A Spiritual Queer Transformation Journey

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I'm writing this post a week before I leave.

I had no intention what so ever to go on a 2-month journey 2 weeks ago.
It just happened to me, it was like the Universe said: nów you should do this.
I do not know the exact reaons why I will keep a blog, because I want to travel in as less stimulations (mail, Facebook, blogposting,...) as possible.
I guess it will be an online journal, a thinned out version of what I will write in my own private journal. I'm sharing the link of the blog on Facebook, so any of my friends can follow this if they want - without my journey spam on their Facebook wall :-).
I believe in energy's in many forms, and posting my blog on Facebook feels like it is not in the right energy, it feels like my spiritual energy would be dragged down. That is why I post it here.



How did this journey came to life?

First of all, I don't like to call it a vacation. I associate a vacation with going-away-time to relax, and it is something you plan to do beforehand out of your own will. As I said, two weeks ago I had no clue I was going to do this. I got the sign of the Universe, which I also experience as the Godess within me, to do this now. And although I plan to relax and feel life, I see it as a transformation journey now that I'm entering a new phase in my life.
So I am going to meditate, play, feel life's energy, look back on the past 1,5 years.
I plan to write a lot (most of all in private scrapbooks). And through rituals, through connections, through prayer to myself and the Universe (I seperate these here, but I experience the Universe, my inner self, God, the Godess,... as all the same thing). I will set my intentions for different theme's in my life.

So how do I know that I have entered a new phase, so obviously, and why do I do this journey?

Okay, enough blabla. Here's the tea (long story, you might take a cup of tea).

In the first 25 years of my life, I was asleep. I was not concious, aware, of the world around me. I let life happen, and I was happening with it, without steering my own boat, without being concious. I developed an anxiety disorder. I was given certain sickness-labels, which I was not able to cope with. They were my demons, and they took control over me.
I was diagnosed with HIV in 2009, and later I was diagnosed with bipolar disease (type 2). I ended up having crisisses every now and then (funny enough; in a crisis I traveled abroad). I crouched into a victim's possition, because I did not know how to handle it or how to be courageous.

In July 2017, during a crisis, I went to Munich.
I came back and got myself admitted into a psychiatric hospital, untill april 2018 (now I think about it, it'll be a year while I'm doing this journey).
There in the hospital, surrounded by my mentors, I was learning the basics of how I could live my life. I learned about acceptance, acceptance about myself and situations I could not control. I learned to face my demons and befriend them, so I can walk hand in hand with them. I learned to be couragious. I learned to love myself, and I experienced first-hand the difference between the connection with people when I did not loved myself and when I do.
I learned the basics of emotion regulation, I took a focus training (some kind of meditation combined with safely getting in touch with your inner demons), I learned to love myself, to accept what I can not control and be courageous.

When I left the hospital, I started listening to certain podcasts. I listened to a podcast where the name 'Eckhart Tolle' was mentioned every now and then. I was interested, so I bought his book 'The Power of Now' and I listened to him speak on podcasts and YouTube (he has a great series of his teachings on Oprah's Supersoul podcast).
Eckhart Tolle is also a mentor for me. I am a student of his teachings and they resonate greatly for me. The same goes for Brené Brown, talking about vulnerability and daring greatly.
I read about buddhism, and I find a lot of teachings in it that I work with.
I got in touch with queer paganism, and it works for me. Rituals, connection with nature and life, making intentions...

So now, I got the tools I learned and made them my own.

Then, in May 2018, I discovered my biggest influence of that year. I met my spiritual, romantic, sexual soulmate, who's name I shorten here with D. The 'relationship' I had with D. was not a "confirmed relationship", and that really is a good thing. We both had our experiences and feelings about exchanging love and feeling love, and we shook each others world. Thanks to his awareness, we never went into the classic (mono or poly) relationship.
We had a very unique, intense bond and saw each not as lovers, not as friend, but in a unique and intense bonding.



In November 2018, I started to do voluntary work in BlinkOut (https://www.blinkout.be/).
Thanks to this work, I connected with a lot of people on a spiritual level. With spiritual I mean, people who are aware of the world, aware of themselves, and have the courage to be themselves and see how the modern-day world is blatantly a severe cut through our human nature.
The people who come at BlinkOut have love for the human beings and the earth, and they all contribute in the world in their way.
And it is at BlinkOut that I met Catherine De Kesel, a life orientation coach who works with the Inner Compas. We talked intensly, and found out we resonated hugely on our shared visions on society. That we must find again our Inner Compas, because certain modern systems of the world are disconnecting us from the Compas.
I did orientation coachings with Catherine.
A HUGE thank you to Catherine.
Next to all the things I've learned from my mentors in psychiatry, Eckhart Tolle, Brené Brown and very much D., she gave me another 'tool'. It was a hidden treasure inside of me. I discovered my Inner Compas. It shows me how I root in life. It showed my trunk and my treetop. How I would be able to thrive and let my branches reach towards the sky.
In my last session with Catherine, 3 words came up. 3 words, as if they are my keywords of life in this moment. Safe place, discovery and heart connections.
I dared to speak out: I'm a traveller who loves to tell stories to bring people together.

The same week as I did my last session with Catherine, I was admitted again in the hospital. I spend two weeks at a very busy hospital ward, because I had a bacteria on my brain. It scared the shit out of me. I imagened getting paralyzed at my age, at a point in life I am beginning to live.
I wrote A LOT during those two weeks, and the writing was a foreboding of the intense writing I was about to do when I left the hospital...

I left the hospital.
And that Sunday, I met D.
We had a conversation, one of those that was going to happen anyway at some point, and we decided it would be the best for the both of us to take a big distance for a while from each other. I was still confused about the thing we had, and hadn't given it a place yet. And I needed this distance to give it a place.
I cried for two days. It felt like a break-up. I was very much in love with D. I have been in relationships in the past, but this thing with D. was different.
So I wrote. So intensly. I wrote 11 poems that are about our most intimate moments of the past 10 months.
And then I wrote a story about us. It's a metaphore about two children at the playground. And what the two children mean to each other, what a special bond they have. What role D. has for me.
D. has awaked Life for me. He let me connect with life energy's, nature. He showed me colors and let me smell the flowers. With D., I discovered the beautiful world for the first time, with him by my side. The last sentence of the story is the moment I realize I am now in the playground without D. by my side.

I have got my experiences of the past years.
D. will not be physically by my side anymore for now, but he is my dear friend who gave me the awareness of Life.

All the pieces come together:

- All the things I learned with my mentors in psychiatry;

- All the things I learned from mentors that are worldly known, like Eckhart Tolle, Brené Brown and buddism;

- What D. learned me.

- What my Inner Compass told me.



I needed to go on a journey. I am on my journey already, it's called my life.
But, I knew that I had to go into the world. Every piece of the puzzle fell in place.

So I arranged my practicalities. and I wrote about my intentions of this journey (which I listed at the beginning of this blogpost).

I will leave in very early hours of monday morning, the 1st of April. I travel to my Queer Pagan friends in the UK, in the South-West.
From the UK, I go to Portugal, where I will go to the Beltane Gathering of the Radical Faeries.
And from there, I might go to Spain, then France and then home. My only certainties are the UK and Portugal. The most imortant things are the heart connections and my intentions to enter this new phase in life.



Love and blessings,
Hans.

PS.: I'm writing this blog in English instead of my native language, Dutch, for obvious reasons. Sorry mum!

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