My person and my being

On the one hand there is the person that is living this life, trying to make something of it, among all the other people.

And on the other hand there is the aware being that just is – a conscious being sitting in the middle of a black sea of non-being and annihilation.

The two of them, the person and the being, are desperately looking for support and trying to find their way back to one another.

What if I could rely on my body to integrate the person and the being? After all, my body is the one that feels the presence of both the person and the being at the same time. It can feel their conflict and it can feel how they are already intertwined. Maybe my body can help my mind, so together they can incorporate everything at once, maybe they will even hold my soul?

Life comes with a lot of feelings

The thoughts and the visuals I have in my head are sometimes chaotic and vivid, other times dark and disturbing. And the emotions and the sensations I experience in my body are a lot to take. Everything just needs a way out but I don’t want to block it out. I want to process things and also live my life and move through the world. So that I remember who I am and what I care about.

I think what is saving me the most in this way is art, consuming it and creating it. Moving my body and spending time in nature helps too. But if it is only sports and no art, it can also be a distraction, a running away from what I don’t want to face. Nature can bring me peace. And art is what allows me to feel deeply, feel pain, fear and relief, feel sadness and joy. Art allows me to turn it all into life, I get to release what I needed to let go of and I get to hold on to what I needed to embrace. In this way, art, like my body, helps both the person going through life and the aware being. Any expression of my inner world, whether by painting, writing or dancing, just reminds me that I am alive right now, as a person but also as a being.

I feel quite alone in my experience of existence

The person in me doesn’t necessarily feel lonely going through life. But the aware being in me feels very lonely and misses connection with others about our existence. In fact, the being in me doesn’t even feel the presence of other beings – it is like they are all hiding – so it is in search of connection. Possibly in a rational and theoretical way by discussing and learning and analyzing, but definitely in an emotional way by sharing and intensely feeling and processing. This is part of the reason why I am writing down my journey. Hopefully I can reach some people, some beings, who are also struggling and searching. I understand that I will have to find my own path for myself. But hopefully I won’t be the only one looking.

Some hope

I am still on a journey. I do not have life figured out. But luckily, from time to time, I am able to pinpoint some things that seem to bring me closer to embracing life more fully and it just gives me hope, almost a confidence that I might just find a more doable, a more livable, way forward. When I somehow make space for supporting both the person and the being inside of me and for integrating them, I feel like I am moving in a direction that I want to be moving in and I can almost appreciate life and love while also taking in the often still unspoken realities and have somewhere to go with my pain and my fear.