I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't chosen to do the most difficult thing I'd ever done which was to confess my attraction to the man who was my first trauma bond, and I wouldn't have experienced that rollercoaster of emotions if I had stifled my inner pull towards him out of fear, and I wouldn't have met him if I'd ignored the download I got one morning to study Chemistry, and I wouldn't have received that download if I hadn't gone through 3 years of my second dark night of the soul, and I wouldn't have gone through it if med school hadn't rejected me over and over, and I wouldn't have applied for med school if I hadn't been pushed into a STEM field, and I wouldn't have accepted other people making decisions over my life like that if I hadn't been bullied throughout my school time, and I wouldn't have been bullied if I'd not been born with all-encompassing, inexplicable grief and soul fractures permeating my being, and I wouldn't have developed my ability to integrate intense emotion and sensation if I hadn't been conceived out of wedlock by people with tons of unintegrated generational and war trauma which they projected onto me knowingly or not.
My life isn't a happy story.
My parents' lives aren't happy stories.
My grandparents' lives aren't happy stories.
There's this preconception that spiritual teachers (especially financially abundant ones) are somehow born into ease and luck.
This couldn't be further from the truth. There's decades of trauma and pain behind them. Wounds they healed because they chose to step into the pus instead of covering it with band-aid after band-aid.
I was one of the poorest kids in class. My single mother is a nurse who could only send me to a private Catholic school because she sued my father for 500€ child support per month, which is a lot less than he was supposed to pay. I grew up in a typical East German Plattenbau while most others had houses or large apartments in the richer districts. A few years ago, I threw away my old grade school maps and found a homework where we were supposed to describe our aspirations for the future. I wrote something about being in nature while other kids wrote about owning a carpot. When I was 9, I had no idea what a carpot even was.
For summer vacation, we couldn't travel far, much less fly to other countries. We stayed in a hotel not even an hour away. We had the same simple car without GPS or USB or other tech for decades. I got my first flip phone when I was 12, and my first iPod when I was 13 which I treasured for many years to come, while everyone else got a new iPhone every year. I kept my first iPhone for over 10 years. We cooked fresh, cheap, traditional meals with potatoes and eggs. My mom's favorite were mashed potatoes with spinach and a fried egg on top.
And I never felt poor.
In comparison to other people, I had a family, food and a home.
Just typing my childhood out from that energy of lack feels wrong.
I lacked nothing.
My family's frugality taught me gratitude.
And I'm so very grateful for how I grew up.
Imagine if I hadn't.
I never would've learned to actively participate in life. I would've coasted along the waves of conditioned entitlement with no values of my own.
Every circumstance I faced asked me to transform.
Every lesson asked me to expand.
Life is our teacher.
And many of us need a guide to show us how to become conscious of life's teachings and navigate with ease instead of struggle.
Are you excited for it?
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