Praktijk Open Ruimte

19/12/2019

Ecology and mental health, one battle !

We zijn een groep psychiaters, psychologen, verpleegkundigen, sociale werkers en anderen uit de GGZ,

19/12/2019

Ecology and mental health, one battle !

25/05/2019

LYRICS Be yourself. Don't try to impress. Baby there isn't anybody else quite like you. Don't try to imitate. The universe doesn't make mistakes. Authenticit...

24/05/2019

LOVE'S DEEPER COMMITMENT~~
Let's not commit to a future together. The future is so unknown, and we are so fluid, and tired of pretending that we know.
Our thoughts and feelings are ever-changing, uncontrollable, like a wild ocean of love.
Our desires wax and wane; our dreams are born and die in every moment.
Let's not commit to a form of love. The forms are always shifting, like the tides.
We do not need security here. We are not seeking comfort, but Truth.
Let's make a deeper commitment; one that cannot be broken or lost.
To presence. To meeting in the here-and-now.
To bringing all of ourselves. To knowing, and letting ourselves be known.
To telling the truth, today; knowing that our truth may change tomorrow.
To bowing before each other, even if our hearts are broken and tender.
No promises, no guarantees.
Loving takes courage! Yes!
For love is a field, not a form. Let us commit to the field, remember the field in every moment of our precious days on this Earth.
In ten years' time, we may still be together. We may have children. We may live together, or live apart.
We may never see each other again. This may be our last day.
If we are honest, we really do not know; not knowing is our Home.
We may be friends, or lovers, or strangers, or family, or we may remain undefined, beyond narrative, our love unable to be captured in words.
Here at the edge of the known, on the line that once divided sanity from madness, and doubt from certainty, we play, we dance, we drink tea, we touch each other, we cry, we laugh, we meet.
We sacrifice comfort and predictability. But what we gain is astonishing: This tremendous sense of being alive. No longer numb to the mysteries of love, the mysteries of our bodies.
A little raw, perhaps. A little shaky. Maybe a little disoriented, but perhaps this is the price of being totally free.
Maybe an old part of us still seeks mommy or daddy, that Magic Person who will never leave, always be there, take away the loneliness repressed in our guts. Loving that frightened part too; bowing to that part too, but no longer being controlled by it.
And they will ask:
What about your future?
What happens if you have children?
How the hell do you define yourselves?
Why are you afraid of commitment?
Why do you run from security? Comfort? Future?
They will say you are crazy, or you don't understand love, or you are lost, or you are unloving and selfish, and you will smile, and understand their fear, for their fear was once yours, and you cannot abandon your path now.
And nobody has to walk with you. Ever.
At some point, only Truth will satisfy. A living Truth, renewing itself each and every moment, the wild Truth of the open heart.
When Love and Truth are One, when the Commitment is deeply rooted in the breath, we can finally face each other without resentment, and explode into the most melancholy sunsets, held in the most profound joy.
Walking alone, together, alone.

~Jeff Foster (www.lifewithoutacentre.com)

23/05/2019

AWAKENING FROM AWAKENING

This is a true story.

Once, at a conference, I watched a spiritual teacher
addressing a grieving woman whose precious young
son had just died.

Her world had just collapsed.
An old reality had shattered.
She said, "My heart is broken and raw".

He told her, "Your heartbreak is the activity of the separate self,
and therefore illusory, based in ignorance.
When the separate self dissolves,
there will be no more suffering.
In awareness, there is no death.
Awareness has no son."

He told her she needed to 'wake up'.
She needed to recognise herself as 'Pure Awareness'.
She was pretending to be a victim.
She didn't know 'who she truly was'.

And in that moment, I saw a deep sickness and inhumanity at the heart of much of our contemporary spirituality.

The invalidation and shaming of trauma,
the false promises, the power games,
and most of all, the suppression of the divine feminine.

Making our grief, anger, fear and joy a 'mistake' or some 'sign'
that we are not awakened enough, not spiritual enough,
not 'divine' enough in our embodied humanity.

The pathologising of our wildness.
The shaming of our fragility, our sensitivity.

Friends, if this is 'spiritual awakening', I simply have no interest.

Let us bow to our fragile, vulnerable humanity! Not run from it!
Let us bless our precious broken hearts! Not pathologise them!
Let us infuse our deepest human experience with empathy, understanding. See it for the miracle it is.
Send a curious, warm awareness deep into our wounds.

Not to mend, not to fix, but to feel!
Not to 'awaken', but to pe*****te and be pe*****ted
by love. The awakening of the heart. The remembering
of the magic we knew when we were very young.

Let us embrace our painful feelings.
Not see them as a 'sign' of our spiritual failure,
or our inability to manifest,
or our ignorance,
or our lack of strength.

Let us wake up from the old concept of 'awakening'.
Re-enchant the word itself, drench it with compassion.
Return to the sacredness in our humanity!
Let the Divine shine through our messy human hearts.
Bless them. Infuse them. Let them ache and be transmuted.

Meet each other in the fire of living.
Be present with each other
instead of trying to fix each other.

Say, "Yes my heart is broken and raw and you are my sister!"

- Jeff Foster

29/01/2019

Maybe calm is overrated.

29/12/2018

Met deze woorden en deze muziek wens ik iedereen een nieuw jaar van innerlijke rijkdom en diepe vervulling !

29/12/2018

Negen jaar lang mediteerde Hein Thijssen twee uur per dag in zijn kloostercel. Hij noemt ze nu de meest frustrerende uren van de dag.

15/12/2018

15/12/2018

❤️

14/12/2018

16/05/2017

17/03/2017

Jeff Foster on the myth of 'letting go'... LETTING GO Let go of 'letting go'. (And let go of not being able to 'let go'.) Simply let the moment go the way th...

31/01/2017

courtesy: mindset

22/01/2017

Never miss a talk! SUBSCRIBE to the TEDx channel: http://bit.ly/1FAg8hB In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized ev...

28/12/2016

Mentors Channel