christmas and New Year’s together. We were joined by our parents and my brother’s girlfriend. It was a great deal of long hours of sleep, great fun, long chats and glorious o so glorious food and WINE! On one of the days, I even managed to go skiing with two Italian friends/colleagues from Cote d’Ivoire, who happened to be taking Christmas holidays! Despite my rather lousy and constantly-out-of-breath-and-holy-crap-my-legs-are-on-fire skiing technique, I looked extremely sexy in my fully black outfit plus black bank robber head mask and I had a great time with my friends. Thanks nonno, nonna, Max, Paola, Roby, Marina, Gianca, Daria, Piergiorgio, Mara, Carlotta, Lisette, Peira, Matteo, Cati, Maria Grazia, Giuseppe, Kim, Silvia, Bruno, Irene, Stefano, Cico, Deglia, Fabrizia, Marta, Roberta, Filippo and Fiorella!

On January 6, actually 7 (because Easyjet decided to cancel our flight after postponing it for hours and hours and sort of forced us to sleep in the airport) we arrived in the Netherlands. From then on I have been doing my very best to visit as many friends as possible, even though between my long hours of sleep, banal misunderstandings and a few double bookings (ups ups silly me sorry) I still managed to miss many of you (currently) in the Netherlands. I will do my best to catch up. Thanks to those I visited already: Christina, Joep, Lyssandre, Etienne, Ofra, SIETSKE, Claire, Rutger, Kim, Andrea, Toto.

On 10 January all hell broke loose, because the cargods allowed me to spent a day in a brand new BMW M3 with an instructor by my side gently suggesting how to best kick the car’s ass around the twisty roads he had selected for me… and some Autobahn (German highway, the no speed limit part please!). Those of you on Facebook will have seen pictures and videos. No need to tell you I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Thanks Stephan and thanks to BMW Motorsport for putting together such a sweet little monster of a car!

After a bit in Holland I went back to Italy to spend the last week of my brothers’ internship by his side, after which we would travel back to the Netherlands with all of his belongings. Spending the days by myself going around admiring the most beautiful Italian sports cars (most brands have their HQ in this area, which is why the area is also known as Supercar Valley). Out of many many motoring highlights I think meeting Mr. Horacio Pagani was maybe the most magical moment for me…
The evenings were filled with dinners, some in the company of Marco’s colleagues and friends. We also managed to visit some long lost relatives again, this time those living on the Lago di Garda (near Brescia and Milano). We were treated so nicely and wonderfully once more, ah our family and relatives really rock! Thank you Mauro, Elena, Bruno, Vittorio, Marta, Flora, Carla and all of Marco’s colleagues!

Then I went on a mini Eurotrip visiting old (but not forgotten!) friends in Brussels, Paris, Basel and Geneva. Ah how nice to reconnect with old friends, to notice how you changed in some respects and stayed the same in other. To reassess the course of your life and bounce off ideas for your future, to see how they live, how they feel. Thank you Nancy, David, Marta, Dieter, Meryam, Alma, Pierre, Catherine, Anne-Kathrin, Sergio, Angela, Lucilla and Ottavio.

Of course I could not leave without a trace, as usual, so I have generously as well as unwillingly donated a practically full pot of gel to Nancy and David in Brussels. Also, I have left a semi new toothbrush to Meryam in Paris (mmm what would Coelho say about this!?)… reports on lost & found objects in Basel and Geneva are still pending!

Back on 10 February from all these trips I decided to rest in …Yemen, where else?!

So please do stay tuned for an imminent recount of my little trip to Yemen (11 – 21 February 2009), to appear very shortly!

- I hope you understand that I do not give too many details on names and certain events because Yemen is a wonderful and at the same time very conservative society so I prefer not to expose anybody online too much -

Hard to believe a place I will visit for a mere 10 days already has found a special place in my heart.

But so it was.

A dear friend of mine and I were chatting online at some point and she invited me to come visit her in Yemen where she currently works. I said I would like to come, but more as a courtesy reply than an actual answer, because I thought meeting her in Europe one day would be much more likely. However, discovering the costs were not prohibitive and that I could wiggle a couple of days into my busy holiday schedule (yes yes poor me!) I told her that I would actually come if she really meant it…

I arrive in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, on 12 February 2009 at 03.55 in the morning. Shell-shocked from the trip and the arrival time, I zombie out of the airport into the warm smile of what was to become one of my best buddies in the hotel I was staying. With some hands and feet conversation and my shameful Arabic mumbling I manage to discover his name and the fact that he has 3 girls and 2 boys. GOD it’s frustrating when you (almost) do not speak the language of the country.

I arrive in the hotel around 04.30 and want to go straight to sleep.

Obviously, a few loud voices disagreed with me. Especially one! About 10 meters from my hotel window there is a minaret and guess around what time the first prayer is announced… let’s just say I did not exactly manage to fall asleep straight away.

In the morning I saw my dear friend but she being… well, a she, I cannot exactly express my feelings of happiness of seeing her again because of man-woman interaction rules in Yemeni society. It makes me feel somehow uneasy during my stay in Yemen, but what better way than learning a country from the inside then by trying to put your judgment aside for a while by attempting to adapt as much as you can and see how it makes you feel over a certain period of time. Obviously, my stay is too short for that, but I can try my best.

I am enchanted by the colors of a splendid city, my eyes cannot grasp the entirety of the beauty of Sana’a, the Yemeni capital. Beautiful little children playing cheerfully on the streets, jumping up and down, and occasionally hopping onto a passing pick up truck for a ride of a few metres, just for kicks. Astonishing buildings in the old city centre, which is the second oldest (although Palestinians told me it was Jericho!) still inhabited human settlement after Damascus, an architectural marvel with a style so uniform and precious I have never witnessed before. Teenage girls, ladies and old women walking by in black burqas, sometimes they quickly glance and their eyes seem to smile at me. The loud and melodious prayers blasting out of the minarets, so much more enticing and pleasant during the day and evening than in the early early morning!

Now I would like to introduce you to a new friend. His/her name is qat.

I chew qat, some kind of green tobacco leaves. You chew them until almost dry, after which you move them into the corner of your mouth and stuff new fresh leaves in. Repeat the sequence until you run out of qat, after which you just suck the remaining liquid out of that ball of qat that will by now have formed in the corner of your mouth and keep it there for hours and hours. Don’t forget to drink because your mouth becomes horribly dry. When you become an expert chewer, your mouth will be so full that the cheek seems to explode. Many Yemeni men have even some sort of dimples on their cheeks when there is no qat in their mouths, which are actually overstretched pieces of skin because of making enormous balls of qat. I thought I was going to have hallucinations but during the different days I try it I notice different effects. Sometimes I feel I can take on the whole world and I feel like talking all the time, at other times I just become slow and my appetite is completely gone.

Apparently almost a third of the country depends on qat for a livelihood and one magazine writes that, because of its widespread use and influence on lifestyle on so many Yemenis, it is the Green Imam secretly ruling the country. In many country, it is considered a drug and is therefore illegal.

Countless other things happened that would make this too long a recount, so I will just tell you one little story and leave you to attend your things!

On 15 February, after a day of glorious sightseeing in the company of my dear friend, her driver and the only female tour guide in Yemen (see pictures), I went with two Yemeni hotel staff to a hammaam, a Turkish sauna.

It was the most wicked experience.

How cool to go somewhere and you have no idea how to communicate certain concepts, it is terribly frustrating but somehow quite fun too. So with many gestures and facial contortions I was dragged through a series of small steaming hot rooms where I was constantly scrubbed, massaged and stretched for about an hour. Every now and then, some bloke would come out of nowhere and throw a bucket of water over my head. Well, not just one, usually 4 or 5 in rapid sequence leaving me ehm, rather short of air to breathe. Is this the infamous “waterboarding” torture technique? Interestingly enough, the person who was my masseur for the occasion was actually a man who must have been about 60 years old. I felt really bad because he was scrubbing, massaging and stretching me all the time and for that he had to fold himself into awkward positions, both standing and sitting. To make things worse for him, he had to repeat to me every instruction or change of position a few times and/or explain it in gestures. Every now and then I glanced over at my two friends and gave them a thumbs-up or my “signature” blink of an eye and they would smile back, seeing I was enjoying the little treat.

What I did not mention yet was that at the very beginning of the massaging sessions, when the masseur tries to stretch the muscles in your legs, not only does he stand on the lower leg, he also slaps it a little. But as he moved upward he also spanked the upper leg and occasionally he hit my butt. So, for somebody who got his last ass whooping at least some 15 years ago I really really felt embarrassed and really had to stop myself from bursting out laughing.

What an amazing trip.

I feel so grateful that the world has many amazing sights and people, regretting my life will be too short to enjoy them all. I am mesmerized by Yemen as I am sure another Marelli was when he set foot some decades back (my late grandfather), and it makes me sad I cannot tell him just how wonderful the experience made me feel.

I wish you all the best, much happiness and love all over,

Your friend,

Fra

P.S.
Check out the photos on http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=228211&id=728315480&l=5e55c
For photos of the Sana’a city centre just go to Google and you will see some awesome stuff !!!!!

P.P.S.
I am now in Romania in Cluj-Napoca working for PATRIR ( www.patrir.ro ) One of the things they organize is trainings for people working and/or wanting to work in the humanitarian sector, so if you are interested and manage to spare some time in May check out www.patrir.ro/training and mail me for any questions !!!!! ciauuuuuuuuuu

Dear people,

I hope everybody is alive & well and that life is treating you fairly.

After taking my leave for the whole month of May to go to Holland and Italy, I came back to Ivory Coast on June 1st.

Luckily enough, last Saturday I was not working and some people happened to plan a weekend trip to the beautiful coastal city of San Pedro.

As people say that a picture is worth a thousand words, I thought that instead of typing a journal entry of 48.000 words (!) I could show you 48 pictures that tell the same story … just read the description and enjoy,

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=125389&l=92f6a&id=728315480

Big hug,

Fra

P.S. 17 June update = I uploaded 2 videos as well on Facebook taken during this weekend, they are really silly… enjoy them !!!!!

Ugh ugh… dusting off this blog is tough work… all these spiderwebs, yuk !

So…, wow, 24 November 2007 and today is 24 March 2008, rrrrright. 4 months…

Sorry for being soundly asleep for all this time, so yeah in the end it seems I did not fall of this earth (in case you were wondering).

Where shall I start? I just came back from a weekend in Yamoussoukro, so I will try to give you a little impression of the little I saw in one and a half day over there. It was something else, let me tell you that!

The trip from Abidjan was about 3 hours by bus, well, UN bus of course. Which means not stopping at the 23490423 checkpoints along the road, which might make your trip just a tad longer… The highway was large and amazingly well paved, much better than many highways I have seen in Italy, Greece, France and Spain. Then there was forest on both sides, becoming less thick the further north we went and, every now and then, a tiny village on the roadside with a little market one could buy fruits and vegetables from. Once almost in Yamoussoukro, the highway becomes more a B-road with just 2 lanes and a couples of bumps here and there. For some stretches, I have seen the magic three colors of this country, which I am sure Côte d’Ivoire shares with many other African countries as well: the bright RED dirt road, with bright GREEN bush on wrapped around the road tightly on both sides and the bright BLUE of the sky filled with the heat of the sun. It is just magic.

And then tadaa, there it is, the supposed capital of Côte d’Ivoire. Supposed, because it is not. All government institutions and people working in them are in Abidjan. But wait, there is more.

Imagine any huge country capital with perfectly paved and well-illuminated 8-lane roads all over, a great number of fancy looking universities and a GINORMOUS cathedral like the one in the Vatican. Ow yeah, and two hotels that seem teleported over here straight from Dubai. And then… emptiness, only the vastness of endless fields of coconut trees.

The roads are deserted. The cathedral is deserted. The universities are deserted (well, I did go during the weekend…!). There is a single street with maquis (Ivorian open air restaurants) only. There are also enormous institutes of this and that, lodges, presidential palaces and other gigantic-constructions-with too-much-marble-and-blasting-airconditioning-for-2,5-mostly-sleeping-or-at-least-sleepy-guardians-and-nobody-else.

The climate is far nicer than in Abidjan, it was far less hot and, in the evening and mornings, even quite chilly. Actually, for the record, on Sunday morning 23 March 2008, for the first time in 5 months since I have been here, I have pronounced the following words: “I’m cold!” Once I shared this revelation with a Belgian friend and colleague we both looked at each other seriously and then burst out laughing bitterly because surely we did not wish more of such horrid and nightmare-provoking northwestern European climate back up here.

Needless to say that we ate rather copious quantities, dare I say it, HEAPS, of food at every occasion which made the bus shiver and shake once we climbed back inside along with our severely strained digestion system.

All in all, never have my eyes met such an outlandish empty extravaganza, a Las Vegas or Qatar where much is in place but where most still needs to be constructed, and where somebody simply forgot to invite people to actually come live there. I think it might be the set constructed for the next edition of the Truman Show and all that needs to be done yet is to give the green light to the movie crew and all the cast to start doing their predefined laps. So yeah, the next Truman Burbank might be Ivorian!

I must say I am very happy to have visited it, to have seen something so extravagant that if you would tell a European or North American that it exists in Africa they would lock you up in a mental institute; to have witnessed a city that, once filled with entrepreneurial people and a big population, could become a new pearl to this amazing country; to have seen that, no matter how often you try to understand, reason and then explain something, and all the more if this something is African, you miserably fail to grasp its many subtleties and intricacies.

I wish with all my heart it will never stop me from trying.

Best,

Fra

Enjoy, my dear people… looking forward to your reactions!!!!!!

Happy life 101

Enjoy when you can and endure when you must;
Take this lesson from Sir Winston Churchill, a person one can trust.

Whilst you enjoy and endure never forget;
That every man is guilty of the good he didn’t do, words of Voltaire, or, actually, Arouet.

Enjoy, endure, do good, and keep in mind;
That the good old Mahatma said that an eye for an eye makes the world blind.

Enjoy, endure, do good, keep us from blindness;
Also, don’t curse the darkness, light a candle, that is what Confucius deems progress.

Enjoy, endure, do good, keep us from blindness, light a candle;
If only these wisdoms were already bestowed upon us in our cradle.

We should however not lose sleep over these matters;
For I think I managed to pinpoint the source of all, wrapped in a mere few letters.

I doubt intensely;
That anyone has ever approximated truth so closely.

If you manage to remember what comes next, you may thus forget all the above;
As St. Augustine found the source energy we all secretly have been thinking of.

He said “Ama, et fac quod vis”, “Love, and do whatever you want”;
Which is a combination of the above, plus Einstein, Seneca, Rumi, Homer, Lao Tze, Hafiz & Kant.

Superb simplicity, genuine genius, crystal clarity, perennial precision;
What amazing qualities for words bursting of wisdom.

——————————————

Fault lines

Rumi is right.

From the day we are born, we fail ourselves.

Not because we grow older, for that is inevitable and both amazing as well as tragic;
But because we build barrier upon barrier against what most likely is the single strongest force that guides our existence, thereby taking the fairy dust out of our own magic.

Some call it love, others compassion, integrity, justice, respect, altruism, or otherwise;
The truth is, if I may be so bold as to pretend to speak its tongue, is that the wording matters solely to the unwise.

Whether implicitly or not, we are supposed to always cheer on our own;
And be loyal to this country, team, religion, income group, profession, generation, skin color, neighborhood, family, ethnicity, or in supporting an occasional combination of some of these elements that our best side needs to be shown.

Important constructions to make sense of the world, do not get me wrong;
Alas making mankind a prey to itself as well, by keeping divisions alive and that force apart, drifting us slowly but surely away from becoming verily intelligent and strong.

Like toro and torero, these fault lines and us are engaged in a dazzling dance of life and death;
An apparently gracious tango for two, albeit up to one of party’s final gasps for breath.

Babies know their mind is free from fault lines, hence their simple, joyous and genuine heart;
As pure and precious as the beauty of a white tiger, albeit, as you have seen by now my friend, this is merely at the start.

When years come to pass, the baby finds itself living in multiple cages, centerpiece of the show, a mere entertainer;
Performing to the whims of the crowd and the animal tamer.

Poor white tigers we all are, so talented yet flawed, so precious yet compromised, so free yet chained.

Knowing this, what we can do is to attempt to slow down the building of fault lines, try to grasp the phenomenon and reverse it where possible;
The minimum we can do is to be aware, so as to, if not to unleash the savage perfection of the white tiger within, at least giver her a reason for a smile, o so beautiful.

For what is better than, even if the body is in shackles, setting the mind free;
So at least a part of us may wander off to distant lands, past circus cages, unpleasant crowds and show rules, in brief, in a place we always wanted to be.

Near you.