journey of the body, journey of the soul

photo by Cas Berentsen

​When he kindly asked me to go back “in time” to where I come from, I was confused.
There is no time to go back into, there are only other dimensions.

I could feel myself going back through 3-dimensional realities (why do we call them dimensions? 3-dimensional dimension? 4-dimensional dimension? Realities, that's a better world).

They are many and I was looking forward to going to that one, you know, the light and everything, where we all come from and where we go when we die.

In the same time, my poor body was getting really uncomfortably cold, like every time I am trying to pull back.
Wait!
​Who is the me pulling back from my body?

Gently, he called me back to the experience, asking me where I was.

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I came to him for answers.
Life is very painful for me.
In the same time, I have a very big attachment to it. I do not want to step out of it.
​I am not that afraid of death but afraid of the pain before death. 
​
I thought about suicide lots of times. Not that I would do the physical deed, I do not see it as necessary. That’s partly because I somehow know - without knowing it - that if I think about it enough, things will come that could kill me.
And up until this very moment, I never saw the connection between how heavy my life was and my hidden big desire to be free from it.

You see, death was really, really close many times until now.
And every time it was.. it was beautiful. Not the perspective of the passing itself - or the danger - it’s not like that. I am no adrenaline junkie. But the force that I felt - that had to get through it, through the experience, to get to the other side of the experience without stepping out of life. It may have been gruelling for the body but felt good for the soul.
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photo by Cas Berentsen

...Like that time when I was 15.
We were in a camp, in a mountain cabin, with maybe 30 high school colleagues. We were hiking on what were to be my favourite mountains, the Apuseni.
​
It’s wild there. You think you know where you are and suddenly, when you step out of the path, it's like you find yourself in another world. Temperature changes sometimes dramatically just from one step to the other. There are cages everywhere..
(Wow. What did I just say?) There are caves everywhere. (That’s what I was going to say). Beautiful cages (OMG I said that again, didn't I) - caves that is, some of them high, some very low, fascinating - and very, very  scary for me (as I feel very claustrophobic in them).

That particular day there was a football match, the boys in the group wanted to see it on this small black and white "Sport" tv.
Somehow part of the girls decided that we wanted to go on a short trip and the guide had to go with us.
He was a quite old, very (physically) shortsighted man, with very thick-glass glasses and - maybe only with us - very grumpy.

Maybe that day he was extra grumpy to have to “take care of us” - it was his job - while our teacher, Mr. Pisica (yes, his true name) and the other boys were watching football. The fact is, any attempt from my part to talk to our guide or ask him questions, were met by short and snappy answers or by pretending he did not hear me.
He also did not answer when I asked him whether we left the signs path on purpose - because I loved to spot these little mountains signs.

We left the cabin with short trousers and short sleeves t-shirts on - it was for a small walk for only the duration of the football match (which I was proud to know it was 45 minutes plus 15 minutes break, plus another 45 minutes play). It was played abroad so it was in the middle of the day. The idea was that we will be back for another short trip with the whole group after the match had ended - and before dinner.

I don’t remember exactly how but at one point the guide admitted that we were completely lost. It was probably because of the girls whining that they are tired and hungry. We were at this point walking for more than a few hours and we wanted to get back home. Our legs and arms were hurt by the jungle-like vegetation of the mountain - because there was no path where we were walking. By that point we had nettle stings almost everywhere.

I strangely liked the adventure. Though I was a bit scared about the “being lost” part, I also secretly liked that I was “lost” for the first time in the mountains. (I had been lost before) I also thought, well, this guy is not for nothing a guide in these mountains, how lost could we be?
I began to have an idea about the "how lost" part when he told us we will have to walk upstream through this strong and very cold mountain river. He told us to hurry because it was almost evening and we would not want to be in the forest at night. He told us that he was sure that the river was the shortest way to somewhere he could recognise.

By this time, some of the girls were crying. I was kind of grinning-smiling and could not stop  (this would be a what I always considered a very stupid and irritating pattern of mine while facing extremely dangerous situations). To hide my grin I was the first to get in the water and start walking upstream.

I took my shoes off. I thought it was a good idea to not wet them. Some of the girls followed my example - only to walk a few meters with shoes in our hands and fall into the river because of the slippery rocks and the fast stream. Clothes wet, shoes wet, some of the shoes started floating downstream.

I was quite ahead in the mean time, following closely the guide who at one point disappeared from sight around one rock corner. I decided to go back and look for some of the girls's shoes. I sat on one wet rock in the middle river and put my shoes on - because we were now in a place where the river had carved directly through the rock, left and right were only high rock walls and no shore. With shoes on I was faster so I tracked the floating shoes and brought them back to the girls.

It seemed mind boggling to me that our guide would leave us there - even if he was looking for a path. I could feel my legs almost frozen. In the cold water up to my waist, I could see part my legs bleeding but could not feel anything. The same with the girls. 

We could walk better with the shoes on. After a while, though, I shouted to them that we should get out of the water. Some of us could not talk or walk anymore because of the cold. We had to go a few hundred meters further upstream, though, to be able to find a spot where we could climb out of the water. I carried and helped some of the girls.

At one point we found a place where the forest was hanging above the river, there were tree roots hanging from the 2 m high rock on the margins of the river. I pushed some of the girls up one by one. 

I was the last one in the river when the guide came back and started shouting that he was expecting us to keep up - and why on earth did we get out of the river? I told him why I had proposed it and he was so angry that he climbed up to follow the girls and left me to my devices in the water. I climbed on some roots, some came tumbling down with the trees and ground, I can still remember the sensation of grinding the ground between my teeth and seeing it falling on my face and in my eyes. I also fell back into the river the first few times I tried, but after a while I managed to join the group.

The guide was taking care of one of the worst bleedings, he had some bandages with him. Seeing this I could also accept that he left me in the river. After all, I had managed to climb out on my own.
He decided to go straight up through the forest. It was almost dark and we would soon not be able to see anything. (no, we did not have any kind of light giving thing with us). He said he would guide us so he was the first in the row. I went second, a few steps behind him.

By this time I had a big esteem for myself and was at the same time ashamed of my thoughts - I thought I should be at least more scared and humble. I also had lost faith in the guide. Which was, I was arguing with myself, not very handy, given that he was the only adult there and he knew more than any of us about mountains and this mountain in particular.

The forest was very quiet and soft. All of a sudden I noticed how loud the river had been. As we climbed through the forest, it’s roar subsided.

We went up extremely steep. There seemed to be a path where we were walking, just no signs. There were big boulders we were stepping on and between and I loved it. I started noticing how much water I had in my shoes and had fun listening to the sound they were making while walking. 
We were climbing on all four by this time. The mountain was so steep and close that by just standing up vertically I could smell and kiss it. It felt safer than in the river and I loved it’s raw deep forest perfume. I could not look up or I would lose my balance but by now everything was so quiet that I could hear the guide above me and know in which direction to follow him.
At one point I stopped to catch my breath and looked down for the others. They were not very far behind and I thought it was actually a miracle that none of us got lost. I decided to wait until the last one passed me so I could be the tail and ensured that I could help. I felt amazing and alive and was not tired at all. 

I looked up to tell the guide what I was going to do (not that he would care but I always had this big respect for authority and thought he should know).

Just before I could open my mouth he stepped on this huge boulder and dislocated it, it started coming down fast. It was jumping at weird angles, like boulders do, faster and faster. It was bigger than my head and yes, time slowed down, just like they say. I thought I should stop it or it could take many of us down the mountain and maybe kill some. I thought, it has less speed now and it’s trajectory would be more predictable than if I let it go past me. There was no time to shout to anybody or do whatever other logical thing. I would catch it. For that split second it seemed I would have to do a football move and catch it with my head - which I remember thinking it was not such a good idea because I might miss it or fall on the girls below.

Luckily, with it’s weird moves, the boulder tried to get pass me near my hip. I did a salsa move and caught it with my right upper leg and with my hands. Then I sat on it to get it steady and I managed to fit it between a few other boulders after I'd slide on it for a few meters down. Little rocks and ground were dislocated in my slide and the girls below shouted at me, protesting at what was - obviously - my unhandy attempt to sit on an unstable rock. And if I was so stupid, why was I walking first in the row.

We walked up for maybe half an hour longer. By now it was dark. I had given up my idea to be the last in the row because my upper leg was hearting like hell. There was no logic in stopping or complaining, nobody could do anything about it. So I said nothing, just hoped that we would find the right path soon. 

Luck has it, somewhere above us there was a path - and on it there were - just as we were coming close - two shepherds walking with a flashlight. They heard us talking and they shouted, asking us what we were doing there in the dark - and the rest is history. They had a flashlight so they helped us to follow the signs and led us back. The cabin we were staying in was actually quite close, now that we knew the way.

After stopping and talking to them, when we started walking again I started crying. I thought I could not walk anymore. But then they asked me if they had to carry me and I said no. 

I limped along feeling very sorry for myself - mostly for not being able to tell my story and what I did (which in the same time I thought it was very stupid and not that it would've helped). Right then and there I felt, there is no bravery if nobody knows about it.
I was ashamed to tell how I got that big bruise that only healed after many weeks, long after we were back in Bucharest. I was not able to tell my story about the guide and that it was he who, so stupidly and un-responsibly, stepped on that boulder and started it down the mountain. I thought, who would believe me? I thought, what would be the use of telling (besides my desire to "be right" - which I totally dismissed as unimportant). I was frustrated that I could only limp for the next few days we spent on the mountain, that I could not walk properly and "be first" anymore. I was ashamed to be "the only one" really "wounded" after that day, the rest of the girls had only scratches that they were proud of "after the facts". I was ashamed of my huge bruise and that I did not have "beautiful legs" anymore, which did not help with the boys at all....

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photo by Cas Berentsen

His voice calls me back gently: where are you?..
He is a guide, he could feel that instead of traveling the realities outside Earth or in time for a past life, I was traveling back in my present human life time.
I had seen this story above in just a few seconds - but I was beginning to understand why I brushed with death so many times in this life time. (and now that I am writing I realise, it was the right leg, the right leg!! this might explain why, years after, I would have one after the other problems with this leg). 

Only a glimpse of understanding, the very first seed.

Then I looked around, to give him an answer.
I had a sudden understanding that this is not that world of light where everything is coming from, where I and everybody initially came from. It was just a place I was shown at this moment, in my search for answers. 

I also felt no peace. Not that all-encompassing peace that I expected, anyway. I was not in Heaven and I almost chuckled because of my expectation that I come directly from Heaven and from Light. (not humble at all, you, human). To be honest, another part of me was also hoping that I would see another planet, to find out I was coming from somewhere exotic, like a distant galaxy.

This was a different place. There was a kind of a light milky mist of different colors, moving. There was nothing matter-y, nothing solid. I was just floating, no body, just consciousness and just visiting. Forms would appear and disappear at enormous speed, some known - like forms resembling things on Earth, things that I could recognize somehow. Some others I could not recognize. Somehow I understood that it was a place of creation, where thought forms start getting a shape: human thought forms, and other thought forms.

I did not like it here. I felt a kind of a fear at the un-grasping quality of this misty world.
I knew it was not the place I was coming from.
I understood that it was a place I was shown while I was deciding where to go next. 
​
My decision was to go to the lowest vibration of energy, there where everything is solid. On Earth. Where everything is so solid that the solid body cannot go through it. I could see myself “fall” through realities and “in" this life, for the first time in this 3d reality.

So when he gently asked me again where I came from I said I came from nowhere.
I said: it’s my first time on Earth. my first time this “low". 
It’s a choice I made - to experience the solid quality of life on Earth, the touching, the bumping into things, falling, the physical, climbing in trees and on rocks, swimming, caressing, the touch of or the clash with another body. 
To experience the “making of stuff”, the putting together - as opposed to the instant manifestation that I had experienced until then. 
To experience the beauty of Earth, the feeling of water and wind on the body, the smell of rain and of flowers, the softness of silk and child skin against my finger tops. 
To experience the body.
Who are you? he asked.
I said, I am really surprised that all this time in my journey I am laying here, talking to you in Dutch.


PS: The soul journey happened 8 years ago. The Apuseni journey, 30 years ago.

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