Inspired: How I left the highway and met the jungle
To write an article, you need to be creative, focused and clear. This last sentence is a story. To write an article, you have to write an article. That last sentence is true and it makes me angry. I feel angry because something inside me says, “Not everyone can write an article! At least you need to be focussed.” The focused part of me replies, “It’s just a story. To write an article, you have to write an article. Just like you have to bake a bread to bake a bread. Just like you have to fix a car to fix a car. Just like you have to jump off a high-rise building to jump off a high-rise building…”
(The part of me that just spoke likes dramatic statements.)
This article is about inspiration. I am not writing about what inspiration is. You can read about it if you don’t know. I am not writing this article to inspire you. It doesn’t matter if this article inspires you. It doesn’t interest me. Inspiration wouldn’t work if it had a purpose. If I say, “I want to inspire you so you see a way to change this and that,” then I can’t inspire you anymore. Then I want you to change something, that you see new paths, that you move forward. That is something different. Something different from the inspiration I am talking about. When I’m inspired, I burn. I mean it exactly how I say it. Inspiration is a fire inside of me, it starts to glow at the level of my solar plexus and the flames flicker up my throat, along my neck, into my face, into my eyes, my ears and my mouth. My inspiration is not a controlled process, it easily skips boundaries within me, grabs everything it can, burns brightly, burns loud, burns everywhere. Inspiration does not ask: WHEN, WHY, WHO, WHERE. Inspiration is NOW. NOW! NOW!! Inspiration is a backdraft. Now, the moment you open this door, you are immediately inside this storm of flames and the only last chance is to throw yourself on the floor immediately and wait for the wave of flames and heat to roll over you.
If I’m inspired, if I burn, you don’t stand a chance. I’m going to light you up. Unintentionally. For no reason. Just because you’re there, now.
I’m 53 now. A German fifty-three-year-old. This morning I woke up and knew that inspiration is one of my bright principles. Along with clarity, focus and creativity. I am inspiration. In the context of Possibility Management bright principles can be assigned to feelings. For example, clarity is an anger principle. When I met my anger, I was 52, it was November and I took part in a workshop called: GET BACK YOUR ENERGY.
A few weeks before this workshop the door to a memory that had been closed for 50 years opened. One could also say that I remembered something that I had forgotten for 50 years. Now, I hadn’t actually forgotten it, because this shadow followed me for the whole 50 years. I saw the shadow, I did not see who was casting the shadow. In late summer 2018 I suddenly saw who was casting the shadow: At the age of 2, I was sexually abused by my uncle in his parents’ house on the first floor, while the rest of the family — parents, grandma, grandpa and other uncles — played cards downstairs in the living room. It was Sunday and the sun was shining. When this memory came back, I was still married and on the evening in late summer 2018 I told my husband Axel what had come to my mind. I said it like one would say that the neighbour’s dog had pooped in the garden again. Like one would say the butter in the supermarket had been sold out today. Then I thought: Over the years I have processed it and now I am strong enough to handle it objectively and reasonably.
In the workshop GET BACK YOUR ENERGY (with Clinton Callahan and Anne-Chloé Destremau) I also tried to tell this memory in a factual and reasonable way. It was the evening of the first day. Something inside of me broke, like a layer of ice too thin to walk across. A great wave of sadness engulfed me. I could no longer look anyone in the eye as I spoke. At that point Clinton told me to look into his eyes. To look into the eyes of everyone present. I realized that I had never really looked into anyone’s eyes in my whole life.
On the second day of this workshop, Clinton offered that I could do Standing Rage Work. He said it was a way to get my dignity back. I don’t know what dignity is. But I went through this process. In the Standing Rage Process, you enter the space of your own anger. An anger that can go as high as 100%. An anger that has so much power that several people are needed to hold you. An anger that screams, roars, hisses and speaks truth. Clarity. Clarity about which there’s nothing to say. That doesn’t need to be discussed. That you can’t improve. Every person in the world — everyone — recognizes the feeling of rage in this intensity. My rage, in those few minutes, was like a blue diamond. Clear, hard, beautiful. I was the anger. The whole time I was in this space of my own anger, I knew I was going to leave it again. I knew that in future I would be able to enter this room consciously. I also knew while I was in this space that I was bigger than my anger. Because I was at the limit. One hundred percent.
After that, I knew my own anger. I recognised it when it appeared and I also recognised it much better when it appeared in others. After I had had this experience, I no longer stayed on the linear highway of a German fifty-two-year-old. That was not a decision. It just was! After this process I was in the jungle. There is no highway in the jungle.
Since I’ve been living in the jungle, my husband’s ways have become separate from mine. Since I have lived in the jungle, I have spent several weeks in South America, alone and without a plan. Since I have been living in the jungle, I have built a sword to have a physical sign of anger. The sword Os. Since I live in the jungle, I have made a website to build bridges through the medium of art. (www.oswords.de)
Ever since I’ve been living in the jungle, a small wild animal has been running beside me. This morning I saw it for the first time and knew that it had been with me for a long time. It is not chained, it is with me of its own free will. It is a beautiful little animal whose fur shimmers in different colours. It can run like the wind, jump meters high and it can even fly! Sometimes it attacks other people, tackles them, throws them to the ground and licks their faces. Not everyone likes that. Some people then say: “Stop it. Go away! Off!” But I can’t control this little wild animal. Sometimes I try to give the little wild animal a command: “Jump! Get him!” But that doesn’t really work either. When it is lying in the sun and dreaming, it just doesn’t like to do anything else.
This little wild animal is my inspiration. My guess is that it joined me when I was in that space of anger. That’s one possibility. In that case inspiration would be an anger principle. Whether that’s correct, I don’t know. I can’t see it right now because there are so many big green leaves and vines in front of my eyes. You can never see far in the jungle. In fact, you can only see the next step. And sometimes not even that. And even then, it’s impossible to tell where it leads.
But it is also possible that this animal has been with me for a very long time. Maybe it was already there when I was growing in my mother’s womb. Maybe this little wild animal is something like a reason. An “AH, THAT’S IT!!” That would be another possibility. Then I could say: I’m here. I am inspiration! I’ve come to set you all on fire early in the morning. I’m here to burn, to blaze, to make you really hot! To really light a fire under your butts.
That’s what scares me. I thought the dangerous little animal was always hiding behind me. That’s where I was very much mistaken. It’s the other way around. I walk behind it at a slight angle. I hide behind it.
Although in the jungle you can never quite tell which way is which….
