LLI 40 Don’t Fix It. Feel It.

00:00:00: Episode and iteration number 40 of the Love Loud podcast "What a Journey".

00:00:07: This podcast is iterative.

00:00:10: You will not find something that is just one and done and perfect and polished.

00:00:15: It is a process, so it's worth listening to a few episodes.

00:00:20: Because how we started off and where we are now, this is a journey in itself and it is documented.

00:00:28: So, life is not a straight line.

00:00:33: Life is not a straight line from birth to death, from iteration 1 to iteration x.

00:00:41: Well, death is the big spoiler of the doll because it all faces us with the change that is inert in life

00:00:52: and that we often just try to avoid.

00:00:58: There are many, many, many movements for that, the ultimate death of this body, of this body only.

00:01:09: Well, in life itself, we do experience many births and deaths metaphorically, many iterations of ourselves.

00:01:19: And that means that it cannot be linear even if we try to make it a linear process,

00:01:27: even if we try to predict with our mind what is going to be in the future.

00:01:34: Even if we try to make sense of what has happened in the past to draw a straight line to why it is now in the present.

00:01:46: It is only one line of causality while this is just the method, the methodology that our brain works with to make sense of the world.

00:02:01: Because it clings on to logic, it clings on to rationality.

00:02:07: And it's societal, very accepted, it's accepted in society.

00:02:16: We want the results. We want to know that if we put in the effort, it will lead to results.

00:02:24: We want to know that A causes B, that B causes C, because it makes life easier for us, it makes it safer for us.

00:02:33: Well, it is Mandarin and it's the tiniest fraction, the tiniest fraction that we can predict.

00:02:50: Okay, so how did we get here?

00:02:56: I share with you that the past few days and episodes were a bit wobbly for me, as the said was wobbly and it was, was a bit, you know, I had not

00:03:12: have the balance of being active and resting as much as I wished it to be, so which came out of course as episodes and me recording about balance, like in the last one and rest and relaxing.

00:03:29: Because very often times when something comes through you, it is for you too.

00:03:37: Have you ever tried that? Have you ever checked on yourself when you were just in the flow, maybe talking with a friend or a group or wherever you are and then it just flows and comes through you and after that you check in with yourself and like, oh, well, that, that would be good for me too to take on, like, take too hard.

00:04:04: That's the magic of it.

00:04:08: It's not just for others what comes through you, it's not just for you, it's never about one or the other pole, which again is that balance because in the end, the personal is the universal.

00:04:22: It does not matter if it's for the single person, the individual or a whole community.

00:04:31: The impact will ripple out, which is why I appreciate so much that you're listening here.

00:04:48: I still held myself up to the commitment that I record these episodes because while we go very much into surrendering, ultimately surrendering your whole body to life, to what comes through you, that does not mean to be all softly, softly, softly whispering and all is fine and flowing and we're going to lighting some incense.

00:05:17: No, that's not.

00:05:18: It also means stepping up, stepping up for life, for the commitment to life.

00:05:30: And for me, this meant recording this podcast.

00:05:33: And that was the magic thing that through recording, while recording, I gained more energy, even though I was not in a state of perfectly full of energy before that.

00:05:49: And sometimes it's like that.

00:05:51: Sometimes we wake up and we feel a little down.

00:05:58: We don't know what it is.

00:06:00: It's just like a little bit drained and a bit low.

00:06:04: You know, it's okay.

00:06:06: That's not unique to you.

00:06:12: It's not unique to me either.

00:06:15: It's a very common and a very human experience and that alone just gives a certain relief that that is just part of being human.

00:06:34: So what it now means, it does not mean to go about it and attack it with any technique or method that you know, which was my tendency to, but to be able to sit with it.

00:06:55: Because the attack in itself, and we have talked about it in past episodes, this too is reactive.

00:07:04: It is an avoiding pattern of the human mind to not feel what is there, to not feel what is that uncomfortable notion that just flows through you.

00:07:18: And the more we try to repress it through either, well, obvious repression through pushing it away or by making it go away or trying to make it go away by attacking it.

00:07:33: It sounds harsh, no?

00:07:35: But it can really subtly look like, oh, I'm gonna meditate on it like for it to disappear in order to.

00:07:47: That's usually a clue for you that you are trying to avoid something to, okay, I'm gonna do this in order to feel better.

00:07:58: I'm gonna do this in order to feel better.

00:08:00: Well, it might be the case that it can help us.

00:08:03: Of course, I'm gonna go out in order to feel better.

00:08:06: It's not a promise because, again, this opens up this notion of the mind to put linearity on something where there isn't.

00:08:17: So sometimes we just get surprised, which would be great.

00:08:23: And in other times, we get disappointed by the surprise, which then just does not make us feel better, doesn't it?

00:08:34: That is what it means in the first place to be open to life, to let it meander through us, to let go of control, to surrender ourselves, to sit with what is uncomfortable too.

00:08:52: You do not have to heal it. You do not have to operate and make operations on it and just like a surgeon and dissect it.

00:09:05: It's okay to just sit with a feeling, scan your body and relax your body into it, muscle by muscle.

00:09:14: You do not have to explore with your mind and your thoughts what is exactly going on.

00:09:20: It is a different technique and it can help.

00:09:24: And I want to offer you a different angle on this that might not be that popular because it's too simple.

00:09:34: It's simple and whatever is simple, it's hard for our mind.

00:09:46: That's a tough one, isn't it?

00:09:48: Because we try to pretend that of course that we want the simple things, the easy things, but yeah, we want it easy, but we do not want it simple.

00:09:57: Because sometimes the simple thing is not very easy.

00:10:01: And in this case it is letting go of the very complications that we try to make up in order to find paradise, to find relief, to feel better again, to get rid of something.

00:10:20: And that's why there are so many methods and strategies and pathways.

00:10:26: It's the complication of life.

00:10:32: It is in the best way possible.

00:10:36: It is the abundance of life too.

00:10:44: It is written in our biology so that life cannot be linear.

00:10:53: It is written in our pulse. Life is a pulse.

00:10:57: And if we look at the graphs of electrocardiographs like that,

00:11:02: that just record the electrical signs and signals from the heart,

00:11:08: the flat line means death.

00:11:10: You're dead.

00:11:11: The body is dead in the flat line.

00:11:13: The brain is dead then.

00:11:16: When you have the same for the brain waves,

00:11:19: anything that is a flat line and stays a flat line,

00:11:23: it's dead for life, the body.

00:11:29: So there is this up and down of the curve.

00:11:32: There is this up and down of the graph.

00:11:34: There are some hiccups and these just mean that your life,

00:11:37: that it's natural and it's good and any resistance to it,

00:11:42: any fight to make it go away, it's you resisting to life.

00:11:47: It's you decaying.

00:11:50: I'm very blunt today.

00:11:52: I'm being very blunt today.

00:11:56: You can see there is a new energy emerging.

00:11:59: And we take it as an iterative process,

00:12:02: that we take the ups and downs of the days of our lives,

00:12:08: of the seasons and we work with it.

00:12:11: Not because we intentionally work with them in order to,

00:12:16: but it's just our current expression.

00:12:19: And there is no need to shame the expression

00:12:22: that we are in right now.

00:12:25: Or that we have been, or that we will be.

00:12:30: There is no need to shame and there is no need to feel guilt about it.

00:12:34: These are all constructions of the mind.

00:12:37: And while it is so simple, of course,

00:12:40: you know how hard it can be.

00:12:44: And it's natural for the human being.

00:12:47: It's natural for our humanness.

00:12:48: So it's good to give ourselves some grace.

00:12:52: [Birds chirping]

00:12:58: To pretend with ourselves.

00:13:02: The love that we can express,

00:13:06: and the compassion that we can express for ourselves,

00:13:09: it will ripple up.

00:13:11: It will ripple out.

00:13:15: And there will be interferences and it's gonna get wider and deeper and more,

00:13:21: not because you forested, but it's just its natural movement.

00:13:28: Life as a pulse is written in our biology.

00:13:32: It's even picked up by architects.

00:13:37: And while in our modern day world, it's not very often seen.

00:13:41: There is an architect,

00:13:44: Kundadvasa, he's called,

00:13:47: an European one and he put emphasis on the curved line.

00:13:54: He built the houses in a way that they were very organic.

00:14:01: There were plants in it and he designed them to be in a way that is supporting life.

00:14:10: It's going with the natural way of the human being.

00:14:13: So I went to the museum, the Kundadvasa house in Vienna.

00:14:20: And it's very interesting because, first of all, at first,

00:14:26: you enter the building and you start to stumble.

00:14:29: I tripped. I tripped because the floor is not straight.

00:14:35: It is. There are little bumps in it and little little valleys and you just go.

00:14:41: It's in a building still. So it's still kind of paved, but it's so unpredictable

00:14:48: that you actually cannot just put that mask of,

00:14:54: OK, I'm in a building, here will be a flat space, the floor will be flat.

00:14:59: But it's just like when you're outside and the forest are walking across a field.

00:15:04: There are bumps in the road and just little valleys and stones.

00:15:09: And this is very organically developing under your feet.

00:15:15: And he says that the straight line.

00:15:20: He's very direct about it. The straight line is the enemy of life.

00:15:28: And we can see that, don't we?

00:15:32: Anything that comes from nature from life, there is no straight line.

00:15:39: There are little curves and nooks and crannies in it.

00:15:43: It's all very moving, oscillating, pulsing even in the form itself,

00:15:52: not just in the processes.

00:15:56: And then the straight line, even though it is very practicable

00:16:00: because for the human mind, it's easily predicted.

00:16:04: We can plan with it. We can calculate with it.

00:16:08: We can plan whole buildings with it.

00:16:12: We can calculate how much material we'll need to build that building.

00:16:17: It's easy to get the people running on the floor there.

00:16:22: They will be faster and more efficient and more productive.

00:16:25: That's the notion of our society, to cramp up the spaces, to put more in.

00:16:36: According to the perception of the human mind, what we want there to be

00:16:43: in a company, in a factory, so in a business, in whatever there is in the city

00:16:53: and also marketers have found that in a store, the design is better to be

00:17:01: designed as something that makes us curious, that is curving,

00:17:06: that we can be surprised when we walk around the corner

00:17:09: because if it's too predictable, of course we get bored too.

00:17:16: And it's funny because it is picked up,

00:17:20: yet at the same time we lost so much touch to it that life is appalled,

00:17:27: that life is oscillating, that there are ups and downs,

00:17:31: that we try to fight it very often times when we're not "on high energy"

00:17:39: or "on low energy".

00:17:40: This you can hear sometimes that we got to be high energy all the time,

00:17:49: that just low energy can go home and all that stuff.

00:17:54: In that notion it is, while I do feel that the positive psychology

00:18:01: is used in honoring the human ways, it is extremely effective.

00:18:16: It's not about that one-sided chaka, chaka, chaka, all is good, no shit,

00:18:22: no it is not because humanity is everything.

00:18:29: And we try to fool ourselves with that because we don't want to feel uncomfortable.

00:18:41: And sometimes we have to pause to be uncomfortable.

00:18:50: And sometimes in this pause lies the key because there is always an

00:19:00: in that notion of being uncomfortable and whatever it is,

00:19:09: it's finite, there is an end to it.

00:19:14: We sometimes feel when we're in it that there's an endless

00:19:21: sadness, an endless grief or an endless anger.

00:19:27: Yet the human body is not designed to keep it at this state.

00:19:37: We will always be able to find something that lifts us up.

00:19:44: We will always be moving, moving through these motions.

00:19:50: Then it will be a ping-pong, maybe.

00:19:57: And while it looks like ping-pong horizontally it's an up and down,

00:20:04: it's oscillating, it's just the pulse of life going through you.

00:20:10: And for some things they just have a grip on you

00:20:17: for weeks, for days, for years, decades.

00:20:22: Sometimes you just grip on them and sometimes it's just a second that

00:20:33: fraction where everything turns upside down and that is the pause.

00:20:37: You do not have to pause the action or take a stop in the action that you

00:20:44: actually do. It can be an inner pause too.

00:20:49: That is the real interruption, that is the real disruptive notion

00:21:00: of what is leadership and intimacy

00:21:08: and eroticism.

00:21:12: It is such a pleasure to be here with you.

00:21:29: If you feel it, I invite you to reach out to me.

00:21:33: I've put a form in the show notes. I would love to get in contact with you,

00:21:39: to open up the conversation. You can choose if you want to.

00:21:43: Answer the questions I've put there as an inspiration

00:21:47: or just a free flowing, just write a comment.

00:21:51: I would love to hear and to listen to you.

00:21:57: Lots of love to you. Love a little louder.

00:22:02: Shang.