Mystery-me and much more

Early on I noticed certain thought patterns repeatedly filling my mental space. Ideas about how I should behave, what I should and should not do. Looking back, I can narrate several sources catalyzing that inner critic. To name a phew important ones, parental styles, feedback from teachers, and an inner tendency to systemize my social and emotional understanding of life all fed the tendency to impose order from the inside out.

Although I also felt energized by what was in some way equally a keen sense of self directing this ‘force,’ it did come with an energetic cost due to the many inhibitions, and suppressing of spontaneity, involved.

At some point, I clearly remember a new thought cracking through the thick surface of a by now well-developed super-ego. It shone a light on potential new emotional roads to travel by pointing me towards the profound need for ‘monstruous freedom.’

“I can not keep on doing this. If I go on, I will become suffocatingly rigid. I need to go against my own habits.” I might have groaned several times.

The harsh internal developmental tension spurred me to positively maladjust to myself, one could say. As I didn’t know how to direct that tension in a self-caring way, the maladjustment was also fueled by self-rejection, the inward suppressive tendencies were redirected ‘outside.’ Instead of inhibiting, I became much more impulsive, eagerly extravert, pressingly outgoing. The exploratory nature offered liberatory experiences in the context of meeting people, a refreshing openness to experience and alternative ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding myself and others. At the same time, a lack of deeper self-insight made me vulnerable to harmful behavior in relationships and lifestyles.

Along the way I felt a need to balance the 'swinging' seeking in me. Trying to juggle the inhibiting and impulsive tendencies has been challenging. Feeling under – and then overregulated often; at the top of feeling more than okay one moment, and then feeling overwhelmed by stimuli and a lack of boundaries the other moment.

Different processes have helped me to streamline these ambivalences. One thing is recognizing how rigidity is intertwined with a need for safety and predictability. As the complexity of life seemen to grow exponentially throughout the years, I was increasingly in need to expand the parameters on which to anchore my navigating of complexity. A basic feeling of safety is important, but it could not be the ‘first and last answer,’ even if I am trying to be sensitively aware of how important this is for many of us and how many internal and external conditions might severely threaten our notions of safety.

The over-arching notion of not-knowing, of mystery, has ‘helped’ me for sure. Whenever I feel connected to a sense of existential mystery, facilitated by practices that nourish this spirituality, I feel ‘sourced,’ as they say, to embrace the complexity of emotional and energetic changes within and without. Just the sheer, but profound notion of being curious towards (my) experiences, helps tremendously in picking up the subtle changes and letting them blend in a wave of consciousness expanding beyond self-fixating categories.

The choice I made to go against my more rigid behavioral tendencies also inspired the integration of activities that allow this sense of mystery to be active in my emotional and energetic awareness.

In the words of Joost Vervoort, shared in this accompanying article spurring far-reaching imagination:

What kind of “infrastructuring for mystery” is part of my life, now?

What kind of “structural conditions […] allow for access to the mysterious and nurturing depth of life”?

A tremendous source of spiritual openness and depth are visits to the monastery House of the Beloved in Brussels, Belgium. The pluralistic approach to existential development and research, the traditional and experimental nature of rituals, the coming together of eastern and western traditions, and the central emphasis on “being different together” makes this a highly inspiring ‘infrastructure for mystery.’ Curious? Got it! Take a look at Beloved’s website.

A diversity of psychedelic experiences has infused my sensing of unmanageable mystery. A psychedelic experience can positively disintegrate, I think, conditioned perceptions of life when an internal awareness of this disintegration is ‘ready,’ so to speak, to integrate the intense experience into a refreshed, more deeper understanding of how everything is indeed delicately interconnected. These processes acquire caring (inner) guidance, a suited set and setting, and I have certainly also had experiences that felt more shattering than mysterious, even though these were eventually integrated into an expanding sense of self. Since I have a strong tendency towards systemization, and already non-induced heightened sensory perceptions, yet another intensification of sensory input by taking psychedelics can either be intensely calming or quite disturbing. Luckily, I am recognizing these patterns by now. And more societal, psychotherapeutic and academical attention is given to the potential transformational nature of psychedelic experiences and to the individual and contextual conditions that allow for such transformations.

I also access a sense of mystery through reading. Both fiction and non-fiction facilitate a fresh understanding of how much we know and even more, how much we do not know. Reading also comes with the practice of relating my sensing with conceptual ambiguities of being this human-animal, I feel my way into another’s life story or map of the world, it is a way of ‘othering.’ Slow reading is a context in which I can feel through subtle, inner energetic changes in response to the imaginational worlds, as if I am 'pre-reading' the 'real' world out there. Everytime I try to pre-read, I end up accepting more ambigituies, more ways to be in and of this world. Films and series can have a similar effect, particularly those disintegrating solidified beliefs about life and challenging the viewer to suspense disbelief and explore an emotional, intellectual, or other territory unknown or even ostracized before. The creation of art and the experiential process of creativity can offer a peek of conscious mystery as it is often intensely interesting to notice that somehow, at once, a great idea or the development of an unforeseen project materializes ‘through your workings.’ It is by letting mystery inform your notion of yourself and other life forms, that one enjoys art (and the creation thereof) to the max. And even if the creative process has its own logic and I am aware that we tend to project a lot of stereotypes upon the place of mystery in this process, the quality of the process remains enticingly mysterious nonetheless.

Same goes for vivid embodied experiences of being in and part, expression of nature. The overpowering power of the ocean, the mysterious whereabouts behind mountain peaks, the intricacies of the tiniest lives underneath our feet, the sensorial differences making up the psychology of other sentient beings; the list of wonder goes on and on. Hopefully and importanly this sense of mystery induces also a sense of respect for and accompaniment with non-humans expressions of nature.

Caring, such as the many encounters I have with my friends, family, clients, and just people right around the corner…., is evenly such a source of unknowing generalizations and categorically dried up understanding of life as "such and such", or this versus that. Every person, when approached from a deep curiosity, has an inner world reflecting the complexity of the so-called outer world. Being together in openness and transparency catalyzes the experience of love, the wonder of interdependency as the bedrock of all life and the impossibility of one ultimate perspective other than the aknowledgement of mystery. I also remember looking at our dog, interacting with her playfully, and oftentimes just letting my mind wonder about her inner experience....

And last but not least, I want to share with you how my understanding of ‘intensity’ has evolved - or unlocked - over the years. More than a personality characteristic, it has taken on a processual quality. In the immediacy of what is present this moment, intensity ís. There is nothing to be done with it, it does not have to become anything (thanks to Eric Baret for the inspiration). I don’t know how to become anything else than what is here, and that is the great mystery.

As I wrote in ‘Intens mens’ in 2021:

"Intens Durven Leven. Dát moet jouw slogan zijn. Daar vaar je goed op, dat golft en geeft mee.

Intensiteit, niet als kwalificatie, niet als persoonlijkheidskenmerk. Niet als synoniem van instabiliteit. Emotionaliteit. Kleverige emoties en onbedachtzame keuzes. Geen labeltje zijn van andermans persoonlijkheidslasten.

Nee.

Dieper.

Hoger.

Basaler.

Frivoler.

Intensiteit als een gegeven van het leven waar jij je natuurlijkerwijs en gevoelswijs toe aangetrokken voelt."

Paraphrased:

“Intensity as a given fact to which you feel naturally and emotionally-wise drawn to.

And I would add now:

Immersed in.

It does not get any more mysterious, does it?

Curious to hear more about the ways in which you infrastructure for mystery in your life. Feel free and invited to share!

*And stay tuned: I will share a community event about cultivating a sense of mystery soon!