Remembrance

Remember how every situation is always an invitation to compassionately observe how you are handling whatever comes your way. Are you reacting or responding? Meaning are you coming from an old projective or protective pattern or are you responding from the now, from your heart? Are you coming from the past or are you present? 

 

Being present doesn’t mean you don’t feel anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t feel the emotional trigger when for example your partner makes a remark that hits your nerves. The difference between reacting and responding is that instead of throwing a remark back at them we take a moment to actually feel the emotion that is coming up inside of us. Regardless of who or what caused this emotion to rise, this is an invitation to feel it, not suppress it, but also not to enter the drama loop again. 

 

Expose it

Responsibility means you are able to hold space for that feeling without having to act it out. Then instead of entering a fight we can say: ‘Ok, what you just said is really triggering sadness inside of me and an old defense mechanism that doesn’t want to feel this sadness is wanting to attack you now.’ Instead of going with the mechanism we expose it, and this can feel really naked and vulnerable. But there is so much power there. This is how we can really heal our wounds and recognize that actually for the biggest part we all have similar wounds we are trying to protect with defensive and sometimes offensive behavior. 

 

Coming home

Coming from the heart doesn’t mean you always are lovey-dovey. Not at all. Coming from the heart means you have the courage to be honest without the intention to hurt another being. Ram Dass, a spiritual teacher, said the famous words: We are all just walking each other home. If we can look at it like that, if we can look at everyone like a teacher for us that somehow is offering us another step in the direction of home, then our interactions can become truly enlightening, even if we are just fighting over whose turn it is to take out the trash.

That being said, it’s really challenging at times. Rising above old patterning, becoming aware of how you are wired through everything you have experienced in your life, how you were raised, etc, it’s not always fun. A lot of times we need to have the guts to see how we ourselves we’re crossing a line or that our behavior wasn’t reasonable. 

 

Meeting the essence

It goes against the natural instinct of the ego to admit its ‘mistakes’. But when we are willing to do this we take out so much of the charge, of the pressure. We can literally feel the energy of the defense mechanism starting to transform into an energy that moves to connect instead of push away. This is where we can truly meet ourselves and thus truly connect with the self of other beings, this is where we meet the essence. 

Our yoga & meditation practice is a way to be in touch with this essence, to remind ourselves through feeling it as we breath, meditate or chant. The idea is to take this remembrance with us throughout our day and use every encounter to remind ourselves again and again, as a continuous practice. A practice, not a ‘perfect’, it’s an evolution of consciousness for which we learn to hold space, step by step, day by day, word by word, breath by breath.

We’re happy to hold space for this evolution together with you in all honesty and vulnerability, recognizing our humanness, learning and growing together. 

Much love, 
Marieke & Tim

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