Become intimate with your own Life

 “(...) to be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”

- E. Cummings -

What words would you choose to describe your own Life?

What do you want from it and what do you make of it?

In an ideal Life — a life of purpose and deep fulfillment — we make what we want to experience exist. In an ideal life, time is not short, neither are the pleasures that deeply fulfill our soul. In an ideal Life, our longing for direction is attained, we find our private North Star and no matter what storms might stand threatening us in the horizon we know what our original path should look / feel like.

“Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and beauty of the world. And it’s breathtaking.”

- Carlo Rovelli - 

Life just can't be explained or understood. It is told as a story in a private circle and felt by its audience. We are stories makers, and the stories we tell ourselves, and retell to others, make us who we become, and in a seemingless timeless repetitive continuum wave, we endure the questions each story leaves unanswered, as well as what perhaps is the heaviest thought of all, the idea of our own mortality. 

We all wish to live, well, we wish to live while there is still the desire to challenge oneself and understand more... But society tells us otherwise. We are told that is selfishness, childish to follow our deepest dreams, dreams that are only ours, that only we can feel the truth in them. Society asks us to live in a rush, without second thoughts or uncertainty.

Well, stand brave and dive, for it's not a selfish at all to feel passion and pleasure. Indulgence is the antidote to the fear of being alive and, in a soul centered mind, indulgence can actually become the fuel for your most generous contribution to the world.

Unshelve yourself, and experience the world as if for the first time. Don't let anyone tell you how old you are, and what is expected from you. Stand alone if necessary, but stay honest to the only person you will forever follow, yourself.

"The true and durable path into and through experience, involves being true … to your own solitude, true to your own secret knowledge.”

- Seamus Heaney -

In our sanest hours we can feel there's no barrier or contours that separate us from the rest of the world, we are part of everything, everything is weaved together, so why is it that too many times we feel these deep crevasses that hurt our relationships with others and their ideologies? In one word, absence. Absence of space, time and quietness to appreciate life and love.

Living life following others speed for lust can sound so overwhelming loud inside our heads, to the point that the Ego feels hurt, neglected, and the storyteller that was shining in enthusiasm, stops caring for the words that are being voiced and confusion is installed, joy is lost. 

Absence of faith, of love leads to hopelessness. Love is what gives meaning to Life, and to love, one must build a deep intimacy with oneself. How do you do that? Stand brave and follow your own sense of fulfillment, fill yourself with belief and jump, tell an amazing story of yourself and become.

“In his youth Albert Einstein spent a year loafing aimlessly. You don't get anywhere by not 'wasting' time - something, unfortunately, that the parents of teenagers tend frequently to forget.”

- Carlo Rovelli -

Dream, ask what if? You won't be wasting time. By trying to see further than the norm it's natural to feel confused, we are unaccustomed, but don't give up and follow your intuition, we are all capable to adapt to new versions of ourselves. That is what should be called to grow up. To expand. We know so little and yet we are part of the infinite. 

Time and Space Synesthesia

It wasn’t that far from where everyone I knew existed. To make it simple, I lived in a very small village out in the hills from nothing. The cave, yes, I will be telling you about a cave, a hole in the rock hard stone, that existed not that far away from everything I had seen.

My mum gave birth to this body that today represents me. People recognise me with this particular shape and in their social politeness they say hello, or we ask each other how life is going. In a very simple way, we show that we care about the complexities of being alive and try to help each other in sorting out the whys and the hows of this enigma called living. 

Because sometimes I don’t want be asked questions, or hear any repeated answers, I walk myself to the cave, that silent hidden hole in the rock hard stone that surrounds the village I was born in.

At first there’s no silence, for I can hear my own breath from the long uphill path that one day I dared to explore. Once my breathing rhythm is set back to normal, I can still hear the thoughts that I carry inside my brain. Gently I start feeling numb and the stillness of that dark hole in the rock hard stone that surrounds the village, begins to engulf the who that is to the world and I finally just am. “To be or not to be”…

We can ask questions to each other, but what if I told you that there’s a part of you that is watching you asking those questions. In the cave, I can feel that outside part of me. It feels as if the shape that forms my arms, legs and face, just dissipates into an ocean of colours, movement, maybe sounds… and I become part of the rock that surrounds me, and I don’t exist anymore, I’m not anymore, I’m everything and everything is me.

The cave, a black deep hole in a rock hard stone.

I’ve heard others talking about the weirdness of the place, and by simple conjunction, the weirdness in me for disappearing so many times in it. At first I tried to hide that choice and desire, that I could feel very strongly in my chest, but with time, more than weary, I started feeling dissociated with other’s views of my choice to be engulfed by the beauty of the deepest silence anyone could experience. The cave was more than a place, space or choice, it was me. I was the cave. The cave was me.

The walls were humid, but it wasn’t cold. The space was dark, but the light of the sun reflected on the water that gently slither along the abstract forms of the walls. It was if the shadows, and its opposite, the light, were dancing around me. My skin could feel that energy and my entire being was immersed in the most pure manifestation of wholeness. I was one with everything, everything was me. I was one and the One was me.

Beyond any polarity I am. Going deeper and quieting what I knew it was just the mind, I became that cave, in the rock hard stone and I found the light in the darkness, and I was no longer my thoughts, I was the entire experience of living.

As a black hole, which is said to be a pure gravitational field so strong that its own energy sustains its existence, I am the cave, the cave is me, you are me in me, I live in you. As massive stars that collapse to an infinitesimal point and leave their gravitational fields behind, we are all intertwined, with all there is, there was, there will be. Dare to visit the dark cave in that rock hard stone, and expand or contract into One.

Fullness of Being

 “I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way,” young Whitman wrote. I have felt it also, and have let my conscious lose the war between rationality and emotions, but unfortunately suddenly I found myself, alone in my own thoughts, and surviving from post war wounds.

That's it, isn't? We are all survivors of something.
It's not safe to be an idealist, but it's not healthy either to live only upon the superficial.

Speaking from your heart it's really an act of courage and endurance, resistance.

We all know how anxiety creates fear, failures, hey, it can lead anyone into drowning on dry land. The only way out is to listen to your truth, your mind. Listen to yourself till all voices calm down and peace starts to settle in. Only then can we seek out what magnifies our spirit. Magic exists, and we are all capable of performing it. I sometimes tell my to myself to not care about what others think and dare to be thought irrational... For some that's called Faith or Hope.

Find that Hope that it's not passive nor patient; on the contrary, that's impatient and active.

Thinking too much, being critical and rational will only bear any fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with — the love of life, but where can we find that bless, that desire to celebrate life? Got an answer... we can find it in having Pleasure.

“Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” as said by Bertrand Russell.

We are, after all, made of the same stuff.

With my vision distorted by tiredness, fear and a sense of not belonging, I realize that as said by amazing author Margaret Fuller, “(...) nothing more widely distinguishes man from man than energy of will,” and I have felt it, that "energy of will" that irrepressible aliveness through pleasure. 
The best pure source? Nature, wilderness.

We are all a fractal of nature, energy vibes, particles of the perfect totality of the universe that we call One, Oneness. We need to connect back into the unknown.

"It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; 
it is easy in solitude to live after our own; 
but the great man* is he who in the midst of the crowd 
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

-  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art by Dorothy Lathrop, 1922

Fullness of being, the Pleasure of a sublime integration of emotion with the intellect and the body. 

As a very special friend taught me:

“... how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” 

- Annie Dillard.

Choose Life. Choose Celebration.

Criar uma nova Linguagem,

verás que os outros irão entender

mesmo não conhecendo o teu significado,

vão sentir.

Pensar e sentir, colidem?

Ou seduz quem se deixar ir…

Deixo-me ir e sinto desejo, vida, gratitude.

Quero ser o dia,

Quero ser o vento com a sua voz entre as árvores,

quero ser o mar, incapaz de se observar,

sentir apenas, com toda a sua imensidão,

a sua profundidade.

Da mais pequena flor

pisada pelo pé distraído 

e sem dor ergue-se de seguida

em direcção ao sol,

alimento.

Quero ser cor,

quero ser calor,

ou frescura matinal.

Quero ser pele que cobre,

árvore que se expande com calma no tempo,

rumo ao céu.

Quero ser sombra que não se esconde.

E sou. Sou tudo isso,

nesta minha forma de Ser.

Women and Emotions

Breaking the stereotype of women ruled by their emotions and so, incapable of rationality.

I feel this story might not start the best way it should for I am already questioning myself about how should it start. Children question a lot. Scientists too. Questioning is in no ways a symptom of inner weakness… but it does feel that too much questioning goes against rationality.

There are norms, guides, structures that imply rebellion if you don’t follow them, but if they hadn’t been questioned in the Past, I would not have the freedom to write these words, I’d probably be living in world where women and men should live according to an unquestionable script and considered opposites, from weak to strong, emotional to intelligent. But before any thought happens we are energy, electric discharges and exchanges, opposites that interact with each other, and create denser energetic fields, magnetising one with another.

Still is there a difference between women and men? The quickest answer is yes.

Genetically, body composition and psychologically. Not energetically.

Embracing the theme Emotions vs Rationality, one can say that women and men feel things differently, but both feel. Less or more intensively, that depends on the subject, we all feel. Some might be better in staging control, others on letting their impulsiveness take the lead.

For some people staying in control represents strength of character, contrary to letting impulsiveness take over, but if your brain is wired to respond creatively towards events, you’ll probably defend impulsiveness as an healthier emotional response. To control or to let go? Is being Emotional the opposite of being rational? Staying cool or acting out? Usually is better to stay cool and let adrenaline levels lower down, before committing to any action.

Emotions, either in women or men, depend on so many factors that assuming that their presence is more prone to exist in women and therefore women are less rational than men, is to say that in face of a life threatening situation, despite the supposedly lack of emotions, a man will react smarter than a woman. Wrong. There's more to it.

Emotions are key in very important cognitive processes such as perception, reasoning and problem solving. Fear, an emotion, of an object, will provoke a response, fight, freeze or flight, that will help you avoid death. What lingers after, and that’s where the concept of Emotions starts to blur, is how Emotions outlast the event. And that’s where memory triggers anxiety and sends the requests to block deeper meaningful thoughts.

Emotions have a strong influence on our attention, as they modulate not only the selectivity of our attention as well as motivating us to action. Behaviour and intelligence, to a large extent, depend in these basic cognitive abilities: attention, perception, memory and language, which in turn define how one sees itself, as well as how one sees / feels the World. We are social beings, we need interaction, we learn from social situations, and Emotions, especially through empathy, help us to understand and navigate the world.

So are women, or men, who let their emotions flow freely, less rational than someone who shows absence of them? No. 

Emotions are an important key in our cognitive retrieval process, a process which involves converting memories into conscious experience. This conscious experience is what directs us towards committing smarter choices. 

When it comes to remembering where you parked your car you will use your visual memory to remember the floor and spot where you left it, and you’ll do this by telling yourself repeatedly the number or color of that specific spot, but to easier retrieve that information when it’s time to go back to your car, and probably to remember the specific number, there will be the memory of a story you told yourself to assist you in memorising it. This story we tell ourselves I believe to be very important.

Emotions are key to sustain our memories, and our own identity, as they not only bring to our attention what we believe to be important to focus on and later recall, as well as, for how long will that information be stored in our memories, and are we able to retrieve it.

A simple example, try to tell a story to a friend without any emotional input, and some days later ask them if they can retell it. Probably the story will not be recalled.

Emotions infuse stimuli in our brain storage, by labelling and organising experiences, almost as a photographic album cover, and being more or less emotional will not affect our rational thought process, but, and I need to highlight again this very important fact, negative emotions such as stress and anxiety may cause severe disruption and our memory will be affected by them.

Are women or men, whose emotions tend to be more at surface, less rational than others that keep their feelings to themselves and use techniques that diminish their presence? No.

Women and men, both feel. Feelings are the bodily states of Emotions, which play a huge role in both women and men cognitive ability as they are the pillars of our narrative memory.

If you are man, and you still wonder if it’s dangerous to let yourself feel, trust the science, and allow yourself to feel and express your emotions. The story you tell yourself now will determine who you’ll be in the future. Rationality will not bring you joy, just a strong sense of judgment and criticism.

Our ancestors were emotionally modern before they became rational thinkers. Language led us towards civilisation, but not without affection, which is present in the ancestral art of storytelling. In today’s fast paced world, unfortunately most stories appear disrupted and fragmented. Twitter, Instagram and any other applications that are supported by short phrases and content, corrupt a deeper sense of community, causing a superficial awareness of the world, but by connecting with others, and sharing stories, emotions, memories, we ensure our own health and security.

Rationality appeals to short sightedness.

Women and men that allow their Emotions rise to consciousness broaden their view of the world and experience life in its multitude of possibilities. Let’s call this the intelligence of Emotions.

Allow yourself to be immerse by Nature’s amazing beauty and feel its restorative and healing powers. The body and mind converge in any experience, for Emotions involve judgment. 

“Nature, the soul, love, and God, one recognizes through the heart, 

and not through the reason… Reason is a tool, a machine, 

which is driven by the spiritual fire.”

Dostoyevsky 

Queer black french dance empowerment feat. poetry by Mykki Blanco

“As you swim, you are washed of all the excrescences of so-called civilization, which includes the incapacity to be happy under any circumstances.”

- Anais  Nin

Laerte ... Bravo!

Até a Luz, a Luz me cercar e Eu voltar pró meu lugar

Esta noite eu quero cantar
Dançar e voar, wow ooh!
Quero ver luzes, muitas
Quero ser um pássaro

Quero ver os peixes a bailar
E as ideias a gritar
Quero voar para, até ver

O mar pegar fogo
O campo, incendiar

Até a luz, a luz me cercar

E eu voltar pró meu lugar 

The Nature Fix

The Health Benefits of the Great Outdoors

I dare to write that not many people know the benefits of being in Nature. I'm sure they have felt it and appreciated it, but there has been a lot of writing about it and it's hard to understand why any dissertation on the benefits of being in Nature can still feel like "new age" fiction for so many.

The benefits are true and the amazing mind and soul advantages of walking barefoot or just looking through a window into a beautiful nature scenery can be proved.

Unfortunately because of the intense usage of smartphones, urbanisation and digital creep, the crucial fact of where you are, seems no to matter, but that's not true. Where you are makes a huge difference on how you feel, right here, right now.

"In this here place, we flesh;

flesh that weeps, laughs;

flesh that dances on bare feet in grass.

Love it. Love it hard."

- 

Toni Morrisson

David Thoreau emphasised the act of walking, and how much benefit it would bring to him, but he would be walking in the "wild". Wondering lonely as a cloud, the poet William Wordworth used his poetry to look at the relationship between Nature and human life, and to explore the belief that Nature can have an impact on our emotional and spiritual lives. He considered Nature as a source of consolation and joy, as well as a great teacher, guardian and nurse.

We've got the art of shinrin yoku, or forest bathing, where the goal is to allow Nature into your body through all five senses. As the Zen student asks his teacher "How do you see so much?" and the teacher responds, "I close my eyes".

It's possible to recover from stress in Nature. Creativity and peace are unleashed when you take off your watch, turn off your devices and head into the wild. Nature allows us to recenter in this time of distraction. The reality is that we have far more information than we can deal with. Most of what the brain is doing is filtering, turning stuff off so we can focus in things that are relevant.

Nature can heal anxiety. How? By pulling people away from stress towards something more meaningful than the punishing grind of work and study.

Nothing hits the brain's emotional neurons more powerfully than odor, and the amazing scent of walking through the woods really elevates your spirit.

The world is also getting louder, and just because you don't notice certain noises anymore doesn't mean your brain is not on some level responding to them. Go into Nature and listen to the sound of the Earth without us. There's something real about the phrase "you can't hear yourself think". Noise, especially if noticed, will annoy you. And the more you start noticing the worst it feels.

Sight will also induce us into certain mental states, as author Diane Ackerman writes about the craving for the "visual opium" of a sunset. It is said that the famous painter Jackson Pollock painted nature's fractals 25 years ahead of their scientific discover. Nanoparticle physicist Richard Taylor chose to study Nature to figure out the most efficient ways to move electricity like those found in river systems, lung bronchi or cortical neurons, and through his studies he saw how in very tiny devices the order of current would break down, and so, as an ordered chaos he saw that the pattern was actually there, but in different scales: fractals. Now he’s actually using “bioinspiration" to build a better solar panel. If trees and plants are branched, why not do the same?

In other cases, the opposite also happens, there’s no aha feeling, insight, but instead a real mind-altering, health-giving effect is induced, but in these cases the subject is immerse in wildish landscapes. As described by journalist and activist Leppanen “Metsanpeitto is about getting lost in beauty. It can have a taste of freedom, nature-union, joy.”

To be grateful is good for your health, and for the economy! Opposite to most countries where usually the right person for the job is selected until it burns out, in Finland, since the pool of workers is very limited, the individuals are kept for as long as possible. How? By keeping them happy. How? By inviting Nature into everyone’s life. They know the more Nature you experience, the better you feel. Scientifically Nature causes immediate effects like lowering our pulse rate and parasympathetic nervous system response of feelings such as peace and well-being.

Even Darwin considered empathy and compassion to be our strongest instinct, one that launched the success of the human species. By taking good care of each other, we thrived through long childhoods, sicknesses and food shortages.

The body’s vagus nerve it’s connected to our oxytocin receptors. This hormone, also called the love hormone, which causes a humming sensation in our upper back, can also be released through a response of the vagus nerve to Awe. An Awe that tis felt as an outward happiness, love, no need for attachment or possessions. This awe feeling also promotes curiosity, murmuration, pushing fear away. When there’s no inner censorship or insecurity, creativity happens. That’s why Nature is such a great channel for distraction from unwelcome thoughts. We are living in an overwhelmed world, and for us, and our children, it’s important to keep learning through exploration, not just by copy paste. As neuroscientist Daniel Levitin affirms, we are consuming averagely 74 gigabytes of data per day. For a strong cognitive and emotional development, we need, specially children, exercise and exploratory play. Both are within our reach.

Please go outside, into Nature, often. Don’t leave any garbage behind. Respect Nature’s holistic space. Turn your phone off. Breathe. Life feels much better when it's simple.

“The faint whisper of rain and running water

was still there 

and it had the same tender note of solitude and perfection”

_

Tove Jansson 

Nanan - Casa da Floresta

Hate is not a weapon of rebellion but of cowardice

In the first of the six basic philosophies of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. essay, “An Experiment in Love,” the six essential principles of his philosophy of nonviolence are examined, and one of the main ideas that challenges us is the statement that we tend to mistake nonviolence for passivity, pointing out that it is a form not of cowardice but of courage.

You have to be strong not to react with the same anger or violence that sometimes is thrown to you.
You have to be strong not to push away and fight,

but look straight at the problem in order to come with a solution.

"Nonviolent resistance [requires] a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back…"

How does one keep Kindness and Love as the core of his/her choices?

We can think of the obvious: whatever feeling you choose to hold close to you will be the one that you'll carry with you and be intensified in the universe. Which one do you wish to hold on to?

If you feel upset, hurt by someone or community, instead of staying stuck on being right or wrong, worthy or unworthy, think of a greater good, to restore the community, to restore a sense of belonging and faith in the future. Tune into harmony, by inclining the mind in the direction of good will.

There is courage in the dailiness and nobility in the effort. There is strength in this process of trying and failing. Of beginning again.

"In every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love…"

- Tosltoy's Letters to Gandhi published in the book "A Letter to a Hindu"

Cultivate Love, Wisdom and Beauty.

The change will be amazing.

As manifested by Mahatma Gandhi “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do."

Riding the Wave...

May you never believe that the strength you have it's only ignorance.
May you never believe that your creativity is childish
May you always feel in Love and appreciate who you are, whatever the conditions, whatever the story that you were told, by yourself or others. Let go.
Feel the energy of good things, good actions and good thoughts.

Don't let your own inner strength turn against you as fear.

Ride the wave with pleasure, with awareness and most of all, connected with the immense warm bright joyful energy from where seeds grow, flowers blossom, clouds move and waves form...
from where you and me came from.

That which you resist persists. Let yourself go... ride the wave.
Lose your mind to find your soul.

AUDI - ELECTRIC WAVE from Lorin Askill on Vimeo.

Change course, but never give up...

While in the majority of our days we choose to mystify, could we follow that hint, that small but passionate hint, to clarify who we are and why do we still chose to exist, even when confronted with pain.

Something does stop us. Something also leads us.

Through Art we're seduced to leave all our considerations behind, and the pleasure of discovering ourselves completely evaded of expectations, can be felt in our innermost intimacy.

It's that thin line between solitude and loneliness. Solitude becomes the space you eagerly look for in the chaos of repetitive unstable thoughts, and loneliness... loneliness draws you further away from simplicity, from peace and consequently from love, self or towards others.

"We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and desirable person. (...) We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone."

_
Sara Maitland

To indulge in solitude doesn’t make us aggressive towards another, on the contrary, we become better able to connect, to listen and appreciate the natural space it exists between two people, like the ocean and it's opposite shores. Words can flow, as well as the sweet warmth of silence.

In this I believe...

Change course, but never give up knowing yourself.

Forever

Missed you for so long, to the point I started doubting you had in fact existed, but my imagination could never create the amazing moments of just being by your side. The simplicity of how everything just fitted in, no questions or doubts or anxiety for wanting more, nothing, pure peace, pure clearance of mind, body and spirit, all into a single point in space and time where you and me just were.

But you told me to let go and not constrain in my corporality, the vastness of what we can't understand and only feel through our meditative breath.

Missed you so much, for I lost myself too while searching for you. But you told me not to miss you, and asked me to trust not in my need for stories and facts, but in my intuitive driven belief that you and me still were. And not knowing, we still were who we had been, a you and a me, just happy to be.

"Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time."

_

W.H. Auden

We are beings of time and in time, a time that constrains eternity. From missing you I've learned that. I felt that and breathed in. A moment is not just this second, it's everything all at once.

Yes, you dared to think the unthinkable, you had always hope in yourself while I choose despair. I did not see how defiance would have brought me enough reason to hope. That's when I lost you in your immense kindness of not blaming me for fighting for toughness, instead of just simply holding your hand and letting it go.

Today I let go. Today I trust completely in you, in me, and all that is part of everything we don't see, but feel, the completeness of an expanding unity. Today I whisper gently to you what I've learned from missing you, that man's most precious quality ever is Love.

"(...) I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving"
_
T.S. Elliot