EUNOIA - shared wisdom by Melina Möller

EUNOIA

shared wisdom

the spiritual lifestyle magazine

shared wisdom

Did you ever wonder about How EARTH'S JOURNAL would look? What CACAO RITUALS are? About SEX, LOVE & ATTACHMENT, or HOW TO LIVE A HAPPIER LIFE? Find all the answers inside!

Eunoia

[you · noy · ya] (n.) beautiful thinking ; a well mind. from Ancient Greek εὔνοια ‎(eúnoia, “goodwill”, literally “well-mindedness”), from εὖ ‎(eû, “well, good”) + νόος ‎(nóos, “mind, spirit”)

Hello you,

©Melina Möller

I‘d never read an editorial text until I had to write one. Most of them are really inspiring, personal, deep and some even describe what the magazine is about — so let‘s try to start with something personal. This project is really personal to me. I came up with the idea last summer when I was at a tiny festival called Psychonautica with only 250 people. All of these beautiful, crazy and different, but still harmonic, humans being really loving and caring about each other. One for all and all for one. I‘ve never received so many massages in my life — everybody was massaging everybody and there were lots of ‘cuddle puddles’ and naked people walking around. I felt the freedom. All of them working together to make this festival possible. In these three days I learned so much. I got introduced to various kinds of practices — for example the cacao ritual in which I participated, led by the fabulous Melissa Honeybee; or the contact improvisation workshops by Vega Luukkonen. At one point I heard a chanting song and followed its melody which lead me to a hall with many people standing in the middle. I tried to find the DJ Booth, but there was none. The beautiful noise which lead me there was all these people making synchronized sounds. I was stunned. In some moments I felt like we’re not separated, but all one. It was these three days that restored my faith in humanity. If we all work together, we’re able learn so much from one another. This was the reason I came up with EUNOIA- share your wisdom — because I know every human has something to tell that could be useful to others and I’m sure that many people don’t even know some of the practices that could help them. My magazine should be a platform to connect all these loving, open-minded, self-reflecting people of all kinds, races and ages to find support and new inspiration. And I think the result is more than I expected. I’m happy to present the first magazine EUNOIA - share your wisdom, in which we’ll introduce you to a variety of topics about mind, heart, body and soul. And I’m thankful for the huge support I’ve gotten from all my helpers — for example, all the authors in this magazine who have shared their wisdom with us. May love and light guide your way,

Melina Möller

Sleeping Reality This is a game I like to play: I close my eyes and fade away I float right to a special place Beyond the stars and moon and space In this place, too good to be true, I find lovely people just like you Everything here seems sheer right Nothing but love and nowhere fights No rules to follow, no laws to break No distance to hold us separate

In this place there isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sadness No judgement, no money, none of that madness The language here is kisses and hugs People communicate only with touch The currency, one all can afford, Is peoples pay and divine award It is a simple, genuine smile The happiness shining from it for miles

ÂŠMelina MĂśller

People play music and dance together The party, it seems, will last forever

Separation, loneliness Isolation and ever stress

And then at the height of this ecstasy My eyes would open and force me to see

It`s frustrating and makes me insane The only medicine is my game

Grey walls that seemingly surround me A glimpse out the window reveals poverty

People then call me dismissive a dreamer Yet, they ignore an important fact:

I see hatred and grief and discrimination Lines in peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minds and lines that form nations

A dream lonely dreamed is only a dream But a dream shared together removes from abstract.

by Felix Drewes

GReeN THINkING 11 15 16 20

Tribalization Treepoem Shitfaced on Earth Resources -Our Last Party? Human Disaster vs. Economic Refugees

wAY oF LIFe 27 32 36 40 44 46 48

People Praise for Mama Cacao Contact Improvisation The Intention of the Artist Synesthesia Polyphasic Sleep Misophonia

cLoSeNeSS 56 58 64 68 70

Cuddling Love, Sex and Attachment Foursome Soulmates Polyamory

MINDMATTeR 76 84 88 94 98 102 104 106 110 112

Why Good Thinking and Bad Feelings matter The Real Secret to Manifestation How to Build a More Positive Brain The art of life Selfdoubt Knowing your value why We Care Less and Lose Interest Achievings Clarity Imprint

content | the spiritual lifestyle magazine | no. 1 | june 2016

ÂŠMelina MĂśller

Tribalização

Photographer Lucas LasCasas | where Olhos D‘água, Goiás. Brasil | Date 2011 - 2013 | Material Analogue camera 35mm | Idea Such as “Fire Circle” this series was my first attempt to connect the human body to natural elements creating a ritual in which me and my friends took a weekend off to photograph this series in a more distant place and to be fully connected to the process. It was one of my first photographic experience.

Tree Poem by Sven Picton

The most solid foundation is always moving... I stand for falling for nothing, listening to everything and allowing ourselves and others to grow It‘s not good vs evil, right vs wrong, or anything to do with sides. It is One Love One Family One Tree The roots will always provide food for the highest point we reach Any separation from the tree falls to the ground and becomes food for the roots the food is then digested and used for new growth, new leaves, deeper roots and higher heights...

©Melina Möller

Mmmm feeed me... Roots man skankin all night long!

Gaya's Diary — Harmony till Humanity's Party. The Earth is more than 4,5 billion years old. If Earth's lifespan is compared to the lifespan of a 45 year old woman, her diary would probably read as follows:

Earth`s Time Perception vs. Human Time Perception “When I was born, my body consisted of molten lava and my atmosphere was lethal. At the age of 7, my lava-body cooled down, crust developed while rocks 45 years = 4,500,000,000 (4500 million years) and seas formed. By my 8th birthday, microscopic life emerged (Archaebacteria). When I was 15, photosyn- 1 year = 100,000,000 (100 million years) thesis developed (Cyanobacteria ) and my atmosphere filled with life-giving oxygen. Over the following 6 month = 50,000,000 (50 million years) 10 years, complex cells evolved and when I was 25, multicellular life appeared. When I was 39, “primitive” 1 month = 8,333,333 (8,3 million years) life formed and insects developed. Around my 40th birthday fish took up the seas while plants appeared 1 week = 2,083,333 (ca. 2 million years) on the land. In my early forties, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds came into existence. At 44, I in- 1 day = 297,619 (ca. 300,000 years) herited a complex Web of Life, a fruitful, but fragile balance of living and non-living matter. I thrived, 1 hour = 12,400 (ca.200 years) blossomed and flowered. Just days before my 45th birthday (200.000 years 30 minutes = 6,200 (6200 years) ago), humans and their big brains spawned to soon disrupt my balance. Over the next week, they dis- 1 minute = ca. 207 (ca.200 years) covered fire, weapons and tools. Less than an hour ago (10.000 years) the dawn of agriculture took place 30 seconds = ca. 103 (ca.100 years) as humans learned how to grow crops and domesti cate animals. Approximately 30 minutes ago they 1 second = ca. 3,5 (ca. 3,5 years) began to make bronze weapons and discovered the 1 millisecond = 0,0034 (ca. 1 day / 29 h ) wheel. Stonehenge was built 26 minutes ago and 4

Â©Kevin Danzer

minutes later “sophisticated” human civilizations emerged, soon conceiving Buddhism (13 minutes ago), Christianity (10 minutes ago), and Islam (7.5 minutes ago). Shortly thereafter, gunpowder reached the West (4 minutes ago) and 1.5 minutes later, Europeans conquered the Americas. Vaccines were developed 1 minute ago and 3 seconds later, the human population exceeded 1 billion. Electricity, railway and cars were invented almost simultaneously and 25 seconds later humans took to the skies in airplanes. Mankind is a peculiar species. They don't quite embrace my idea of mutual service and symbiosis. It's the only species obsessed by control and power, not realizing that they are creating their own fatal trap…” What trap? What does Earth mean? Well, phrased in

economic terms: Humans bankroll by recklessly consuming Earth's capital in a way that would send any business bankrupt. It's a massive party for short-term fun while no one cares to clean up.

The liquors of humanity's party are Earth's resources, especially oil. We are addicted to it. When tapping the first oil spring in Pennsylvania in 1859 (or 44 seconds ago) mankind won the lottery. After all, one barrel of oil (159 liters) contains as much energy as approximately 23.200 hours (966 days) of human labor. That’s why we call it “Black Gold” (Marrin, 2012). Oil is incredibly

energy-efficient as it concentrates solar energy from billions of years in the past. During these years, plants and algae drained carbon from the atmosphere, literally incorporating the sun's energy while exchanging it for oxygen. Fossil fuel is basically “Ancient-SunEnergy” created via photosynthesis. Yet, burning this energy sets carbon free again, CO2. Its concentration in the atmosphere is now about 400 ppm, significantly higher than at any time in the last 400,000 years, during which Earth's climate was fairly stable (Hansen and Hoffman, 2010, p.6). Because CO2 is a major driver for climate change, Earth's atmosphere is warming at a rate ten times faster than any rate in the last 10,000 years.

Since humanity's party kicked off in the late 19th century, a geo-historic blink of an eye, we have radically transformed our way of life. Tapping fossil fuels is the primary cause of the dazzling explosion in human population, technology and any other advanced facet of “modern” civilization. We call all of this “progress” and squeeze it into a numerical formula called Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It's no coincidence that CO2 levels rise correspondingly with GDP figures. Yet, we are obsessed with growing GDP figures, mainly due to a growth-imperative imposed by our financial system. It's fractional-reserve-banking, an absurdity of mankind's wittiness. Just as is expressing progress in terms of GDP per capita which only adds monetary transactions without accounting for costs like resource-depletion. It's a huge paradox as we fool ourselves by selling GDP as progress. In essence, this fallacy of mankind creates consequences which are omnipresent. Several Crises of Civilization include, and aren't limited to, the following: climate change, water and food shortages, ©Marlene Job

loss of biodiversity and habitat (IPCC, 2007), social and economic injustice, increasing conflicts over dwindling resources and a precarious addiction to further economic growth, hence resource consumption (Jackson, 2011; Heinberg, 2011). Our current way of life is a self-de-

structing dynamic, a naïve disrespect of Earth's Web of Life, mad Ecocide, mankind's doom.

Our prevalent culture of consumerism, driven by both flawed economic measures of progress and means of exchange are responsible for Ecocide. Our ethical traditions take issue with homicide and genocide, yet when it comes to Ecocide they fail, why? It may be because mankind thinks itself to be separate from nature. Why else do we cause such Ecocide? At least sixty percent of Earth's ecosystems have been degraded or over-used since the mid-20th century (MEA, 2005; EC, 2008). Species are becoming extinct at severe rates, thousands per year. We fight Nature while she tries to support us. Life is cooperation and symbioses more than anything else. Think about it, our body contains more foreign cells than human cells, billions of beneficial bacteria. This pattern of cooperation translates to other contexts and scales — communities, countries, ecosystems, Earth, Universe, yet not to man’s mind. We surely need better economic indicators which resemble nature’s cooperation principles. One valiant attempt is the Genuine Progress Indicator. We also need an alternative system of exchange, one idea for example is Freigeld, one that doesn’t dictate endless growth and wealth concentration. But what can each and every one of us do individually? How about altering our Egos and extending our moral considerations to Earth itself? One such policy is Bolivia`s recent granting of legal rights to Earth. Maybe we need to inject a good dose of empathy for Earth into our toxic-party-cocktail of reckless resource consumption. Maybe “love” is the Aspirin, why not? There is much inspirational food for thought, bright minds like Eisenstein, Kryznaric, or Holmgren who offer practical solutions to our Crises of Civilization. Whatever we do, Earth will continue to write its diary, with or without us being protagonists. Let’s see that her story has a happy ending, praising mankind as gracious creators rather than egotistical psychopaths addicted to material consumption. by Felix Drewes

Hey hombres! I think you heard about the stories coming from the Philippines. They are unimaginable. Rushing water and wind tearing children away from their parents. That is exactly what happened to the family in the picture. The parents died and the kid in the picture is still missing. They are part of one of the heart-wrenching stories.

Because I’m half Filipino I feel highly connected with the fate of these people. My mother was an immigrant from the Philippines. I’m sorry to say it like this, but she was an economic refugee. There is so much misery there, that it is easy to understand why she has fled. Millions of people are abroad, mostly women, because its easier for them to get married within the visa time limit. The biggest export product of the Philippines is people. They support their families with a contribution almost every month. You can say they are a big part of the GDP. The Philippines is an island nation that is still third-world in the 21st century. While the Philippines is beginning to get its footing in the international scenery, corruption and a lack of education,money

and sustainable thinking is preventing them from becoming a prosperous nation. Even though the Philippines aren’t prosperous, they pledged $450 000 to China during the earthquake in 2008. This was without any conditions. “Just do something useful with it”, was the message. It was a nice gesture towards China. So China decided to surpass every expectation, and pledged to the Philippines an astronomical amount of $130 000. Besides that, China broke the Guinness Book of Records with this pledge. The media also noticed this massive gesture and sent this message into the world. Because of this message, China raised their pledge to $1.8 million. It’s still an awkward amount. The reason for this, you’ll see in the little green list.

China Sovereign Nation $1,800,000 IKEA Swedish Corporation $2,700,000 Coca Cola US Corporation $2,500,000 Japan $10,000,000 The list says enough. In this case, it would be better to spend nothing and follow the example of the Middle East. Loads of oil money, but not a single penny for charity. And nobody is blaming them for that. Lets not forget — $1,800,000 — from the second greatest economy with an eye on being the worlds leader? Laughable. Next time you‘re cruising through the shopping centre, turn a box over and read the label. As the second biggest economy in the world, you need to do more in regards to assistance during disasters like this. Especially concerning your own neighbours. But on the other side you’ll save loads of money if you save it for some other purpose. Saving costs on food is also popular in China. That’s why they prefer to pick up some cats and dogs from the streets. You can make delicious dishes of them such as Doggy Goreng and Bingtang Cat Hulu. If you ever go there to try these dishes, don’t forget to burp, because burping is a sign of pleasure from a meal, a sign of gratitude toward the host... Saving money in China also means that they have enough money to bully their own citizens. Sometimes it’s so much fun to let some hundreds of citizens disappear. You can tweet the Guojia Anquanbu for a confirmation. They replied to me in a tweet that it does no harm, since they’re not lacking in people anyway. They have got a point. And because the Chinese government is formed by thugs dressed up like nerds, they found another way to bully their citizens in a digital way. Like putting some internet-restrictions on their CWW (Chines-Wide-Web). Or spying on them through twitter and so on. China is a Big Brother country ‚ without the glass windows. If they ever want to get civilised, they still have a long way to go.

Speaking about big brothers, America is, and always will be, the Big Brother of the Philippines. The Philippines is one of Washington’s closest allies in Asia and a crucial partner in President Barack Obama’s strategy of rebalancing U.S. military forces towards the region to counter the rising clout of China. That’s why the United States has pledged $20 million in immediate aid and has ordered the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the sail to provide assistance in the wake of the typhoon. The American people were very generous in donating money to relief organisations. Because of the shared history and the big Filipino population in the States, Americans were more concerned about the situation out there. I think the relief organisations thought that Santa Clause was coming early this year, since the Philippine Typhoon known as Haiyan must have sounded like a Christmas gift. They couldn’t have wished for a better marketing present. Nowadays, charity is a booming business. Only a small percentage of the charity will be used for its real purpose. I think everybody remembers the earthquake in Haiti 2008.The Americans gave more than $1.4 billion in relief aid to the country, but only 38 percent of that has been spent to provide recovery and rebuilding aid. It is almost 2014 and I don‘t have the feeling that the money will be used for its purpose any more. A lot of organisations used the pictures and movies of children with flies on their faces and digging through garbage to make people feel bad so that they would do something to help. Some of the relief organisations not only used pictures and movies, but also abused the name of god for their

marketing. Can you believe this? In the section below I have created a list with the donations these organisations gathered and what they actually have spent up until the time of writing.

American Jewish World Service Amount Raised: $6.5 million. Amount Spent: $1.4 million Catholic Relief Services Amount Raised: $192 million Amount Spent: $60 million Just like the financial banks, relief organisations found a way to steal massively from the consumer. They don’t always have to justify their releases. That makes things so much easier. If they can’t justify their expenses somehow, they always can use their magic word — ‘Overhead’. America, the land of freedom, paradoxes, hypocrisy and racial differences... For me it’s difficult to understand why a European would want to have green card in the first place. My parents, for instance, choose another adventure and emigrated back to the Philippines. Not that it is better than the Netherlands or the States, but my mother wanted to turn back, at any price. Her beautiful illusion turned out to be a delusion. Step by step they were affected by the corruption and poverty of their surroundings. Instead of enjoying their retirement, they needed to work more than they ever did in the Netherlands. The country where they live, has a government that is sitting on $936 million that is about to be spent on twelve new South Korean FA-50 fighter jets, two Italian Maestrales frigates, and eight Augusta Westland AW109 attack helicopters. Since the final contracts have not yet been signed, the Philippine government can divert the $936 million for immediate disaster relief and reconstruction. Why should an almost 4th world country like the Philippines invest in these prestige fighter jets and other Airwolves? America is your

Big Brother, remember? He’s got your back in case of danger. Like many male presidents of poor countries, President Benigno Aquino III also likes to purchase big impressive aerial vehicles for his vanity. It’s the cliche I hate the most. Do they want to compensate their lack of prosperity or masculinity or something? I can’t imagine that all these vehicles will be used to bully Chinese fishermen who are trying to catch some whales for their viagrasoup on Philippine sea-territory. For god’s sake, I hope they will not purchase those vanity vehicles at the expense of millions of poor Filipinos. After my conversation with my niece Joanne and cousin LA Oticreje yesterday, I’m not too optimstic about that.

I asked them: their opinion about how much they trust this president. If they see enough initiatives to rebuild their country’s infrastructure and the buildings with steady materials. In their opinion, everything is going too slow and they‘re afraid that everything will be rebuilt with substandard materials. Despite the incompetence they believe the president is trying to do the best that he can do, but that his best isn‘t good enough. It look likes the contractors, bureaucrats and politicians all will demand their part of the share. I hope it will not take too long before the first whistle-blower reveals some conspiracy and scam in this industry. I really hope a new Snowden stands up in concern for the millions of people he can save.

I think the golden rule in this conspiracy is: Take as much money as you can, the more money disappears, the harder to identify those who are responsible for the money’s disappearance. When do these Goodwill Charity Gangsters get the recognition they deserve? When will some members of this Charity Mafia finally get convicted? They know that as long everybody gets their share and sticks together with the golden rule, it will impossible to convict someone. We are living in a messed up world. At first glance it seems to be very clear who is good and who is evil. But if you take a better look behind the scenes, you only see a thin layer between good and evil.

The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent person with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it’s a decent person? We can all ask ourselves whether we would know which one we are. And the lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves... I think that the nature of human beings in general won’t change; we only modify the system to our selfish needs. You will always see that the people with the power will be corrupted by it, and that people in the weak positions will be the victims of that . In terms of ratio, it means that the minority of the people will dominate the majority of the people in terms of having much more money, privileges and power. It is like this and it always will be like this. It is not just that, that politicians are inspired by Machiavelli. He was the prince of the “Divide and Conquer” rule. That is exactly what you see in the political reality After all you have read, I can imagine you are not convinced that your financial donation will make a difference. It is good that you are aware that most of the money will not find its way to the victims. In only the last 20 years, the Netherlands spent over 800 billion euros on charity. That should be enough to make all of Africa prosperous. So think about this, before you contribute... I will plead, that we as human beings have to donate anyway. Even though a small amount will find its way to the victims, it can make a difference. What you can do, to prevent getting scammed is some extra homework before you make a contribution. Identify agencies that are transparent about how they spend their funds and can account for them. Investigate how the agency has performed in the past. It is easy to obtain evaluations online.

by Emmanuel Kant

©Melina Möller

Way of Life

People

VEGA Katri Luukkonen

Vega is passionate dancer, performance-artist and dance-teacher. As well enthousiastic masseuse and soulful singer... Her heart is beating for contact-improvisation. She has graduated from Theatre Academy of Finland — as dance- and theatre-teacher, and since then been teaching dance & contact all around the world, on many internationally acknowledged festivals and retreats. She is also one of the organizers of Goa Contact Festival, and been spending her last 10 winters in India.

I like water. It finds it´s effortless ways to run through the rocks and sands. I like air. It carries us towards the sky and helps us to fly. I like earth. It grounds us and connects us to our roots. I like fire. It inspires us to live, sparkle, spiral and glitter. I like sun and moon. Extremes of life.

“...My dance is drawing inspirations from bodywork & massage, concious breathing, body-mind-centering, authentic movement, meditation... As well as more dynamic disciplines as aikido, yoga, capoeira, acrobatics, hiphop... For me is important to root my expression and inspiration into my inner landscape, and my emotional body. From inside out. Finding the balance between being and doing, technique and form, and on the other side — sensing-feeling-intuition... I live and flow my life through my heart, intuition, emotions and inspirations. On the other hand i also appreciate the ability to be organized and punctual. It´s all about the balance, ying & yang. And between black and white, you can find all the shades of grey. Like in dance, the ability to adjust tonus of your body, organize your limbs, head & tail to bring you smoothly on the journey — In life we need the ability to adapt in each situation — What is needed to land softly...

MELISSA de Honeybee

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”

– Emma Goldmana

Maegan Melissa HoneyBee is a devout lover of music, dancing through the spectrums of life, and all gentle passages that lead to a more open heart. Music and dance has shaped and transformed her life in magical and expansive ways, and has been the backbone of her inspiration and transformation throughout life: from her hip hop/blues American-roots, house music changing the course of her life at the age of 18,

Gabrielle Roth’s 5 Rhythms movement meditation changing it again in her 20s, to the wild freedom and interconnected web in Berlin, and her path of rebirth and reinvention there. Music, dance, community, connection, celebration, elevation and evolution are her passions, and said short and sweet: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”.

Â© Janny Francis Kussatz

JENSKYF

Jenny Francis Kussatz Jenskyf is 20 years old and raised in Berlin. She is a creative person living out her creative powers in a variety of ways. She is addicted to old rock bands like The Clash and The Kinks, and girl punk bands like The Raincoats and The Slits. Loving the charm of cheap beer and smoking bars, she adores making music, but is too shy to play it on stages. Her work is usually graphic, simplistic and creates depth through structures. She has a strong interest in political and social topics, and expresses herself through prints, texts and self-created objects. Her upcoming plans are her art studies.

by Jenny Francis Kussatz

Praise for

Sweet Medicine For 32

CACAOPHANY:

noun // a sudden & profound outburst of joy & expansion through the ritual sharing of cacao, super sonic music & dance.

Mama Cacao: These Times

Cacao Rituals Cacao (Theobroma cacao — “Food of the Gods”)

Nourishment of Body and Brain:

has had a long history of important worship &

Cacao’s health beneﬁts are VAST: extremely rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals (especially

inﬂuence on human culture. Dating back to

iron & magnesium), not to mention its profound aﬀects on our brain chemistry, releasing endorphins, anandamide, histamine, phenylethylamine (PEA), serotonin, theobromine, dopamine, tryptophan, and tyramine — all substances that stimulate the naturally occurring celestial — alchemy of the brain. Cacao in its raw, natural state literally strengthens the heart, regulates sugar levels & hormone levels in body, detoxes the liver, and basically nourishes the deﬁciencies found within the typical Western diet and (often stressful) lifestyle.

2000 BC with the Olmec civilization, following with the Mayans and Aztecs, followed by European Trade, cacao is currently experiencing a new wave of worship, reverence, and celebration across the globe, carrying a MULTITUDE of gifts with her sweet medicine:

Nourishment of heart & soul: The Spirit and essence of Cacao, as a plant medicine, is an extremely gentle, loving and supportive Spirit. It‘s no wonder this plant is so lovingly called “Mamma Cacao”, as its essence is much like that of the archetypal Mother: unconditionally loving, unconditionally supporting of her children, and helping them reach wholeness & maturity. Cacao works particularly on our heart-center — our ability to give and receive love freely and generously — and reveals the places inside us that are withholding from this transforming quality of (self)love. Cacao creates compassion, for ourselves and others. It is a gentle medicine, and reminds us of the power of softness over force. Cacao stimulates our emotional body — helping to feel and process emotions with

more ﬂuidity. Cacao also stimulates our intuition and creative ﬂow, stimulating our right brain to come alive and play.

with Melissa “One of the most powerful transmissions offered by Ixcacao (the Cacao Plant Deva) is Her capacity to cofacilitate our embodiment. When I speak of embodiment, I am not merely referring to the dropping down and coming into the physical body as an alive, connected, felt experience of truly belonging in our own skin and the deep exhale that comes when we learn to utterly relax into the gravity of our own bones. Let’s go deeper still, beyond the idea of embodiment as the tangible, visible and visceral sense of this human form. What I want to name embodiment here is the true incarnation and ever-unfurling actualisation of the Soul. It is one thing to be born into a physical body from the womb of our biological mother, but it is yet another thing entirely to consciously incarnate and activate as Soul, borne directly from the vast Great Mother. Yes — that Soul that is the absolutely magnificent, elegant, kaleidoscopic aperture of pure divinity that is lovingly manifest in all of its perfectly messy, wild glory as the total precision and indisputable fact of YOU! It is your absolute, deep down core essence.” — Annu Tara Nourishment for Our Community and the World at Large: Several indigenous myths from Meso-America all profess in their legends that when the balance between humanity and nature is lost, Cacao will come to save the day. And Keith, the Chocolate Shaman, also professes in his channeling of Cacao that indeed Cacao is THE “Food for the Shift” — the Shift in human consciousness that is currently under way, the Shift from the old story of disconnection, domination, disrespect (of the feminine and of our beloved planet Earth), to a new story of inter-connection, unity-community and utter reverence to the natural cycles of life. Cacao’s gift is awakening our hearts and our consciousnesses to our true potential: beginning with each heart, and then connecting hearts, connecting dots across the planet. We all are so deeply interconnected with one another. The time is ripe to stop thinking and feeling small and isolated. It’s time to feel the power of our heart, to live courageously and joyfully from our heart, to allow our hearts to feel the entire spectrum of life. And Cacao is the soothing balm to help us aid in this process.

Cacao Heart Offerings: It is one of my greatest joys, and a true honor, to be able to create, facilitate and share Cacao-heart-spaces with as many people as possible. One of the beauties of Cacao is its versatility as a plant medicine: young or old, skeptical or the spiritually adventurous, male, female, or a bit of both, Cacao has the unique ability to unite hearts and people, dissolving borders in constructive ways. Each offering of Cacao is a co-creation between myself, the fellow beings sharing space, and the Cacao-spirit herself. Each Ritual is a tailor-made sacred-slice of time and space created in order to dive into the realms of Cacao’s wisdom.

Experience

body, movement & Expressi

Contact improvisation is a dance technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for exploration through movement improvisation

passion for on

CONTACT IMPROVISATION

with VEGA

I wish to offer you diverse tastes of my favourite ingredients of Contact Improvisation and Dance If youre Interested contact: Vega 017667964630 Zentrum von Praktikern der Grinberg Methode 8 Euro each class

Körtestraße 8 / Berlin Kreuzberg

Playing with the gravity During a weekend we will see how to use the gravity force as a dynamic resource in our dance, finding ways to smoothly enter and leave physical contact while dancing together !

Moving in three dimensions We aim to bring the participant to a dynamic body and space awareness which allows them to fully sens and spread their movement in three dimension. This awareness gives us more freedom in our dances... and we can be more and more crazy in our improvisations.

Connecting through space We develop an awareness to each other body which is based on sensing the movement of our gravity center. Through this awareness we become able to feel each other intentions in and out of physical contacts. In this frame we can open our dance to the space and we become able to enjoy more freedom and more energy in our movements ! Slowing down, and sinking deeper into ourselves. Breathing, arriving with soft floor-work and bodywork/massage â&#x20AC;&#x201D; inspired material into more dynamic exchanges. Developing our dances from inside out, from down to up, exploring organic movement on different levels. Finding soft strength and support, preparing our bodies to listen and connect with the others, as well as with the space, and our surroundings. We explore simple tools as sharing weight, support, momentum, suspension, different qualities of touch, impulses, leading and following, falling, spiralling... Playing with our spines and centers. Using our breath to soften our being. Finding effortless and easy ways to move together â&#x20AC;&#x201D; finding the flow and joy of dancing. We'll also play with energetic space around us â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in and out of contact. Creating a sphere of listening with all our senses, touching without touching. Developing sensitivity to read and follow each others in movement.

by Vega Lukkogen

ÂŠ Melina MĂśller

the Intention of the artist

What was the artist Ever since I’ve started my interest in art everyone made us students interpret the paintings of famous artists with the question: “What was the artists attention?” or “What was the artist thinking? Analyze it!”, But how am I suppose to know what people many years before I was born have been thinking? Its hard enough to understand someone you know. Its almost impossible to figure out what someone you’ve never met in person was trying to tell you. For sure we need to separate all the different epochs and thats how we will find out about most of the history and what motivated the artist. History is a big part that should not be forgotten as well as where the artist was living. I’m not saying that the attention of the artist is meaningless. I’m just trying to find out when we are in the right place to give it importance. Or how to know that our interpretation of the work is the right one. This kind of over-interpretation happens quite a lot but many artists wont be able to speak up anymore. Many Art-historic, critics or psychologists will interpret much in it. I don’t say thats a bad thing. But couldn’t this happen? I can only speak from myself, but i like to draw wildly cause it takes the stress of me. I stop thinking and start flowing. One time me and a friend created an abstract painting which would change depending on from which side you look at it. From one side its a jungle with a little monkey, from the other one its a peacock or from the next a scull or eyes looking it you. (to find at page 39) What have we been thinking? Nothing much. Was just what my hands would do if i let them. Maybe not-thinking leads to a bust of creativity. Another time, a friend of mine accompanied me to a photography-exhibit at “Zimmer16” and while looking at the Photographs we would start to use our knowledge on how to analyze art but more exaggerated than usual. Suddenly many of the visitors gathered around us and listen carefully to our words because they thought we would have some wisdom to share. So to sum it up just because we sounded intelligent they would have believed the artist intended what we told them.

thinking

A couple of month ago i had a experience that showed me how powerful the artists opinion made the artwork. I was at Berlin art contemporary ABC and went to a room with frozen flowers which have been covered by many layers of ice in a glass box in the middle of the room decorated with some black and white photographs on the walls. It looked stunning. What a great work. But i didn’t even realized what i was seeing. We met the artist and asked for an explanation and he told us that his work is about humanity and the earth and how we destroy it but that nature always wins. He wanted to show that the primeval plants will live before and after human existed. Because they could live after being frozen like in the primeval time. What i didn‘t notice was all the huge black and white photography on the wall, which looked like explosions. He told us that he went to radioactive places, destroyed by human race. And took some pictures of the area but also took the radioactive material (for example stones) with him. While developing he would lay the stone on top of the negative to catch the radiation in it. This showed me how important the true meaning of art can really be. To find out how important the question is we have to ask ourself first how the process of analyzing works. So first we look at a picture and all the elements which it has in it, the colors and shapes and how they‘re set up. Than we look in our memory’s for what we have learned in the past and how it could fit to what we are seeing. Blue is cold. Love is red. We have emotions connected to colors. So how we are conditioned has a lot to do with how we will interpret a artwork. This is why if many people analyze the same picture you would have many different results. That has a lot to do with coding and decoding of messages and the black box model. If there is a message, the artist is the trans-sender and will code the thoughts and put the message in for example a painting and than its on viewer of the painting, who is the receiver of the message to decode it. Its like playing Chinese whisper. What comes out in the end doesn’t necessary have to be what the trans-sender wanted to say.

There is another thing that leads to misinterpretation. The state of mind which the artist was in. How was the mental and physical health of this person and was he or she under the influence of alcohol or drugs? All of this could lead to a different way of viewing the world and expressing ourself. Many Artist have been wasted while doing art. Salvador Dali took magic mushrooms and even made an documentary about it, called “Impressions de la Haute Mongol”. Vincent Van Goth was addicted to absinthe and digitalis, Picasso used Opium, henbane, hashish, morphine and ether. They saw the world in a different way sober people would which also could lead to misunderstandings. Or maybe to a better way to show emotions. In Graphic Design we have to constantly deal with the meaning of colors, shapes and composition and how all this effects the mind of our target group. Its no coincidence that if we get the assignment to do a logo for a client that has a lot to do with nature, everyone picks green as the first color. But there are some times that I would just create a design and try to make it stand out the most and using unusual colors and shapes. As long as my explanation is good enough to convince the client, it works. So even if it wasn’t intended, I’m able to use my knowledge in order to sell my product. Yes there are many Artworks which have a deeper meaning and which are touching and you can learn much from it or the intention the artist had. But there is art which has no deeper meaning to it. Art is as individual as every human and they’re is no way to figure out for sure what exactly the person creating it had been thinking all you can do is guess or ask them.

by Melina Möller

Seeing Sound Synesthesia

What happens when the lines between senses begin to blur? When you can taste words, feel voices, see music? Synesthesia, an unusual neurological phenomenon, allows some people to experience these unique sensory mashups. In many cases, synesthetes channel these irregular perceptual experiences into creative energy, making use of their unique sensory inputs. Sensa Nostra speaks to WindUp Bird [https://soundcloud. com/windupbird], a Berlin-based electronic artist who paints landscapes with her music. When I think of numbers or letters, there are always certain colours associated with each. Sometimes different smells have different colours. I feel textures and see shapes when technically I should only be hearing, and I experience coloured sounds and, most notably, coloured music. When I listen to a piece of music I experience an associated colour palette in my mind's eye. I know if I try to focus on it too hard, it skitters away, but in relaxing my mind I can start to perceive more of the details and the colours. I'll get a strong sensation that this particular piece is feeling very blue, and this part over here has little yellow brush-strokes. Music becomes more like a landscape to me and when I'm making music I always feel it's akin to painting with sound. I also have the unusual experience of feeling textures and shapes that are related to the musical waveform. Things like more metallic, rhythmic sounds, things that don't have a musical tone to them, tend to not have so much colour, but more texture. Something like that I'll physically feel on my hands as smooth and metallic. In my own work, I begin with a good loop or a unique sound — something that's got a really interesting timbre as well as aural complexity. I enjoy sounds that involve distortion because it adds these interesting little prickly things and comes across as grainy. It feels like I'm sliding my hands across something metallic that has these little tiny fine bits in it. I really like that and I love a well-crafted synth sound that has a very complex texture for that reason. When I make my music I often veer into blue tones and more minor modal chords because they have deeper richer colours than the happy, bright colours of major chords. I've got certain sounds I go back to but it's a constantly shifting process. What I really love

about electronic music is that there's such a variety of timbres and sounds. It's a richer palette to work with. Its always changing, there's always something else. When I write, I'll find a nice pad or synth that I like and I can pick out complimentary sounds that go with that — that's how I build my pieces. Selecting for the sounds according to colour is usually a very subconscious process — I must be in a blue mood at the time and feeling drawn towards this blue colour. So I look to see what things develop subconsciously. The colour and texture of the sound are what allow me to find other sounds that work inside it. It becomes so much like crafting a painting — if I've got something that's a deep purple colour, then I know these sounds will work well with that tone and these are good accent colours, good accent shapes. The same instrument might have different qualities of sound and those differences influence the shade of the colour, or the shape of the sound itself. I let it build on itself and I can look at other sounds and know that they won't work within that piece because they don't fit with my colour palette. Seeing and feeling music also means that there are certain instrument and sound combinations that I don't like because they create unpleasant shapes or colours. Certain timbres are not exciting or interesting to me, or they're jarring so I tend to avoid those instruments. For example, I get really bored with traditional rock ensembles because guitar has never excited me as a timbre; orchestral pieces have sounds that are too clearly defined and not complex enough. When I find a piece that resonates with me, I love to enjoy it in a sort of reduced sensory environment — in a dark, silent room with headphones on — so I can immerse myself in the musical experience. It's such an all-encompassing thing. I tend to have that same

When I listen to a piece of music I experience an associated colour palette in my mind's eye. immersive experience when I'm creating music. It gets very emotional because it really does become a landscape and a narrative of colours. I know that I've made something that's right when it triggers that kind of seizing feeling you get when you're about to cry. If I can trigger that repeatedly at points in the piece, I know that I've really captured something important. Emotions are coloured as well and this feeling becomes a very fundamental point in the creative process, that finally I've captured the nuance of that particular moment. It's usually only a split second and then it's gone so it's a very ephemeral sort of experience. But that's why I enjoy making music. The music and the colours and the whole experience somehow captures a snapshot for me of a particular moment and expresses that emotion. Aside from the creative benefits of synesthesia, I've found it also has drawbacks. I find it very difficult to concentrate when people play music in the background in places where I need to focus — in school or work situations it draws my attention away from whatever I'm supposed to focusing on. I cant sleep with music either. I've known people who play music when they go to bed because it's relaxing but to me it's just an inescapable busyness occupying my mind. Different kinds of music

are more prone to monopolising my attention. When I go to techno clubs it's harder for me to dance because it's so all-encompassing in my brain. I'm so focused on the subtle changes and the measure of the music that it becomes hard for me to coordinate bodily movements. Whereas crunchy things like goth music aren't so interesting in terms of layering, so its easier to dance to. These situations are not something I ever questioned until I read about synesthesia. Experiencing the world like this is how I've lived my whole life, but until my early twenties I didn't realise most people didn't navigate their existence the same way I did. That said, I think synesthesia, may not be such a unique phenomenon — our understanding of it as a perceptual anomaly may have more to do with recognition than occurrence. It may come down to way we're taught to experience the world. Every kid grows up being told “You've got five senses with clearly delineated borders” and that's all they know. There's this strange fetishization of the sixth sense but we have so much more than just those five senses to begin with, it's just that they start to blend together. I think a lot of people do have more overlap, it's just a question of how profound that overlap is and how aware of it you are. by Jazz Meyer

Cheating The Sandman Explorations in Polyphasic Sleep

Alice Grinda has dedicated her life to exploring the world that lies beneath waking consciousness. Dubbing herself 'Alice in Wakedreamland', she's always been intrigued by the sleeping state and seeing how far the rabbit-hole goes. It was in her work as a lucid dreaming teacher that Alice first became acquainted with the idea of polyphasic sleep — that is, sleeping for several shorter periods throughout the day, rather than in one solid block. Alice talks about her experiences with several different sleep schedules and the subsequent cycles of zombification, reinvigoration and the eventual unexpected health benefits of polyphasic sleep. Two hours a day — that's how long I sleep. From 3:25pm to 3:45pm, 7:25pm to 7:45pm, 11:25pm to 11:45pm, and the same times in the AM. And my sleep is more conscious, efficient and invigorating than the solid eight hours that most adult humans spend sleeping. When I heard I could reach a higher level of consciousness and enhanced lucid states through polyphasic sleep schedules, I was intrigued. I devoured the book 'Ubersleep' [http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2009/01/04/the-ubersleep-book/] written by a woman known as PureDoxyk, inventor of the UberMan schedule. This schedule is made up of only six separate 20 minute naps spaced out every four hours. That's only two hours sleep per day. This sounded somehow crazy but I was hooked on the idea and the more I thought about it, the more curious I became. There was only one thing holding me back: I'd been suffering from an undiagnosable medical condition for the previous two years and was afraid that this would be too much strain on my health. I was plagued daily by insufferable neck and back pain, as well as constant lethargy and fatigue. Doctors couldn't help me. I was afraid I wouldn't have the energy to withstand the gruelling adaptation process I'd read about when shifting to a new sleeping schedule. But the thought persisted. Eventually my curiosity overcame my fear and I just thought, fuck it, I'm suffering anyway. In April of 2013, I began to adapt to a polyphasic schedule. I tried to adapt two times to UberMan and two times to a slightly easier schedule called EveryMan. Slowly I was getting to know more and more, but maintaining the schedule was incredibly challenging — you have to live your life like that. I kept reaching a breaking

point and falling out of the schedule, only to try again a few weeks later and start the process all over again. Before attempting these experiments, I was worried about my medical condition, that I might be exacerbating my ever-present pain symptoms. But miraculously, polyphasic sleeping had the opposite effect. The first time I tried EveryMan, I was completely sleep deprived — I was operating with the mental capacity of a zombie. But I noticed that somehow my pain was completely gone. I felt like a zombie but had no pain. It stayed like that. This became one of my biggest motivations to fully adapt. I wanted to commit to this, but I knew I needed help, so in April of 2014 I tried again. I spent three weeks adapting to UberMan, but this time I enlisted the help of friends, who would come over from midnight until 8am. After three weeks of relying on others to help me, I started to attempt more independence. The friends who helped could no longer commit so much time to keeping me awake through the night, but becoming more independent hasn't been easy. It's not only discipline — if you have a life that goes against it, it's impossible. I needed to create surroundings that supported my new sleeping schedule. It can take anywhere from two to four weeks to fully adapt, and the in-between adaptation stage is gruelling and relentless. The first two times I adapted I didn't go into sleep deprivation. I didn't really know the difference between being tired and being truly sleep deprived. But after the first round of sleep deprivation, I could watch for the signs and knew when it started. I began to get narcoleptic symptoms. I would fall asleep talking or walking, and that's when the battle really started. by Jazz Meyer

In the times that I had friends with me, they would often see me 'switch'. One moment I was awake and coherent and the next I was suddenly in zombie mode, almost sleepwalking. My dreams would bleed into reality and I would be following narratives in real life that were happening in my head. This phase was the hardest phase to get through — to fight your own consciousness, to keep a tangible connection to reality. During the adaptation I was in between being a zombie with absolutely no focus, and being in constant pain when I accidentally overslept. The fight to rewire my sleeping habits was so hard and so painful. I nearly gave up so many times. But slowly, slowly I started to make progress and, as I did, my pain symptoms disappeared. But it was always a challenge to balance the physical and the psychological. In the beginning, days three and four were so incredibly bizarre. I had so many hallucinations. Whenever I relaxed my eyes, everything moved, or I heard voices. I

saw what I was doing but I had another consciousness. It was really interesting, I loved it. But I began to get better and overslept less and less until I was eventually sticking to the schedule. Now the hallucinations have faded. I'm more adapted and a part of me misses that straddling of both the waking and dreaming worlds. To be able to adapt, I've had to structure my life in a way that allows for polyphasic sleep. While it's not always easy, I'm finding ways to slot my naps into everyday situations. I no longer own a bed because I never sleep at home these days. I'm used to sleeping in different places now — my body knows when it's time and I fall asleep immediately when I allow myself the allotted twenty minute naps. As a result, my lucid dreaming is enhanced to a level I've never experienced before, my days are longer and more productive and I know now, after finally adapting, that this is the only way for me to escape my pain. I'm not a zombie, I'm not suffering.

©Marlene Job

I'm free.

ÂŠ Marlene Job

Snap, Crackle and Pop Navigating Misophia

If you've ever had the urge to punch someone in the face because they were chewing with their mouth open, you may be surprised to find yourself suffering from misophonia. This little-known anxiety-related disorder causes the brain to be triggered by certain sounds, immediately eliciting a fight or ďŹ&#x201A;ight response, and causing the sufferer to either ďŹ&#x201A;ee the situation or be overcome with rage. Unfortunately, nobody really knows how or why misophonia arises and so far no research has been done to better understand the causes, symptoms and potential cures for this disorder. Living with misophonia and struggling against a world of misinformation, or lack of information entirely, is common amongst sufferers and with no guidance, some have had to pursue their own treatment. Sensa Nostra speaks with one misophonia sufferer who, after fifteen years of wondering why he experienced this intense response to trigger sounds, has recognised the disorder and successfully alleviated his misophonia symptoms through meditation and mindfulness techniques.

It took me a long time to realise that my irrational anger towards certain innocuous noises actually had a name. Looking back, I probably developed misophonia at around ten years old when my parents would point out to me annoying sounds that I was making â&#x20AC;&#x201D; like eating loudly or gulping my drinks. I learned quickly to pick up on these sounds, initially in myself to avoid chastisement, but eventually in other people too. And, following the well-intentioned guidance of my parents, I learned to develop the same feelings towards these sounds that they had expressed to me. This is where the cycle started. After years and years of reinforcing unhealthy fight or flight responses to these noises, misophonia began to consume me. But at that point I'd never heard of the disorder and assumed I was alone in my sound-induced anxiety. I was at my worst just before I found my psychologist. A new colleague had just started at work and very quickly my lunch break became the hardest part of the day. Peter sat right next to me and was completely lacking in self-awareness. His favourite snacks were wheat biscuits and he'd crunch loudly at them throughout the day. For some reason, my threshold with him was particularly low. When he started eating his lunch I'd put my earphones in, or I'd wait patiently for him to start eating so I could take the opportunity to leave the office and have my lunch somewhere else. As

soon as I heard that first bite, I was on edge and defensive. I couldn't focus on anything else. Every extra bite would make me angrier and angrier, waiting for him to stop and fantasising about smashing my computer monitor into his head. I wrote scripts in my mind about how to confront him. I thought about slapping him just to make it stop. If I didn't have my headphones and I couldn't leave the office, I'd block my ears with my hands. I was completely enraged, every day. It was at that point I decided to research my symptoms and discovered the term 'misophonia' for the first time. I found that there were other people that experienced similar responses towards certain sounds, but I assumed it was just hypersensitivity. Even when I came across a misophonia forum, I didn't want to believe it was an actual disorder. On the surface it still looked like a group of overly sensitive people complaining. What eventually legitimised it was coming across a few research papers that mentioned, as a peripheral note, that misophonia had been encountered during their undertakings and that it should be investigated further. As yet, nobody has, but there are at least people that recognise that it might be a genuine disorder and, luckily, my psychologist was one of them. Without any real research, it's difficult to understand why misophonia exists in the first place. My psychologist has a theory that it's a leftover evolutionary

spent my time watching that misophonia forum where people discussed their symptoms and triggers. But none of them were getting anywhere with it. Many of them were using the same unhealthy coping mechanisms that I was — fleeing the situation, blocking out the sounds, or even mimicking and mocking whoever was making the trigger noises. Others had sought help from psychologists, only to be dismissed as over-sensitive and told to chill out. I was afraid I would face the same issues. By accident, I was lucky enough to see a psychologist who, although she hadn't heard the term before, recognised it as an anxiety-related disorder and had some ideas about how to approach it. Having somebody else take it seriously meant that there was hope, and I practised, diligently, the exercises she'd given me to begin breaking down the thought patterns I'd built up over so many years. Rather than avoiding the triggers, I was taught to confront them with a mixture of exposure therapy and simple mindfulness techniques. I was taught to meditate and focus on all the senses, rather than just one specific sense, or even one input into that sense. When misophonia sufferers are triggered by a sound, they don't hear anything else — they are incapable of paying attention to anything other than this one stimulus. By meditating on all my senses at once, I learned to broaden my intake, experiencing other sounds, sights, feelings, smells, alongside the trigger sound that had previously taken my full attention. The purpose is to experience a range of different inputs simultaneously, diluting the trigger sound amongst the other senses to reduce the anxiety related to it. I wanted to use these exercises to understand my symptoms, to understand what my brain was actually doing. When you see how it works, it's easier to deal with. I know now that the more respect I have for somebody, the higher my threshold will be. I know

mechanism — a mechanism that used to be beneficial if, say, we were approached by a predator and needed the fight or flight response to kick in with a surge of adrenalin and, as a consequence, anxiety. In the modern world, we no longer have any real dangers, but we still have the mechanisms once used to deal with them. So her theory is that these can be triggered by ordinary stimuli because our brains' rewarding structure is still in place to encourage these behavioural responses that once determined our survival. This repeated cycle of reacting to trigger sounds, releasing adrenaline and reinforcing the disorder builds up behavioural patterns very quickly. After fifteen years of reinforcing these thought patterns, I was trapped. Every time I encountered the trigger sounds I would go through the same process of waiting for the sounds to stop while building up anger, and eventually rewarding myself with a wave of relief when it did. With this sort of reinforcement I couldn't have any response but the one I'd trained myself to follow. Eventually my threshold had decreased further and further and, around the time Peter started working with me, I was being triggered more easily than I used to be. Initially, after learning about misophonia, legitimising the phenomenon made it harder to deal with. Suddenly I felt like I had an excuse for feeling the way I did. But it still sounded so stupid — even if it's a legitimate disorder you can't go around telling people you have misophonia and you don't like the sound of eating, because they'll think you're an idiot. Even though I now had a name for what I was experiencing, there still wasn't anything to do about it. There still wasn't a cure. I knew though, that I wanted to find a way to do something about it and now that I knew it existed, it was easier to find information. For a long while I just

when I'm tired or stressed, my senses are heightened and my threshold is lowered â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it's much easier to be triggered in a tired state to the point of severe anxiety. And knowing how it works makes it much easier to monitor and dismiss the feelings that arise in times like that. It was also comforting to know that I never had to jump right into the exposure therapy. There's no expectation to suddenly be okay with trigger sounds. One of the exercises I was encouraged to practise was to set a timer and expose myself to the trigger for a period that I knew I could handle. The goal was to notice how I was feeling or what my thoughts were doing during the time of exposure. Starting with one minute timers, I would listen to Peter eat his lunch and try to recognise the thoughts and emotions that were being brought up. The intention was never to suppress my rage, but to observe it. At the end of the minute I could go back to my headphones or leave the office if I wanted to. I'd exposed myself to Peter's munching for a short, manageable period of time and recognised that I hadn't died. Nothing terrible had happened. Doing this slowly cemented the idea that there was no real reason for feelings of anxiety in that situation. I was changing my brain's rewarding patterns by discouraging anxiety and encouraging tolerance. Every day I would do a few one minute periods of trigger exposure and within the first week I was doing a couple of minutes back to back, encouraged by my successes. I was beginning to rewrite my thought patterns and reward myself in healthy ways instead of

possibility of the disorder coming back. While the symptoms are almost entirely gone, I can see them occasionally creeping back on days when I'm really tired or stressed. But I notice them and can immediately deal with them, which was the entire goal. The exercises were never designed to ignore the symptoms but to notice them and become comfortable with them. Now I'll hear trigger sounds and recognised that they once would have enraged me, but the feelings of anxiety are completely gone. It's become second nature now and should I ever find myself revisiting those symptoms, I can stop the patterns from forming again. The key to dealing with misophonia is taking responsibility for it. While legitimising it as a real disorder is helpful in knowing how to deal with it, it's easy to begin expecting people to accommodate you because of what's going on in your own head. I would hate for misophonia to become accepted as a disability â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that line of reasoning discourages people from trying to fix it. A cure is possible, in a matter of weeks in my case, so long as misophonia sufferers are willing to try. If anything, it's more important that mental health professionals educate themselves firstly on the existence of misophonia, and secondly, on the techniques necessary to deal with it. When asked, I say I'm cured, but misophonia is an anxiety related disorder and, like other disorders of the same nature, it's unpredictable. I know that struggling with anxiety is part of my personality â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I'm susceptible to that sort of thinking. But now that I've become aware of misophonia, and conquered it, I know what

unhealthy ones. After a few weeks I could last through an entire lunch break. I knew I was overcoming misophonia when Peter would finish his lunch and I was disappointed that I couldn't keep challenging myself to more minutes. These days, I'm still aware of the

to look for should it come up again. The techniques I've learned to deal with misophonia have helped with other anxiety issues and unless something drastic happens, I'll continue to say that I'm cured. I guess I owe my thanks to Peter. by Jazz Meyer

ÂŠMelina MĂśller

Closeness

ÂŠMelina MĂśller

ÂŠ Mat.Hoffstiepel

Come closer...

n i l g d d u

About a year ago, I was invited to a friend of friend’s housewarming party. Expecting your usual noisy Berlin techno-music-fueled, talking-loud-with-a-drinkin-your-hand kind of party, I was surprised to find myself in a room filled with mattresses, candle light and soft music, and people sitting or lying on the floor, some sitting or lying next to each other, talking, cuddling and massaging each other. It was not and was not meant to be sexual; however what was there is a feeling of incredible intimacy and relaxation. Even being mostly among strangers, I quickly felt very comfortable, connected and close to everyone. There

was a warm fuzzy feeling in my body, a feeling of peace, harmony and timelessness — quite new to me back then and now a very familiar oxytocin buzz. That’s right, the science behind why cuddling feels so good is that it releases the hormone oxytocin that has many amazing properties such as releasing stress, promoting bonding and attachment, and healing feelings of loneliness and isolation. If you cuddle for

©Jazz Meyer

long enough, serotonin is also released that elevates mood and promotes happiness. Hugging strengthens your immune system, self-esteem, balances your nervous system and this is only the beginning of the list of all the amazing benefits it has. Needless to say, I was completely hooked. After that party, I have been to and have organized many ‘cuddle parties’ — events where people come together for an evening of cuddling, chatting, massaging each other or watching a movie. It is amazing how adding this kind of non-sexual physical touch to my life and my social interactions dramatically improved quality of both. Unfortunately we live in an era where we are consistently undertouched — you may be lucky to receive enough touch when you are a baby, maybe not even then, and then the amount of touch constantly declines until you are a teenager and from then on it is mostly your sexual partner, maybe also one close friend, that you have physical intimacy with. However we definitely need more than that. A free solution: and easy solution cuddle your friends! It takes a bit of time and practice to overcome initial awkwardness, and it’s worthwhile to define the boundaries well so that everyone involved is on the same page, but as a result, you will strengthen and improve your friendship as well as get this much-needed oxytocin boost that will leave you feeling happy and

loved up. Gender also has no importance for cuddles. It is very sad how little intimacy men are ‘allowed’ to have in our society. Physical contact between men is often considered taboo among straight men, and one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed on my cuddling journey is men becoming more and more relaxed and comfortable around each other and cuddling each other. We are learning that there are no borders for human contact and intimacy, none of that superficial stuff matters after all when you feel accepted and understood by your fellow humans. When I am getting enough touch in my life, I feel more relaxed, confident and creative, I have more energy to get on with my daily life. I feel a deep sense of peace and contentment infused through my whole body and staying there for a long time. After having tried many spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation, journaling and so on, I can definitely say that cuddling was that one magic ingredient that brought me to a new level of happiness and contentment in my life and changed the way I relate to others. I have noticed that relationships with my cuddly friends have become closer, there is more intimacy. When you cuddle, interactions naturally become more intuitive and slow-paced, conversations deep and interesting, and you really have time and space to deeply know and care for your friends. There is a saying by Virginia Satir, a respected family therapist, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.” It is not easy at all to meet this ‘quota’ in our busy urban lives. So why not stock up on hugs for a week by throwing a cuddle party and cuddling with your friends all evening? It is such an amazing way to relate to people and I really wish more people would discover it for themselves. After all, it’s free, it’s natural and it’s freely accessible. All you need is something soft to lie on, and another human being, or a few ...

by Eve Bitton

Sex, Love Sex creates feelings of attachment and bonding via the release of oxytocin, dopamine,

and vasopressin. This happens whether we want it to or not. Such bonding is evolutionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s way of increasing the chances of children being made and of keeping partners together for their welfare. This neuropeptide-based bonding experience engenders feelings and thoughts of specialness, endearment, trust, and compassion towards our partner. This is

ÂŠMelina MĂśller

endearment fostered by lust. It feels ecstatic but is not truer love.

©Melina Möller

& Attachment Love is a word we use to describe certain feelings. These feelings may or may not be matched by loving acts. Such “loving” feelings can occur during and after having pleasurable sex. But these momentary feelings are not enduring, abiding love, what I call “truer love.” We just most often use the words ‚love‘ or ‚falling in love‘ to describe sexual feelings of attachment, which sex and attraction foster. Truer love is something else. In fact, just becoming excessively and carelessly emotionally attached in the honeymoon stage even without having sex can create blinding attachment. Because emotional bonding is the meat of relating, suspending sex, or significant sexual involvement, seems more reasonable and more sustainable than suspending emotional bonding. The degree to which we become emotionally attached in the early going, however, is something we should try to gauge and be aware of to the degree that it causes us to become blindly enamored. But, often we only see to what degree we let ourselves go in hindsight! We learn to be more balanced by learning lessons one relationship to the next. Balance, balance, balance as level-headedness comes with time! For this discussion, then, truer love is defined as: respecting, honoring, sacrificing one’s immediate needs for, deeply enjoying the friendship of, and having similar core values as, another person. Being sexually attracted can help truer love relationships but is not necessary. Add to this a sense of enchantment, awe, and fascination with the inner workings and worldview of another, and I think you get the idea of what truer love is. So, when we base a relationship on sex, we often end up attached and thinking we are “in love” . . . until we discover the deeper values and personality of our partner. At this point, we might find ourselves attached, but not in love. Maybe we even have made promises to the other, made elaborate plans for the future, spent a lot money on lavish gifts, or had a child together. These can have further stressful repercussions. At this moment, we can clearly see that sex does not create truer love, and in fact, might obscure it, along with our long-term happiness.

When we realize that we are attached to someone we don’t really respect, or even like, we might try to change them into the person we should have discovered before getting so attached, which attachment sex strongly forges. Deep down we all know that attempts to change another don’t work (nor should they) and ultimately doesn’t feel good for anyone. Yet we might feel so attached that changing the situation to meet our personal needs seems more appealing than breaking up and facing the real work of finding and growing an enduring, truer love relationship. Had we refrained from sex and its blinding oxytocin-dopamine high, we could stand a better chance to be rational and discerning about our potential partner, which can save us the disappointment, stress, and heartbreak of realizing too late that we are in a doomed relationship. Deeper, truer love can then eventually reach into the world to create more real fun without the painful side-effects of lustful attachment.

I n t e g r i t y c u r e s In discovering that we are attached to an incompatible partner, we face the heartbreak of breaking up. Depending on the level of attachment, we break our own hearts and likely that of our partner. So, the inherent bonding power of sexuality too often creates pain, nullifying the fun we thought we were having. The longer we build attachment, the more painful it is to separate. This pain redeems itself some when we learn the hard lessons of love and sex and dedicate ourselves to finding more self-fulfillment prior to embarking on our next relationship. This is the journey of developing of integrity. Once we develop more integrity, we can forge more enduring, fulfilling, meaningful relationships replete with values that go beyond the “fun” of sex. Selfwork like this is not your ordinary type of fun, but paradoxically, it allows us to have more enduring fun and less heartbreak. It requires self-love, hard work on oneself, the postponement of immediate gratification, being realistic and honest, facing one’s lone-

liness, emptiness and shadow, and using one’s power pain while remaining connected to oneself and the of discernment. Incidentally, the popular New-Age world. Personally, I am wary of people who detach meme of non-judgment can dissuade us from when pain surfaces in them. And you should too if you appropriately judging — which in this case is to want a meaningful, truly loving relationship. discern — the truth of a potential mate, to our own detriment. In any event, many don’t choose the hard work of becoming a person of integrity. This is why many relationships fail and why heartbreak is so If you are interested in a deep, more meaningful, rampant. To my mind, it also explains the pervaenduring, truly loving relationship, and are tired siveness of addiction and why so much narcissism of superficiality, heartbreak, and confusion, get to abounds. Such collective selfishness — as a failure to know your potential partner first. On average, it takes regard other — also underlies the destruction of the at least a year to begin to really get to know somenatural world. one and to get to know yourself in The trick is to welcome both relationship with them. Avoid sex Sex can also become an addiction, just painful and pleasurable emofor as long as you can while you get like sugar, because it makes us feel good and gets us wanting more. But, tions while becoming wiser to know them so you are less emolike all addictions, sex’s dark side is and more skillful at avoiding tionally attached and stand a better just as powerful as its light side. He painful experiences. When we chance to make level-headed dewho fails to appreciate life’s light and learn how to protect and trust cisions, such as pulling away from dark side falls prey to sex’s darkness ourselves to make tough decia bad or “inappropriate” situation either through pain, struggle, confusion, sions before they become much before getting more involved. This and heartbreaking attachment, or by tougher, we can minimize our is why it is advised to “become becoming a superficial and numb fear and remain capable of friends before lovers.” Yes, this reperson who tries only to enjoy sex’s reasonable risk, freedom, and quires restraint, sacrifice, wisdom, light side and shut down feelings of adventure. This is my definiand true care, particularly when painful detachment. But, we know that tion of “conscious and evolved” we are not friends already and are sensual pleasure does not exist without pain, and the more we shut out pain, relating. Such mind-bodyattracted. These are small prices the more we shut out pleasure. heart integration, as a refineto pay for happiness and avoiding ment of our integrity, is actuheartbreak, no? ally a beautiful, rewarding, stimulating, and exciting With this said, just because we can be friends adventure (i.e., via the self-work described in the with someone and get to better sense of their deeper preceding paragraph) that engages all aspects of what values through friendship, this does not mean a I consider the most redeeming and honorable human truer love partnership will work. Becoming friends qualities — what makes us “divine” creatures rather and learning about another is just the first checkthan the monsters of addiction, greed, and apathy. point. Many aspects emerge from us when we become Detachment might seem a good way to avoid the romantically intimate; these are triggers and exprespain of sex’s dark side, but detachment as denial of our sions of our psyche that friendship typically does not true feelings has more pitfalls than I care to mention, elicit. Among these are our childhood wounds (and not the least of which is to limit our compassion and indeed we can seek relationship itself as result of empathy. To deny pain leads to not caring as much these wounds). So, just because you are friends does about others. It also precludes one from cultivating not mean you can let down your guard and exist skillful means for how to be attached and suffer less carefree in a relationship. It just means you better

knowledgeBeforeNooky

know what you are getting into and have a foundation It is “finding oneself”, or the process of individuation for navigating the joys and challenges ahead. as Jung called it. It is the building of integrity. If you have a fulfilling, meaningful, inspired, and pleaSexual attachment at the onset of relationship, as surable life to begin with, refraining from sex is easier characteristic of the honeymoon phase, in fact obbecause you stand to lose more from the drama of a scures our discernment for choosing a meaningful, bad relationship. It also can make it easier to refrain harmonious relationship. Sex before discernment because you already have pleasure, creativity, and too often fosters heartbreak through its attachinspiration flowing through your veins, meeting your ment-making powers. Such attachment is not endurneed for these psycho-spiritual qualities, which we ing and leads to emotional swings and confusion, as more lazily and selfishly often try well as very rude awakenings. to meet with sex. But, because sex The other choices we make A man recently commented on one alone is easy and severely undereqwhile “in lustful attachment” of my posts about easy sex. He said, uipped to meet these deeper needs (giving of money, property, “Sex for the sake of sex is an amazing (especially, for example, being of lofty promises, elaborate plans, elixir. It produces smiles and good times. Sometime you just got to do it just service to the world), we often end making children, etc.) can for the fuck of it. And live a little.” I up not only band-aiding our lives further cause us undue pain replied, “I agree, to a degree, as long but creating more problems to sift and hardship. as a) we let the other know that we are through before getting to our core There does not need to be engaging with casual intent, and purpose and meaning in life. so much confusion when we a) especially if they ask and b) we can All this is why some say that a stop conflating sexual attachharmoniously end the connection relationship should be the coming ment/endearment/adoration before significant attachment sets together of two full selves, not two with the truer love of respect, in.” With this said, many of us find it halves. If you feel empty, confused, honor, compassion, and selfless diﬃcult to be so honest and to end a unduly pained, and without purpose regard b) respect the bonding casual sexual relationship before it gets for your life, sex and companionship and attachment power inherent entrenched and causes pain. In fact, the bonding power of sex is so strong can seem a way to meet all these to pleasurable sex (especially if that many find themselves hooked and needs. But they are not; they are you are a sensitive person who deeply affected after one session. often a way to avoid healing these feels your feelings); c) become conditions, unless the relationmature and wise enough to ship points you to working deeply on yourself. This is refrain from sex and sexuality before getting to know why there is so much sex addiction, and addiction of if we share similar core values with our potential partall kinds. People are afraid to face themselves and do ner; d) understand via critical thinking the interachands-on inner emotional shadow work, which brings tions and reasons for feelings of attachment and the more true, deep, enduring light and joy into the world. deeper values of true respect, integrity, honor, and In sum, I maintain that sex has little to nothing to time-tested trust that create more loving and honoring do with truer love because it has little to do with a truer, relationships; e) realize that cultivating the more deeper, more meaningful life centered around finding difficult, full-bodied integrity of true care and and following our callings to the world, healing our wholeness (often reflected in how one treats others core wounds, and cultivating a sense of wholeness that to which he/she is not sexually attached) is not only can offer something beautiful, unique, healing, and the way to personal fulfillment, but also the path to creative to the world. This takes time and is often the choosing and maintaining a meaningful, fulfilling wisdom I hear from others emerging from heartbreak. relationship that is also of service to the world.

Merely feeling in love is not enough to determine or develop enduring, truer love. We always want to feel in love with our partner, but we need a lot more than just feeling to decide that a relationship will endure. We need more than just to â&#x20AC;&#x153;come from the heart.â&#x20AC;? We need a good mind to help us discern, a wise disposition, and self-discipline to navigate and integrate a relationshipâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s many physical, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects. When we acknowledge the bonding and blinding attachment that pleasurable sexual interaction forges we can moderate our sexual activity in service of our emotional and spiritual wellness and not sacrifice these finer parts of ourselves for temporary pleasure. This way we maximize long-term wellness and minimize pain.

©Melina Möller

by Jack Adam Weber

4some Fantasy is easy. It's idealised and naĂŻve and

perfect and nothing goes wrong. Nobody loses, because everybody is a figment of the imagination. How do you react when your fantasy becomes reality, outside of your control? What happens when you find yourself confronted with your own desires? How much are you really comfortable with? Sensa Nostra speaks with one quarter of an unplanned foursome between two couples.

I was 22 and, after getting out of a long, unhealthy, and restrictive relationship, I found myself in a long-distance relationship with a man who was very open with his sexuality and enabled me to explore my own. His lust and bold sexual aura excited me and when, at a party on one of his weekends visiting me, we shared secretive kisses in a dark hallway with another girl, the thought of a threesome was thrilling. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before and watching Brendan kiss another girl was confusing and exciting. With part disappointment and part relief, the considered threesome never eventuated, but the thought lingered. Brendan had a best friend, Matt, and Matt had a girlfriend, Bree. I knew she was interested in girls and had recently been exploring her own sexuality. Me, being in a state of heightened sensuality, with this new boyfriend who was so comfortable and sexual, played with the idea of hooking up with Bree for fun. Besides that though, Matt and Bree were such close friends with Brendan, and I, as the New Girlfriend, wanted so badly to be a part of that group. And so one night, in an effort to continually improve my friendship with them, I invited Brendan, Bree and Matt to my house for dinner. I was aglow with the prospect of being invited into this tight-knit group and the wine and conversation flowed freely. About two bottles in, mid-conversation, Bree suddenly asked,

“How does everyone feel about group sex?” From there, it was inevitable. The sexual tension sent waves of electricity through the atmosphere and after some more polite conversation, somebody suggested we just get naked already. And then, in a drunken, giggling blur we were literally running to my room to pull each others' clothes off. In a wine induced haze, I watched Matt and Bree having sex beside me, as Brendan had his face buried between my legs. And then suddenly, Bree was kissing me and the boys were high-fiving and we were a mixture of bodies in a drunken fog, blurring into one another. Even now, the memories swim together but I remember, clear as crystal, when I saw Bree's hand

on Brendan's cock and then they were having sex. And then Matt and I were having sex and I didn't know what I was thinking or feeling, all I knew was my boyfriend was having sex with someone I barely knew and so was I. I hadn't prepared for this but all I could do was say fuck it and just try to have fun. Maybe I should have stopped it there but I'd had just enough to drink that I was open to where the night had unexpectedly lead, and I wanted to see it through. I wanted to know if I was capable of it. It probably went for an hour or so, all swapping and playing with each other, and then I got my boyfriend back and we had sex until the two of us had finished. Eventually we were all exhausted and after a sleepy goodbye, Bree and Matt left to go home to their own bed. Two hours later, I woke up and groggily drove Brendan to the airport so he could fly home. In my idealised girlish fantasies, this was not how I had ever imagined a foursome playing out. As soon as it was over, he was gone and there was no time or space to debrief. I felt entirely alone and lost. This experience had been thrust upon me and now I was left to deal with it in isolation. I became consumed with this deadly, sickening feeling in my stomach and I found out what it felt like to have real, scorching, hateful jealousy burnt into me. I was so wrapped up in my hungover blur of a world the next day, with no one around to talk about the experience with, that I sunk into a depressive state. by Jazz Meyer

I called Brendan and expressed, to some extent, how I was feeling. And he assured me that sex with Bree was not something he'd been secretly lusting over and that I should speak to her. I remember being so pathetic down the phone to her, crying endlessly, telling her everything and being so afraid she would hate me for it. But with her reassuring words I remembered that Bree was actually not a spiteful witch but a really cool, caring person. I had assumed that she had had ulterior motives — that she just wanted my boyfriend and I was a necessary evil — but with the phone pressed to my ear, wet with tears, I heard her calming voice and I realised

she didn't want my boyfriend any more than I wanted hers. And from there we formed the friendship that I had always been hoping for in the first place. Matt and I did the same thing — we talked and he comforted me and I knew these people cared about me; that I was in good hands. It was funny, we did the relationship backwards— started with sex, and then worked our way to being friends. In the longer term, all the relationships there were better off for the experience. It has absolutely strengthened my relationship with Brendan and my friendship with the others is different to any other friendship I've had. It's a very intimate friendship now. And I've changed — after being thrown in the deep end, I realise that sex is just sex, and humans are just humans. I think, biologically, that humans should commit to one sexual partner. I believed that before and I believe it now. But I've come to re-

ÂŠ Albe rt Bitton

We talked about it beforehand, we discussed what we would like and not like, and everyone was less drunk and more comfortable. those experiences have opened me up to a world of alternative sexual experiences that fall outside the realm of strict monogamy. Currently, we're looking for the opportunity to find a girl to join us. And now that we've slept with other people once or twice, I know we'll be able to approach a similar situation with more maturity and certainty. This time though, no uncertain surprises, no depressive states and no burning jealousy. And at the very least, I'll schedule it for a time when Brendan doesn't fly home the day after.

alise that Brendan and I, for example, can commit to one another one hundred percent, but cannot deny each other the pleasure of experiencing attraction to other people. That is purely physical. I don't think that I could ever be in a relationship where sex was not meaningful, and important, and special to the two of us in a way that is not shared with any other human being. That being said, sexuality is fascinating and fun and relationships that embrace that could potentially get a lot more out of it. It's better to accept and embrace and share sexuality, than live under oppressive expectations. I hate the feeling of constantly worrying about your partner being sexually attracted to other people. It happens, and it's better to be open about it and to enjoy sharing it rather than keep it from one another. Which is why, a couple of weeks later, we all repeated the experience. It was my birthday actually, and this time it was infinitely better.

Soulmates why our best friends might be the better soulmates

At 16, I met a boy who went out of his way to send me corny jokes because he knew they were my favorite. He made me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world, as cliché as it sounds. He asked me to prom and I felt like Cinderella when we danced the night away. I thought I had found him; the soulmate everyone talks about. The one that seems like the universe had too much to do with for our meeting to be just a coincidence.

At 17, that same boy, however, went away to college and we never spoke again. At 18, I met my soon-to-be freshman roommate at a Panera Bread halfway between our two towns. We sat and talked for hours and I left feeling like I had known her my whole life. She understood what I had been through because she had gone through the same. She listened, she laughed, and she loved when it came to the stories I told her. Still, to this day, she is the sister I never had but always wanted. Society has taught us our soulmates are our missing pieces. There’s the whole notion that someone, somewhere is going to come along with a dozen roses and a box of chocolates to sweep us off our feet and that will be the end of our search. We spend hours and even days agonizing over whether or not we have a date to a certain function or if we’ll end up like the old lady down the street with ten cats if we aren’t in a steady relationship by the time we’re 20. The truth of it all is:

Soulmates don’t always come in the form of a boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes, they just so happen to be our best friend who’s been the voice of reason through all of those boyfriends and girlfriends. Think about it: they’re the ones whose souls tend to fit perfectly within ours. They become our biggest cheerleaders, our words of encouragement, our shoulder to cry on. They’re the ones who will tell us if our sequined prom dress makes us look like a giant disco ball or if our leggings are see-through. They’re the ones who just get our love/hate relationship with Shonda Rhimes and understand that on Thursdays, we need a box of tissues and a pint of Chunky Monkey Ben & Jerry’s.

They know your test schedule better than you do so they can leave sticky notes on the bathroom mirror telling you “you da bomb!” and “I believe in you!” But mostly, they’re the one you can tell everything to, without having to say a word. They know something’s off by just the sound of your voice or the way you write a text message. They know what you’ve been through and where you’re going. At the end of the day, while they may not be serenading you with a love song they wrote just for you or surprising you with an anniversary dinner at a 5-star restaurant, most of the time, they’re enough. Chances are, you’ve already found your soulmate. And chances are, she’s sitting right beside you eating all of the cookies you two bought to share over your chick flick tonight while you scroll through Twitter and tell each other every juicy piece of gossip you find.. by Kady Braswell

Polyam� y Polyam� y Polyam� y Polyam�y Escaping the Make-Believe

We live in a world of make-believe. We don't admit it but it's true. And the very fact that we don't admit it is the only thing keeping the make-believe alive. Look at it this way: the society we've formed around us, the one that tells us that the things we 'know' are based in reality rather than imagination, is a construct that we've all subconsciously agreed to. The agreement governs everything: the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the economic system we're a part of, the interactions we have, the relationships we form. We have all agreed that there are certain ways of doing things and that if we don't stick within the very limited borders of

Realistically though, none of this exists anywhere but in our heads — in the collective agreement of our social structure. And so, if we take a step back (which, in many arenas, people are doing) we will see the myriad of choices that are actually available. We can ignore fashion constructs and wear whatever we like, we can grow our own food and cook experimentally. We can forgo the monetary system entirely and operate self-sufficiently or through barter. We can abandon social norms and ‘rewrite the script’. We can choose alternative relationship structures if heterosexual monogamous relationships don’t fit to our beliefs and experiences with love, sex and romance. This last choice is what we’ll explore today but it’s important to understand that this is just one act that defies the make-believe. The broader picture is more important — it’s not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s about the ability to see our choices and reject the limiting pre-programming of our culture. Let’s first start by looking at the expected structures that govern our relationships. It wouldn’t be too brazen to say that most romantic relationships in Western culture are presumed to exist as monogamous, heterosexual pairings. Happily, the heterosexual part of that equation is being whittled away as people are becoming more and more accepting, even celebratory, of non-heterosexual relationships. However, the expectation for monogamy is still strong enough that alternative relationship structures are barely even acknowledged. When the different desires and needs of every individual person are taken into account, it’s astounding to think that we operate largely under this ‘one-size-fits-all’ system.

Monogamy demands sexual and romantic exclusivity from both partners. The boundaries inferred by labelling a relationship as monogamous can vary, from quite conservative, to more liberal. Some couples maintain that any affectionate physical contact should be reserved for each other, or that a certain level of emotional intimacy should not extend outside the relationship. Others are more relaxed, allowing those boundaries to broaden and physical and emotional closeness to be shared with friends or acquaintances. These comfort levels differ, depending on the cultural and personal expectations of the people involved, but the determining factor of a monogamous relationship is some agreement, or expectation, of exclusivity. There is nothing inherently wrong with monogamy — not at all. For many people this structure may fit each person’s wants and needs from the relationship. However, rather than being decided upon as a structure that fits best, it is usually assumed to be the only available option and is thus employed by default. This can cause problems when monogamy is not, in fact, the best fit for one or both people who have found themselves in a monogamous relationship. So, what alternative is there? It makes sense, given the eclectic nature of human desire, that there would be equally eclectic ways of forming and maintaining relationships with each other. Non-monogamous structures can take many different forms, but the identifying factor is openness. If the crux of monogamy is exclusivity, then the crux of non-monogamy is inclusivity. While non-monogamy can exist in many different forms, here we’ll look predominantly at polyamory,

©Melina Möller

acceptable behaviour — if we don't play by the rules — then we become outcasts.

in charge of their own choices. Respecting each of your partners as individuals, responsible for their own decisions, is simply incompatible with the oft-present assumption of ownership that can form within traditional relationships. Monogamy, while not inherently

the philosophy and practice behind the notion that humans have the possibility to maintain several romantic partners simultaneously. While the details of polyamorous relationships can vary, the broad strokes tend to be the same, and a central theme in this relationship structure is the power to choose. Breaking outside of societal programming, polyamory allows for multiple concurrent relationships that exist within a framework of mutual consent, communication and care. Once again, there are as many ways to do polyamory as there are polyamorists. Most often, polamory exists quite openly, with each partner having the freedom to develop emotional and/or sexual connections with whomever they choose to. This is sometimes referred to as relationship anarchy — with no restraints on the development of new relationships and each person acting autonomously. Each person is treated as an individual, capable of choosing the people with whom they form relationships. This is a far cry from the restraints imposed by the make-believe. A common thread in polyamorous philosophy is personal autonomy. It is more or less integral to the principles of polyamory, that each person is free, and

espousing the notion of ownership, can often facilitate it. Polyamory, by virtue of nature, forces each partner to recognise that they have no special claim over each others’ romantic or sexual lives (or the rest of their lives for that matter). For many people, breaking out of the patterns laid out by the make-believe is extremely difficult and painful. It’s not easy to choose alternative relationship styles. We operate in a world that doesn’t allow for these choices, and therefore doesn’t teach us about them in the same way we are taught about monogamous relationships. Fortunately there are more and more resources emerging that outline the philosophies, principles and experiences of those living in alternative relationship structures. Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert’s book More Than Two (plus the accompanying website, www.morethantwo.com), The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, and Sex at Dawn, co-authored by Cristopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, are three important sources that approach the topic of non-monogamy from various angles. They are worthwhile reading material for anyone interested in the philosophy and practice of non-traditional relationships. There is a danger, when dethroning a dominant and long-standing ideology, of simply replacing it with another. It is important, again, to stress that any alternatives presented here are not superior to monogamy. They are simply examples of looking further than what is offered to us by default, which also includes looking further than the suggestions made in this article. We are free to take a step back from our assumptions and think about what we actually want, what is important to us, and what fits with our individual beliefs and experiences. Have we made our choices in alignment with these things? Or have our choices been made for us? We can all choose not to play make-believe. by Jazz Meyer

ÂŠMelina MĂśller

Mindmatter

Â©Kevin Danzer

Why Good Thinking and Bad Feelings Matter Without honesty, we live in disaccord with reality, which bears all kinds of hidden problems. Honesty is truth, and refers to the accurate perception of ourselves, each other, and the outside world. We can only heal to the degree that we are honest, for what goes unnoticed, especially inside us, will remain largely unchanged. Our spirituality is no exception. In this vein, I will first discuss intellectual and emotional honesty as a build-up to spiritual honesty. So, please bear with me while I set the stage for this fruit of our best-used inner resources.

Intellectual

Honesty

Intellectual Honesty is our capacity to notice and accurately report to ourselves and others what is true in the world, what is true of ourselves and our own logic (if it is internally consistent), and what we honestly believe. Intellectual honesty relies on our subjective capacity to level-headedly assess what is most likely true, what is factual, which is another way of describing rationality and self-evident common sense. Some things we all consider to be true. This is called consensual, objective reality. Drinking poison will hurt you. Lying to others for our gain at another’s expense is hurtful. Abusing children is damaging and not compassionate. Unless you are a psychopath, we all hold these to be true. Good science and self-evident common sense inform us of objective truths. We now know the Earth is not flat, that it revolves around the sun and that gravity is an invisible force that causes things to fall to Earth. This all pertains to fact, to intellectual honesty. Intellectual honesty also relies on critical thinking, which is our capacity to reason and make sure the logic of any position or discussion is internally consistent. According to Wikipedia: “Critical thinking is clear, reasoned thinking involving critique. Its details vary amongst those who define it. According to Beyer (1995), critical thinking means making clear, reasoned judgments. During the process of critical thinking, ideas should be reasoned and well thought out and judged.” In sum, intellectual honesty helps us ascertain fact, whether that fact is personal, interpersonal, or objectively true about the physical world. Intellectual

dishonesty shows up as excuses, alibis, and justifying just about anything we want to, usually to protect our ego, pleasures (for the moment), and false sense of self. Many influences cause us to deny the truth, with the result of suffering, not just our own, but especially for those we love.

Emotional

Honesty

Emotional Honesty is our capacity to consciously feel our true feelings, our true emotions, as we experience them in our body. Intellectual honesty aids emotional honesty by helping us make sure that what we base our beliefs on, and therefore our responses, is true. Intellectual honesty therefore helps us to be more emotionally honest. If we are not intellectually honest, if we don’t discover the facts of our predicament, we can generate emotions that are not appropriate in

“To learn about spiritu-

ality, to become spiritual,

you have to give up all you think is spiritual.”

the context of external reality. If we then act on these emotions, even by expressing them, then we run the very likely risky result of doing violence onto others and creating suffering because the external world is likely not deserving of our reaction — which, had we been more patient and intellectually honest about the facts of a situation, we could have avoided. I discuss this at more length in the article Re-Thinking Love — Why Our Hearts Must Also Be Minded. Reciprocally, being able to feel our true feelings and work through painful ones helps us assess reality more honestly. If we are not emotionally honest then we will be less intellectually honest because we’ll have unconscious emotions governing our decisions, opinions, and thoughts. This is based on some interesting science, which I mention just below. We’ll also be more prone to acting out our pain onto others via the maxim, “hurt people hurt others.” Modern neuroscience informs us that most of our decisions and beliefs are emotionally driven. For this reason, emotional honesty, and emotional process work to heal and reduce our painful feelings, is crucial for intellectual honesty. In other words, many people won’t be intellectually honest, not because the facts are obscure, but because they don’t want to believe the truth due to a fear of feeling pain, even if it’s the death of their illusions. So, if we can accept that “the truth hurts,” and adjust accordingly, we stand to be more intellectually honest, more in alignment with reality, and ultimately more productive, effective, joyful, and helpful. These positives usually come after we make peace with the truth, become more grounded, and adjust our lives appropriately. In one sense, all of our feelings are true because they exist. However, just because we feel something, doesn’t mean that what we assume from our feelings is true. For example, because I feel upset at you doesn’t mean that you deserve it or that you actually did anything to justify my upset. To find out if my interpretation of my feeling is accurate, I can exercise critical thinking to find out if what I believe about what upset me is true. If I find out you didn’t eat the half

a watermelon I was saving and I just missed seeing it in the back of the fridge (which, if you know me, is utterly likely!), then my feeling, while true for me, was not true in its assumption and projection onto you. I want to mention a point about emotional healing in the context of emotional honesty. If we haven’t done

If we can’t determine

what is true, then to

remain honest, we say: “I don’t know.”

some core emotional wound work, we really can’t be as loving as we’d like because when our buttons are constantly pushed we tend to shut-out what triggered us, thus limiting our outreach, our love in action. What’s more, dealing intimately with our own heartaches fosters compassion and empathy in us for others that suffer (which is everyone). When we can accept our own pain and wade through our griefs until they run clear, then we can extend our love to a world that suffers. When we don’t do this personal work, we miss a lot of suffering because when external painful events trigger our unconscious pain we haven’t dealt with, we tend to defend against it and tune it out. I think this is a big unacknowledged reason for why so many deny evil and the climate change crisis. Just as we can’t heal without intellectual honesty, without emotional honesty we also can’t heal because we don’t know what we are feeling. Emotional dishon-

esty, therefore, shows up as a disconnect both from feeling our feelings and being conscious of them. Indeed, intellectual and emotional dishonesty are coping mechanisms that allow us to keep doing what we are doing, even if it is violent, cruel, selfish, and breeds unhappiness. Both allow us to deny reality and make a mess of our lives and the planet. They prevent us from waking up and from real transformation. Such people

“Love is the answer,” but

what is the nature of the

question? For love to be the answer to our complex problems, love has to be diverse, multi-faceted, not just a feeling.

perhaps don’t realize that goodness and abundance can be found honestly and that alleviating isn’t achieved by ignorance but by embracing it, so that violence is prevented and love in action is promoted. Our experience and awareness of both our intellect and feelings must therefore be as honest as possible to maximize emotional healing, and ultimately our spirituality. If they are not — which is likely because we have come to convince ourselves that aspects of our

false self, including its many beliefs, are true — then hopefully we do have just enough honesty and intelligence, courage and care, to begin to notice where we are not being honest in both heart and mind. This begins a spiral up rather than down into more delusion and suffering, so we can more readily unravel our false sense of self in order to allow our better humanity to emerge. This true sense of self is not only the absence of heal-able heartache and all its dark spots inside us, but our full-functioning self imbued with the inner psycho-spiritual riches, what I call our Finer Jewels of Being Human, that we rescue from clearing out our hearts. Let’s consider an example to illustrate intellectual and emotional honesty so far. Say a blogger says, “I love animals,” and it turns out that he also eats meat. What a hypocrite, right? Especially if you’re an animal rights activist, as I am, right? Well, many jump to this conclusion without thinking it through, thereby creating the very violence they are railing against. This is a perfect example of what is often the projection and displacement of one’s own disowned violence. Applying critical thinking, we can deduce that maybe there is a good reason that he eats meat. And, maybe he isn’t happy about it either. But we’d have to ask some questions first to become intellectually informed. For example, it’s possible that he does love animals and it might also be possible that he needs to eat meat to sustain his health. In fact, upon further discovery we find out that he can’t digest vegetable protein (a real-life problem for some people), so meat is his mainstay. So, he can both love animals and eat meat without being a hypocrite. However, it may also pain him some to eat meat from animals that he loves. Now, if this fellow is intellectually honest he would need to verify through self-reflection that indeed he loves animals. To be intellectually honest about this he would have to also be emotionally honest and allow himself to feel his love for animals. He would also have to admit by way of intellectual honesty that killing animals doesn’t support his love of them. His intellectual

ÂŠKevin Danzer

honesty would also acknowledge that he eats animals not because he wants to promote their killing, but because he needs to in order to get protein that he can digest. Yet, regardless of these facts, he might still feel badly, and rather than shut out those feelings because he is justified, further emotional honesty allows him to feel any sadness, remorse, and guilt as a result of his need and actions. Eventually, through some process around this, he might come to a natural resolve without having had to deny aspect of his heart and mind. Indeed, this is how real growth happens, honestly. We have to struggle with things some, and if struggling for difficult truths in mind and heart is too tough for you, the option to believe dishonest spiritual slogans to live in a bliss bubble of magical beliefs and denial can be just as diminishing, if not more so.

Now, if you were one to jump all over this meat-eating, animal-loving blogger guy, would you also be able to be intellectually honest enough â&#x20AC;&#x201D; by not letting your own ego get the best of you â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to correct yourself,

To be spiritually honest

we might be better off to be both intellectually and emotionally honest

maybe even apologize? Would you be emotionally honest enough to feel and be with any remorse, sadness, and self-disappointment that came up in yourself, and be able to learn and grow from it? These same dynamics of self-correction are what would also allow major corpo-

any spiritual beliefs as a way to secretly avoid feeling our difficult or enjoyable emotions. If we can’t determine what is true, then to remain honest, we say, “I don’t know.” In our not-knowing, in the empty space of existential angst, it also means that we remain intel-

rations to admit they are wrong, to see they do violence, to change their ways. It’s only reasonable that we should set the example, right? We can each day with ourselves, with our family, and with the land — through our actions. This is honest, grounded spirituality in action.

lectually honest — we don’t make up stories to fill the gap. So, spiritual honesty does not make stuff up about the universe or the world. Spiritual honesty is informed by both intellectual and emotional honesty, which also makes it more integral, or integrated, and embodied. Integral spirituality, however, bears one more crucial ingredient… Integral spiritual honesty is the fruit, the result of intellectual and emotional honesty, that has also undergone emotional transformation, which is the healing of our core emotional wounds. The result of this

SpiritualHonesty

©Kevin Danzer

Spiritual Honesty means that we believe what is actually true about whatever our spiritual beliefs are. To be spiritually honest also means that we don’t adopt

process delivers us a rich inner life and deep, grounded, love and care for the world because in the depths of consciously endured heartbreak a strange happens: our heart merges with the world. It probably really doesn’t (per critical thinking intellectual honesty!), but the feeling of it allows us to remain connected to the world in a deep, embodied way from which we can help the world, which is emotionally honest and totally okay and a good thing! What we gift is our deep self, our gifts, our talents, which, coincidentally enough, have all been resurrected in the process of emotional work. Emotional healing also delivers genuine empathy and compassion, as well as purpose and meaning, because we have lovingly abided by our own healing and cleaned out our hearts of what blocked it. So, what are commonly considered some cornerstones of spirituality — love, compassion, empathy, and universality — can be delivered by emotional work, without any need for leaps of faith. Spiritual honesty in turn relies on intellectual and emotional honesty. This way, we develop a spirituality that begins and ends in our bodies and in the world, one replete with awe, wonder, magic, and feel-good love in addition to the difficult states of appropriate anger, grief, remorse, and fear. This integral spirituality — meaning it relies on and is based in good thinking, honest feeling, and deep transformation of pain — extends itself passionately and caringly into the world without any fantastic beliefs, covert fears of feeling pain dressed up as holiness and higher states removing one from the ability to empathize and understand the suffering of others. Sounds like a package deal to me. Spiritual dishonesty usually shows up as a result of intellectual and emotional dishonesty, because we fail to critical think for factual truth and fail to feel and thereby work through our emotions to clear our core wounds, thereby biasing our beliefs, perspectives, choices, and actions. The sequestered hurt of our core wounds from old unresolved heartbreaks — such as from childhood and past relationships we have not grieved and healed — increases our bias, our intellectual dishonesty via our defensive ego, which loves to

make up stories that aren’t true so it doesn’t have to deal with pain and its own shortcomings, if not its dissolving (heaven forbid).

Some cornerstones of

spirituality — love, compassion, empathy, and univer-

sality — can be delivered by

emotional work, without any need for leaps of faith.

Many spiritualists these days seem to advocate vehemently for dissolving ego, but fail to see how defensive ego is propped up by a fear of feeling emotional pain. Without going to these core emotional roots, dismantling of ego is largely theatrics. To maintain ego submission in such instances, one would logically have to flat-line his emotions, to deny fear and thereby heartache. Sadly, what often results is an emotionally repressed spiritual sufferer. For all these reasons, my benchmark for believing a spiritual path is if a person is in touch with and has abided by the transformation of his or her emotional pain, to a significant degree, anyway. I know extremely few religious and spiritual people who do, and I treasure each of them! Unfortunately, spiritual dishonesty is aided by the popular trend to consider thinking antithetical to spirituality, as if we had to dumb-down the nature of our love (read more about this can of worms here). So many

Â©Kevin Danzer

say, “Love is the answer,” but what is the nature of the question? For love to be the answer to our complex problems, love has to be diverse, multi-faceted, not just a feeling. And for love to be all these things, we have to be able to think well.

Spiritual honesty in turn

relies on intellectual and emotional honesty.

I suspect many rebel against thinking because of their own love wounds, as result of closed-hearted parents who were too in their heads to express affection and caring. But to throw the baby of good thinking out with the bathwater of imbalanced cerebralism is a mistake. While it can be helpful to balance too much thinking with emotive expression, feel-good loving feelings are diminished because of conflict and inaccurate blame due to a lack of critical thinking. Ironically, then, not critically thinking through our own emotional wounds, thereby making thinking the villain, generates less grounded, integral love. In sum, it’s not thinking that’s to blame; it’s the imbalance between head and heart. If on anyone, the blame is ours for not thinking well enough to preserve the boons of good thinking by victimizing the head in the name of the heart. But, our hearts really do need our heads to be functional and full. I can’t tell you the number of times I have posted a fascinating discussion about emotional work in the context of love and spirituality only to have a handful of people say it’s too much thinking for them. A lack of good thinking allows us to more easily believe whatever we want, real or not, to make stuff up. Failure to

look deeply and think well causes us to miss so much of life’s fullness and live in small boxes. Isn’t spiritual anti-intellectualism, after all, an oxymoron of sorts because spirituality by definition is a global appreciation? So, wouldn’t an authentic spirituality rely on all of our assets in body and mind? Wouldn’t good thinking that ascertains fact from fiction be integral to an authentic spirituality? Let us go on loving, by all means, but let’s expand our concepts and applications of love. Let’s be accurate about what is real and what is not, or likely not. Doesn’t the truth matter anymore? We want government agencies and greedy corporations to be honest, to ascertain fact, to feel the effects of their damaging actions and products. But can we? Mirror, mirror… Spiritual Honesty is the opposite of Spiritual Bypassing. Spiritual Bypassing is described by Robert Masters, Ph.D. in this excerpt from his book by the same name: “Spiritual bypassing is a very persistent shadow of spirituality, manifesting in many forms, often without being acknowledged as such. Aspects of spiritual bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia, blind or overly tolerant compassion, weak or too porous boundaries, lopsided development (cognitive intelligence often being far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence), debilitating judgment about one’s negativity or shadow side, devaluation of the personal relative to the spiritual, and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.” So, to sum up, to be spiritually honest we might be better off to be both intellectually and emotionally honest. We need to ascertain what we know to be true about the underlying beliefs of our brand of spiritual practice and its tenets. We also need to self-check ourselves for emotional bias that causes us either not to see or not to believe the facts, or likely truths, that support our spiritual beliefs. Whether it be a logistical fact or an emotional truth, we have to be willing and able to name it and call a spade a spade through the rigor of critical thinking, scientific discovery, and deep emotional honesty. by Jack Adam Weber

The Real

SECRET to Manifestation

Do you know that you are dreaming, and that nothing is happening outside of you? This means that there is no competition and there is nothing that you cannot be, do or have. This is your dream and you are the dreamer. Indeed, this can be a scary realization or the most liberating. Possibly both? Waking up in the dream state requires 100% responsibility for everything in your dream. This includes close and personal experiences as well as the global container in which you live and breathe. If you are even aware of something, it is a part of your dream. When you are ready and willing to wake up, you must stop shifting responsibility and you must take complete ownership of the dream called your life. Every time you blame someone or something you give your power away and you stay asleep. Instead of asking why something is happening to you or why someone is doing something to you, the only question is “Why are you doing it to yourself?” Everyone whom you experience is simply reciting the lines you gave them and fulfilling the roles you cast. No one is doing anything to you or taking anything from you. It is simply you and you. I know that this can be difficult to digest, but if you have gotten this far in reading, at least a part of you remembers the truth of who you really are. You might wonder, if we are all just dreaming, how does it all seem so real? Well, don’t let the real in “reality” fool you. This is all just smoke and mirrors disguised as a flowing and logical story that the human mind can project, process and accept as real. If you could step back for just a moment, you would clearly see, that when you withdraw your energetic and emotional participation, the “state of reality” melts away as the dream. by Nanice Ellis

The Real Secret to

Manifestation

Freedom does have a cost — that cost is surrendering the illusion in exchange for the Truth. All suffering is believing that the dream state is real and absolute — and that we are subject to unreasonable forces outside of our control. But, in a dream, there is nothing that exists outside of you and therefore nothing can control you, unless you are dreaming it as such. You may be asking, if this is true, then why would we cause ourselves pain, and why would we ever withhold love and abundance from ourselves? From a state of amnesia, we simply don’t remember that we are dreaming the whole grand story, and that any time we can change the course of events simply by waking up and dreaming a new dream. Because the story of life contains self-imposed rules and expectations, we create our lives based on these self-imposed rules and expectations. When we go against the “shoulds and have tos” of family, society or culture, we often punish ourselves with judgment, and as a result, life manifests in such a way to demonstrate that judgment so that we can recognize it and ultimately release it. Self-judgment manifests as feelings of unworthiness and unworthiness manifests as issues and challenges unique to our specific beliefs about ourselves and “reality.”

If you have been taught that you can only have love or abundance if you meet certain conditions and you never meet those conditions, then you will not allow yourself love or abundance, but without pre-imposed conditions anything and everything is possible. When we surrender our conditions and limitations, love and abundance flow naturally with ease and grace. Contrary to popular belief, the Universe does not punish or reward. It is only us doing it to us. Karma is what we do to ourselves through our beliefs. Can you now see that Waking Up is the real secret to manifestation and creating the life you truly desire? From the awake state you can dream any dream, and it will materialize just for you.

©Kevin Danzer

This is the beginning of spiritual awakening. This is the beginning of true freedom and liberation from perceived bondage. After all, how can you be imprisoned in a dream? And, if you do perceive yourself as imprisoned, abused or condemned in some way, it is just you doing it to you. This means that the key to unlock the prison door is in your hands, and at any moment you can put the key in the lock and turn it.

How do you dream

New Dream? It’s all about focus and imagination.

STEP 1

STEP 4

Remove your energy and attention from the drama that no longer pleases you. This means that you must stop reacting to “reality.” You must stop feeding the illusion with your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. As long as you are in a state of reaction, you single handedly perpetuate the illusion.

At some point in this process of Dreaming a New Dream, opportunities will present themselves, you will get a bright idea or you will be inspired to do or create something. Follow the leads, even if they seem unusual or unrealistic. In a dream state, “realistic” doesn’t count for much, unless you believe it does and give it power. When you receive inner guidance or intuitive hits, it is the Universe giving you instructions so that you can align with your desires and create the dream that you most want to live. If you can imagine it, and you are willing to give it to yourself, you can experience it. This is your personal invitation to living a magical and miraculous life. From the Awake State, you can do, be or have anything that you desire. It is your dream — make it the best one possible!!!

STEP 2 Know that you are unconditionally worthy right now. There is nothing that you need to do in order to prove your worth. Believing that you are not worthy is part of the illusion and what keeps the illusion running. A huge aspect of Spiritual Awakening is reclaiming your worth — remembering that you are unconditionally worthy and there is nothing to prove.

STEP 3 Begin to imagine a different life — a life full of everything that you truly desire. If you are like most, your imagination has been dormant and it might be challenging, at first, to activate the power of your imagination. But, you can do it. It is your natural born gift, and the more you practice imagining a new life that fits you like a glove, the easier it will be to imagine that life into being. Begin wherever you can. If you can only imagine one aspect of a better life, that’s fine. But, practice your imagination every day until you get really good at imagining your best possible life, as if it is occurring right now. If you find something difficult to imagine, find a version of the new dream that is easier for you to allow. ©Kevin Danzer

Focus on what you do want – not on what you don’t want!

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream… In love, grace & gratitude, Nanice Ellis

How to builD a more Positive

BRAIN While the idea of having either a sunny brain or a rainy brain is a little bit extreme, it’s not too far off base because optimistic brains actually do function differently than pessimistic ones. As science has begun to unravel and validate the complex neurobiology of positive

ered that three brain regions play a crucial role in making and keeping you optimistic.

©Melina Möller

emotion and optimism, it’s been discov-

how your brain

ways to build an

makes Optimism

Optimistic Brain

The prefrontal cortex (PFC), the “executive center” of your brain, guides your behavior, regulates emotion, and motivates you towards reward and away from pain or danger. The PFC also allows you to set goals and plan for and imagine the future, which are directly related to optimism. The second part(s) of your brain involved in creating optimism are your amygdala (there are two of them), which are the triggers for raw emotions such as fear and rage or delight and joy. The third essential players in creating an optimistic brain are the areas located mostly in the midbrain making up your reward circuit and involved in the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter most closely associated with reward. The reward circuit and corresponding punishment circuit supply the necessary motivation for most of your behaviors. The reward circuit is activated any time you perform behaviors that you enjoy. Studies have shown that stress reduces activity in the reward circuit. While optimism has a substantial hereditary component, like any personality trait, it’s also heavily influenced by experience. Only 30-50% of most personality traits are genetically inherited. The good news is that this means 50-70% of how optimistic you are depends on environment and your effort and input. The science of epigenetics is confirming that social and environmental factors alter your genetic code and that the genes you’re born with don’t have to be your destiny. The PFC, involved in optimism and the reward circuit, is also conveniently in charge of learning, and it can be strengthened and exercised much like you pump up your biceps. Your brain is malleable and can learn to be more optimistic.

In order to survive, our ancestors’ brains were wired to notice and remember the bad while pretty much ignoring the good. Recalling a near miss or deadly predator’s territory was much more likely to allow them to pass on the genes than remembering a nice na±pping spot. Although this negativity bias developed for an important reason, it gives your brain a constant negative slant and leaves you worried and feeling stressed out today. But there are ways to give your brain a more positive tilt. Look for and take in the good — In an effort to use neural resources efficiently, your brain doesn’t automatically recognize the good. It’s job is to be on the alert for danger and protect you. To counteract this natural tendency, you have to look for, put emphasis on, and create goodexperiences. This involves becoming aware of what good is present in your life and making the thought an embodied experience accompanied by positive feelings, sensations, desires, and actions. Keep long term rewards in mind — Because your PFC is concerned with imagining and planning for your future, you can keep it motivated and give it something to look forward to by focusing on potential benefits, like health, monetary, or relationship rewards. Take the time to visualize positive outcomes every day. In your brain, imagining something and doing it are not all that different. The same neurochemicals are released and neurons fire when you are just thinking. Every time you visualize, you’re building up your brain’s ability to sustain positive emotions.

ÂŠMarlene Job

how to build a more

too much of a

PoSITIve BRAIN

GooD THING

Well-Being Therapy — Developed by Giaovanni Fava, of the University of Bologna in Italy — has been known to help people adopt a more optimistic outlook and hold onto positive emotions longer by most likely strengthening the PFC’s interactions with the reward and pleasure circuits. Well-Being Therapy consists of three exercises done everyday for a week: Three times a day write down one positive thing about yourself and one positive about someone you interact with regularly. Express gratitude often. Say “thank you,” keep a gratitude journal, write an appreciative note to someone, or make a caring phone call. Do whatever feels appropriate to you, but make a point to notice and express your gratitude. Compliment others regularly. Start actively looking for opportunities to give authentic compliments, and you might be surprised at the multitude of reasons you find, such as a coworkers’ thoroughness, someone holding the door for you, or a neighbor’s beautiful flower bed. When handing out your kind words, look the person in the eyes and make a connection. Don’t forget to include yourself in the compliments.

While studies have shown that pessimism and being able to see the worst in a situation actually make for better lawyers, an overwhelmingly negative outlook can lead to anxiety and depression, sap your motivation, and suck the joy out of your relationships and life. However, it is possible to carry a positive outlook to unrealistic extremes. You probably know a “Positive Pollyanna” or two like this. You might even be one! An excessively positive attitude impairs your ability to consider consequences, learn from mistakes, and postpone immediate gratification. Too much optimism can be inappropriate and get a person into trouble. If you continuously use your credit card to make purchases adding to the already astronomical balance thinking “Oh well, I’ll just work some overtime this month,” that’s not a good strategy either. In this case, you would want to lower the activity in the brain’s reward circuit and weaken connections between involved areas. For example if you are tempted to buy that expensive new car you really can’t afford, you might remind your brain of the detriments: a car’s value drops dramatically as soon as it’s driven off the lot; how you’ll feel when its beautiful paint job gets a scratch; how the high payments will force you to not spend any money on other things you enjoy. What you want to shoot for here is realistic optimism.

by Debbie Hempton

blau aquarell

THE ART OF

LIFE There is an art to life and living, if we learn how to live it from the inside out instead of from the outside in. It requires the willingness to open our minds and hearts to our own unique, creative gifts. But, more importantly, it allows us the freedom to see through the matrix of boxes and squares and detach ourselves from controlled illusion of our reality. Then, looking from the inside out, we find that the reality of creation is actually beautifully chaotic.

Down The Rabbit Hole

As human beings, we can become attached to all What we learn about love is backwards. We are raised bekinds of ideas of what we think we need to be haplieving we must search for love outside ourselves, find py — comfort, security, career, social circles. But someone to love us, and find someone to love. We learn when we look deep within ourselves, we realize these that we are alone, incomplete and loveless without the needs are mostly of a material and external nature. love of another. Although they can be alluring, the happiness we find In reality, we ARE love, in its purest form. But we are in these attachments and identifications is usualconditioned to feel separated from that true nature of ly temporary, as they reflect our relationship to the love, valuing only the love we receive from outside ourchaotic outside world, not our personal, peaceful inselves. This leaves us open to fear, as we believe that love ner world. Of course, when our happiness depends itself can be taken away. on conditions outside ourselves and our control, we Love and hate (fear) are like oil and water, so when search for completion from the outthey interact on an energetic and side in. Then, when those external emotional level we often find chaos conditions are taken away, so too is Last night as I was sleep- in the polarity — an allergic reaction our sense of peace and fulfilment. if you will. Our loving nature and our ing, I dreamt that I had a fearful conditioning can’t co-exist. We have lost control over our emotional being. beehive within my heart, Something has to give. And in that But everything is upside down in and the golden bees were dark and confusing place, we find rock this beautifully chaotic rabbit hole. bottom; the inky black energy of the making white combs and aether, where our training and our In our attempt to find happiness in the outside world, we often perceive truth collide. But, it’s also the place sweet honey from all of external chaos as our lives 'falling where we find our greatest opportunimy bitter disappointapart', when really, circumstances ty — the creative 'spark' to light our ments. are just starting to come together in way out of the dark. our lives in ways we can’t compreEven in our darkest and most painhend. ful times, we always have that opporAntonio Machado There are terms for this state tunity, that choice. It’s harder to make of being and several come to mind — rock bottom, that choice when we are in an emotional state of change crisis, despair, and/or finding the Spirit within (a probecause change can feel like we’re losing something, cess that will crack you wide open, but that’s another and in uncertainty, we fear what may yet be. But as we article in itself). In these times, whether we can see it shed our external attachments, the way forward — that or not, our external attachments and identifications creative spark — can only be found in the emotion of the are stripped from us, and it is only within ourselves moment, right now, not in feelings of loss (past) or fear that we can create comfort in the chaos. (future). The only way out is through.

“

©Melina Möller

The Life Force

“

As the old makes room for the new, our overwhelmIt can feel daunting, looking into our own personing emotions can sometimes make us feel like we can’t al rabbit hole, but don’t be scared. The darkness is go on. Fear, loss and grief are all part of the great aether which common. But what we’re feeling is the spiritual energy of crein those rock-bottom moments ation. The aether is the ‘place’ In reality, we ARE love, in its is actually the stale old toxic enand the mindset where illusions purest form. ergy dying, not our life force! It’s are shattered, perspectives no vacation, but at the end of are changed, new dreams are it, we are left with new circumforged, and something beautistances, new energy, a new perful and honest is born — seemspective. On a micro level, these old energy patterns ingly from ‘nothing’. are being felt and released by individuals, while on a Remember though, the ‘nothingness’ you may exmacro level, humanity is currently reflecting the same perience is still something, because there is no such process — we’re at rock-bottom, feeling the chaos of thing as nothing. In the heart-felt stillness of the dark, this energetic clash, and using that spark to light crewe find the presence, openness and creative spark we ative new ways forward. need to truly see our reality and consciously invigorate When we go into darkness, it’s no vacation. It helps our lives, aligning our outer world to our inner reality to remember: when emotional chaos takes hold, the and desires. best remedy is simplicity. When we simplify our lives So honor the darkness for the experience that it is and remove subjective distractions, it brings us closand the lessons it offers your heart and mind — and er to alignment and objectivity. We become more most of all, know that it is temporary. sensitive in our perceptions. We can be still with our To make ‘the big move’ is basically a two-step thoughts and feelings, while also exploring the opporprocess. First, we have to identify and connect with tunities they create. This will tell you everything you the fearful energy that wants to be expressed — or need to know – even if it feels upside down. (you’re in released. Most of us have an awareness of our fears the rabbit hole, remember?) and the patterns they create in our lives, even if we’re unsure how to process them and/or persuade them to move out. This is the process that we don’t necessarily like so much because it’s uncomfortable at best. The key is realizing that we need something to replace the First, it helps to know that we’ve done this before even fear in our heart. if we can’t see it, or forgot how. Through the process of When fear keeps us ‘stuck’, the reason we find it shedding old energy and creating ‘the new’, we’re changso hard to move is that we stop supporting the Uniing, evolving, and moving energy — the emotional kind verse in supporting us, by focusing our consciousness of energy that comes with great weight, which is why the on the ‘what if’s — what we don’t have, what we can’t process of releasing it is called enlightenment (light bulb do, what may go wrong, and often, what other people moment!) Although the ego part of us may attach to the think. The ego’s perception becomes about ‘loss’ and feeling of loss, and resist letting go of old comfortable ‘want’ and ‘fear’ of the potential future, and so we lose energy, this process of unpacking our emotional baggage touch with our natural sense of gratitude for now — lightens our emotional load and helps us to align our enwhich is a necessary ingredient for co-creating with ergetic being to what our heart and soul essence is really conscious intention. But that sense of fear is not real, searching for — change and the fear that comes with it. it is the ego trying to protect itself from the worst case The whole gamut of conscious experience.

The Big Move

“

‘what if’s that may or may not happen in the future, bigger picture that exists beyond its own self-oriented and redirecting our attention back to familiar patterns awareness.The best way to resolve the fear of doing is of behavior that may gratify the ego to DO. Go ahead and prove your in the short term but do not serve the fearful ego wrong. Sure, it can Self in the long term. take great courage, discipline and The darkness is part of the self-understanding to honestly Then, when ego/fear prevents us from trying, or even dreaming, nothexplore the dark recesses of our great aether which is the ing happens at all! Today or in the fufears and ego. But the truth is, spiritual energy of ture… there is no other real option. As creation.. … and so, this is where we get ‘stuck’, we continue down this path of going round and round trying to solve collective and personal awakenfearful problems in our heads, trying ing, our unresolved ego/fears and to resolve our fears with the same mentality that cretheir effects are becoming increasingly obvious in our ated them… more fear. It’s the emotional equivalent of lives, and like any other unsustainable practice, we can banging our heads against a proverbial brick wall. no longer put them aside without consequence. Ego is the antithesis of Oneness. Inherently fearful It’s time we cleared the space, start a fresh canvas, of the unknown, ego is hard wired into our biological and show those around us they can do the same too. flight-or-fight/fear response. It views reality in terms of separation and comparison to others, blind Our emotions ultimately tell us everything we need to to the know about what’s working and not working for us in

“

©Me-

Grab a Pallette!

our lives. When things aren’t ‘right’, we experience discomfort or discontent in various areas of our life. If we don’t allow these feelings to surface, and more importantly to guide our mind’s decisions, the unresolved emotional energy will always find a way to be expressed, whether the ego likes it or not. For many, the ongoing denial and apathy to such challenging feelings can culminate in a ‘dark night of the soul’, where the emotional veil suddenly drops and the full range of emotional energies demand that we feel them, and heal them, at once. In these times, we may not like what we see when we look at the canvas of our life. Reflecting on our fears and most painful experiences forces us to be aware of the fearful, unloving, or desperate decisions we’ve made in our lives. We may not like the landscape we’ve painted, or the details in the background, or the truth

“

Colour in the Dark

about what we’ve emulated from our fear but we can change it, move it, enhance it, and color it in. First we need to step back and really see the canvas objecLet’s be honest, our darker feelings of fear and chaos tively — without ego— and feel the message within it. aren’t exactly easy to look at up close and personal. We Our pain, discontent, anger and regret are all perfect learn to keep our fear hidden just beyond the periphery indicators that we are settling for something in our of our conscious awareness in order to stay ‘sane and lives that is not aligned with our true Being. Explorfunctioning’. The ego’s mode of operation is like a seing and acknowledging the whole spectrum of our cret agent in stealth mode encouraging the turbulence feelings is the first (and most difficult) step to healing of our fear. Its very purpose is to make us aware of our them, and starting over, creating through the chaos. own fears and/or limitations, taking us into the darkIn order to unravel the effects that ness of the aether. But the darkness only our feelings, and that our experiencobscures our view, hiding a blank canvas Then, when ego/fear es in ego and fear have caused on our of infinite potential. We have something energetic landscape, it’s a case of prevents us from try- the ego doesn’t though — color, light going back through the darkness in and shade which equates to every imaging, or even dreaming, order to see the light. That’s the inable outcome. duality — light doesn’t ex- nothing happens at all! Creating something *NEW* is the ist without dark, and the only best way to release emotional baggage way out is through. Follow the light. Someand re-color our lives into a canvas we can’t wait to times that means we have to stop, look, and claim as our own and share with the world. If we allow listen in order to find a heartfelt stillness enabling ourselves to fully experience the dark side of our emous to truly see what our heart, and the universe by tional existence, we can use that experience as both a extension, is trying to show us. motivation and a tool to create new experiences, new Then, when we confront our true human and relationships, and new outcomes. spiritual nature head on and ‘survive’ the truth of Our creative juices move in synchronicity with the our dark side (even though our ego feared we would universal flow of creation when we allow ourselves to perish!) we emerge with a new clearer perspecbe guided by our hearts. As we release our fears and tive — ready to create a more honest, simple, joyful, overcome the urges of the short-sighted ego, we learn meaningful, enriching, experiential kind of life. The to listen to our hearts and to our inner guidance. The kind of life that is perfectly aligned to the inner Being dreamer’s dream comes to life before our very eyes we have come to know so well. The kind of life that is and it mirrors back to us all that we truly are — beauimpossible to create while the ego has us convinced tiful, colourful, and unique beings of light, consciousthat what we want for ourselves is always somehow ly co-creating our own canvas, and transcending the out of our reach. darkness of the aether. Fun and rewarding, our existence suddenly becomes a vibrant colorful life when we make the choice to embody the art of life, with all its light and shade, and open ourselves to experience its endless, beautifully chaotic possibilities.

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Light doesn’t exist without dark, and the only way out is through. Follow the light.

by Jennifer Desiher

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Who am I? Somehow the beautiful weather lets me muse like I usually do when the weather is bad. It lets me muse about the worth of friendship, love and family. It lets me think about things, that could've gone better, if I had acted differently. I wonder if it actually isn't wrong that things shatter into a million pieces. Because there were reasons for it. I once changed for a person. You would have not even recognized me. My grandma once told me, I have a beautiful personality and that I should never, especially not for other people's will, change. I took that for granted, because why should anybody ever want to change for someone else? That would be stupid, right? But that‘s exactly what I did a few years later. Why? Because I wanted to please a person. So the person only liked an idea of me. He never really knew me. Even I didn‘t know myself back then. But that happened and I can‘t change it. The reason I'm angry about it is that I said goodbye to so many things. I left friends that meant a lot to me. But wasn‘t it right somehow? I learned from it. Or do I just exculpate myself? The truth is: Strange things happen and mistakes will always be made. That's called life. You can neither foresee them, nor change them afterwards. The human being is only capable of learning or forgetting. I will always make mistakes in my life. And every big one leaves a scar. And I will show every scar to say “Hey, I have this scar, but I stood up again and learned from it. And it didn‘t kill me, it made me stronger!”

©Melina Möller

by Lisa Richter

Knowing Your Value A Lesson I Learned The Hard Way

One day, whether you’re 16, 24, 55, or even 78, your path will cross with someone who will set a fire in your soul that cannot be extinguished. As I’ve slowly learned, however, they are not always the ones who will keep it ignited. And as bad as it hurts in that moment, I think I’ve found that it’s okay to find a love like that; one that sweeps you off your feet, but leaves you lying on the ground with a heart covered in scars and bruises. It’s okay to experience that at least once in your life. Or at least it will be.

This person will enter your life like the answer to every question you ever asked. They will be a hurricane; you’ll feel their raindrops before the storm later on. And you won’t know how or even want to prepare yourself for the force. They will be the ones who will put a smile on your face without even trying and be the ones who will settle the chaos in your soul. They will hold your heart, no matter how closed off it’s been before, and take the time to slowly pry it open and set up a home inside. They will carry your storms, your thunders, your cold shoulders, and every dark question, and they will do so without hesitation. They will fight the battles in your mind until you’re strong enough to win the war. They will celebrate your highs and remind you of your greatness. They will sing encouragement and praise you for the little things. I’ve learned, however, that sometimes, those get a little too heavy for one person to carry and they will drop it. They will drop everything and let the words “I don’t see a future with you” slip from the lips that once held soft kisses and sweet laughter. Such small words, but they will leave big questions that fill your mind with doubt. You’ll ask yourself what you could have done differently and the question of value and worth will consume your daily thoughts and actions. You’ll wonder why you weren’t worth it. And you won’t understand why the one you thought you

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could make plans with suddenly no longer wants to spend his days by your side. If you’re like me, you’ll wonder if it was the nights you spent tossing and turning because your mind never fell asleep when your body did. You’ll wonder if it was the band-aids and the thought of not being able to save you that pushed him away. You’ll wonder if it was the days you spent in a fog because you couldn’t concentrate. You’ll wonder if it was the constant need of reassurance that everything was okay or the fact that there was no middle ground on your want for affection: you either wanted it all or none at all. You’ll wonder if you should have made a bigger effort to drive to see them on every break. And you’ll wonder what you could have changed about yourself that would have made him stay. That will be the question that sits heavy in your gut because you’ve never been that kind of person. I don’t know where it came from or why it suddenly nestled its way into every thought that crossed my mind and made a home in my heart, but it did and it scared me. I’ve spent the last few weeks silently questioning my worth. And why I wasn’t “good enough” for someone who had always been more than enough for me. But I’ve slowly been learning that my value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see my worth. Nor does it decrease based on someone not wanting to be with me.

©Melina Möller

“I’m sorry s I’m not good enough” is not a statement I ever want to let past my lips again because it’s a lie. I am more than good enough for the right person and I’m more than good enough for me. There are days I see something or hear something or find something and I miss him so much it hurts, but as I will tell all of you, there will come a morning when you wake up and your heart feels lighter, like the memories aren’t so heavy to think about. You’ll respond with a smile when someone asks you about him instead of feeling like your heart is being ripped apart. You’ll realize that not everyone who crosses your path is meant to stay on that path with you and you’ll learn that it’s okay. You’ll learn to open your heart again and you’ll learn to let love in. You’ll learn to believe in the beauty of falling and the fleeting moments of catching again. by Kady Bradswell

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ÂŠAnnika Messerschmidt

why do we care so little

and lose our

interest? I often think about the fact that we all spend too much time on social media. What is the benefit of it, actually? If there is one at all. I have three short stories for you directly of my daily life: I had to go to the doctor and I was sitting in the waiting room. Next to me was a mother with her three children — two girls and one boy. All of her children where using a smartphone to avoid the loneliness of waiting. The boy was playing some kind of game and was very noisy and he often said things like: “Yes!!!! I've got 500 Gold. Money ..yeah…” or “ No , I lose, I'm a piece of shit”. The mother just said, “Be quiet” occasionally. For me it seems to be that this mother doesn't know how to entertain her kids WITHOUT a smartphone. And even worse, kids can't handle waiting any more without using a smartphone. I mean come on, they're kids — where has the fantasy gone? When I was a child I loved to look out the window and then suddenly some cool stories started in my head and I thought about things like “why is the moon so shiny?” — and I didn't google it. I wondered about it and thought about a logical explanation, even if it was wrong. Another thing we will lose — thinking on our own. The second story is nearly the same. I was at a Indian restaurant and I was famished because it took so long. So I was observing the table next to me. There was a single mother again with her two teenage boys. From the context I concluded that they were a patchwork family. The boys usually lived with their father in Hamburg. The mother always wanted to start a conversation — she asked about how things were going, about school, about their girlfriends. And the boys held their smartphones underneath the table, busy texting. Like in school. They gave short, quick answers and tried to hide the smartphones under the table. This wasn't a normal conversation at all. I looked at the mother's face and she looked back and started to talk with me. I mean, what the hell? I felt so sad for her. Last story. I had a roommate and he had a 'no-yesmaybe-maybe-not' relationship with a girl. And this girl spent hours and hours JUST updating her tumblr page. She told me. One day she was really happy and came to me and said, “I finally reached 100 followers.

It was such a good idea to update my page the whole weekend”. I'm not joking — that happened. Seriously! In her point of view she had interests, but in my opinion there were no 'real' ones. I think she was so happy because she thought she had made something really creative, her own style. She and identified her achievement as, “That was me, I made it on my own”, and she also got a reward for that work. Psychologically, that is how the brain works — it's called the 'reward system'. And at the end I have some questions for you. You should sit alone in a room with no interruptions. Close the door, shut out your phone and listen to the voice in your head. And maybe you will ask yourself the same questions I did: 1. What is the first thing you do in the morning? 2. What is the first thing you see or hold in your hands? 3. For what reason do I actually use my phone? And always the most important one: 4. Am I happy with this? I still love looking out the window and I don't want to lose my fantasy. I want to learn a new language on my own. I love to draw handmade and not on the PC. I love to cook without recipes. I love to try out Halloween make up without watching tutorials. But I don't get a reward in my brain for this because often I'm not as good as the others who use the help of the internet. However, I'm also very often proud of myself and that makes me happy and my brain gives me a 'like', not my follower. I really don´t know what I'm going to do when I'm a mother. I can't solve this myth but maybe someday the voice in my head will give me an answer. But one step at a time. And know I will give your brain a few hashtags to think about: #interests #reality #society #happiness #reward-system #fantasy #andfuckthereisthisvoiceinmyheadthatwontstoptalking by Annika Messerschmidt

Why You Have The Definition Of

Accomplishment All Wrong 106

Â©Kevin Danzer

Accomplishment Why You Have The Definition Of Accomplishment All Wrong We had just finished reading a story of a Roman emperor who had made a declaration of all of his life achievements and proudest moments. I looked down at my blank sheet of paper and wondered what to start my own story with. Sighs and sounds of frustration filled the room. I knew what other people were writing about; the accomplishments that got their name in the newspaper, the ones they were praised for, the ones people knew about. I knew I could easily fill the lines with those, but I also knew I didn’t want to. I knew I wanted to take the last couple of years and encompass them in just two words, I survived. There’s an idea that comes with the word accomplishment; that if it doesn’t get you praise, or add to your resume, it doesn’t count. That if people aren’t still talking about it days, weeks, months, or even years later, there was no point in doing it. We get so wrapped up in how we come across to other people, we forget to congratulate ourselves for the 'little' things we accomplish, too. There’s something to be said for those who still got out of bed this morning and faced the day after dancing with their demons left them up all night. There’s something to be said for those who have made it two days without self-harm; without seeing a friend in a razor or seeing an enemy in calories. There’s something to be said for those who tackled that presentation when anxiety eats them alive. There’s something to be said for those who may not be the fastest, but still get out here and run that mile. There’s something to be said for those who looked in the mirror today and didn’t let the negative thoughts consume them. There’s something to be said for those who conquer what seem to be trivial things to others, but Mount Everest to them. It may not be something that will get your name in lights, or your picture up on the refrigerator, or elicit a round of applause by people, but it is something to smile about. It is something to be proud of yourself for. It is something to mark as a victory. No matter how small.

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I looked down at my still blank sheet of paper as he called out “five more minutes!” I finally knew what I was going to write: At 16, I felt the world crumble beneath me, letting the nights come too quickly and the mornings too slowly, but I survived. At 17, I found my skin a canvas to the battles I fought with my demons, but I survived. At 18, I graduated with a brother looking down on me, instead of cheering me on from the crowd, but I survived. At 19, I found myself in the deepest pits of depression, on the verge of dropping out after my freshman year, but I survived. At 20, I am struggling to make peace with my thoughts, but I am surviving. I am surviving. We, the millennial generation, have been raised on the idea of thick resumes and well-known names. I’m guilty of it, too — the added stress of perfection, the incredibly packed calendars filled with projects, jobs, volunteer work, etc. And all of that is great, but it tends to cloud our perception of the definition of an accomplishment. This idea of accomplishment I’ve been chasing it since I can remember. I wanted to run the farthest and the hardest. I wanted to have the most pieces published in the school paper. I wanted the acknowledgment when I took time out of my schedule to do volunteer work. Because it meant I was doing something with my life. But it sent me to the brink, both mentally and physically, and that’s what it took for me to open my eyes. Be proud of yourself today. For getting out of bed, for killing that presentation, for eating, for smiling, for anything. An accomplishment is an accomplishment, no matter how small it might seem.

by Kady Bradswell

“I’d like you to take out a sheet of paper. Fill it with your accomplishments. You have 10 minutes.”

©Kevin Danzer

Clarity about the point of view

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It was a moment of clarity. I stood with my backpack, large and green, in the sunlight along a wall. Mid-summer in Berlin on Europaplatz before the bombed out church. The center of the city hadn't completely moved yet. That was still years ahead. I was basking in the sun along the wall, as everyone else was revelling in the mid afternoon sunlight and conversation. A few meters to my right sat an attractive young German woman; stylish and comfortable without caring about her appearance in the way that Berliners seem to have. Whether she was reading or eating I can't recall, but it was hard not to notice her. Several swarthy young men, probably Turkish descent, approached her. She was too far way for me to hear, but hearing wasn't necessary to understanding what followed. They tried to chat her up, and she was politely having none of it. They persisted though, and one in particular became aggressive. As he became aggressive, she became less comfortable, politely trying to put off his advances. It was becoming clear that this attention had passed into unwanted, and it was equally clear that this situation was still escalating, and it might be best if someone intervened. I had no cell service on my American phone, but her aggressor didn't know this. The phone was large, and I was more than willing to bluff a call to the Police. I very visibly pulled it out, and as I flipped it open, something else happened. Sitting on the wall beyond her were another group of slightly older and much buffer Turkish men. They were as far from her as I was, and they have been watching these events with equal concern. I stopped and watched as the largest of them stood up and hastily walked towards her, with body language that warned off the jerk. Their expressions were expansive. He asked her if these men were bothering her, and if she needed

more firmly to restrain him, but not succeeding. It was clear to anyone watching that she was not happy with his attentions, and that she was becoming upset. Once again beating me into action by a heartbeat, her defender leapt from the wall, strode the seven meters over, grabbed the aggressor, and pulled him away. It was clearly said that he should get the fuck away from her, or things would end every badly for him. The young jerk, half the size and a quarter the muscle, and much to his friend's visible relief, slunk away. Her defender turned to her, and he apologized for the jerk's behavior. She thanked him, and he rejoined his friends. I stood in wonder. It was like watching a slice of history being made, but history without a victor to tell the story. I can tell stories about it. I can tell the story of the jerk's friends trying unsuccessfully to rein in his behavior. I can tell the story of the young man who is learning how to treat women from his German step-father; the German step father who beats his Turkish wife. The story of a man who is horrified at what his fellow immigrants are doing. The story of a young man who can't deal with the fact that he's gay, so he has to prove to his friends how much he likes women. There are two obvious ones though, and I saw Germany's future written in these two stories. What story would she tell her friends? What story would the witnesses tell? Would it be the story of a Turkish thug assaulting German virtue, or would it be the story of a gallant Turkish rescuer? One story leads to hatred, and one leads to acceptance, and the future would be formed from these stories. Not in this moment alone, but in thousands of similar ones. One at a time they seem insignificant, but collectively our stories have an impact. They guide our

help. She responded that she was fine, but thanked him for his concern. Unconvinced, he walked back to his friends, but within moments the most aggressive young man was hitting on her again, and even more aggressively than before. His friends were trying even

choices, both individually and societally, guiding the courses of history. We have to be aware of our stories, and what they represent, because the truth always lies beneath them, and we get to choose. Hopefully we choose wisely. by Jeff Younce

imprint | the spiritual lifestyle magazine | no. 1 | june 2016

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Many people have been involved and supported me. Without them this magazine wouldnt exist: the photographers: Kevin Danzer Lucas LasCasas Mat.Hoffstiepel & Jacki Dalí the lector: Jazz Mayer the authors: Jazz Mayer- Foursome; Misophonia; Polyamory; Polyphasic Draft; Synesthesia Kady Braswell- Accomplishments; Soulmates Melissa de Honeybee - Cacaophany Dr. Kelly Neff - 11 Ways to Live a Happier Life Debbie Hampton - How to Build a More Positive Brain Emanuel Kant - Human Disasters vs Economic Refugees Nanice Ellis - Waking Up In The Dream Jack Adam Weber - Sex, Love and Attachment Jennifer Deisher - Spiritual Honesty; Art of Life Melina Möller - What was the Attention of the Artist? Vega Lukkoken - Contact Improvisation Jenny Francis Kussatz - jenskyf Jeff Younker - Clarity Annika Messerschmidt - Why We Care Less and Lose Interest Lisa Richter - Who am I? Sven Picton - Treepoem Evagenia Bitton - Cuddles the supporters: Michael Hentschel - tutor Alberto Arranz Barrantes - support; music and marketing Marlene Job - layout advice and illustrations Änias Fritsch - layout advice Hendrick Thul - video & layout advice Dominik Wein - video advice Klein&Halm - support & advice THANK YOU ALL !!!

Melina Möller -layout -illustration -producer -editor -art direction -photographer -marketing

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