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Dr. Feelgood by Andre Platteel , May 13th

“No, that’s nothing; no need to worry about that.” Five seconds and a fear that had stayed with me for years, vanishes. Just like that. I am already lifting myself out of the chair when he says: “You are trying to love this, aren’t you.” On ‘this’ he spreads his arms, and I think I see a twinkle in his eyes. Now fear has left me, my system is more open to really looking at this doctor, this doctor with the practice deep in the woods. And he looks funny. Early fifties, grey hair, glasses, white coat, of course, jeans, sneakers – also white, with three white stripes, barely noticeable. Actually, he looks a bit like Dustin Hoffman. “So, what I notice is that there is a certain resistance in your system, making it hard for you to be fully open to this moment. Is that right?” He is leaning backwards. He is enjoying this more than the investigation of some small bumbs on my head, a few seconds ago. “Listen.” Bird sounds. “Feel,” he says, striking his cheek and pointing his head in my direction, encouraging me to do the same. I feel a bit embarrassed. “What is it that prevents you from being fully open to this moment? This is all we have. Now – this moment – isn’t it?” Without waiting for me to answer he grabs a paper and a pen and gives them to me. “I will ask ‘it’, and also for you to come up with something that will support you in becoming fully available.” He puts his hands behind his head, letting it rest in them. “Please write down...” His breathing becomes louder. He closes his eyes, opens his mouth, but nothing comes, not yet. A few seconds later: “Love and happiness are what the world will give to me...” He is breathing loudly through his nose and takes a little pause, “…I am part of all that is happening, every moment. What could please me more than to receive love in the deepest of my being. Everything is so easy, and the reason why is not important.” He stops. Opens his eyes and meets mine. I put down my pen. Unexpectedly, his mouth issues more words. “What a pleasure it will be to allow love to ground me, to form the basis of my being.” He asks me to repeat what he has just said. I do. Quite fast, feeling a bit strange. “Again please.” I do. Then: “Could you do it one more time, but take your time for the words to blossom in you.” In the slowness of repeating I feel the words finding their way into my body. “I know this is quite unusual. You go to a doctor, and well...” He lifts his arms and opens his hands. “For thirty years I have been a doctor: what most doctors do does not help one bit to make you become more fully alive.” He gets out of his chair and walks a bit. His office is quite big. “Are you okay with this?” I am. + more “No, that’s nothing; no need to worry about that.” Five seconds and a fear that had stayed with me for years, vanishes. Just like that. I am already lifting myself out of the chair when he says: “You are trying to love this, aren’t you.” On ‘this’ he spreads his arms, and I think I see a twinkle in his eyes. Now fear has left me, my system is more open to really looking at this doctor, this doctor with the practice deep in the woods. And he looks funny. Early fifties, grey hair, glasses, white coat, of course, jeans, sneakers – also white, with three white stripes, barely noticeable. Actually, he looks a bit like Dustin Hoffman. “So, what I notice is that there is a certain resistance in your system, making it hard for you to be fully open to this moment. Is that right?” He is leaning backwards. He is enjoying this more than the investigation of some small bumbs on my head, a few seconds ago. “Listen.” Bird sounds. “Feel,” he says, striking his cheek and pointing his head in my direction, encouraging me to do the same. I feel a bit embarrassed. “What is it that prevents you from being fully open to this moment? This is all we have. Now – this moment – isn’t it?” Without waiting for me to answer he grabs a paper and a pen and gives them to me. “I will ask ‘it’, and also for you to come up with something that will support you in becoming fully available.” He puts his hands behind his head, letting it rest in them. “Please write down...” His breathing becomes louder. He closes his eyes, opens his mouth, but nothing comes, not yet. A few seconds later: “Love and happiness are what the world will give to me...” He is breathing loudly through his nose and takes a little pause, “…I am part of all that is happening, every moment. What could please me more than to receive love in the deepest of my being. Everything is so easy, and the reason why is not important.” He stops. Opens his eyes and meets mine. I put down my pen. Unexpectedly, his mouth issues more words. “What a pleasure it will be to allow love to ground me, to form the basis of my being.” He asks me to repeat what he has just said. I do. Quite fast, feeling a bit strange. “Again please.” I do. Then: “Could you do it one more time, but take your time for the words to blossom in you.” In the slowness of repeating I feel the words finding their way into my body. “I know this is quite unusual. You go to a doctor, and well...” He lifts his arms and opens his hands. “For thirty years I have been a doctor: what most doctors do does not help one bit to make you become more fully alive.” He gets out of his chair and walks a bit. His office is quite big. “Are you okay with this?” I am. “Look, we can investigate what it is that is bugging you. We can also ask this great intelligence (lifting his arms again, opening them to receive) to show it to us.” He closes the office curtains. Some workers have arrived to fix something and can see in. “I don’t like people watching me when I’m doing this,” he says, moving to the middle of the room. “I will ask this intelligence, or love, or consciousness, or whatever we want to call it, to show, through me, who you think you are at this moment. After that I can ask it to show, through me, who you really are. Let’s see if there is a difference.” He takes off his white coat, revealing a blue polo shirt. A man on a horse. He concentrates. His body begins to change. He starts walking with his chin slightly tilted, chest pushed out. All in slow motion. He raises his arms and puts them in front of his chest, his hands becoming claws. His feet move heavily, stickily. He walks for two, maybe three minutes, doing circles in his office. Changes in his posture, but not significantly different. I am watching myself in a mirror. He breaths out, heavenly, and lets me out of him. “Okay.” One word to close session one. He walks to the centre of his office and closes his eyes. He makes contact again. For a few seconds, nothing. Then, he bursts out in a laugh. “This is funny, this is so funny. Look.” He begins to pace again. He touches his heart with his right hand and then makes a movement with it as if sowing seed. He doesn’t stop giggling. His acting out of ‘me’ goes on for minutes, encompassing different movements and poses. I cannot help but burst into laughter too. It doesn’t disturb him. He keeps on acting me, and my systems recognize what it is that wants to show itself. A few minutes later I am standing at the door. We shake hands. They feel good: his and mine, both hands. - less tagged:   body   spaciousness   consciousness   knowing   spirituality   love    permalink  read: 5747  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: André Platteel

The man who loved too much by Andre Platteel , December 4th

She’s sixteen, sweet sixteen. She’s only lived here four years but speaks the language fluently, cleverly. She says she loves being here, but would also have loved stay at home. Not because of her new country, she explains, but because she doesn’t know the father she’s living with. Back home she only saw him two weeks a year, yet even after spending four years with him here, he still is a stranger. “He is a clever man with a great memory.” I am listening with ten other young people and we have only one purpose: to really listen to what each of us has to say. “He always knows anything and everything. He can see inside you: what you think and how you will act. I never really liked talking with him though. I always had the feeling that there was a competition going on: who will win the conversation?” She doesn’t talk silently, to herself; her voice is clear. She eases into the eyes of us listeners. She has big brown eyes, beautiful eyes. “And if, occasionally and miraculously, you won the battle you still had the feeling you had lost, because he had permitted you to win the game. As a child, he let me win several times. And although I knew I won because of him, I liked those moments. I had the feeling of having a father for a few moments.” None of us is asking questions. None of us is impatient. “He is a strong man,” she continues, “with a strong body and a strong sense of justice. With him by your side you feel protected against all evil, protected against all the bad things that could ever happen to you – even the things you were never afraid of in the first place. When I first came to this country he warned me for all the dangers, and for the first few weeks I could only walk outside with him by my side.” There is just a little pause, and a beautiful silence, before she continues, as if she is taking the time to lead us to the next chapter. “He is a great man, actually.” + more She’s sixteen, sweet sixteen. She’s only lived here four years but speaks the language fluently, cleverly. She says she loves being here, but would also have loved stay at home. Not because of her new country, she explains, but because she doesn’t know the father she’s living with. Back home she only saw him two weeks a year, yet even after spending four years with him here, he still is a stranger. “He is a clever man with a great memory.” I am listening with ten other young people and we have only one purpose: to really listen to what each of us has to say. “He always knows anything and everything. He can see inside you: what you think and how you will act. I never really liked talking with him though. I always had the feeling that there was a competition going on: who will win the conversation?” She doesn’t talk silently, to herself; her voice is clear. She eases into the eyes of us listeners. She has big brown eyes, beautiful eyes. “And if, occasionally and miraculously, you won the battle you still had the feeling you had lost, because he had permitted you to win the game. As a child, he let me win several times. And although I knew I won because of him, I liked those moments. I had the feeling of having a father for a few moments.” None of us is asking questions. None of us is impatient. “He is a strong man,” she continues, “with a strong body and a strong sense of justice. With him by your side you feel protected against all evil, protected against all the bad things that could ever happen to you – even the things you were never afraid of in the first place. When I first came to this country he warned me for all the dangers, and for the first few weeks I could only walk outside with him by my side.” There is just a little pause, and a beautiful silence, before she continues, as if she is taking the time to lead us to the next chapter. “He is a great man, actually.” And: “His greatness became even greater the moment he saw that his behaviour had been coloured by fear and pain. That is why he always wanted to win; that is why he made himself so strong: to protect himself. He told me how afraid he had been to lose, to lose everything of value. I was with him the nights and days he cried away his pain and fear. Now he is happy again. And strong, he says.” We are all part of her story. If you were here, you would be able to sense it. “He tells everyone he has an open heart now. He says he only acts from love, only with a message of love. He tells everyone that his love pours from his heart so easily. This gift of God gives him the ability to see what is wrong with you emotionally, mentally, physically, and what you can do to become just like him. Made purely of love. He wants to become a spiritual teacher now. In the name of love he guides people to become love. You know, my father loves his love so much, and the love he receives when he turns you into love.” Another little pause. “A lot has changed for me since then. Suddenly, there is someone who pays me attention and guides me, like a father should do. But at the same time I do not feel complete. There is always something to fix. Despite my love for him, the love of my father is simply too good to be true to me.” - less tagged:   understanding   mind   spirituality   uniqueness   heart    permalink  read: 3566  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

Making love by Andre Platteel , November 12th

In one of the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, a group of people is asked to make a map of a city. It must be as detailed as possible, charting every street and river. Every time the mapmakers present their work they are sent back with the request to make the map even more detailed. Eventually, the mapmakers end up in the nearby desert, where they have enough room to produce a map that is an exact copy of the city. Then, when the men have nearly finished the map, a storm whips in and destroys it. Only a few pieces of the map are ever found. The experience of being conscious, being connected, is often referred to as the experience of ultimate love. Everything is love I have often heard. Everything is love I have often said myself (to myself). Consciousness as the source of all life can only be good, bad is nothing more than confusion. What is love? Not so long ago I was in Big Sur, California, a beautiful era of rough nature between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I was surrounded by thousands of trees, many of them many hundreds of years old, thousands even, and by many plants and animals I had never seen before, neither in reality nor in books. To me, it felt like true perfection: the beautiful colours, the bio-diversity and the astonishing vibration of energy. Hiking for hours caressed my system. Life was streaming through my veins. I felt connected. Being here felt like heaven. Harmonious. Right here one could experience that consciousness is simply love. Looking closer, however, I could see a battle: trees fighting to be the tallest around so they receive more light (and so take light away from the others trees); plants twisted around trees, initially protecting, later suffocating them; animals hunting and playing a deadly game at every moment. There was a war going on! Where did love and goodness go in this God-like nature? Are these trees, plants and animals confused? Or is the sensation of perfection that we often encounter in exquisite nature, and which we often tend to call love, actually based on a misconception? Are we confused in what we call love? We tend to see love as something that feels good, something that touches us. To be more specific: as something that pleases us. But is that all that love is? Going by what I have seen around me and in what I have experienced, love can also say no. Love can also hurt. Love can suffocate. Love can damage. Love can even destroy and kill. Love can be anything. Just like life – and just like consciousness, being all. But we do not refer to all when using love; we refer to only that what pleases what we have called 'I'. + more In one of the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, a group of people is asked to make a map of a city. It must be as detailed as possible, charting every street and river. Every time the mapmakers present their work they are sent back with the request to make the map even more detailed. Eventually, the mapmakers end up in the nearby desert, where they have enough room to produce a map that is an exact copy of the city. Then, when the men have nearly finished the map, a storm whips in and destroys it. Only a few pieces of the map are ever found. The experience of being conscious, being connected, is often referred to as the experience of ultimate love. Everything is love I have often heard. Everything is love I have often said myself (to myself). Consciousness as the source of all life can only be good, bad is nothing more than confusion. What is love? Not so long ago I was in Big Sur, California, a beautiful era of rough nature between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I was surrounded by thousands of trees, many of them many hundreds of years old, thousands even, and by many plants and animals I had never seen before, neither in reality nor in books. To me, it felt like true perfection: the beautiful colours, the bio-diversity and the astonishing vibration of energy. Hiking for hours caressed my system. Life was streaming through my veins. I felt connected. Being here felt like heaven. Harmonious. Right here one could experience that consciousness is simply love. Looking closer, however, I could see a battle: trees fighting to be the tallest around so they receive more light (and so take light away from the others trees); plants twisted around trees, initially protecting, later suffocating them; animals hunting and playing a deadly game at every moment. There was a war going on! Where did love and goodness go in this God-like nature? Are these trees, plants and animals confused? Or is the sensation of perfection that we often encounter in exquisite nature, and which we often tend to call love, actually based on a misconception? Are we confused in what we call love? We tend to see love as something that feels good, something that touches us. To be more specific: as something that pleases us. But is that all that love is? Going by what I have seen around me and in what I have experienced, love can also say no. Love can also hurt. Love can suffocate. Love can damage. Love can even destroy and kill. Love can be anything. Just like life – and just like consciousness, being all. But we do not refer to all when using love; we refer to only that what pleases what we have called 'I'. So why call consciousness ‘love’? What use is there in seeing the source of all being as nothing more than that what pleases us? Most of the time we only use love to represent a wish. We call something love because we want to receive it – love; love being no more than a desire: excluding everything that does not fit our need. If someone does not agree with us, if someone loves other things or has other desires, we do not feel connected with that person, we cannot see love anymore. We make love for ourselves. Is love a wanting that excludes? Can we ever experience love itself instead of a projection of our needs? And if so, can we call that experience love? Once we speak of love, the experience of love is blown away; try to turn love into a word and we find only fragments remain. The word love does not include our experience of love – we are mainly distanced from it, excluding the parts of the experience that do not fit our mental definition. It seems to me that every time we try to define what we experience, we try to define life itself. We move our being to a dry, lonely desert, where we create a map instead of immersing ourselves in the experience itself; we wait for the storm that will take away what we have created, leaving only traces of disillusion. Even if such a map is called love, consciousness cannot be love. Consciousness just is – including what we generally call love. - less tagged:   love   consciousness   wholeness   spirituality   Borges   desert   experience    permalink  read: 4249  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: André Platteel

Hide and Seek by Andre Platteel , October 12th

I’m sitting outside Olive, a great bagel-cum- coffee shop in the heart of SoHo. It’s early and most of the shops are still closed. Some street artists are unpacking paintings and drawings for sale. Trucks are unloading stuff. Morning is awakening, although the sun is still hidden behind typical New York buildings: huge warehouses with beautiful exterior stairway constructions. Dozens of people are passing me by and a child-like surprise hits me at noticing how different all of their faces are and how, at the same time, none of these faces seem to be so unknown that they shock me. It is as if I already know these people I’ve never met. Some of the people pass me in a hurry; some of them give the impression of still being asleep; others are vibrant and have intense discussions through small microphones hanging around their necks. All these people are going somewhere; all of them have their unique destinations; all of them are ‘on the move’. I wonder: What is it that drives us? What do we long for? What is it we search for in a world that seems to be violent, restless and insecure? I long for peace of mind; I would like to be wholehearted with the people I’m with and about the things I do; I would like to enjoy every minute of the life that I live. I haven’t met many people who don’t want to enjoy their lives, so I imagine that what we long for is to live a life of joy. Joy can be found in many things. I have found joy in lovers, books, clothing, eating, holidays, places, friends, and probably many other things that do not come to mind right now. All of those things have, at certain moments, satisfied me. Which is more than the Rolling Stones got. But this kind of satisfaction doesn’t seem to satisfy me to the degree it used to. Satisfaction has a short lifecycle and continually demands something else to be satisfied with, or about. Satisfaction and consumption go hand in hand: we look for joy in something outside of ourselves. But after a while we begin to understand that enduring joy can never be found in something other than in ourselves. This understanding, which more and more of us are feeling these days (and which is in all of us), stimulates an inward journey: self- inquiry kicks in and the question comes up: ‘What truly matters to me.’ + more I’m sitting outside Olive, a great bagel-cum- coffee shop in the heart of SoHo. It’s early and most of the shops are still closed. Some street artists are unpacking paintings and drawings for sale. Trucks are unloading stuff. Morning is awakening, although the sun is still hidden behind typical New York buildings: huge warehouses with beautiful exterior stairway constructions. Dozens of people are passing me by and a child-like surprise hits me at noticing how different all of their faces are and how, at the same time, none of these faces seem to be so unknown that they shock me. It is as if I already know these people I’ve never met. Some of the people pass me in a hurry; some of them give the impression of still being asleep; others are vibrant and have intense discussions through small microphones hanging around their necks. All these people are going somewhere; all of them have their unique destinations; all of them are ‘on the move’. I wonder: What is it that drives us? What do we long for? What is it we search for in a world that seems to be violent, restless and insecure? I long for peace of mind; I would like to be wholehearted with the people I’m with and about the things I do; I would like to enjoy every minute of the life that I live. I haven’t met many people who don’t want to enjoy their lives, so I imagine that what we long for is to live a life of joy. Joy can be found in many things. I have found joy in lovers, books, clothing, eating, holidays, places, friends, and probably many other things that do not come to mind right now. All of those things have, at certain moments, satisfied me. Which is more than the Rolling Stones got. But this kind of satisfaction doesn’t seem to satisfy me to the degree it used to. Satisfaction has a short lifecycle and continually demands something else to be satisfied with, or about. Satisfaction and consumption go hand in hand: we look for joy in something outside of ourselves. But after a while we begin to understand that enduring joy can never be found in something other than in ourselves. This understanding, which more and more of us are feeling these days (and which is in all of us), stimulates an inward journey: self- inquiry kicks in and the question comes up: ‘What truly matters to me.’ This process of discovering what matters to me has confused me more than a few times. In my case, I sometimes found myself confusing the satisfaction that I felt at undertaking the journey for the destination I was seeking. Did I meditate the right way and long enough to create peace of mind? Am I making (spiritual) progress? Do I have the necessary experiences for an inward journey? Or other confusion that I have felt in myself and among friends: Do I have the best spiritual teacher? Am I following the rituals that should guide me in my? Can I place my inward journey in the right spiritual context? Can I (already) ‘enlighten’ other people around me? Suddenly, spirituality is consumed in order to get satisfaction, becoming no more different than the satisfaction you get from buying clothes, having a great dinner or enjoying a wonderful holiday – nothing wrong with any of them, but they’re not the same as enduring joy. Fleeting joy rather than enduring joy. I have come to the understanding that for me it is important to understand why I am seeking enduring joy; I have come to the understanding that for me it is important to understand that something that is enduring cannot be found, but must be always here. I have discovered that it is important to me to enjoy everything that comes my way, including things outside of myself such as having a great dinner or buying nice clothing. And I have come to the understanding that the idea that something in me, in others or in the world has to be solved in order to enjoy enduring joy is actually one of the biggest obstacles to really embracing enduring joy. And I have come to experience that, despite understanding what matters to me, enduring joy still finds a way sometimes to seduce my mind into playing hide and seek with it, within me. Come out and play. - less tagged:   NewYork   SoHo   Olive   matter   consciousness   spirituality   consuming   knowing    permalink  read: 6328  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

Mind blowing by Andre Platteel , October 3rd

Five hours north of New York, following the Hudson River all the way, I reach the Adirondacks. At Lake George, the start of the Adirondack Mountains, I will attend a week-long silent retreat with Gangaji, a teacher in Advaita, the Hindu philosophy of non-duality. A half-year earlier my girlfriend and I had also attended a retreat with Gangaji, at the legendary Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. The experience was mind blowing. This time the retreat is at a YMCA, a big venue built in a beautiful style that pays tribute to those typical family holiday destinations of the 1950s, the ones that have been so beautifully captured by photographer Martin Parr and in the film Dirty Dancing. The consciousness of all being one has been burning in me ever since I discovered Advaita, seven years ago. The experience of Wholeness that is at the core of Advaita has led me to investigate who I am – a process that is ongoing. Gangaji is a great teacher: through silence you experience the essence of who we are. Her pointers are clear and she is sweet about any question that arises. After a few days spent in silence, experiencing the intense love that comes from the feeling of being all connected, it suddenly feels weird to be in this retreat. I feel a strong hunger to know ‘outside’. Of course, if all is one, there cannot be such a thing as ‘outside’ and ‘inside’. However, being in this retreat feels that way: you have to wear a name badge all the time; alcohol is forbidden; you have to stay and wait for five minutes after Gangaji has left the room; you have to answer certain questions; and couples are advised not to hang out with each other all the time. It is true that every ‘social community’ has its rules and regulations, but it is just this knowledge that leaves me with no reason to stay. After four days, my girlfriend and I decide to leave the retreat: it has never felt so good to play truant; it has never felt so strong to demonstrate the experience of freedom for real. We spend hours driving south beside the Hudson River, hit the Holland Tunnel and enter downtown New York. It’s rush hour; New York streets don’t have lanes and we get squeezed between hundreds of cabs. Finally, after being stuck in traffic for yet more hours we reach our hotel. The last day of our stay in New York we decide to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where there is an exhibition of Dutch Painters. The Age of Rembrandt features 228 masterpieces displayed together, works of Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch, Pieter de Hooch, Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, and – of course – Rembrandt van Rijn. Being Dutch, we feel a bit like Japanese, eating only Japanese in every country abroad. + more Five hours north of New York, following the Hudson River all the way, I reach the Adirondacks. At Lake George, the start of the Adirondack Mountains, I will attend a week-long silent retreat with Gangaji, a teacher in Advaita, the Hindu philosophy of non-duality. A half-year earlier my girlfriend and I had also attended a retreat with Gangaji, at the legendary Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. The experience was mind blowing. This time the retreat is at a YMCA, a big venue built in a beautiful style that pays tribute to those typical family holiday destinations of the 1950s, the ones that have been so beautifully captured by photographer Martin Parr and in the film Dirty Dancing. The consciousness of all being one has been burning in me ever since I discovered Advaita, seven years ago. The experience of Wholeness that is at the core of Advaita has led me to investigate who I am – a process that is ongoing. Gangaji is a great teacher: through silence you experience the essence of who we are. Her pointers are clear and she is sweet about any question that arises. After a few days spent in silence, experiencing the intense love that comes from the feeling of being all connected, it suddenly feels weird to be in this retreat. I feel a strong hunger to know ‘outside’. Of course, if all is one, there cannot be such a thing as ‘outside’ and ‘inside’. However, being in this retreat feels that way: you have to wear a name badge all the time; alcohol is forbidden; you have to stay and wait for five minutes after Gangaji has left the room; you have to answer certain questions; and couples are advised not to hang out with each other all the time. It is true that every ‘social community’ has its rules and regulations, but it is just this knowledge that leaves me with no reason to stay. After four days, my girlfriend and I decide to leave the retreat: it has never felt so good to play truant; it has never felt so strong to demonstrate the experience of freedom for real. We spend hours driving south beside the Hudson River, hit the Holland Tunnel and enter downtown New York. It’s rush hour; New York streets don’t have lanes and we get squeezed between hundreds of cabs. Finally, after being stuck in traffic for yet more hours we reach our hotel. The last day of our stay in New York we decide to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where there is an exhibition of Dutch Painters. The Age of Rembrandt features 228 masterpieces displayed together, works of Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch, Pieter de Hooch, Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, and – of course – Rembrandt van Rijn. Being Dutch, we feel a bit like Japanese, eating only Japanese in every country abroad. The museum is huge and although this is a major exhibition we find ourselves being sent in every direction but the right one. We get lost between thousand-year-old Buddhas, mummies, African masks and remains of Indian temples: a bizarre collection of man-made devotion to God and Godlike. Finally we reach the Dutch painters. So many pieces that some of the paintings are exhibited on top of each other. Lots of heads from centuries ago are staring at me and it is as if I can touch them, can talk with them: they come alive. I am overwhelmed. The energy in my body starts dancing and I feel a strong urge to leave, just as I felt at the MoMa exhibition a few weeks earlier. Fear is running through my body and I am disappointed that the silence and rest I experienced during the retreat seem to have left me. It becomes almost impossible to look at another painting: the energy I derive from looking is so strong that I lose my sense of and stability. I need air. The fear of fainting comes on top of the unknown fear that is taking over my body. I try to open myself for the fear, to give it space, but restlessness runs through me and I move into a survival mode: get me out of here as quickly as possible. On my way to the nearest exit I encounter a small painting by Vermeer: a head of a young girl, with a face like porcelain. Her face is round; she wears a white dress; she has dark hair; there are hardly any colours in the painting. She has no particular expression in her eyes – they are just open to receive light. The girl’s face stops me. I stand in front of her, for minutes probably. In an embarrassing emotional state. But I don’t feel embarrassed; I experience how this girl turns my fear into the sweetest joy. The painting blows my mind. - less tagged:   NewYork   consciousness   BigSur   spirituality   Gangaji   Esalen   MartinParr   DirtyDancing   MET   painters   Advaita   India   God   connectedness   fear    permalink  read: 7363  print  forward  comments: 0  add comment      name:

Photo: Annemarieke van Drimmelen

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Advaita  AlexvanWarmerdam  aliveness  Allen  animals  Anschauen  Antonioni  Aronofsky  arrogance  art  attention  authetic  awareness  Babel  balance  beauty  Bechstein  Beloved  Berber  beyond  BigMind  BigSur  bird  blackhole  blindness  blood  Body  Bohm  books  borders  Borges  brands  brightnes  brightness  BruceLee  business  Butterfly  carpet  Cartesian  CEO  change  child  Chinese  circle  Clueless  co-creation  colours  communications  community  concepts  condor  confusion  connectedness  consciousness  consuming  Coppola  creation  crocuses  Curse  dancing  darkness  Death  decadence  decay  desert  desire  dialogue  DiegoMaradona  difference  DirtyDancing  disorientation  doubt  dream  Duchamps  Dunaway  eagle  earth  endless  erotic  Esalen  ever-unfolding  everything  Evil  evolution  experience  faith  falling  family  father  fear  feeding  feeling  fighting  film  fire  flame  flow  flower  flowers  fluid  foam  form  fragment  freedom  friend  Gangaji  God  Goethe  goodness  gravity  grip  ground  Groundhogday  grounding  guilty  Gypsy  heart  hearth  heaven  Hero  holy  home  horizon  house  Hungary  hypocrisy  ignorance  image  images  imagination  India  innocence  intimacy  inviting  irony  Japan  Jarrett  Jewison  judgement  KarlBlossfeldt  Knowing  language  laughter  leaves  lie  life  light  Linklater  love  Lynch  lyrics  Madonna  Magic  Manhattan  MarcForster  marketing  martial-art  MartinParr  master  matter  McLuhan  McQueen  meadow  media  meditation  memories  memory  merketing  Merleau-Ponty  MET  mind  MIT  Moma  Monet  Montauk  moon  mortal  mother  mountain  mountains  movement  Murakami  Muslim  natural  Nazis  Newton  NewYork  Nolita  nothing  Olive  oneness  opinion  opposites  otherness  painters  painting  Paris  passion  patterns  phenomena  philosophy  photographer  physiology  Pirandello  plane  playing  Pollock  pornographic  power  promise  punishment  reality  red  repetition  resistance  river  Romania  roses  sadness  seduction  self-consciousness  Serra  shadow  Shakespeare  shame  Shapiro  silence  silk  singing  sky  Slacker  slopes  SmallMind  snow  SoHo  sorry  space  spaciousness  spirit  spiritual  spirituality  Spring  stars  stone  stories  StrangerthanFiction  strategy  stress  sun  swan  swordsman  T'aiChi  TallbergForum  tears  thinking  time  totalitarian  totality  travel  trees  TV-series  understanding  uniqueness  unity  untrue  Ursus  utopia  virginity  vitality  voices  Waiter  warrior  water  wholeness  wind  wing  Wing-Chun  wolf  WoodyAllen  youth  Zelig  Zen 

2010	June May April
2009	June May April March January
2008	December October September August May April March February January
2007	December November October September August

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June, 2010 Dutch Political Leaders Receive book Our World		May, 2010 Resistance Decadence New Book: Our World		April, 2010 Arrogance Naivety Ignorance		June, 2009 Mother of all memories
May, 2009 Come again, and again, and again		April, 2009 The Wolf		March, 2009 The three voices		January, 2009 Born to adore This Dancing with the Beloved
December, 2008 Listen carefully		October, 2008 A fragment of a circle God’s Gods You, me and everything else		September, 2008 Man with powers		August, 2008 The hidden promise Crazy for love
May, 2008 Dr. Feelgood What’s the limit of love		April, 2008 Spring Snow will fall The Cleaner		March, 2008 Motherless Child What I am made of Falling upwards Northern Lights		February, 2008 Glass-made-mind The outer layer of the mind Growing younger On Holy Ground
January, 2008 Watch for the wind to blow How is Diego Maradona doing? What are we guilty off? Everything is what is besides language The eagle and the condor flying together In the heart of Otherness		December, 2007 The man who loved too much The dark brightness The windmills of our mind To make two mountains one, gone Bigger than the stars		November, 2007 Act of passion Making love Life has no meaning Where the heart is Oneness is never the same		October, 2007 Mind blowing Becoming authentic Coloured Mind Hide and Seek Culture of fear The man on the bench The Swordsman
September, 2007 What is thinking? World happening Unity in diversity Smell no evil Going in all directions without beginning or end Alternative routes Superheroes don’t age No place like Utopia? Fog		August, 2007 The Wholeness of being Spirit through matter Looking in the mirror A new heart Is matter what matters? World of opinions. Spaciousness for a flower to grow