TO LET GO AND TRULY LISTEN

Currently I got confronted with people who are unhappy with their life situation and complaining about this place.

They are saying, the place they used to live in was better, the food was better, the chicken out here tastes shit, everyone is just drinking all day and the weather is absolutely inappropriate. They don’t have this and this, and the whole time they got to that and that. I cant even remember what it all was they haven’t got because I had to switch off half way through the complaint list as it started to drag me down.

Now, in this situation afterwards I realised, there is a few different things about this place here and their issue.

1stly, this place is very remote, and this kind of remoteness brings up things inside of us we sometimes don’t really like to face. If we don’t have distractions like parties, shopping, TV or concerts, we are made to think a lot and are confronted with our partners, and ourselves, and it can be quite upsetting to find out, that what we thought what is, is not what it is in reality.

2ndly, there is a lot of comparison they are doing. They constantly compare this place to other places. You cannot do that, as each place in this world is different, same, as one cannot compare apples and pears. Apples will never taste like pears, but it doesn’t mean we cannot like and eat both, right? When we compare, we usually concentrate on the loss, rather than on the gain, as there can only be loss. They ARE NOT THE SAME!

And here comes the third thing in place.

A lot of people don’t realise, that it is only and always up to them and not other people or a place itself to make something of their lives and their happiness.

How is a place supposed to make one happy? Its just a place, it cannot go off and think: “Oh cool, let me think what great I can do for Mr and Mrs Pumpernickle today!”, right?

To get to know a place or even people really doesn’t mean to see something with our eyes only, to compare or to judge things.

It means, to ‘experience’ something and to truly ‘experience’ something means to open up all our senses fully, without expectations, without perceptions and with no judgement. It means to just watch, take it all in and see what it has to offer, instead of finding out what it is missing by comparing and judging.

I hear them complaining about the weather.

“It’s so cooooold out here, and then the snow!”

Well, we are in the middle of Scotland in the middle of the winter. Honestly, why would one expect 20 degrees and sunshine?

Some of my friends go snowboarding to the 3 Valleys over Christmas and I am pretty sure they don’t take their windsurfing kit, just in case of a great meltdown!

On the other hand, people out here tell me they love snowboarding but why do they not go then?

“We don’t know any people!” they say.

Well, congratulations to that. What are they waiting for? One of the guys in Cairngorm National Park (which is only 1h drive from here!) has a nightly supernatural experience thinking: “Wow, I think there are some people in Aboyne that would love to go snowboarding, I might as well just pack my things, drive over to find them and invite them!”

Honestly, life doesn’t work that way and we have to realise, it’s never the place, never the people and not the weather!

It’s inside of us and it’s always up to us to make something of it. It’s about changing our point of view and to allow the place we chose to live to be enjoyable to us. To find the good things it has to offer! To learn to enjoy something we haven’t done or known before.

Even though I am a sunshine and beach person I still can enjoy the snow. I can enjoy both, although I have preferences!

But I couldn’t come around to think: ‘If it’s all down to us, what is holding us back to open up and let things in, to accept and experience new things?

Someone once told me, there are only 2 emotions in life: FEAR and LOVE.

“Anything, that isn’t based on LOVE, has its roots in FEAR!”

So I am wondering, is it the fact we have to let go of our perceptions about a place, let go of a habit, let go of a place we have left…is the ‘letting go’ causing us FEAR?

Are we scared to let go of things, as we think with ‘letting go’ something inside of us will diminish?

But if this was the reason why we are scared to ‘let go’, then we are caught in a misperception as:

1stly: we never ever own anything, so we cannot loose anything (I cant remember I ever owned a place called Oldenburg in Germany)

2ndly: we had to let go of habits and perceptions we had when we were a child…. And this didn’t do us any harm either, right?

Or is anyone out there still thinking that our parents are unfailing and that brown cows give hot chocolate?

We gain by letting go what we don’t own anyways!

It sounds weird, but for some reason, on this very rainy Sunday morning, this sentence makes sense to me… and to my lovely hot chocolate I am having just now in the coffee shop.

GRIEF STAGE 7

ACCEPTANCE & HOPE

EVERY LOSS IS DEATH, AND AFTER DEATH THERE WILL BE REBIRTH

Finally, floating through the last stage of Grief I have to realise, that Grief in the End, if we let it happen to us naturally, is more like waking up from a misperception. Its like waking up from a dream into reality, losing nothing but gaining everything. It’s a process of transition, where I realised that what I claimed to be reality was just an idea about reality and therefore with the “loss’ of that idea, I finally could see that there is nothing I can loose because there is nothing I actually ever owned.

Now I have come to see the predicament of my last whole year as an opportunity to learn more about myself, to grow and transform - in essence, to see this period in my life as one of transition.

Having developed the ability to see the pain as an experience, I came to the conclusion that:

Ruin is a gift!

Letting the ‘loss’ and pain transform I was able to see another truth behind the ‘loss’ and seeing that, awkwardly, a ‘loss’ doesn’t feel like a loss but rather than a gain, which turns all the pain, all the turmoil and desperation I had felt into a blessing.

The ‘loss’ was inevitable and merely illustrating my true beliefs, my driving forces and myself.

It illustrated a reality, which I was not able to see and not just concerning the whole last year but also things that I actually had slightly been carrying throughout my whole life with me.

The whole last year I tried to infiltrate my spirits, beliefs and my wisdom with a bad, destructive system! And this in a very violent way and it’s all only my entire fault! The crisis and predicament I had found myself in 3 months ago was bound to happen exactly the way it did!

And now I had to learn the hard way that I need to stand up for my own feelings and needs in order to be happy again. I have to care for myself without trying to adapt and make others happy in exchange of my own happiness.

Now, after all these stages, I feel more confident in saying NO whenever something doesn’t feel right for me – I check this with EVERYTHING I do now. I check if it feels right for ME, or just for someone else and I BELIEVE in MY feeling and experience, rather than questioning my judgements and myself.

To care for myself and say YES to myself sometimes means NO for someone else and seeing that this isn’t a bad thing is an awareness that’s completing the whole transition - something I had been missing in order to develop my character.

I lost old belief which where never truthfully working FOR me, old misperceptions about love and I also lost the weakness of saying YES to everything, although knowing that it would me neglecting myself.

What I gained?

I found out who really are good friends and who aren’t. I can now say YES to myself and concentrate on my own happiness without any guilt towards others, which is leading me successfully into the direction of my dreams and experiencing life as even more worthy and more beautiful.

In the last stage, I ended up saying good-bye to the old me. I will never be the same as before but it doesn’t mean I am not myself.

Never being the same again feels like a good thing!