Connecting Spiritual Sense Of The Desert & It’s 
People
From a little country in Europe called the Netherlands where I spent the first half of my life. After I studied psychology I wanted to travel before working so I backpacked and came to outback Australia. Drawn to the outback and the desert. It was the spiritual sense of the desert and how the people have lived there for 1000 of years and how they were connected to nature and life. Couldn’t resettle in the Netherlands, felt like didn’t fit in there anymore.
Came back to Australia and now lived here for last 18 years here. I have settled in the Otways surrounded by trees, nature, birds, kangaroos, life, eagles. I love the peacefulness and the stillness of it.
Connecting To Spirituality in Nature provides Peacefulness & Stillness
I find in nature almost something similar to what others might find in church. I grew up in a very religious family and was very religious myself for many years. As I came back to Australia started to experience its the limitation and the beliefs of exclusive and excluding of anything that’s different.
I’ve always had a big pull to spirituality and being aware of a different dimension than what meets the eye. I find that I can connect with that most when I am in nature. If I look at a tree I can see the stillness in the tree, the presence of the tree and the life of that. It connects to something deep within me.
The stillness resonates with me absolutely. I’ve had different experiences and some people might judge them, however, I remember walking with my dogs and I was quite sad and looking at the trees I could hear them without hearing them – the voice from the trees or inside me, ‘the voice’ was saying just be – I stood there and looked and listened and felt incredible presence of life around me. It was so soothing. Does it flow through my body? For the first half of my life lived in my head. Over the year through my reading and some courses about working more with the body and I can now experience more of life through the body.
Out of My Head and To My Heart Through My Body
More and more, yes I can experience it through my body. To be very present and connected to myself and all of life around me is being aware of my body. Really focusing on the spirit in my body. Coming into my body, I start with my hands, like body focus meditations look at breath – e.g., they start with the breath. I’ve never really connected to that. For me, it’s my hand which is my door in – door to my aliveness, (the energy) awareness of life all around me. The border of my body does not exist so much anymore.
Then becomes more focused on the heart, the heart of everything. There was an observed experience of aliveness in you and looked it reached a peak or enriched. Enriched is a good word – I expected you to ask what Heart of Connection means and I was going to speak about what it doesn’t mean for me and what the barriers are for it.
Allowing Life To Be and Allowing Life to Look After Itself
To sit with the pain of suffering look at it is to become aware of a different perspective. There is a whole universe experience around us. In the depth of despair adding to something of the bigger whole in terms of what we can learn from it. In the whole perspective, it is a collective consciousness like an enlightenment – it’s less painful if we accept it and see it from a faraway. As an observer in – allowing life to be and allowing life to look after itself.
In the ‘being’ without as, one of the major barriers to ‘Being,’ – is the shit in our head – all the beliefs we are conditioned to have all the things people fight, judge – creates a suffering and causes us not to connect and is placed in our heads.
If we come to the heart or body it doesn’t matter. When you come here to the heart – other people have described it as love – I think that is love. Other people might say its God – it’s kind of a “knowing” in fact. There is less of a need for a word for it, “just is”. Easier to connect if we give it a word – like Love or life if we give it a word….connect to it.
What happens to you in that love and life? If you were looking at me probably very little (LOL), it’s just ‘being’ – it’s peaceful, from that space you can connect to all of life, I might cry or have joy – it’s joy. Some might get it from using drugs – it’s just joy. How do you take it to connect to others – head always pops in back in and takes over and it’s a journey of learning to be present. I come back to a presence in the body, that is the door in.
I can listen and hold what comes? How to reconnect? Once you become aware you are not the voice in the head, to notice your thoughts rather than be your thoughts. I don’t know how that happens but awareness is there, I am not sure I do anything – becoming aware – so much suffering being attached or identify with the shit in your head – once aware not connected and there is a distance – you’re observing own thoughts – observing own states. Can’t tell why or explain it. But that awareness somehow does not leave you again – need trust or faith that it will stay with you. Being present to it and allowing it. It’s like an energy to describe it with a word.
I Do Not Need To Take It With Me – It Is There With Me
Are we being in it now – in it – we radiate – how do we take that with us? It is really interesting – how to we take it with us? It is interesting I believe we don’t need to take it with us. We don’t need to take it with us – as it is always there. It’s about tapping into it. That to me is love and life and we can’t un-see it. The head can distract us from it and we can escape using other things. When it’s with you, how do you share it with others? I don’t think I need to. How to share it or enable others to experience it – is to just be in it. There is a presence by being in it. I am embodying the energy for them. Holding them there in the energy, I bring it there.
A present space love and life is always there – just need to be aware of it – being in itself whilst we are working with people helps them learn to connect to it, see it and learn strategies to distance ourselves from what’s in our heads. In sessions can people learn to be in it. Learn strategies to distance themselves from their heads.
Meeting Our Pain With Love Is Transforming
In that space – are we giving our distress a love? – Is it giving a loving space and a presence – being there being held for it to be allowed? Fixing it by being in it, being held without rejection. Being held in this space is allowing. Is it Heart of Connection? Yes. If the work doesn’t connect from heart to heart absolutely – if there is not an awareness of this then it is not going to be as powerful.
Meet them in their suffering absolutely and connect to the heart of our own suffering for us to be able to do any work that is healing – you need to experience the process to at least some extent, otherwise, it says at a head level.
There is a lot of meaning about the Heart of Connection already coming from the story. There is a lot of meaning from the story about the Heart of Connection. What does the Heart of Connection mean and what would your message be for Heart of Connection – yeah the Heart of Connection? It takes me into my head, as I am trying to think about it. What happens in your body when I ask that question – well have to go into my body to check with that (LOL) – just being present in the silence – being – deep listening to self and all that’s around you – the therapeutic silence which is very powerful and like a deep listening.
Mind Empty, Heart Full – The Word Mindfulness Takes Me To My Head
The habit of the head can be anxious about too much silence. Just be present to what unfolds will unfold. How would people get there? They get there in different ways and to discover what works for them. Like being connected with animals – this can be really calming to look at it or be with it. For others it could be meditation – observe and aware of how much nonsense is in my head – walking in the bush gets me out of my head it’s a bit like going to church for me – practice being in the presence and being in the heart. I don’t like word mindfulness as it takes me to the mind full, for me. For me, it is mind empty heart full.
I guess with my experience of humans we have all have endless varieties of trying not to feel and not connect to the heart for fear of pain – the pain becomes something else and its healing and it’s mostly the head that says do it’s the head that says don’t get there. Does the pain get your love? Yes. Does the pain heal? The pain becomes something else, I think it becomes a teacher. Or sometimes it can be someone else’s pain and can be unbearable because it is unbearable for the person we are with. More unbearable when it’s in our heads. When we connect to heart it becomes bearable as can dissolve it – through feeling through it leads to a real connection to self. It facilitates the growth of more compassion for Self. We can come to a place of love through that pain.
Does it change our vibration to give back to Mother Earth? I hope so.
Heart of Connection Gives Back To Mother Earth
Through our Heart of Connection can we give back to Mother Earth? Friends who might have a bleak view of the world despite what we’ve talked about and how good that is. If we don’t get there as a human species we’ll go extinct. I don’t think it will be worst scenario life will still exist. It might be a step back in conscious awareness and we are not – there is so much life that is significant ……that lives on……
I remember in a beautiful spot in outback called Trephina Gorge near Alice Springs and in this canyon sitting in the dry river bed and looking at and have a real awareness of how insignificant we are – no matter how much we stuff up we won’t destroy life, it will continue on. We are killing a lot of life around us and it is incredibly sad but we are not going to destroy all of life. It sounded like you were part of it? Yes, I was in it, as part of it. We are sitting here in body but we are more than that. We are spirit just as much, that spirit is like a love.
Thank you, Marjan. I really appreciated the opportunity to listen as you shared your story.