about CHANGING YOUR LIFE IN TEN (!!!) SIMPLE STEPS.

It’s been a while since I have written anything, probably because I haven’t been feeling inspirational very much lately. Not that I do now, but life goes on as it does, and before you know it, you’ve spent your entire day trying to remove caked-on dirt from the little corners of the shower door, and then suddenly you feel like life is passing you by and that you’re doing it all wrong, and why don’t you write something? Get some neurons firing in your brain? A little reminder that trillions of other options can actually be created from within the head that you carry around everywhere, every day.
Options for a different kind of thinking, that is, because you also recently learned that life itself doesn’t have a plan for you. It just is, and then it changes, then it changes some more, and then at some point it simply no longer is.

So once that’s been established, how to go about it? I’ve gone and found myself a temp job in which I have to sit behind an internet-connected computer all day and do nothing except be present. So instead of removing dirt off things, I’m now basically getting paid to figure out what my next “grand” move might be for this life of mine. It goes like this:

Step one: Read your emails and scroll through facebook until you stumble upon posts that you’ve already read the day before. Next, browse stuff you don’t need on Etsy.

Step two: Browse the internet until you’ve read so many gossip celebrity posts that your brain is totally numb.

Step three: Move on to “spiritual” online magazines with articles written by people who insist that “Changed my life forever now I am released and love myself the world everyone smile every day yoga meditation zen purpose forever happiness AND THIS IS HOW I DID IT.”

Step four: Look at the clock and establish that you have indeed 3.5 hours more of “being there” to do.

Step five: Engage in “spiritual exercise”, such as answering 6 Powerful Questions That Will Change Your Life Forever that you found somewhere on the internet.

Step six: Share answers with loved one and receive positive feedback.

Step seven: Look at the clock and establish that you have indeed 2 hours more of “being there” to do.

Step eight: Share answers to six questions in blog post entitled “about CHANGING YOUR LIFE IN TEN (!!!) SIMPLE STEPS.”

1. What do I absolutely love in life?
– Cooking an awesome meal in which everything just comes together perfectly.
– Feeling that I’ve made progress on whatever I’m trying to do (better)
– Sunrise from a mountain top / ocean cliff
– the natural world in all its beautiful complexity
– recognizing my feelings/thoughts/doubts/ideas in a book I’m reading
– doing sports and feeling awesome afterwards
– being comfortable around people
– receiving love from animals

2. What are my greatest accomplishments in life so far?
– Helping to restore 350 hectares of land back to nature
– surviving Indonesia
– starting to take on my (physical) weaknesses

3. What would I stand for if I knew no one would judge me?
I would stand for what I already stand for, just louder and bolder.

4. If my life had absolutely no limits and I could have it all and do whatever I wanted, what would I choose to have and what would I choose to do?
I would choose to learn various crafts and skills, and learn them well. Simple things, such as making beautiful sauerkraut, simple furniture, basic electricity, sewing, gardening, kombucha-brewing. I would choose to have a small house with a big garden – big compared to the house itself that is – and live close to people that I love. I’d be in a place where I can feel healthy and nourished, both physically and mentally. And I’d want to share that life.

5. What would I do if I had one billion dollars?
I would restore a whole lot of forest. I would build sustainable houses in various places and sell/rent them. I would use my financial power to push politics forward towards the greater good.

6. Who do I admire most in the world?
People who know how to live freely, who overcome fear and doubt to create a better self. People who reinvent themselves. People who do what they do full-heartedly. People who strive for inner peace and a better world, simultaneously.

Step nine: Feel accomplished about having written a blog post after such a long period of silence.

Step ten: Remember that you still have to mop the floor later that day, because dirt will always have to be removed forever in eternity. Shrug and feel okay about it.
Add random pretty picture.

about change part II.

Focus your entire attention – your entire attention – on the area, the area above the upper lip below the nostrils.
Observe. Observe the sensations caused by the breath moving over this area as you breathe in and out, calmly.
Calmly, patiently and persistently. Patiently and persistently.

A ten-day vipassana course starts out with the teaching of anapana-meditation, a technique which allows one to gain control over the mind, and sharpen its attention to enable observation on a more subtle yet purely physical level.

My own mind, as I experienced, is extremely wild and stubborn, only interested in doing what it wants to be doing, regardless of whether or not that works towards my own wellbeing. As the course moved on to teach the actual vipassana technique – in which you have to sit still for at least an hour while you let your attention move through your entire body in a systematic way – I would still get incredibly distracted. I would have to plea with my mind to please shut the fuck up, and was amazed to realise that it was devising the most insane tricks to keep me from making progress as much as possible. I figured that my mind does not actually belong to me; I have to make it mine, tame it, shape it. I’m afraid I will need much more practice in that…

Vipassana meditation is commendable. It was developed by the Buddha Gotama, but it is strictly non-religious. I cannot stress this point enough: any person from any background is able to learn the technique and gain from it. Gain an understanding – if not through experience than at least on a deeper intellectual level – that everything is constantly changing, and that is simply the way it is.

My sole remaining regret in all of this, is that I chose to take the course this year instead of last year. Perhaps I would’ve been able to share this knowledge with my friend J before he had to die with a face twisted in pain and frustration. And anger. Anger that he had to die, when there are so many other people out there wasting away their lives while he was so ready to take on his. And wasn’t allowed to, for some strange reason no one could comprehend nor explain. I could’ve told him his only option was to live until he’d die, instead I was clueless in the face of his desperation.

But then again, what do I know about living with the knowledge and the full, actual realisation that my life is going to end?

Nothing.

But even that will also change one day.

If you want to know more about vipassana meditation / where to take courses: www.dhamma.org. All courses are free of charge, including food and accommodation, and are run by volunteers + donations.

about eating your heart out, ten times over.

Because good food nourishes the soul?

1. Veganised pozzole

2. Fusion-wrap: Rice ‘n’ Beans ‘n’ Peanut

3. Southeast Asian Feast: Massaman curry deluxe with Indonesian stir-fried Kangkung

4. Spicy butternut squash soup with super-chunky peanut butter and LOTS of croutons/fried chia-seed-wraps-in-strips

5. Fiesta Mexicana otra vez: slow-cooked black beans with rice ‘n’ veggies and spicy tomato sauce

6. “it doesn’t get any greener than this”-Noodle soup without noodles 

==> with spicy broth

7. Saffron rice with some kind of made-up curry

8. Noodle soup without noodles part II: Japanese version. To be eaten with miso broth

9. Noodle salad (with noodles!) with raw veggies cured in rice vinegar/maple syrup/ginger vinaigrette with millions of toasted seeds.

10. For dessert: sticky date pudding. Of course with some sort of veganised butterscotch sauce, it’s just soaked in you monkeys. 

about change.

Exactly three years ago I was on the Trans-Siberian Express on my way to Indonesia, believing I was going to take on the world.
Exactly two years ago I’d just found out that I’d graduated magna cum laude, convinced that a PhD would be the next move for taking on the world.
Exactly one year ago I withdrew my participation to a 10-day silent meditation course in Perth, because I had to monitor seedlings, or collect seeds, or do something or other that was more important for taking on the world.
Exactly two months ago, one of my best friends took his final breath after the anguish of a most horrifying illness, making me wonder why the hell taking on the world is so bloody important to me.
Exactly two weeks ago, I started drafting a matrix of PhD programs, and a proposal too I guess, which has all the characteristics of taking on the world, but actually it’s just plain self-development.
Exactly two hours ago I made vegan Massaman curry, because even when you’ve made no progress whatsoever in taking on the world, you’re still hungry every couple of hours.
Exactly two minutes ago I decided I should be writing more, because if I’m not taking on the world, what else am I supposed to be doing?

TIME TO REVERSE THE CLOCK!

I’m starting a 10-day silent meditation course tomorrow.

about figuring it out.

So I disappeared for a while.

Inside my head, and also to the other side of the world, then to the other other side of the world, then back to the other side of the world, and finally back to this end of the world, which is basically the end of the world. (yes, it means my carbon footprint is massive this year. But I plant trees for a living. What the hell are you doing?)

I had left this end of the world with the straightforward idea that, elsewhere, I would be able to figure it out. You know, it. Turns out ‘elsewhere’ does not enable you to figure it out. Yet for some strange reason, in time – and after you’ve already backtracked to that point where you initially started from – things do figure themselves out.

And usually not in the way you thought they would.

When I first signed up for this end of the world, it was because of a denied research visa and well, a boy. When I finally got here, I had received the research visa after all and I was no longer talking to the boy. Instead, I got propelled into a career which miraculously enough does not just consist of evaluating plans and writing reports. I get to work hard and get shit done. The fruit of my labour sits there. It may not be much, but it’s tangible and measurable. And it’s growing.

It’s not easy. In fact, it’s bloody hard work. It includes frustration, anger, disappointment and even rage. So much you start doubting yourself, asking yourself, What the hell are you doing?

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?

DOING? DOING? DOING? DOING?

ARE YOU REALLY TRYING? AS HARD AS YOU CAN? REALLY? REALLY?

Bang. You’ll figure it out.

On to the next.

about living in words.

– So you never get sick of hearing your own voice in your head?
I don’t actually hear my own voice in my head…
– Are you sure? Whatever – whenever – you think, you use your voice. To shape the words in your mind, right?
I guess so… but whenever I hear it on tape it just sounds so different from what I hear in my head.
– Yeah.

It’s just so crazy to realise that your whole reality is shaped by the concepts that are available in the language you speak.
– Fuck yeah.
————————————————————–
That’s why you don’t know what you’re feeling until you read it in the book on your bedside table.
————————————————————–

That’s why this is not really the same as:
“Als de wereld niet zou zuigen, dan vielen we er allemaal van af.”
————————————————————–
That’s why you didn’t feel saudades, until you learned about them on Wikipedia.

about your mojo.

So you’re crouched in front of the fridge pulling out the 3-week-old celery and blackening mushrooms and suppressing a wailing moan emerging from the innermost depths of your body – your coccyx [new word! new word!] to be more precise – because last night you got really drunk and somehow managed to sit down beside rather than on your chair, and it was still hurting when you woke up way too early with a slight headache on top of everything, but you pulled yourself out of bed anyway to – hold your horses – prune your rose bushes.

And as you were then trying to stuff the pruned branches down the garden waste bin you were getting pricked all over, but somehow you didn’t care, because you were too distracted by that fucking throbbing coccyx, fortunately no longer with a headache but unfortunately with bad cramps jamming down the left leg too. Hence by the time you’ve finally actually managed to stuff those thorned branches down the bin, it’s about lunchtime and you are crouched in front of the fridge pulling out the 3-week-old celery and blackening mushrooms and suppressing a wailing moan.

And then everything changes.

You marvel at the fucking awesome colour of these purple carrots that you bought yesterday at the farmers’ market, and you realise just in time that the missing ingredient is indeed some cinnamon, and half an hour later you’re stuffing your face with cumin-leeks potatoes and a smashing Moroccan-flavoured lentil curry – which indeed has the 3-week-old celery and blackening mushrooms in it and actually also some recently expired tomato sauce – and you know that, today, you fucking win.

And the tiger balm makes your ass smell like magic.

Win.

about happiness, or not-unhappiness.

2011 taught me an important lesson. I finally understood that life is quite vicious and cruel, which is not a lesson schematically drawn on a blackboard. Instead  it comes smacked in the face, slap after slap until the walls of naivité built around everything believed in finally start to crumble.

I can hear your thoughts all the way here. ‘Coming from someone who’s trotting around the planet as if life is a never-ending vacation.’ But let me tell you: I am not happier than you are. And you are not particularly happy. If you tell me that you are, you are probably lying. I may coarsely be persuaded to believe that you find yourself in a certain state of contentment, but it is way more likely that you chose not to think too much about your life and hence not to feel too much about it either.  Or, you are telling yourself over and over that you have nothing to be unhappy about, until you actually believe that you are not-unhappy, therefore happy. Or, perhaps you are convinced that you are on your way to your happiness, and you can already see it shining on the horizon. All you need is a better job. Or some more money. Or a child. Or a lover. Then you’ll finally get there, destination happiness.

Wrong. You’re chasing rainbows.

I am not happier than you are. But, just like you, I refuse to settle. I consciously and willingly choose to battle. For every nanosecond of pure bliss. Shooting right up to the stars, way beyond the fucking rainbow. This war is not about winning. It’s about fighting and getting up over and over again. For all the small victories of joy, laughter and pleasure. Bear the pain. Suck it up. This is life. For everyone.

about living to the point of tears.

Rolling back and forth in crystal clear emerald waves, following the tides from here, where I am, to there, where you are

I can taste its saltiness on your cheeks.

about transitioning.

I have been living my life long enough now to somewhat understand its structure and functioning. It kinda works like this:

I learn something.
It fascinates me.
I want to know more.
I get involved.
I get in over my head.
I try to finish (but I don’t always succeed in doing that properly as more often than not, a new project arises before the last one has come to an end).

But not this time! Because this time, I took my time to transition. Transition started by me arriving in Kuala Lumpur, the city where my life always seems to stop –
and pivot to a different direction.

Once there, my life as I knew it literally vanished*. As a matter of fact, the constellation that is ‘me’ disintegrated into free-floating energy, disconnected from any time and space. I fled the city, fell back into habits from the past, and landed into the arms of old friends. In transition, I relived the times when we were still hungry and full of hope and anticipation for life to come.

Upon returning to Kuala Lumpur, a wave of consciousness took me under once again. My body ached to get out. Out of transition and into life. Apparently, I still existed.

Now, I slowly get reconnected to new smells, new sounds and a new quality of daylight.

I can recommend you all to transition at some point. It makes you hungry. And everything simply tastes better when you’re hungry.

*This may partly be attributed to excessive intake of an alcoholic herbal drink known to most of you as Jägermeister.