At home I lie down with an ice pack on my head, contemplating what had happened. I feel humbled and humiliated by the big impact that just a bit of fear can have on the outcome of events. At a glance you could argue that only minor mistakes were made. We shot the video, even though I notified the gym a bit too late the resistance that came up was addressed politely, and I almost lifted a badass weight. But if you look deeper and when I become more honest with myself we can see that there are some deep-rooted patterns at work.
Traveling light with a backpack full of enlightened ego
It is late at night on a Friday. I am alone and without a home. Not tonight and not for an entire year. My apartment is now the home of an expat. I will have to find home wherever I go this year. I am sitting in a cafe I carefully chose for it’s definitely […]
Eps 88: The Ego Is A Tricky Bastard
The ego is a tricky bastard. The ego goes around playing he is you, not only to the outside world but also to yourself. Many people can live a really long time without ever noticing or questioning this. But once you realize the some sort of imposter who tries to steer your vehicle in the way he thinks is best and that his way is not in your best interest al of a sudden the road becomes a lot more slippery.
Eps 63: The Deceptiveness Of Everyday Life
Pema Chödron is perhaps one of the most appreciated spiritual teachers in the world today. She is a very evolved human being. She is trained for many years by her teacher Chögyam Trungpa, the famous Tibetan master who brought us the Shambala Warrior teachings. So it is save to say that Pema Chödron is one of the most evolved warriors on the planet. And even this lady can disregard an appeal to her warrior persona, only minutes after having a profound experience of wanting to help others, mind you!
Eps 62: Why It Is Good To Bow
When you reflect on the concept of bowing I think it becomes quite clear how little bowing there is in our lives. There is a lot of resisting. We resist change, we resist influence, we even resist obviously good things like love, tenderness, open-heartedness and vulnerability. For our stubbornness is quite often not really serving us it is a good idea to learn to bow.
Eps 36: No Such Thing As A Half-Assed Warrior
Let me be clear, very few people ever arrive at that place, the place where the coward feels he has to scream. Most of us are comfortably ruled by the coward, he never has to raise his voice and there are no warriors in sight making his life difficult. Let me put it differently: if you don’t know what it feels like to have a terrified coward yelling at you every day he is the one steering your ship.
Eps 30: How To Become Less Arrogant
Your ego always wants to separate you from the rest. It is always comparing and likes to celebrate an ego party when it finds itself on the preferred side of the fence. Quite often the ego feels a lot of self-pity but now and then we can feel a good dose of conceitedness. Unless you have an ego like I used to have: then you can feel a lot of conceitedness all the time.
Eps 24: Why You Should Not Explore Human Conciousness
If you are contemplating the exploration of human consciousness: be warned. Indeed, turning the light inwards opens up a fascinating and revealing scenery. But it is also a very complicated and slippery path and very confusing at times, I feel. You will enter a different game, and need to stop the game that you have been trained to play until now. To complicate it further: most others around you will just continue playing the old game and treat as if you are still playing that game too
How to damage a valuable professional relationship in 25 minutes or less
Sometimes I semi-jokingly describe my job as sharing about all the fuck-ups and blunders I made in my life. There is some truth to that: I try to be as honest as possible and not paint a nicer picture of myself. I don’t want to present myself with a mask because I have learned that […]
A Remedy Against A World On fire
The world is on fire. Three days ago a plane filled with primarily Dutch tourists was shot out of the sky by pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine, a week or so ago Hamas and the IDF went to mini-war against each other and ISIS is doing their best to cause death and destruction in Syria and Iraq. Due to the new function on Facebook to play videos without clicking on them in combination with the many contacts I have in the Arab world and their habit to show death from close up I can now see beheadings and executions first thing in the morning, today combined with dead Palestinian children and the bodies and body parts of my countrymen in a desolate field somewhere in the Ukraine.