each one of us

Each one of us

is amazing to someone
is ordinary to someone
is loveable to someone
​i​s challenging to someone
is pitiable to someone
​i​s hiding something from someone
is vulnerable to someone
is a liar to someone
is a saviour to someone
is a mir​ror​ to everyone
is dear to someone
is pathetic to someone
is in need of someone
​is caring for someone​
is fearful of someone
is uplifting for someone
is a victim to someone
​i​s gracious to someone
​i​s witness to someone
​i​s a trigger to someone
​i​s a treasure to someone
​…​.
And ​t​hough each one of us just is,
we can’t be everything to everyone.
That’s just the multiplicity of being​,​
human.

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Nature vs. Nurture: For All My Relations

The vasectomy––what I call my V-Day––marked a new chapter in my life story. And it’s an unapologetic HIStory. I was very ware that a vasectomy is so much different than using contraception. Seeing the smoke rise from my burning vas deferens solderised a new recognition and acknowledgement of my maleness.

As a baby, I was adopted and later raised as an only child by two lesbian partners, who I call “my moms”. I have a great relationship with my adoptive dad (who is sterile and why he and my mom adopted) who has always been in my life (along with his wife). I have a very good relationship with my biological family: brothers, parents, grandparents, et al. I have had a lot of caregivers. I have a lot of family.

I have never felt to have a child, to be a parent—or at least not biologically. When I was old enough to be aware of my egoic self, I considered that such a desire would be stemming from my mind, and therefore not entirely trustworthy. And so I stayed open to the possibility that a desire to have a child may be born out of a relationship/couple/union that would be the wellspring from which a heart-based manifestation could offspring—a child born out of abundant love.

At 40, I closed that option. I had yet to have that shared desire with any partner. True, I’ve never been in a relationship for longer than two or three years. Nevertheless, I remained open. Of course, 40 is not that old. I had many years ahead in which that shared love could birth a desire to have a child. Yet, apparently I was ready for a different human experience.

Closing the door to the possibility of having a child does come with a certain chagrin. I won’t have that very basic of human experience, parenthood. I’m not alone in that, for sure, and yet I share here the context for this long-considered choice.

A Human Experience

Before my vasectomy—what I have come to call my V-day—I revisited the genealogical work that my biological maternal grandmother so generously and laboriously created in the form of a family tree album. As I traced with my finger the names of my ancestors as far back as the early 1700s, I imagined all the reasons they wanted to have children. I honour their decision with supreme gratitude in recognition that I am one of the direct benefactors of whatever inspired them to create more life. Perhaps optimistically, I imagine that it was love above all.

In the album is a photo of me at three months old. It’s a precious image, perhaps the only one of me in the care of a family who fostered my nascent being from when my biological mother gave me up to the family that would later adopt me. A ghost-like sadness arose as I considered that an infant such as this, like me, in my likeness, won’t be appearing. This image—me—has chosen that this will be the end of a line in this genealogical fractal.

Seed Carriers

Before V-day, a lover expressed sadness when I told her about the approaching procedure. She would have carried my seed, she tells me. She would have, alone, raised a child that I provided the seed for, as if I were to give away a cutting of my own branch. All I could say, from a place of reason, is that we are planting seeds all the time, be they genetic or not.

In one generation, there will be 9 billion germinated seeds, all in various stages of maturity. The human family flourishes. The tree is enormous. Perhaps my vasectomy is a sort of pruning. Yet it’s not that what could have come from me is unwanted. I trust that the creative energy that manifested me will swell and collect and that the foliage and flowers—albeit sterile—will be as colourful and abundant as can be, even though this particular branch will not extend any further.

I don’t have strong opinions about menopause, impotence, contraception, infertility, abortion, etc., yet I imagine being able to relate to those who are not having children—be it by choice or not (for example, my mom later had a tubal ligation). My family tree is comprised of branches that have no direct biological connection as well as those that do. I have been living the nature/nurture binary all my life as well as exploring the theories of attachment. The constellations of what ‘family” is to me are pretty unique and my relationships—with family members, friends, romantic partners—are somehow anarchical as a result.

The Will of One

The V-day marked a new chapter in my life story. And it’s an unapologetic HIStory. I was very aware that a vasectomy is so much different than using contraception. Seeing the smoke rise from my burning vas deferens solderised a new recognition and acknowledgement of my maleness.

I identify as cisgendered. And the cauterisation of one of the most male of parts brings to my contemplative mind how we co-create our reality, not just together but in concert with the larger divine will. My considered choice to halt, from me, the flow of new prospective humans is somehow a very male-willed act. It is my personal will. And I’m a male-bodied person.

I’m tempted to describe this act as a responsibility, though this may be interpreted as a moralistic stance. In any case, I think that my vasectomy is just as much a contribution to the human environment/story as is having offspring. I take responsibility for my choice to not be a progenitor by taking care of all my relations.

As I, as an adult, came to know my biological family, I realise that there was and is great care in having allowed this seed to germinate.

It was nature.

As one who was adopted, the many members who I know as family all took great care of me.

I was nurtured.

As one who is maturing amongst many trees in many places, I thank you for being part of my family.

May we nurture each other.

It seems to be a natural thing to do.

 

 

 

 

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inspired being

“All you need to do is breathe. The teachings will come. Immerse yourself. There may not be a certificate at the end, but not everyone taking a plane needs to learn how to be the pilot.”

inspire: (1) fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative ; (2) inhale

Je dis en français : «laissez-vous être inspirés».

A direct translation may be “Let yourself be inspired.” This play on words doesn’t have the same affect in English. Even though ‘to inspire’ has the same meanings, English-speakers rarely use it that way, it would be better said “Let yourself be breathed.”

 

Teacher in Training

I get asked this a lot : Do you train other facilitators?
My answer is: no, not now.

My reason has many parts. The main part is that it is not, at this moment, my highest calling. Yes, I have, by now, 6+ years experience with a sample size of 2000+ participants in small group contexts. And I LOVE sharing my learnings with the breath, whether in a personalised therapeutic sessions, initiatory discoveries in group ceremonies, or ceremonies with teachings in the Immersion (retreat) context. But training others to be facilitators? Not now. I’m still learning myself.

I imagine that if I had poured as much energy, time, and resources into my breathwork practise in the last 3-4 years as I had other work, maybe I’d have developed a training programme, or been more involved with the International Breathwork Foundation, or maybe have written a book like Dan Brulé and Giten Tonkov (which are great, by the way). No, I haven’t yet contributed to the breathwork world in these ways. My focus has been on my other passion and sense of right livelihood, what I call the Breath of Five. Nevertheless, conscious connected breathwork has always been at the core of all my lessons and continues to be the core of all my teachings. Indeed, as I embody the breath-as-medicine, I am able to translate and transmit how the breath is the ultimate teacher.

And so I have let the breath inform, infuse, and influence everything I offer. The primordial nature of this modality is inspiration enough. Because it is practically synonymous with life itself, the breath doesn’t have a trademark: Essence, Transformational, Biodynamic, Holotropic, Clarity, Rebirthing….

I AM the breath.
You are the breath, too.
And it needn’t have a name.

Embodiment and continual offerings, both in individual therapeutic contexts as well as ceremonial, are my contribution to the world of breath work. I have been inspired by and I bow to the teachers and leaders who have taken charge of training other teachers. Teacher and trainer need not be the same thing, however. I pay tribute to those from whom I have learned by continuing to breathe others. That continuation is my contribution.

I’m a tributary. This is how I currently teach.

All you need to do is breathe. The teachings will come. Immerse yourself. There may not be a certificate at the end, but not everyone taking a plane needs to learn how to be the pilot.

Enjoy the ride.

Let it take you to your destination.

Let yourself be breathed.

 

 

 

 

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s’entraîner à mourir

“Bien mourir
c’est permettre au souffle
de faire irruption en soi
C’est laisser le mouvement
devenir pur jeu
et accepter d’être rempli
par une chaleur vibrante
par un repos pénétré de clarté
L’ange de la mort invite
à une vie exempte
de toute résistance.”
Qu’est-ce qui nous empêche d’évoluer de façon plus satisfaisante et plus digne?
Peut-être la peur.
Si tel est le cas, de quoi sommes-nous le plus effrayé(e)s?
Peut-être avons-nous peur de l’événement qui sera la fin de notre expérience terrestre, la fin de notre expérience de perception, la mort.
Quand nous mourons, qu’arrive-t-il? Est-ce que quiconque aura un jour une réponse définitive à cette fameuse question?
J’ai envie de répondre: oui.
J’ai été témoin de plusieurs centaines de morts. Pas en tant que secouriste, urgentologue ou soldat. Je fais plutôt référence à la mort de l’ego. Le concept nous paraîtra parfois remâché; il est vrai qu’il a été récupéré à toutes les sauces, et que nous en sommes venu à le considérer presque comme un cliché. Mais il n’est pas question ici de ces petites morts de l’ego que nous expérimentons sur le chemin vers nous-même; celles-ci sont en effet toujours partielles, ou relatives. Je parle plutôt d’une expérience directe et complète, je parle d’une molécule très particulière qui a le pouvoir d’aider notre ego à mourir, mais cette fois totalement.
De quoi nous libérons-nous quand nous mourrons? Qu’est-ce qui meurt? Qui meurt?
Dans la mort, quelque chose cède. Quelque chose est libéré. Qu’est-ce que c’est? Et bien, entre autres choses, toutes ces peurs qui constituent une grande partie de notre identité — consciente ou inconsciente. Toutes ces barrières qui ont été mises en place pour nous protéger de l’inconfort, du malaise, ou pour nous retenir, nous empêcher… d’évoluer.
Et si nous pouvions, en toute intentionnalité, se libérer momentanément de cette structure érigée par l’ego? Même si c’est pour y revenir ensuite.
Mais revenir d’où?
Nous avons peut-être entendu des histoires d’expériences de mort imminente. Nous avons peut-être accédé à l’extase, à la félicité, à la joie transcendante. Tout cela est difficile à mettre en mots. C’est en fait impossible à mettre en mots, parce qu’il s’agit d’expériences intraduisibles, incommunicables.
Mais nous pouvons tenter de qualifier cet état, cette aise — une aise réelle — cette grâce tranquille de l’être, cette essence sauvage, cette innocence qui existe par-delà tout programme. Nous pouvons parler d’une amnésie qui se dissout pour laisser place à la réminiscence de ce que nous sommes, de ce que nous avons toujours été. Toutes les parties de nous-même que nous croyions perdues, et dont l’absence créait en nous cette douloureuse impression d’être brisé(e), désuni(e), partiel(le), à la dérive, se rassemblent pour reformer notre être en ses qualités originelles: compassion, joie, présence aimante, pardon, curiosité, empathie, gratitude, grâce…
Lors d’une expérience de libération complète avec la molécule divine, la mort — l’expérience directe de tout ce qui est — révèle ces qualités de telle façon que nous pouvons faire tomber les conditionnements, déprogrammer le soi. Mourir dans le Tout, dans l’Un. Une occasion de s’y exercer…
Mais est-ce que le simple fait d’inhaler cette molécule est suffisant pour intégrer ces qualités? Non. Par contre, alors que nous sommes libéré(e) de notre existence fragmentée, elles nous sont révélées.
Cette vie terrestre est parfois agitée, domestiquée ou engourdie par un monde qui nous sépare les uns des autres autant qu’il nous sépare de nous-même. Dans ces circonstances, une expérience directe de l’unité nous fera sans doute l’effet d’un antidote. C’est là que la molécule divine révèle toute la puissance de son potentiel. Le phénomène est transpersonnel, trans-humain. En réintégrant ensuite nos repères humains, nous réalisons que nous avons la possibilité de choisir consciemment cette expérience humaine et d’accepter son idiosyncrasie, c’est-à-dire les paramètres inhérents qui la composent.
Et quel genre d’être humain voulons-nous être? Pas un être humain qui s’accroche à la vie par peur de la perdre, espérons-le. Plutôt un être humain ouvert à l’idée que la vie est là pour être vécue, et que ceci inclut: être pleinement humain.
Merveilleusement humain.
Sentir toutes les sensations.
Avoir toutes les pensées.
Savourer toutes les expériences que cette vie a à nous offrir. Mais surtout, savourer entièrement l’ici-maintenant, car c’est ici et maintenant que l’expérience d’être un humain se révèle et se déploie.
Le moment présent est éternel. La mort ressemble à cela, je dirais. Intouchée par le temps. Atemporelle. C’est l’ego qui crée le temps. Par le corps, nous pouvons accéder à la présence. L’esprit fabrique du temps sans arrêt. Le corps, quant à lui, est une porte vers le présent. À travers lui, nous y accédons momentanément. Mais dans la conscience infinie, le moment présent foisonne en toute éternité.
Je n’essaie pas ici d’embellir la mort, ou de la rendre glamour. Pas plus que je ne souhaite la rendre profane. Elle est sacrée. Elle est réelle.
Avec tout mon respect, j’entre en lien avec la mort, et cela a pour effet de m’emplir de révérence pour la vie.
Ceci n’est pas une aventure à prendre à la légère.
Ceci nous ouvre à la possibilité d’incarner une liberté de vivre. Laisser tomber les armes et exister dans cette vie sans être miné(e) par la peur de tout perdre. Ramener ici, avec nous, en nous, ces qualités divines auxquelles chacun de nous a accès, et cultiver ces qualités de manière à modeler notre expérience sentie. Parce que c’est ici et maintenant, et avec ce corps, que nous ressentons les choses. Ce corps sauvage et éphémère.
Car nous sommes sur terre.
Je pratique la mort pour inviter le paradis sur la terre.
S’agit-il de l’illumination?
Je ne sais pas mais, à force d’apprendre à mourir, je sens que tout s’illumine!

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a practice in dying

“If you would die well, permit yourself to fill with the rush of breath, playful movement, stirring warmth, and the clarity of rest. The angel of death bares no harm to life unresisted.”

What blocks us from evolving in a more satisfying or dignified way?
Perhaps fear.
If so, what are we fearful most of?
Perhaps the event that would be the end of all our perceived experience, death.
When we die, what happens? Yes, that timeless question.
Will anyone ever know?
Yes, I would say. I have witnessed hundreds of deaths. Not as a paramedic, an ER doctor, or soldier. I’m speaking of the clichéd ego-death. And yet, not the ones we’re mostly familiar with—the relative ones. But one that comes so efficiently and completely with this particular molecule that can help us die.

What are we free of when we die? What dies? Who dies?

In death, something gives way. Something is released. What is it? Well, amongst other things, all those fears that form much of our identlty—conscious or unconscious. All those barriers that protect us from discomfort, or hold us back from… evolving?

What if we could intentionally be released from all that holds us back, only to come back.
Come back from what? We may have heard the stories of near-death experiences. We may have touched on transcendent joy, ecstasy, bliss. It’s all hard to put into words. It can’t be put into words. It’s ineffable.

What’s not ineffable are the qualities that are linked with an ease—a real ease—of being, a wildness and an innocence that is beyond programming. Not so much a becoming something but maybe an un-becoming, a re-membering of all the disparate parts that would have us feeling broken and not whole.
What are these qualites? Compassion, joy, loving presence, forgiveness, curiosity, empathy, gratitude, grace….

In the full release with the god molecule, death—the temporary yet eternally accessible direct experience with all that is—reveals these qualities by way of helping us shed the patterned, conditioned self. Dying into the whole, into the One. It can be a practice.

Does taking this molecule just give us these qualities? No. However, it can reveal them as we’re released from the dismemberment of a life lived defended, unwitnessed, fragmented. A life sometimes agitated, other times sleepy, tame, perhaps numbed. Tamed by a status quo apparatus that is characterized by echelons of stratified society: separateness.
To separate us.
A sepparatUs.

Perhaps an antidote to this malaise could be a direct experience of unity. This is the reliable potential of the god molecule: it’s trans-personal, trans-human. And yet to be human—to be a cis-human—is to consciously choose to be that, to be here in that, to be here in that now.

And what kind of human do we want to be?
Hopefully not one that is clinging on to life for fear of losing it. Hopefully one that is open to the idea that life is here to be lived and it includes being fully human.
Beautiful human.
Be-a-yoU-to-full, human.
Feel all the feels. Think all the thoughts. Embrace all that there is to be experienced. But first, embracing this experience that is happening right now.

The present moment is eternal. Death, I would say, is that. It’s uncensored by time. And the mind’s ego is the time machine. But the present moment is held. Held in this body—for awhile. And held eternally in infinite awareness.

I don’t wish to embellish or glamourise death. Or make it profane. It is sacred. It is real.
With all due respect, I engage with death to revere even more this life that is being lived.

This is no frivolous adventure.
This is about embodying the freedom to live in an undefended way, in a way that is not fettered by the fear of losing it all. Bringing those heavenly qualities we all have access to and the capacity to cultivate to the forefront of our felt experience.
Because we feel here, with this body.
This wild, ephemeral body.
And we’re on earth.
I practise death to bring heaven on earth.
Sounds like enlightenment?

I don’t know but,

as I learn to die well,

I en-lighten up!

 

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a storey beyond story

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"Enlightenment itself evolves. Even though the state remains absolute, the means by which humanity awakens as a totality has its own storyline within the maya [...] Every individual moves through progressive revelations before arriving at the ultimate Revelation....

read more