No intention of stopping teaching

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For those of you who have asked or wondered, now that I am pregnant, I have no intention of stopping teaching, holding meetings or residential intensives. However, I will of course slow down and stop all the traveling for a period from February until August 2015 (I am due in May). During these few months break I will continue to offer online courses and sessions, as long as I can. Before we stop traveling, the last 10 day Intensive will be in Portugal in January. Then after the break, in August 2015 we plan to hold some meetings in Europe and also a 10 day intensive in France. From there onwards, Robert and I will just see how things unfold once we have the little addition to our team.

A Little Secret….

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We have been holding on to a little secret for the past few weeks… I’m pregnant! Now 16 weeks. We are so happy, and now happy to share the news with you.
Photo by Emily Goodman Photography

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Dancing on the surface

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Many so-called seekers are dancing on the surface, tasting many flowers, but never really courageously dive deep into what is real right here now. This comes from a idea that “something ‘more’ might satisfy me one day if I keep looking out there”. It is an endless agitated energy that will never be satisfied. It will always be looking for the next fix. If you really want to explore what is true, at some point you need to stop and feel what is here, instead of continuing to dance to the next flower. Feel that agitated energy when it comes up, rather than just blindly following it.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

Simply Enjoying Life As it is

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A question came up in the from a man in the recent meeting in Totnes: ‘People ask me what my passion is, and I don’t feel that I have one. I like doing a bit of this and that, and enjoying the simple things in life (like a beatutiful sunset), but I don’t have a great passion. Is there something I’m doing wrong?’
It seems that there is a great pressure, particularly on men, but also women, in our society to be achieving something special and becoming someone great. Simply enjoying life as it is, is not considered to be enough. There is nothing wrong with being passionate about life just the way it is. When all goals and great achievements are seen to be essentially only coming from a sense of agitated dissatisfaction, and to never bring ultimate fulfillment, then all you are left with is the ordinary daily human stuff of life. You may get involved in achieving or creating something but, you take it lightly, knowing that no matter what happens, you are already enough as you are.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

Stepping into the Unknown

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When you admit that really you don’t know how to live this human life, then the burden of covering it all up and pretending you know or need to know, doesn’t need to be carried anymore. This is very liberating in itself. Thought no longer needs to play the role of being in control of it all. It is freed up to be used as a tool, to offer logical, rational suggestions, or to remember or imagine. But it is no longer believed to actually be the master of this Life. Thought is finally allowed to be the servant that is it’s nature to be. It is this liberation of thought that brings great relief, lightness and freedom. No longer believing that thought has all the answers leaves no position to stand in. Without relying on thought to run the show, there is only the wide open space that is filled with whatever is here now. Nothing is excluded, whether it is considered to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘dark’ or ‘light’. It is all included in this open free-fall. There is no rule book or model to follow. You step into the unknown, moment to moment, and feel it all as it is.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

Do you want to be a teacher?

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Every so often I get another email from someone asking my advice about how they can become a ‘teacher’. It seems that some spiritual seekers believe that once they get ‘it’, then the natural consequence of that is to become a ‘teacher’. I invite these people to look at their real motivation for, first of all, the getting ‘it’, and then also why they would care to start teaching.
When I look at my own motivation for starting this expression more than 10 years ago, I know that it was the last thing I wanted to do. My main motivation was, and still is now, to wake up out of the dream of thought, and explore what is true in myself, in the most honest and real way. I never saw myself as a teacher and had no idea that anyone needed to be taught anything that they don’t already know. I had no interest in enlightenment or any other spiritual concepts. I started expressing the truth of how it is, because after a lifetime of suppressing life energy in believing that there was something missing or wrong with me, Life itself needed to express what had not been expressed. This has changed over the years, and now is much more of a full expression that has evolved through life experience, but the motivation is still the same – to explore and express what is true in the most honest and real way.
So if you are willing to admit to yourself that your secret fantasy is to become a spiritual teacher, I ask you to look really honestly at what you want to get out of it.
In my own experience, being a so-called ‘teacher’, has only ever been about exposing my own raw vulnerability and endlessly losing more and more of what I thought I knew. In this love of truth, there is no possibility of hiding behind a spiritual teacher persona or any other role. Sitting in front of a group of people, and acknowledging that I don’t know, and seeing how in this not-knowing, all the real knowing is in each one of us.
And contrary to popular belief, certainly in my experience anyway, being a ‘teacher’ is a terrible business model….

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

A Teacher or Facilitator

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People will either put so-called ‘teachers’ up on a pedestal position, or will crash them down and trash them. Both are an illusory, and both are a way of not meeting directly whatever is here.
Although it does seem that I am teaching, or rather facilitating, something, the message is really about seeing through any boundaries or positions, including my own.

If you really have a passion for the truth, you will question any and every position that you find yourself protecting or defending.

It is an endless losing any position that you think you are standing in.

I have no choice but to live like this myself and it leaves nothing to hold on to. Absolute vulnerability, and endless humility (and even humiliation). Being open to being touched by it all. And simultaneously, the knowing that the whole thing is simply a play of itself.

I find myself playing the role of the facilitator for people in their exploration into the truth of who they are. And every time I sit with someone, the truth is that they are always me. It is always an exploration into myself, and every person is always playing it out in me. When it is interpreted by thought, it is misunderstood again and again, in one way or another. It is mistakenly assumed that it is about me as some kind of special person, or that it is about having some kind of special experience. But when it is recognised and resonated with, there is a meeting the wholeness of Life itself, beyond you or me, beyond all the words, concepts, boundaries, and positions.

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com

‘Being Triggered’

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argumentSometimes things get triggered or touched, and then it all feels so overwhelmingly important. You notice that you are being drawn into a certain familiar energetic dance that feels tense or painful, and yet has a certain exciting flavour to it. It is all so mesmerising and trance-like…
You watch yourself play out the childish games to try to get what you think you want, or need. The need to be right, or to maintain a certain position becomes more important than what is real. You watch yourself react from pain or fear, but the cover-up-games mask the desperate longing for a resolution to that pain or fear.

And at some point there is a break in the clouds. A moment when you realise that there will never be a satisfactory resolution to the story being told. A moment when it is suddenly possible to risk being honest about what is really felt or longed for. The pain is acknowledged. The embarrassment or humiliation is felt. The body shakes, cries or laughs. There is a seeing of the whole dance.

Nothing wrong has happened. None of it meant anything about you. It was simply an old friend that came to visit for a while, and then left. Don’t worry, they will be back again some day. There is no need to, or no point in punishing yourself for being entranced or reacting like that. In that moment you couldn’t do anything else. The possibility for honesty was simply not there at that moment. When it was, it was.

As you see in more and more situations that it is hopeless to try to find a resolution in a thought-story or belief, the more there is possibility for honesty with what is actually being touched. There is the endless discovery that there is never any real satisfying nourishment from being ‘right’ or from proving a point. Although it can be uncomfortable, the only real nourishment is in acknowledging what is really here.

Unmani, 13th April, 2014
www.die-to-love.com

An Endless Losing…

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Life is an endless losing, an endless unraveling of what you thought were, had or knew. Sometimes it is a sweet feeling of openness and ‘let go’, and sometimes it is a painful humiliation. But each time we see through an identity that we were desperately clinging to, we acknowledge our own absence.unravel

Being Strong

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Being strong does not exclude feeling vulnerable or scared. Being free does not exclude feeling caught up. Being who you are does not exclude any experience, because no experience means anything about who you are.