Week 17a – The q̶u̶i̶c̶k̶ and the dead

Usually, I am all fired up after the webbies. Even when I am tired before they go live -which is at 10 pm where I live- I need a few hours  after the Live Q&A to come down from the high and go to bed.

This Sunday I felt so serene, by the end of the webcast the feeling in the pit of my stomach had vanished.

Death in Venice/Barcelona/Antwerp

I remember years ago when my nephew Yassine was only five, he came into my bedroom one morning and asked me why God wanted us to die. When I asked him what/who gave him the idea that God wanted people dead, it turned out that my mother had found her go-to answer (everything is God’s will, so is death).

So I told him I thought one day people die  because we have to make room for new people, just as at some point other people died to make room for us. He loved that answer, and seemed genuinely happy to know we weren’t the first folk to live on this earth.

Reading about the hero’s journey and death being an integral part of that actually made me calm and soothed ever racing brain.

Why do I pretend? I don’t care

I have an inkling, I could keep mulling over that question. But, I am not that person anymore. I guess it took me 18 weeks to realize that the person who tortures herself with that question is no longer welcome in my life. I won’t miss her.

Even dwelling on that question seems to me a waste of my valuable time. Don’t get me wrong, if you read this and are asking you that question, it does not mean you are dead to me. I just realized I don’t need to do so anymore.

Great expectations

My life has changed dramatically the last months. Not as I expected, though. And to be honest, not as I had hoped.

I had hoped to be teaching yoga to children all over Barcelona, organizing workshops and retreats with some of my favourite yoga teachers and taking daily strolls along the beach. Instead I am back in my home town of Antwerp, reconnecting with my family after nearly a decade.

Watching my mother, sisters, brother and myself trying to work out how a family functions, is one of the most surreal experiences. And one I was not expecting at that. But it did figure quite prominently in my DMP, in all formats.

I suppose I needed to take care of my backlog and I am not talking about being behind on my reading, blogging or sits. The baggage I am dealing with is old and heavy and I don’t want to it drag around anymore.

I am in the process of decluttering and rebuilding my inner house. Once I seperate the wheat from the chaff the latter won’t get as much as a funeral or funeral pire. It will just be gone.

Belgium…one point

Now that this particular point of my DMP has manifested itself loud and faster than I could have dreamt, it’s time for me to rephrase my DMP and even rewrite my press release.

Apparently I needed to come back to Belgium and make sure the past doesn’t bite me in the backside. Now I can move forward. And I w̷i̷l̷l̷ am.

It is such a relief to be in this process not as a naughty little school girl, but as a grown up  woman learning. I can’t explain what has happened but it clearly has. Somewhere between the readings, the sits, the worrying about I have been made over.

I feel liberated and for that I am grateful.

Om shanti