Implosion Explosion

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All worlds must end…
Eventually.
Rebirth I trust,
It is a must.

Implosion
Explosion.

Long ago we seized to exist,
I must admit
I am having a hard time with this.

Lightly taken
Through millenia
I feel ancient
Yet so new.

Gaze at me
with your young eyes
I feel the might
Of this flight
Depart.

All things drift apart
and move together
Again.

The only question is:
WHEN will things begin
again?


Vanessa

Vastness of solitude

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In the vastness of your solitude
I miss You every day.
Even in suffering
There exists tremendous love.

Even under difficult circumstances
You are there,
Working miracles in my heart.

When I suffer from hunger
You come and nourish me,
When I feel thirsty
You provide me with water.
When I feel lost,
You send me someone who finds me.

When I suffer from my own ignorance,
You are there to touch me deeply,
So that I open my heart.
When there is hardly any hope left,
You instill faith.

Who would I be without You?
For it is in this nourishment of
Pain that You make me see
That there is nothing else but
You.



Vanessa

Gates of hell

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Inundated I stood at the gates of hell,
If there was any light
I could not tell.
Blinded by my own fear and rage
I tried to remember Dante’s way
So I could disappear.


Memories faded and remembrance
Could not strike
There left all my pride.
Anxiously I took a look around
But no one was to be found.
Stranger in my own land,
I took a glimpse of long-lost freedom
And finally took matters into
My own hands.

The pathway was crooked and
Not to distinguish
My anguish
Made my heart jump with fear
Took me right into the
Arms of Ereshkigal.

The seven gates
I had to pass
Albeit
My ego took a blast.
Discard I must all regalia
What once looked bright and shiny
Possessions now seem to be so tiny.
Dried and hung at the hook
It took
All my force to start
And finally to depart.

All hell is equal in their remains
And build I must trust
In the unseen.
In love and simplicity
and to trust
In my Higher Self
Who remains to be my only guide.

Agony’s prisoner no longer,
I set myself free
Just to see that no one
Can in fact reach liberty
Without the ego’s poison
To depart
From the heart.

Escaped my own fate
And now all is too late
For I must accept
That all of it remains
In a state of constant change.





Have you discovered your own hell yet?


Vanessa

Lover’s dream

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Lover’s dreams
Streaming down my face,
Love’s agony leaving
From my solemn heart.

Eternally
Wandering in loneliness
Where are you now?

Forgetfulness condemning me
I wonder, where you have
Been hiding for so long?

Memories may fade
Until we meet again,
Oh heart of my Beloved.

Once we were two,
Now one,
Time has just begun to
Spin
For I am nowhere to be found
But here.

Vanessa

Inferno

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“Midway upon the journey of our life,
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! How hard a thing it is to say,
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.”

– Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Ashes to ashes,
Fire to fire,
She is burning my every desire.

Setting me free,
Gracing me with liberty.
Love’s endless game,
All blame and shame
Depart

From my broken heart.
Love’s burning glance,
Offering me a second chance.

Throughout nights so terrifying and bleak
I discovered a streak
Of light
That brought me near
To my deepest fear.

Illuminating one’s own path,
I must depart
And fall back into my own midst,
Outwitted I had sought
The devil’s calamities.

But being Persephone nonetheless
I urged forward and
Overcame my own death.
Faked it,
Carried along the way to my own punishment
I felt a light descend.

My heart glowing now
For all to see
What was it that set Persephone free?

The apple I saw in her hand
Pomegranate shone through her being
Spring dawned on me
And so I hailed Persephone.

Bade goodbye all those
Who came from hell
And let myself be
Me….

Vanessa


Stillness of love

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In the stillness of love
My heart awakens to death.
Near me
I bow to you
Continuously.

Who but You
Could ever know what I need?
Who but You
Could ever know of
What my heart speaks.

Longingly
You hold me in Your embrace
Bittersweet tears
Make me die
A million deaths.

Until my rebirth
I never knew
What love could do.

Tell me,
Have You been
Always been waiting for me?


Vanessa

World dressed in silence

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This morning when my consciousness awoke,
The world was dressed in silence.
Thick white snowflakes falling from the skies,
A rosebush hidden in my heart,
I felt joy pulsing through
My eternal being.

Nowhere to go now,
Oh, My Beloved.
So bittersweet
This love I have for you.
Mesmerized
I watch crystalline
Strucutres descend
To acknowledge
Grace’s beauty.

Open my heart
For in this life
All I know
Is Your love.



Vanessa

Life as a series of events

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If we really look at it, life seems to be a series of events. They are strung together by our mind holding onto them, as if they defined us.
But what would happen if they were taken away? What if no one but ourselves created those thwarted stories?

Try it. Take them away. Do you feel all that space that is being freed? All that inner depth that you can now access?
Can you feel all that you feared once melting away?

It is this void that one must access in order to liberate yourself.

There is nothing to fear, nothing to lose, nothing to gain.

It is in this void that we must find peace.
One finds one’s own love and devotion.


Nothing less.
Nothing more.

Let it all go and embrace the void.


Vanessa

Grace’s prisoner

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“…time will not destroy love,
it stronger will be!”

– Majnun

Heart in exile,
I am my own worst enemy.
Cruelty is dying
And love must descend.

A lifetime I have spent running
From love,
But in this loneliness of mine
I must die.

Grace’s prisoner
There remains no will of
My own.

A fractal of light
I am uncertain of my
Own dreams.

Who am I
To declare a war
On anger?

It shall disappear
…eventually.



Vanessa

In you is the remedy

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New Year, New Beginnings….

Finally, I have started a new job.
It is the first time in years that I get up and I am looking forward to go to work. Certainly, it is still a bit tricky with Kundalini Shakti, but it has always been like this. Nothing has changed.
I am also starting to see my patterns: Over the course of my lifetime I have had the tendency not to work 100% but 180% or more. I have completely exhausted my reserves throughout my sound engineering days. Before that I had exhausted them with partial partying, studying and having four jobs at the same time.
When I started reading Sufi poetry, I cam across a poem by Hazrat ‘Ali (Prophet Mohammed’s (PBBUH) nephew). It starts with the following verses:

“You do not know it, but in
you is the remedy;
you cause the sickness, but
this you do not see.”

I remember being perplexed about the poem, where something resonated within me. At the same time it made my ego-structure feel a bit angry: How could I be the cause of my own illness? Is it not the fault of (please fill in here) my genetics, the weather, the jobs I have done, other people, etc. Of course I never wanted to understand back then that I am myself the cause of my illness.
But over the past few months I have watched myself closely: I have the tendency as a sensitive being to pick up things from others, sure, but also to completely overdo it. It is nearly as if I am trying to do a Salto Mortale every other second. This cannot a way of living. So I have to take the pressure off of myself, to rest more, to be content with what I got (and I got A LOT!), to hardly do any spiritual practice (very difficult for me), to abstain to constantly be with people or input.
I started doing little things each day, have periods of rest, even at work. Sometimes one needs to be absolutely bored to understand oneself. I also understood that what I thought of self-care is in fact no self-care. I need to find my own ways an rituals and not do what other people or society believes to be self-care. A massage from someone is NOT self-care for a sensitive, so I rather have to do self-massage instead of getting one.
I should not be spiraling on a daily basis and have to eat very different from others to replenish and to keep the awakening going on a subtle basis. I still have some aura issues, but I am working on it. I feel that it will diminish over time if I persist and not get into the over-doing mode.
Looking at all of this, I have to say, that somehow divine consciousness put me in a place again where I have a lot of motivated, fun, and also very faithful people. Even the names of some of my favorite Saints and Sages are in the mix, where I do not believe that this is a complete coincidence. On the third day I already had a conversation about Sufism and the tenets of the Holy Qur’an. I do not take anything personal anymore and seem to have developed a certain neutrality on relatively “normal” days. Sometimes it is still hard, because I still experience phases when I do not want to speak and I actually have to, but I am sure right now that this new job is no coincidence at all.
It stands in stark contrast to my last one where I was having a hard time holding it down even as a 50% job. I felt off and completely inadequate. I used to think that it is me, but I am seeing now that it was the completely wrong environment, a boss who was way too overwhelmed, and some weird circumstances. But the job brought me to this city I am living in where I am finding back to myself, to find my talents and back to my own center of gravity instead of having it revolve around a job or another person. I felt like I needed to walk on eggshells all the time in my last job and not like myself at all. I can be at times fatalistic when I feel very tired, but most times I am quite goofy and love to laugh. This was not possible at my last work and I had to learn that some jobs are not made for one and that one needs to walk away. It is not about being a quitter, but rather understanding that this situation is just not working.

I also came to the conclusion that retreats are way too much for me and that I need to do exactly NOTHING. To just be, but of course this is the hardest part, because I still have it ingrained in me that I need to do lots of spiritual practice. But the other day I realized that I am in quite a fortunate position and that Kundalini Shakti has been active for so long and guiding me all my life. There is nothing to overcome or do really, but rather to live and figure out what it is that I want. To become more compassionate and loving is just an automatic by-product.

And that’s it for 2023. Maybe it will be less eventful than the last years, but that is fine by me.
I am my own remedy after all…

With this I am wishing you a good start to 2023 (if you are following the Solar calendar).


Vanessa

Essence of Love

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In the mornings when I wake up
there can only be peace.
A few moments before the body reminds itself
Of living,
the mind catches up
and I listen to my heartbeat.
Wherever I go, there is my heart.

It speaks of long lost loves,
Of dreams of yesterday,
Unraveling time
In its essence of eternity.
Matter of no importance
It dances throughout the ages,
Through renaissance nuisance,
Composing a melody,
The essence of love.

Follows me day and night,
I cannot sleep
Because of it.
Calling me in a myriad of
Ways
I follow you,
My heart
Through desert storms
And Infinity.
Haunted by
The essence of love.

Shadows greet me at dawn
Never fading
Away,
Reminding me of ever present
Death.
But even in death
There can only be the
Essence of love.

A scent so sweet
That no one can resist it,
An overwhelming fatigue
Grabs me by my shadow,
Twisting my heart,
this is
The essence of love.

Never leaving me
alone,
Always with me.
I carry it
With humble pride.

The essence of love.


Vanessa


Any day is a good day…

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It is everyone’s least favorite topic: Dying. If it is not yours, feel free to stop reading right now. I do not take it personally.

As most of you know, I have experienced an NDE when I was fourteen years of age. It was an extremely profound event in my life and one cannot be the same as everybody else after that. One part remains within that experience. It is nothing to be scared of. It is an incredibly beautiful experience and I remain surprised that most people are so fearful of death. Maybe it is the fear of what we were not able to achieve in this lifetime, the grasping onto this physical form in this lifetime, the desperate wish that we could have left more of a mark on others. Who knows.
Death is as if one stands in front of the void that I saw once in a dream: It is peaceful, nothing left to do, nothing left to achieve, and nowhere left to go. One stands within this nothingness and feels tremendous peace that cannot be described. It is as if one is floating in an immense ocean and one is at the hands of fate, but safely guarded.

Over the course of this lifetime I then realized that even Kundalini has been active from a young age. It is my own life-force that is expressing herself through me. The near-death experience was in fact one of my rises of Kundalini as I am having similar things going on right now. Maybe it was too much for a small body back then, I am starting to wonder about this.

So, being at the brink of it again, second time in my life, I can feel that life-force is dwindling. I should be resting most of the time, but I got bills to pay. This world is not made for awakenings. It is made for money. Not all of it and I do not want to rain on anyone’s parade, but most of it is made for a fast living without thinking about it twice. I still have my episodes of becoming frustrated about it. I have questioned society as long as I can remember. Sometimes I am at ease with it, but most times I look at everyone rushing mindlessly about, running in this hamster wheel and would like to know whether they even question their lifestyles once. Does not everyone run across this moment, I wonder? But having endured a year of “normalcy”, I came to realize that most people do not stop and ask themselves.
They never ask: What is the purpose of all of this?
Maybe it is my cross to bear in this lifetime to have asked such questions from an extremely young age. Maybe I will never get an answer to this. Maybe I will.
But today I realized that I really need to live each day as if it was my last. Not in a state of perfection but one of beauty and rapture. To dwell in each moment as if it was my last, because after all: What if it was really my last one?
Then how would I have wanted to spend it? Certainly not in a job I dislike.
And that’s it. Make it count, not in an exaggerated manner, but to live as if there was no tomorrow.

Can one then move always further within and say: Today, I have gone into my heart and can leave everything as it is.

There are some Buddhists who only possess a few items and each night they make everything up as if they would not wake up the next day. They do not want to burden anyone.
Maybe I do not have to take it to that extreme, but to find an equilibrium in a life where sensitives have not so much space…

So today I figured is a good day to die, much like any. Even if it just in an energetic form of my ego.


I am wishing you all a beautiful end of the year 2022 in our solar calendar.



May your day be filled with peace.


Vanessa

Choices

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“Ne pas choisir
C’est encore choisir.”

– Jean-Paul Sartre

(Not choosing still remains choosing)

Today I am turning 42 in this lifetime. It seems like an eternity to be alive. 42 in the medievals was old and now it is but a fragment of a lifetime. Sometimes my body feels as if it s already a hundred years old. In a sense it is and has endured so many lifetimes. It is a physical shell, yet, remains the vehicle for enlightenment.
I made a choice before I was born and how my life would unfold, I could not know. Because some things are left up to fate. So far I move in between loving it and at the same time asking myself: What is the point? Some days can be excruciating while others can be incredibly intense and beautiful. I am still trying to find that equilibrium that can be so easily destroyed. So instead of having a party or meeting with friends, I decided to treat myself to some pots for my plants and take myself on a date to the museum. As I have studied hospitality management, the university believed in a wide variety of subjects and we also took arts history and literature as subjects, which I truly loved. I had a thing for the expressionists and even though I did my paper on them, I hardly remembered that Essen was quite the city for expressionism. So today I was reminded of it by going to the Folkwang Museum. Of course it was packed. I moved through stages of intense fear throughout the exhibition. There was this silent angst stored up, residues in my nervous system from inherited World Wars. Especially World War II. I had to face my fears and move through this exhibition. It ranged from pain to elation, to feeling ill at times. But I took my time and what unfolded was actually very moving: Some paintings, I could tell, were infused with this divine energy, where the painter seemed to have moved out of the way, for them to be a channel for divine expression. Some were made out of life stories, most of them tragic, some were made out of ego, but rarely. Expressionism seems to be an art form where there was no room for large egos. It was a specific time period and painters lived in a sense that all they created could be destroyed at the blink of an eye. The destruction of paintings when not adhering to Nazi standards was the hardest bit to swallow.

It has never gotten easy. I still feel this national guilt.

It’s deep rooted and it has gotten better over the decades, but I still can never say with pride: I am of German origin in this lifetime. It is a hard task that I may have to muster in this lifetime. The thing that I realized about this is though that most countries had a play in all these happenstances. Most marched with the troops or had to follow. How much resistance was there? Not enough I would say, but it takes courage to do that, so I am not blaming anyone. I cannot put a guilt-trip on anyone either, because I would not know how it was like not to follow what was preached back then.
But it resurfaced obviously during this exhibition. It was tough to face this again, but when I finally went to another part of the exhibition, I felt relieved to have gone through it. It felt as if some of these parts of sadness had been taken away (I hope not to resurface again).

But today I felt at home for the second time in a few weeks. Somehow the expressionists have been like a string of synchronicities in my life. And here, on my birthday, they had turned up again.
Of course the first painting I saw reminded me of the kriyas people have when going through an awakening. It was so uncanny that it took me aback. Even though I had seen some of these works before, this I had never seen and it was incredibly beautiful. If there hadn’t been that many people, I just would have stayed there forever.
Another topic that stuck out was the study of the feminine body, which I am still somehow struggling with- it’s a love and sometimes dislike relationship. I am trying to make my peace with this bodily form in this lifetime. It is not so bad that I would consider gender change, but I do have my moments.

And of course the last topic was my effervescent crucifixion and resurrection. It never disappears. It is like it is calling me to surrender to my fate. Sometimes one is asked to just be and leave everything else alone. I always wonder: How could Christ have just walked up there. I’ve had many visions of him over the years, but I have to admit that there must have been no ego left for him and this is terribly hard to picture as we live in a society where ego is the dominating factor. He had only devotion to the divine and humanity, so soft, and so pliable. Unbelievably tender and open he must have been. Human but not human at all…

So today, I had to make a choice. It felt as if my inner being intended me to do so. It reignited my love for the expressionists and for doing what I really love doing. One just needs to stay courageous yet grounded into this reality (which is mighty difficult).



Vanessa

Love

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Today, no poetry of mine, but a piece by Hazrat Inayat Khan. I could not describe this any better…

“I have loved in life and I have
been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of
poison from the hands of love
as nectar,
And have been raised above
Life’s joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set
afire every heart that came in
touch with it.
My heart has been rent and
joint again;
My heart has been broken and
Again made whole;
My heart has been wounded
And healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart
has died, and thanks be to
love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw
there love’s raging fire,
and I entered heaven
illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all
weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced
the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell
On the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the
flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth
Trembled, and when I cried
Aloud the name of my Beloved,
I shook the throne of God in
Heaven.
I bowed my head low in
humility, and on my knees I
Begged of love,
“Disclose to me, I pray to Thee, O
Love, Thy secret.”
She took me gently by my
Arms and lifted me above the
Earth, and spoke softly in my
ear,
“My dear one, thou thyself art
Love, art lover,
and thyself art the Beloved
Whom thou hast adored.”


– Hazrat Inayat Khan