Why do we seem to talk constantly?

Especially being here in one of the most popular holiday destinations on earth I notice a lot of families from all over the world. They all have something in common - they all talk constantly. It’s almost absolutely non-stop chatter when a family comes to any site of attraction.

We as species seem to use language as a kind of bond between individuals so that we find our appropriate place in the pack. The talk is actually much more than the words. It’s also a kind of energetic and telepathic transmission. I see it almost like people are sending their energetical tentacles to probe others around if they are still in consensus with each other and whether some action is needed to restore the the status quo to ensure the survival of the family organism and therefore the individual. This happens on completely unconscious level of course.

I would say from my empirical observations that the average person is very much afraid of silence. Silence is very dangerous indeed. You combine that with some solitude and we will see a revolution in an individual.

Most people are afraid of silence because most people are completely dependant on group-consciousness or to put it even more directly THEY ARE IT. In other words their identity and attention is entirely tied to maintaining a personality which is the interface we use for having a place in the pack. We mould ourselves to suit the needs of the family and culture around us. We use language to check our position with our surroundings and in the violent history of mankind not being part of the consensus has been a danger for the individual’s survival. It always affects the whole pond when one jumps out of the water and makes waves. People in general don’t like that because it feels so safe and comfortable to go with the pack, always check with others what to do, where to work, what to wear, who to marry and when is it appropriate to have children.

So that’s why it’s dangerous to take time for yourself because doubts will come. Eventually all of your personality and habits will come to display in front of you and you will have to discern whether you want to keep it as yours, whether it’s really yours or was it indeed just something you picked up that had nothing to do with you in the first place. You will have to look at everything you believe in and especially who you take yourself to be and that, I would say, is the single most difficult thing a human being can ever do. You have to give up everything eventually when you go into aloneness and you will not find anyone to tell you what to do. People talk about freedom all around the world with very grandeous words but until one has let everything go, including every notion of him or herself all the talk of the freedom is just romantic ideal, a noble-sounding lip-service.

It all starts with silence.

Ps. I actually just googled to find some image to add to this blog and I put "alone" as the search word and all the result were depressed people wearing hoodies in some dark place. It's funny to observe this myth of aloneness being something terrible where one should never go. One should never be left alone and it's even considered noble that somebody should stay with another just so that they don't have to be alone with themselves. It shows how terrified we seem to be even about this notion of having to be alone. It's a myth that only the bravest of us go and see for themselves. Others just keep believing in stories and try to find even bad company not to face it.

Bali Diaries part 3 - Not just peaches and cream

I don’t know where to begin. It has turned out to be a very peculiar time for me in Bali so far. I paid for the house I was supposed to live in for the whole time I was going to be here, almost 3 months together. I thought that I will have such an easy living in paradise. No worries! When I came here the locks had been changed to the house and after 30 hours of traveling I had to deal with the owner and bunch of other people trying to find out what was going on. It turned up that it was far from certain and secure and I had to pay double rent and I still haven’t received back my money from the original payment from the lady who used to live there who is in fights with the land lord. It’s a long story that I don’t want to go any deeper into in public. I decided to move away from the house anyways and I’m doing that in a week from now to a really nice villa nearby and I’m really happy about that.

I also lost my paying card couple of days ago and I’ve been pulling strings together to cancel the card and to access my money in other ways and also to get the money back from the fucked up rental situation. I’ve been sleeping very little and making calls and going around talking to people and trying to arrange things so that I can manage without the card for a while until I get my secondary card to function. Thank god for the internet and amazingly wonderful people around!

In a way I actually enjoy the whole situation because it has placed me into a situation where I have to do one thing at the time because I cannot go ahead of myself. It keeps me alert and on my toes. I almost forgot this part of traveling. It makes me use my capacity to command energies and see what is my actual level of trust.. And I find it’s very good! Underneath the apparent chaos of the situation I feel immense trust that everything will be alright, how else would it be?

I feel gratitude for what I have still at these kind of moments. I find just the right people, the money has always come at the right moment and completely appropriate things happen. I feel one of the lucky ones more than ever now. Even if there is a lot on my plate I feel that everything is just fine. I still have enough money to do whatever I need to do when I need to do it. Something always turns up and I think to myself “hmm.. I’m seeing a pattern of here, It smells a little like abundance”.

Without for example the whole mess with the rent I would have never talked to a very nice lady from neighbour about my situation who happened to own a bunch of top-end villas and turned out I could move in and got a nice deal for it. It feels just perfect for me. Also without this whole experience I never would have known how much potential and possibilities I have for dealing with these kind of issues and now I know quite a lot about different payment methods and cheaper ways to send money which will certainly help me in my future travels and dealings with people from around the world.

You see how there is many ways of feeling about these kind of things and it all starts with what kind consciousness we bring to the equation.. or rather, how much do we limit ourselves with identity. If we have a story of being a victim of the circumstances that limits the options that we can see in any given situation. We give our own significance and meaning to everything. When I told these things to my father his reaction was “Oh, so much trouble and nuisance!” but I never really felt like that. I just feel that it is what it is because I can get an experience out of it. I can see myself from yet another perspective and it’s kinda fun. I get to see how I function in this kind of circumstances that are very different from what I would ever see back home. Underneath all the hustle I’m here and I’m aware of that and even if everything is taken away that cannot be taken away.

I can recommend traveling to a distant land for everyone if for nothing else then to experience some very unexpected and challenging situations that take you out of the usual comfort zone to see that you can see how magnificent you can be when it counts the most.

Enjoy the rainy days - Return of the natural creativity

I’m again sitting on my balcony and it’s raining. Oh, I love rain and how everything becomes cool and fresh. Too long time of just sun is getting a little boring. Things need to go to a kind of stand-still from time to time for everything to regenerate and rest. Too long time of sunshine and heat is exhausting and consuming. So both are needed to create a balance in nature. Plants will need the rains every once in a while or otherwise they will not have the strength and the juice to take full use of the sunny period. They need the sun for their growth and expansion but if there are no breaks in it then the roots cannot provide for the expansion and the plant will eventually dry up. 

You might have guessed that I’m not just talking about plants but it’s a very good symbol with us too. Our society is very external and we seem to live in our outer layer where our senses get stimulated by external influences and we often just run after every stimulus. We are addicted to having the input from our surroundings and our attention lies there almost the entirety of our existence and hence we also present our polished outer layer to the outside. That’s why we live in the culture of selfies and the social media is full of the things we have done and what’s going on in the surface. Maybe that’s why there is such an obsession towards having celebrities, famous people who’s sole contribution to humanity is to be all appearance and show up in different events and maintain a certain lifestyle and literally to have the same face that we use to create a nice little compartment for them in our heads. These celebrities go on doing plastic surgery which often leaves them looking like their faces have been made of rubber and you almost lose the touch with the fact that they too are humans who experience things in different ways and have their ups and downs. They are not constant, none of us are.

The focus on the outside appearance and outer experiences seems to leave us in a desperate comparison. Not a big surprise there was a study suggesting that social media can cause depression. We have objectified other people and they keep on holding this image in their social media updates. They tell what they have done and who they have been with and where and what food they ate and in what party they went to. It’s all a big show and leaves us to our imagination to fill in all the blanks of what they want us to think about them. This focus on the external leads us to need to always find a fix of acceptance and admiration and our actions start to be in line with this desperate seek for proof to justify our existence. We are afraid of the rain.

What is the rain?

The rainy day is time to be inside the house, alone and having enough time for ourselves to feel into ourselves from tip to toe, from outside to inside. Let ourselves know where we are going emotionally, physically, psychologically. It’s a time of contemplation and kind of stop from outside stimulus when we can rewire ourselves. There might be a fear and strangeness to this because our habit of craving for outside validation by our actions. It might feel like discomfort and fear of being alone but it’s very needed. It’s time to let the house of cards collapse and let yourself to feel all the layers and parts of yourself that are ignored in the pursuit of things to do and experiences to get and memories to accumulate. 

It’s also a great chance to learn to express yourself in a new way. Usually the flow of energy is trying to get something from the outside and put it inside to fill the void, not to feel so empty and dissatisfied but this is the return of the natural creativity where the energy comes from the inside and expands outward. It’s sharing of what we have plenty of. In fact our nature is creator itself and it’s the joy of being that brings the expression. If you look at it from this energetic point of view the search for external stimulus to fill us up actually creates a cork for our natural creativity because you are trying to shoot the gun at the same time as you are stuffing it full with all sorts of rubbish. It’s not meant to work like that, it’s just simply not the nature of things. I have come across many interviews with musicians who go into making an album and state that they simply cannot listen to music of anyone else when they are in the process.

We need the rainy day sometimes to just be with ourselves in whatever is going on so we can integrate and accept back parts of ourselves what the very limited focus on our social mask doesn’t have space for. The mask can come back on later when it’s needed but it’s important to take the time to let it dissolve again and let your internal spring come alive once again. Stop holding the identity on the most superficial layer.  It starts it’s flow from the inside and will fill you up with joy when it does. The natural thing then is to share it because it’s not yours to keep. It’s a gift from existence itself.

Enjoy the rainy days :)