When communicating with people who lack an aligned spiritual background, or who have not delved into it as far, my mind starts translating, explaining, and becoming more detailed in conveying its meaning. Realizing the difference in cosmologies and how these influence the conception and perception of my words and their meaning, and understanding beyond the mind that some of the meaning of my words lies in the invisible which necessitates a listener to have an intuitive or conscious access to the invisible to fully grasp what I am sharing or pointing to.

I catch myself attempting to make that meaning tangible and perceptible for those without access to the non-physical through words, which necessitates more words and a higher level of complexity or communication of interconnected aspects.

Someone called it my ‘branched’ thinking, which amused me at first because that has a different meaning to me, as I conceptualize that as taking an essential or fundamental idea and following it into branches of its meaning and manifestation. Which I do at times but had not in conversations with them.

In my morning reflections today I became aware what they were trying to verbalize by talking about my ‘branched’ thinking. They were pointing to something I had not been mindful of, though I was conscious of in my higher mind: my wish to verbalize my multidimensional perceptions and thoughts.

That was an interesting moment of realizing how the higher mind acts without the ‘human mind’ being aware of it, even if consciousness is utilizing the ‘human mind.’ What I refer to as the higher mind is not located in the brain, and may include what we usually think of as the mind (human mind), yet it exceeds it by accessing the field of consciousness in more subtle or higher layers depending on how you picture it. It is through this aspect that access to the higher realms and dimensions is possible to us. Some people perceive it and conceptualize it as the heart-mind.
A term I intentionally side-step as it subtly affirms to too many their dualistic perception of heart and mind and the rejection of the mind (mental, intellectual), which to me is something I don’t want to feed into. One could argue that ‘higher mind’ might be misperceived as a disregard of the heart but that is easier to address than the other perceptive distortion because it is an effect of mainstream thinking.

Back to my adaptations in communication when speaking with people who are not familiar with relationship dynamics, energetic dynamics, and spiritual cosmologies pointing to the oneness of all that is or the field of consciousness. As my perceptions and reflections of life are based on these knowings they often feel alien, weird, or outright nonsensical to those who perceive life through the lens of mainstream conditionings, which deem the physical and quantifiable the only reality.

Therefore while sharing of myself and my perceptions I am aware of a need to make the invisible and intangibles, which are real aspects of life to me, shine through and become more visible and tangible to the human mind.

It feels like changing languages, and coming up against the limitations of my language skill and vocabulary in the other language, and having to accept my falling short of truly conveying my meaning and releasing the hope for their full understanding. At best 50% or 60% of it is accessible to the open minded but closed bodied/hearted. With people whose intuition is more intact and integrated it can go up to 70% or 75%, which is not too bad.

And how does my being know or guesstimate the percentage of what has been transferred? The feedback is mostly clear and loud in the non-physical, non-linear, and non-verbal. This is also where cues to rephrase, explain, or drop a subject come from even if the other doesn’t communicate their confusion.

Don’t get me wrong I get the same ‘lost in translation’ feedback when communicating with some spiritual people, whenever what I share is from my current growth edge and ‘too far out’ for their cosmology or current grasp. The difference there is a different kind of openness to the unknown, a part of them hearing me and opening to what may lay out of their ken… allowing the meaning to come to them in time, if welcomed.
In a sense a listening happens with with others too, but the part that hears and opens is not as integrated into their waking experience or awareness. Which makes it unclear if that knowing will ever be theirs in this lifetime, depending on their life’s trajectory. It is like a seed that doesn’t fall on fertile welcoming soil, but on a hardened soil in a dry and hot climate, making it a matter of alignment of many factors if the seed will ever get a chance to root and grow.

Becoming aware of my unconscious attempts at and challenges of translating the mystical into the mundane is quite entertaining. On the one hand I cannot help feel a deeper appreciation for the dynamics of communication and its complexities, and on the other hand I cannot stop laughing at this human experience and its countless futile toils.

Making it conscious allows me to stop wasting my energy in attempts which are not going to be fruitful and only end up confounding and mesmerizing another in ways that are not conducive to a meeting of equal beings.

Once again I wonder how subtly my path keeps changing and transforming my expressions and how I live in the meeting point of two worlds. What a gift that I am surrounded with beloveds, who not only understand my mystic’s experience, heart, and mind but also inspire her to travel and explore further.

Who would have thought that a mundane thing like dating could be the source of reaping sweet fruits of insight? But then isn’t all made of consciousness and awaits our attunement and ability to commune with it in playfulness?

What magic this life holds for all…

Art by Robert Cook

The post Lost in Translation appeared first on Venuskind.

I am in a newfound and visceral awe of this archaic and arcane instinctual wisdom, its no nonsense attitude, and the sense of uninterrupted connection with all of life and experiences on this planet it opened up to me. What magical gifts we carry encoded in our genes without ever fully appreciating or hope of knowing them until they choose to open themselves to us?

It is a special kind of magic when this old one deems me deserving of more direct and interactive exchanges. Opening my mind to a dimension of consciousness which was not available to my awareness, though it strongly affected and formed my everyday life since I incarnated into this form. 

This novel opening of the primal is helping me understand the relationships and power differentials between the primal (instinctive, animal), vital (emotional), mental (intellectual, cognitive), and higher mind (consciousness). 

I am aware this is possible only thanks to the higher mind having all mindbody systems focusing for years on dispersing illusions and releasing blockages to oneness and wholeness. There is grace in this as well as a reward for commitment to the path, work done, and surrender to higher consciousness through all the twists and turns of my path.

Using a recent experience I was shown that my primal mind dispelled a sticky enchantment of the vital (emotional), which was vulnerable to it owing to old wounds, said disruption ushering in more clarity of perception and realignment of my being. Allowing me to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the primal, its strong medicine/wisdom, and dispel my misperception that what obstructs knowing and alignment with greater mysteries of life lies mostly in the primal. I stand corrected and bow in humble gratitude for the gift of knowing and liberation from distortion.

Art: ‘Safia’ by Marcel van Luit

The post The Primal appeared first on Venuskind.

This is how I deepened my love relationship with my body, feeling more attuned, healthy, stronger, energized, balanced and peaceful.

This year Spirit has stopped me in my tracks and made me contemplate where my preference for diversity and desire to connect with a variety of people, energies, mindsets and lifestyles was serving my wellbeing and where it was detrimental to it. In the process I had to release some unconsciously held beliefs and fears, change what I expose my mind and being to, become more discerning and reflective of the energies I experience and the feedback my body gives me about them. I had to discard another layer of good girl programming that used to override my own needs in service of useless ideas or principles. Within the same lesson Spirit guided me to choose the reality, timeline, story I want to live in and release my attachment to being connected to all other realities, timelines and narratives in unhealthy and ego-driven ways.

This is how Spirit healed my mind and spirit and revitalized my being.

This year I am wrapping up a long karmic cycle of unbalanced, unfulfilling, unloving and disheartening relating and relationships. I was lead into extensive self-observations, deep introspections, reflections and knowing of what in me attracts, co-creates, enables, nurtures and holds on to these painful experiences. Another layer of how the ego abuses and tortures me was revealed to me with the gracious help of an external catalyst who artfully combined all the tones of my ‘core woundings’ to trigger the unraveling of what still remained hidden to my awareness.

Parallel to it I have been exploring new dimensions of relating and communing with my innermost circles of friends and family, tasting new states of oneness in diversity, joyful embracements of similarities and differences alike, new frequencies and tones of blissful co-being. My heart is opening to more love and experiencing a delicious multitude of subtleties and nuances to love, friendship, affection, tenderness, support, nurturing and care. I have been learning to show up in my relationships with more vulnerability, playfulness, discernment and self love than I would have been capable of or even dreamt it possible just a year or two ago. I am being met in kind, with effortless reciprocity, appreciation, compassion, joy, playfulness and love that exceeds my most daring dreams. And yet I know it to be just a beginning…

This is how my heart and emotional body have been purified from the dark tendrils of karma, ancestral patterns and trauma and infused with luminous rainbow colored threads of love’s potentiality and soothing.

It has been a year of refocusing on my dreams, of manifesting my heart’s desire for a life filled with a multitude of loves, for a community of like-hearted dreamers, magicians, alchemists and creators, for creating spaces of potentiality, transformation, the magic of being and the effervescence of life. A year that allowed me to witness these dreams begin to take form in the physical dimension and nurture their unfolding with eyes of awe, glittering with the light of age old galaxies. This year has shown me the change of the tides-the time for my visions to take form has finally come. It has been a year of answered prayers of old, a year of my consciousness visioning in the realm of the unknown, touching the impossible wanting to be manifest through me and us.

This is how my trust has been nourished and expanded, this is how my dreams have been resurrected into a higher vibrancy, free, fluid, playfully and creatively shapeshifting with the flow of conscious harmonic resonance.

I release what cannot be part of my becoming and unfolding with heartfelt gratitude and blessings and welcome whatever awaits to teach me, enrich my life and expand my consciousness and love with open arms and heart.

And I bow in gratitude to Source, life, 2020, catalysts, teachers, students, friends, beloveds, family and Self for a subtly yet profoundly transformational year. 

Art by Marcel van Luit

The post 2020 Hindsight appeared first on Venuskind.

But what after all, behind appearances, is this seeming mystery? We can see that it is the Consciousness which had lost itself returning again to itself, emerging out of its giant self-forgetfulness, slowly, painfully, as a Life that is, would be sentient, half-sentient, dimly sentient, wholly sentient and finally struggles to be more than sentient, to be again divinely self conscious, free, infinite, immortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo

I often use the word consciousness and in using it I can already sense the ones who will misunderstand it and mistake my sharings to be about their experience of the waking mind. But consciousness lies beyond the physical brain and body-mind, and though accessible with practice, it is not experienced by many. Especially not by those who have internalized and identified with the disregard for everything that is not pure logic or a product of the mental.

In walking our path the expanding of our senses and ascent through higher layers of mind is not easily and correctly tracked or known without context or contrast. It often takes the encounter of contrast and the limitations we feel when sharing what has become normal and accepted to us with someone who listens intently but has not the slightest clue of what we are talking about. I am not talking about people who are intellectually lazy or unimaginative but about intelligent, engaged and open-minded people. And yet they cannot understand or even remotely grasp the realness, form, function and expansive natures of Intuition and aspects of the Overmind. 

Here again intuition will be read as the gut instinct which is not quite what I mean. The gut instinct is a subconscious body-mind response which is informed by previous experiences of this lifetime as well as  ancestral and karmic memories, its fundamental goal is assuring our survival and safety, and this is what most people experience singularly as intuition. Yet I have come to experience another layer or emanation of intuition which is not sourced from the body-mind and whose objectives are based on alignment with higher Self and Source. An intuition that can be accessed in the higher mind/ overmind layers and necessitates a different kind of silence and attunement to receive and know it. This is what I meant by intuition earlier.

As with many things our lower minds will struggle to accept or believe in the existence of the heart mind, higher mind and higher intuition dimensions until we experience and know aspects of mind beyond the mental and physical. To get there takes a disciplined practice of inner vision, self reflection, knowing and silencing the mind and a capacity to receive and be open without judgement or expectation. This takes whatever time our system needs and our souls choose, for some it will be short for others a long journey. 

All progress on our spiritual path is a gift of grace and not a matter of achievement through doing things right or long enough as I was reminded emphatically a while back. There is nothing to feel superior about as we were graced with whatever access and use of our being we have, nor do we need to feel envy over the gifts of others as life unfolds perfectly for our individual soul’s growth and quest.

This year I have been taken further in my learning and being, and was granted the gift of being united with woman whose gifts are more subtle and expansive than mine. Whose being and sharings speak to the path and magic which lie ahead of this journey into divine self consciousness and freedom.

Yet with gifts we also have to accept the “price” they come at as we are changing. I became aware that I take decidedly less pleasure, sustenance and meaning from connecting with someone not on this journey or not advanced enough in it. Such connections though lovely in a lot of other ways I appreciate and value feel like someone drained color, textures and tastes from life. These exchanges lack aliveness and the delicious shared knowing of the magical glitter of consciousness sparkling through all of life. It took me by surprise and saddened me deeply to own and accept this. 

The change I feel internally can be best compared to suddenly realizing that eating apples no longer pleases and nourishes you but to the contrary it makes you feel hungrier and unwell. And necessitates coming to grips with the loss you feel at knowing it still is a beautiful and sweet apple others can fully enjoy, as you did before you changed and lost your ability to metabolize it.

I am surprised that most parts of me take this loss in a stride and that it didn’t incite a woe-is-me-feeling. I guess the past decade of stripping away all that is not true and real to my soul has trained my lower minds to become better at accepting what is than I give them credit for.

And so the journey continues as I choose once again surrendering and opening to the mystery of consciousness.

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Photography by Unknown for Vlisco (textiles)

The post Higher Self appeared first on Venuskind.

Fascinating how our healing paths are perfectly individual, giving us lessons and insights that open up doors to resources within us, which later on turn out to be much needed for more challenging lessons and revelations down the road. I see with clarity that I am always cared for on this path of self realization and always, always guided via all kinds of signs, prompts, helpful messages, thoughtful friends giving me much needed wisdom, validation or clarification of vague intuitions.

I have learned that the habits of the mind are harder to change than emotional habits. Even if it may seem to be the other way around on the surface, on a cursory glance or brush with them. 

Emotional habits even if they resort to knee-jerk responses can be eventually managed or even controlled by a disciplined mind. 

Yet who will manage an uncooperative or unhealthy mind?

Consciousness of course. Yet consciousness does not operate with strictness or harshness and often utilizes the mind in engaging with us and this dimension. It also speaks and acts through the heart – but again the feelings and emotions permeating us from consciousness are not the forceful, flooding kind our subconscious creates.

Which makes for a slower pace and more challenges in finding pathways to bring our minds back on track and free them from their bad habits and conditioning.

It has been a relief to find ways of detaching myself or moving out of spaces where my own mind bullied or tortured me. To know that I have the power to rid myself from this experiences of internal oppression has been freeing and a shining tether to wellbeing whenever I lost myself in the artificial realities my thoughts conjured.

My main tools and resources in dealing with repetitive patterns of thinking which would take me into states of stagnation, unhappiness or depression are such that need cultivation and nourishment even in times of ease but also serve me in countless other ways:

Having a strong connection with Source

Being anchored in the felt sense, experience, knowing and feeling of the oneness of all, the love and beauty of existence at my core. To have that inner space of calmness, clarity and love no matter what chaos, storms or darkness might be raging in my mind and emotions is a gift I am grateful for on a daily basis. It is the protector of my sanity, my respite and succor.

Humor – not taking myself and life too seriously

It has taken a couple of years to learn and practice this. Looking for the humor or absurdity in any given situation, no matter how “serious” we are told it is or believe it to be. Allowing myself some ‘comical relief’ is such an important break from my cult conditioning and brings spaciousness to moments! Being serious has often a constricting effect on our mind, body and energy. Humor allows us to breathe deeper, take more space and find our way back to the bigger picture of life and connect with the vast possibilities life holds as it operates outside of the limitations of linear thinking and perception.

Having an actively engaged Healer

Looking back I have always had a part in me that pushed me towards healing and growth. I have consciously amplified this parts voice within me, given it knowledge (book knowledge, education) and knowing (intuition, claires, etc.). And she is the one who engages the mind on its own ground, meaning she reasons artfully with the mind. My inner healer points out irrationalities, logical fallacies, harmful effects, the track record of failure of this line of thinking and while thanking the parts/ thoughts/ mind for their efforts she suggests better and more successful ways of protecting me from disappointment/ rejection/ pain/ shame/ guilt and other feelings it is attempting to avoid. She is strict where she needs to be but otherwise compassionate, playful and inspiring… and she never tires in meeting the parts who stray and bring them back to path of integration and growth.

Create timeouts from thinking and emoting

This might take the form of meditation, yoga, qigong, dance, time in nature or any creativity or expression that gets me in the zone e.g. mantras, cooking (my longtime favorite). Sometimes I just shake the funk out of my body, which appears to be truly stupid to my mind but eventually even my most stuck up aspects give way to laughing and the doorways to ease and grace open up.

Please remember you can be the creator of your experience. You have the power to create new doorways where your mind tells you there are none. Just educate yourself, practice and laugh yourself through the times you stumble and fall.. until you fall less and make a stumble part of your unique and beautiful dance.

May all beings find their golden door to freedom and love!

Photography: The Golden Door by Patrizia Guerresi 

The post When Your Mind is a Bully appeared first on Venuskind.