Lotusflowers

  When I was born, my mind was clear, a tabula rasa some might say.But before we travel deeper into the workings of the mind, we need to go on a little energy side track.  I have this idea I carry a lot of information with me into this life. Information from my former lives, biological family, and other places. That specific information is stored in my energy field and my cells.  The mind is a different place.My mind is made up of thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts. Sometimes images, smells, and sounds, but mostly it is a wordy experience in my head. A mind is useful, we need a mind to be able to communicate with each other. We need a mind to connect with others. We simply need a mind to survive. In the first years of my life, my mind fills itself with information from the world around me. My senses pick up pieces of information. And my mind makes sense of it (or not), and stores the inform...

Balance means being in harmony with our environment. How we are inside reflects how things are around us and vice versa. Here in the West, we find it hard to believe we are one with our environment. Individualistic, separate, and dualistic are our favorite ways to think.  But in many ancient cultures, our belief system was different. We were believed to be one with nature, humans, and animals surrounding us, one in one great energy field, living together in a balanced way. Today we still find these beliefs in shamanistic practices. Taoism also stems from shamanistic practices and beliefs.  In the story below we see a beautiful and inspiring example of Taoism. This story was told by C. Jung who heard it from R. Wilhelm, the great translator of the I Tjing and writer of The Secret of the Golden Flower.  As a missionary in China Wilhelm witnessed an event that took place during a drought lasting for months in a Chinese village he was visiting. This story dates back to the be...

I must have been 14 or 15 years old, my world consisted of going to school, hanging with friends, and a lot of horseback riding. I had no clue about qigong, China, healing, Qi, or martial arts.  Even so, I had no clue about paranormal abilities, not even my own. My world was pretty small at that time growing up in a little town nearby the sea in Holland. One of my best friends had to go to the hospital to have the pins removed from her leg. She was born with a crippled leg. The doctors had broken the leg and put pins in it, to straighten the ankle and lower leg, so she would eventually be able to walk better.  My friend was not amused by this procedure and was very uncomfortable. I was there to support her and hold her hand. While we were waiting for the new X-rays to arrive an older woman walked in the room. She must have been 65 or so, but she looked very vital and worldly, she was very calm. I liked her immediately and that is why I was paying attention to her.  S...

Yesterday was lesson two of my Stone Medicine and Chinese Medicine classes. In this lesson, we did a beautiful meditation with stones, learned about the five elements, diagnostics, and much more. Great! In the lesson, we discussed and meditated with the chevron amethyst. It's a stone that helps you focus during meditation and helps you ground (where needed). It's my favorite stone at the moment: the chevron amethyst. You can see it has stripes. A piece of purple crystal, just like a regular amethyst, but with bands of white quartz or feldspar. The photo shows tumbled stones. The rough pieces are pure, while the rounder and more lustrous stones have an extra sheen added during the processing. The rough pieces are my favorite; I feel the stone's energy a little more strongly in them than with the others. But of course, taste is personal. The Chevron Amethyst According to Chinese Medicine As mentioned, the Chevron Amethyst is a more potent amethyst, meaning it can work slightl...

  I’m currently in the recovery phase from the back pain I’ve had for over a month. Below you’ll find my tips, exercises, and approach that helps me with this. Pain Management Number 1 is the pain, the constant pain that makes it almost impossible to think, sit, lie down, walk, or sleep. There’s no position without pain. My system can’t tolerate painkillers long-term, so I have to find ways to manage pain without them. -> Breathe deeply and calmly, open the chakras, and keep them flowing. And chant to supply the organs with sufficient Qi. (I’ll make a recording/lesson of the chant and chakra meditation soon.) The better the energy flows in my body, the better the organs and chakras can keep my body balanced, and the better the self-healing process can function. The more I relax, the less the nerves that send pain signals are stimulated. Movement Pain causes cramping, cramping causes stagnation, making the body stiffer and less mobile. Muscles are used less and lose strength. I h...

  I.. who am I? A question we all ask ourselves. You hobble through life collecting dots, putting them on your canvas. It’s like you have a little dot-magnet on the inside. And this magnet attracts exactly the dots you need …. Our childhood contains the most amazing dots, real gems. The combination of our parents is unique and they respond in an unique way to you. Maybe they make you feel warm and safe, maybe they make you feel scared and unwanted. Or anything in between. It doesn’t matter what the feeling is, or the idea you get from your childhood. They are all dots on your canvas. All your childhood dots contain a lesson for you. Teach you to share your warmth, to create safety, or to feel good about yourself no matter what others think. For some mystical reason all the dots you gather on your canvas make you the person you really are from the inside.

Yesterday we left with a blanc canvas, we all come into this world with an empty mind, like a lake. Not any thoughts come up. We live on instinct, food and comfort is all we need. The world is small and comfortable. And then we start to learn new things, we learn colours, we learn shapes, we learn sounds and so much more. Our canvas is filled with dots of information. Every day, new dots arrive in our mind. Our mind expands. Some of the dots we can point out in the world: strawberries! Some things are really unfindable, like ‘Eat your food!’. It seems the big people want you to do something, as they repeat the sentence over and over.

  Not all the time, no, but sometimes unannounced, suddenly there it is: THE FEELING. A welcome sensation for a change, since most feelings are not so welcome because they are not fun. No THE FEELING is a most welcome guest in my system. Even more, this is one of my top-3 of fantastic feelings. It is a bit of a tricky one, THE FEELING, because I’m not sure what I have to do to elicit it. The moment I start thinking about it, or worse longing for it, I believe it goes on hiding in the deepest corner of the universe. But as today, I’m not busy with THE FEELING, just doing my things, bit of martial arts, bit of qigong, bit of cooking, bit of thinking about when to start working. There is actually a big pile of administration trying to seduce me for weeks, with no success so far.

Today I learned how I can make my mind the happiest mind of the world. I’m still a bit confused about it, I must say. The mind is happy when it has things to figure out, to look for answers on daily chores like ‘What do I wear?’ or ‘What shall I eat?’. I can understand my mind is not happy when I’m ruminating about things that happened in another timeframe, the not now. Or when I'm dreaming about possible future events, also the not now. I learned so far my mind is most happy when it is in sync with my body, as in the same place and time. But according to Shinzen Young, who I listened to because I’m studying a bit about Buddhist theories, the mind is just superficially happy thinking about the daily-in-the-now things. Ok, is there some higher level of mind-happiness to achieve? 

  My Insta-sentence-of-today is actually a real-life-in-the-moment thought I had made for myself to get through a scary moment. Did you know that when you change your thoughts you also change your physical reaction? Today I needed this trick, because  I’m starting a new very Big Project, something that might take up a lot of my time and energy for the coming five years.  Somewhere today while I was working on my project, a little fear started to grow inside. Slightly noticable, it made my bodya bit tense and started to distract my mind. Yes, those fears know how to creep up on you. Initially I planned to go to China for a year, sort of to take time to take a deep breath before to take this jump into the unknown. But my trip to China could not go through, so I ended up at the same place I started a year ago. 

Once upon a time, psychology was about ourselves, our personalities and about growth. Personal growth. Western ideas blended easily with eastern philosophies and practices. We looked inside ourselves and found our inner beauty. We worked on ourselves to let that inner beauty shine outwards to lightup our lives and the lives of our dearests. In a way we made society a better place. Psychology was about letting go of things you did not need anymore in your life. Letting go of old patterns, thoughts, behaviours and feelings. Letting go, freeing your mind and expanding your consciousness. Healing our wounds, recovering and becoming whole.

Somet imes my life is like that, I can't find words for it for a while. As if the lamp in the room has been turned. The light shines on completely different things and the familiar things disappear into the shadows.I give the word to Alan Watts, who knows what I mean: "The animal, in order to be happy, is content with the moment. But man is anything but satisfied with that.Man does nothing but chase pleasant memories and expectations. Especially the latter. If he has them, he can handle the most adverse circumstances. 

Do you remember those drawings with the numbered dots? When you had to connect the dots in the right order and then: surprise, the image of a flower or a frog appeared.  Or in my case a flower disguised as a star and an animal with aan unrecognizable rectangular body-part. I always forgot to add some curves connecting one number to the other.  If I had been more meditative those days, my numbered drawings would have been just as great as the exemplary picture.  But besides a challenge in self-confidence, this exercise teaches you a great lesson about life. And that’s what I love about them. You come into this world as a blank slate. And then the game begins. Dots appear and start to populate your canvas. Where do the dots come from? What will the picture show?

Our consciousness fascinates me, the more I read about it and learn about it, the less I understand it. At first, there were humanoid people without awareness, or rather without thoughts.  Quite a happy kind in my opinion. Then came the great leap in evolution and we separated ourselves from being animals. At least that is how we think about it. We thread thoughts of each other into logic, so that we can explain with good words that we really are no longer animals. I have never seen my cat suffer a burnout or a nostalgic attack over Spain where she comes from. Incidentally, I still believe that she has a kind of consciousness, but one that does not bother her so much. Our human consciousness contains the two great evolutionary leap forward elements: yesterday and tomorrow. And that’s where our misery begins, our longing for yesterday, our hope for tomorrow, and the vast majority of our thoughts are far from about the here and now.

You are about to start your daily practice Qigong. A wonderful repetitious movement or maybe a great standing posture. You set your timer or your favorite music to 5, 15 or maybe 60 minutes. You feel great, you are ready. Or maybe just proud that you've made it in time for your own practice. Your postures is balanced, the movements just right. You open up for feelings of joy and relaxation, to get the qi flowing, and then…. A little squeaky door in your mind opens…. Tadaaa, in full glory and ready for battle : boredom and impatience have joined your practice.