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ALIVE
We’ve come a long way together since February. Maybe you’ve been here since before the beginning, maybe you joined recently. It doesn’t really matter to me. I dare to say that you are interested in some kind of learning more about yourself. Let me make this assumption, simply based on you reading this. Maybe your journey of self-discovery is beginning right now, in this very moment. Maybe you’ve spent years, decades, lifetimes deeply in self-study, in process, in discovery of yourself, your patterns, the roots, the wounds, the causes of why you do things the way you do them, why you are the way you are, how came that you feel this specific way about this specific things, the things that agitate, aggravate and trigger you. Congratulations. You know some things about yourself.
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And then sometimes I wonder, how would it be like to know less? What if being oblivious was the true blessing? All the time, effort, and resources that have gone into learning how to understand ourselves. Has all this awareness made us freer, or slaves of our self-knowledge? Has it made us more conscious of every way we get in our own way? Has it liberated us, or made us more unfree? Sometimes I cannot help but wonder, would I be more free, knowing less? Do I maybe even use all that I learned and believe to know about myself as armour, as wells, as pretence, as excuses to refuse taking responsibility, make myself a victim and outsource my power? Who knows.
THE STORY
Many, many years ago, two decades at least, we went on a family vacation to Greece. My dad loves driving his Audis, so 90% of our family vacations involved long drives to the European South. This specific journey involved a drive, an overnight ferry across the Aegean sea, and then another long drive on the Greek mainland, partially along the Albanian border. We saw monasteries perched high on pointed rocks. And stopped to visit Delphi along the way. Prior it had a different name, Pytho, later Pythia. Please forgive me in case I am butchering history here, but let me try, with no claim of truth and historical accuracy: Long before Delphi belonged to Apollo, it belonged to the Goddess. According to ancient Greek mythology, the oracle was originally sacred to Gaia, the primordial Mother Earth, source of life, creation, and ancient wisdom. The site was inhabited as early as the Mycenaean period (c. 1500–1100 BCE), and by the 8th century BCE, Apollo’s sanctuary had emerged as one of the most powerful spiritual centres of ancient Greece. Myth tells us that Apollo killed Python, the serpent guarding the sacred place, and claimed the oracle for himself. Yet even under the authority of a male god, the divine continued to speak through a woman: the Pythiae, the high priestesses whose prophecies guided kings, generals, and entire civilizations. For centuries, the most powerful men traveled to Delphi to receive wisdom through the feminine. Even after Rome conquered Greece in the 2nd century BCE, the Pythiae continued to speak. By the end of the 4th century CE, as Christianity began to dominate and ancient religious practices were suppressed, the oracle was silenced. By the 5th century BCE, the Temple of Apollo bore an inscription that would outlive empires: Know Thyself. Attributed to the Seven Sages of ancient Greece (6th century BCE), these words invited those seeking answers from the divine to turn their attention inward. Originally a reminder of our human limitations before the gods, they later became central to the philosophy of Socrates (469–399 BCE). Yet beneath the layers of gods, temples, and empires lies an older story: that of the Earth, the Goddess, and a woman’s voice carrying divine wisdom. Perhaps knowing ourselves is not merely an intellectual pursuit, but a remembering of something far more ancient. A return to the body, to the Earth, to the wisdom that lives within.
I was young, and I still have a visceral memory of visiting this ancient site with a slit opening into the Earth. I might not have understood all of what I just wrote, but I knew this place to be powerful.
And since we began our descend together in February, my continuous invitation for you has been, over and over again, to bring your attention back home into your body, to let the wisdom of sensation express through movement and voice, to liberate what has been held in exile in bones, breath and in the spaces in between, and become more you. Be your own oracle, if you will.
And here I am, wondering if knowing thyself is actually more a blessing in disguise. How lovely would it be to simply fall in love, enjoying attraction, butterflies and tingles with no need to analyze attachment styles, infant wounds, and unfulfilled childhood needs. How exciting would it be to simply build that business, make that investment, work hard for that promotion, enjoy your success, being fully in your head and depended on external validation without even knowing what that means. How liberating would it be to get mad, angry, without wondering which childhood wound just got activated. How satisfying would it be to enjoy a date with having no idea about your own avoidance. What happened to simply experiencing life?
Sometimes I miss the woman who simply did for the sake of living, who didn’t need to know why she was doing what she was doing. And I’m bringing that back. It brings me a lot of enjoyment to follow what feels good, or recently in dating, challenge myself to do the opposite of what I want to do, aka do the thing which feels more challenging to do (I am experimenting on healing attachment trauma here, research ongoing). See, here I’m doing it again. Any magic potion here to forget all the things I already believe to know about myself? Someone take me to Delphi, please, I need to speak to the Phythia, urgently!
Back to the story - remember how I wrote that this one person I’ve been dating for a couple of months now pointed out my sweetness and innocence, and how that made me melt? And how they also named my avoidance, which made me want to disappear (into that slit in the earth, in Delphi, let’s go!)? I knew he was right. And it made me feel uncomfortable af. I don’t know about you, but I definitely do not love all my shadows. Hell no. It is like a greek tragedy, or comedy, or tragic comedy - I know this about myself, call it highly self aware, and in moments when it matters the most, I might still, consciously or not, act from avoidance. Lalalalalaaaa. See, knowing yourself does not automatically mean doing better.
THE PATTERN
Once you see it, can you unsee it? Can you simply be, simply live, simply follow impulses? Or do you stall through life, on the constant watch for another, you guess it, pattern? I’m afraid self-awareness influences the relationship with our behaviour. I want to try to keep this neutral and curious, as always, and all at the same, I cannot help but wonder, did we lose innocence on this journey of self-discovery? Or maybe it as a long road leading all the way back to Rome, Delphi, or innocence? Maybe it goes something like this: before awareness, there was innocence. Or at least plausible deniability. More or less. We simply do not know any better, neutrally. One level up from awareness, let’s put choice. And when we get to choose, we can take responsibility for our actions. And how do we bring it back to innocence? It might almost be easier to be hard on ourselves, the “I should have known better, I should have done better.” Familiar, isn’t it? Awareness gives us choice, and it adds that option of being really mean to ourselves. Here self-awareness easily falls into the trap of self-surveillance, and that ain’t fun at all. Not with yourself. Not with the ones around you. I definitely have lived (and still do) and the state of the inner military police, junta and judge. The experiencer kind of stops existing, life is controlled, because now that you know your patterns, you must avoid acting them out at all costs. Ha, and all of a sudden, knowing thyself has sneakily become a different form of controlling thyself!
Let’s try this again: Innocence: I don’t know. Awareness: I see my patterns. Responsibility: I have the capacity and capability to choose differently. Integrated innocence: I know, I choose, and I can still surrender to life.
My hypothesis is the following: there are two kinds of innocence: the one before we know better, and the one we return to after we’ve seen our patterns, met our monsters, and taken responsibility for the beautiful mess of being human. What if the greatest gift of knowing ourselves is that we can finally stop watching ourselves so closely, surrender to life, and fall in love with being alive all over again? Simply rereading this makes me smile.
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ALIVE
You think it’s easy for me to always feel ALIVE? Hell no. Sometimes it’s really hard work to remember that. And having someone around on the regular to remind you, that’s gold. Let me be that someone for you.
I have space for 3 leaders.
For the places where you already know something has to move- your body, relationships, sexuality, power, creativity, LIFE. To get my attention on it, apply to work with me privately. Before winter begins.
Ready to be your own oracle? Receive ALIVE for free and join me again on December 29. You’ll automatically be on the priority list. Less self-improvement. More sensation, pleasure, and aliveness.
ALIVE
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