Let's Courageously Listen to Our Hearts
I have been interested in spirituality since I was a little girl, and since I was the only one in my family interested in such things, I was always a bit alien to them. The things I was interested in or trying to understand always seemed foreign to my peers. To be honest, I'm still triggered by that little girl, and as long as I take up space in this life, I'm going to be triggered and try to get a little bit closer with each trigger.
Isn't the hardest thing in the world to do justice to the practice of being ourselves without caring what the people around us think? Friends, I wrote it in one sentence, but we all know that it is not so easy to do it justice.
My story of quitting my full-time job was also a product of this flow. Despite many fearful scenarios of the mind, I was able to take action and leave my safe space. Life brought me to the present because I chose to walk step by step from there to here. But I have news: Some letting go can involve a few comebacks, and that's okay!
Writing and teaching yoga classes are the same attraction for me. When I write, rather than trying to be the one who chooses or determines the words, I become the one who lets them flow. I mediate what already wants to come out, so there is a special relationship between us... The same is true when I teach. Seeing different bodies, different stories, holding space and practicing being yourself in that yoga class without worrying about what the person in front of you, next to you, behind you will say is my biggest inspiration as a yoga instructor, yes...
Isn't it courageous to feel attracted to someone and let them guide you? Because we humans are always running away from feeling. The problem is that we run away without knowing that we are running away. At some point we become so numb that when we are drawn towards something, we think it's fear. And then the whole movie gets confused.
In group classes, the most common thing I see in the body language of those who are taking their first yoga class (including their changing psychology from time to time) is timidity, their belief that they are wrong or that they cannot do it. This is my favorite part to remember, because this is where I learned to remember.
When I decided to open a yoga studio last year in the darkest part of the pandemic, again, everyone around me thought it was not a healthy idea. According to them, I was going into a business that was going to fail and everyone was coming to me with the worst case scenario. Friends, it's not easy to move forward when you hear such voices around you, believe me. But again, I felt the same thing: The decision had already been made and the path was formed. What would have happened if I had not taken this path? I don't know, but what I felt was that very clear pull. To be honest, I feel that the studio healed me on a deep level, but again I can't explain it in words.
Every trigger is an opportunity for the darkness to come to the light!
Please don't leave me, I can't live without you!
But I have done all this for you...
I'm sorry, but these are not sentences of love! Do you realize that we want to show our love in relationships, but in fact we can't, because we confuse everything nowadays? When we say relationship, don't just think of it as being in a relationship! Friendship relationships, work relationships. Everything we communicate is a product of this bond. And these bonds are a great opportunity to get closer to oneself again and again! How?
Because past experiences will trigger us to be seen and healed, and with each trigger we have two possibilities: To be captive to them and repeat our old patterns or to be free from them and see them.
The unpleasant bodily tightness that sometimes arises without us even being aware of it, either from a possibility in your mind that didn't happen, or from a present experience that did happen, and our patterns of behavior that follow this tightness.
Past wild experiences, of course they pass. What doesn't? But the power of our humanity to ignore things in order to let them pass is incredible, and yes, this is where we get ourselves all mixed up.
The relationship with mom and dad is the foundation of everything. All our triggers, all our codes of love are determined by this bond we establish or fail to establish with them. Then we experience the reinforcement of the codes and states formed here in our work, friendship and lover relationships. In business or private life, we therefore declare that woman or that man guilty. It doesn't occur to us to look beneath the incident, to dig beneath our soil. Then we experience similar things again in another experience and we ask: Why are the same things happening?
For example, you have a lover with whom you are happy, but you carry the fear of loss from past experiences into this relationship. A small situation, a message, a pattern of behavior brings this fear to the surface again. Your lover doesn't understand why you are reacting and most probably you don't know either. You start saying, "You're leaving me because of one of my behaviors, why don't you pay attention to me? You feel a tightness in your body that you don't understand. Maybe your breathing becomes shallow, maybe your heartbeat speeds up. For that moment your body starts reacting as if your lover has really left you.
So, this is your trigger point. And every time you are triggered, there is a memorized, stereotyped behavior: Maybe running away, maybe blaming the other person, yelling... You can put these rote patterns into action and spend years like this.
Old wounds in any relationship trigger us when they want to heal. It is very easy to blame ex-lovers, ex-colleagues. But when we look at the big picture, every dark experience eventually chooses events and people when it wants to come to light!
I am sure we all have a bag full of this! At least once in our lives we found ourselves saying the phrase "Please don't leave me, I can't live without you!" To be honest, I said it too. At the time I thought I had to fight for love, that's how I was taught. That was my rote behavior pattern too!
My dear life has given me such experiences to make me look under my own rug that I was finally able to turn my head to my essence and take care of it. And this made me realize that true love is hidden in taking a few steps back and seeing that I deserve love for who I am!
Thank God!
At the end of the day, isn't it all about us? So, in order to do justice to the experience of being human, as we can approach our own being with care and accept it with all its wounds, we will be able to see our triggers more clearly, remember that every experience is new and our darkness will be covered and as it is covered, our captivity will end and we will be liberated!
My hope for a world where better people will multiply
I'm hidden on the wing of a victimized swallow.
I'm a dominant wind in the compartments of my interior.
Sadness from the times today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and...
It is also the very thing that I sit crookedly and speak correctly, that I fulfill my longing for myself and that I'm my story and my subject and my emulation...
Of course, people whose weaknesses are killed and who drown their ego and I write and pray and live my destiny with the longing of the times when I no longer waste my breath.
While the white of my face is on the paper.
Even in my longing for the sea, while the sea is still holding me and the journey I am on with words on my tongue and the many more I will take, of course, my soul and my words hidden in my exit and here I care about the flying clouds, not the cars changing lanes.
Dear dark blue night...
Dear God, look, I am here and I am glad that you are always with me and whenever I find time from sadness and tiredness to come before you, of course you know beforehand because I remember you incessantly, though people don't mind and make fun of you a lot, but there are those hypocrites who chew their cud.
Neither my age, nor my age, nor what I have lived, nor what I have lived...
Dear Lord, the only device I don't like is perhaps my smart cell phone because before the invention of the cell phone, I always used my mind, so I don't care about the record button and the stored numbers, just as I don't care about whoever I ring when they are busy on their own, but what about you, my Almighty Lord?
Your almighty being who is never busy...
There is that cell phone that never turns me away and I don't like it as much as I don't like that cell phone: a, yes, and my books, I hide in them and they hide in the library of my mind.
And what I have always wanted is again on offer, my dear Allah:
You know what I want and please just accept my prayer this year. Haven't I always asked you for the sake of this blessed month, which has come every year since I gained a lifetime of awareness, that these people would be guided...
And I look around me.
I look down the alley.
I look at the way things are going.
There are so many people in pain and so many oppressed and so many unclaimed children.
Even the children who have parents are unclaimed at times.
No one knows the value of the other and people are always deceiving themselves and each other, whether they have the financial power or not, with the high sums they spend and a huge consumption frenzy...
Of course, every sheep hangs by its own leg, but it is such a time that if a sentence comes out of my mouth, wherever the death penalty is set up, whereas I am neither rebellious nor after something, I just live right, I defend and write the right things.
There are people who cannot bring bread to their homes.
And those whose eyes are not satisfied.
How many oppressed and bleeding geographies and the time we are in, and no matter what anyone says, everyone is skeptical and eyes on someone else.
It is obvious that this is a world where love is fading.
I am neither an angel nor a perfect believer, I am just trying to use the time given to me properly and do something, and since the day I met my pen, my imagination has expanded even more.
I am trying to get somewhere in my own way and thank God there are hearts and beautiful people I have touched and I cannot predict how long this journey will last but I know one thing; writing is incredibly good for me and my distance to you has decreased a lot and I have even reached you but I know I have a long way to go in order to reach guidance.
I have always stood out because I am a harmless person.
I couldn't love people as generously as I loved myself and here I have to do justice to the pen to make up for my mistake and the pen equals me.
It doesn't matter whether I had a painful life or not.
Even though I deserved to be loved, I was not loved much and this is also insignificant, especially after this communication I established with you, I don't worry about the distance of people from me as much as I used to, since I also had my share of unloving people...
I have recently met my heart's eye and in this context I feel who is sincere and who is not, and no matter how mild and loving I am, it just doesn't work: people supposedly love each other a lot, but I have always been marginalized, and it seems that this will not change for a lifetime.
Loving and being loved in every context is the medicine of human beings and I cannot adjust the dose of this and the excess of love poisons people and people are experiencing a poisoning of love.
Tonight I thought aloud and again I took refuge in you and as I always say whenever I feel helpless:
Help me, my Lord.
Sometimes I don't know how to ask for help, but because you know me better than me, you always, always catch up.
As for me, there are not many people I can catch up with, but I give a lot of alms to those in need, of course accompanied by your heartfelt greetings.
Of course, while I do not give up hope for a world where better people will multiply and how I want people to realize this.
There are many more things I have realized and will realize, and my inner voice will surely be transferred to you again...
In this story I become My own knight
I'm listening to quiet music on the kitchen radio. It's half past three in the morning, there's no moon, the stars flicker in the window like flowers chilling in the wind. I close my eyes and let the music pour through the cracks in my heart, mend my heart. To make me feel at home in my body.
All my life I wanted to be more open to love. To let it in, to host it. Can music teach me that? I don't know. But with every note, I feel my story being reshaped.
In this new story, I am not a victim whose heart is petrified. In this new story, I am someone who is learning to love again, albeit slowly. My story is taking shape as I write, and the old myths that I clung to, that hurt me, that dragged me down, are crumbling with it.
As I write, my past is left behind. I get rid of it like a snake shedding its skin. And suddenly I find myself lighter. Or is this what it is like to live in the present?
In this story, I suddenly become my own knight. I realize that the person who will save me from the evil dragon is myself and only myself. And that the dragon is really a little girl who just wants to be loved.
I've been waiting at the window all my life. But who? I've always longed for something. But what? What life? What world? And what did I do to get it, except wait at the window? Here, listening to Debussy on the kitchen radio, I realize that I never knew that.
Now that I think about it, I've always had my life in my hands. I could go anywhere I wanted. I could be anything I wanted. Or let me put it this way: I can go wherever I want. I can be anything I want.
I turn on the coffee maker to make a cup of coffee. As the coffee maker grumbles quietly, I smile to myself. Because in that moment I realize: I just want to be myself. I pour hot coffee into my favorite mug. I add a little almond milk. Although I don't know how to be myself yet, I believe that I will discover it somewhere along the way. As the almond milk dissolves in the coffee, I feel the dark brown melancholy I have felt deep in my heart all my life dissipate.
I can do this, I tell myself as I take a sip of my coffee. I can manage to be myself.
Something inside me tells me that the secret is to abandon all my false selves. That I have to leave behind everything I've learned that doesn't belong to me. That's why I have to keep writing. That's why I sit at the kitchen table at half past three in the morning, listening to Debussy on the kitchen radio and gathering strength to keep writing my story.
Music gives me strength and I know now that I can only heal by writing. As the notes pour in through the cracks in my heart like moonlight, my heart turns into a moon garden full of white flowers.
All that remains is to find someone I can invite into this garden. Someone I can love, someone I can call mine. Moreover, I know who that someone is, so I know who I should start with...
I place my hand over my heart, letting its warmth spread like sunlight to my chest and from there to my whole body. I love you, I whisper to myself, a little embarrassed. I'm not used to saying it, after all. I love you, I love you, I love you.
And I hope with every fiber of my being that it's true, that my words will reach my heart, because more than anything I want to be able to love this snake, naked after shedding its skin.
I was a real writer back then!
With my computer on my lap, my cats by my side, as I take a deep breath and sit down to write this article, I realize that I miss the days when I used to write without thinking about being read, just for the happiness of writing. After school, I would take my coffee with me, throw myself in my room, turn on music, light incense and candles and start writing in my diary. I remember those days like it was yesterday.
I felt like I was meeting with a secret friend. It was a period of time that belonged only to me. Happily, passionately, knowing that no one would read it, maybe even with the comfort of knowing that no one would read it, I would write in my notebooks over and over again.
I would get carried away with the sheer, aimless, crazy joy of writing. As I filled my journals, I felt like I was in a ritual. Every now and then I would look up and watch the flame of the burning candle, for example. As the smoke from the incense filled my room, with my favorite Hermann Hesse's books lying on my bed, I would smile to myself and feel like a real writer.
I realize now that I was a real writer then in a way that I am not today and perhaps never will be again, because my writing had no ulterior motive other than my love for writing. I was writing for the sheer pleasure of writing. I didn't have a reader, an editor, a publisher, an agent, a plan. It was just me and my diary.
By the way, I am not trying to say that I don't like writing now. I still love writing more than anything. I just feel that I am no longer the old me, that I have lost that spirit. I lost it the day I started to read what I wrote through the eyes of others. After I became an adult, I guess writing stopped being a ritual for me.
I know that I can't turn back time, that things are constantly changing and we are changing with them. That diaries have been replaced by blogs, blogs by Instagram and Twitter...
At least this is the case as far as I know. Maybe one day all this will be replaced by something completely different. In short, I guess no one writes for themselves, only for themselves anymore.
No, I will never get the time back. No matter how hard I try, I will never be that girl who reads Hesse. I know that. But one thing I have discovered is that he still lives somewhere inside me. Because when I started painting, he reached out his head again and said hello to me.
I started painting to take a break, to rest a little, to have some fun. I had no other goal than to amuse myself. I knew I was no good and I didn't care. I just wanted to play with colors and those beautiful brushes, just like when I was a child.
I started by laying out my canvases, paints, brushes, paper and drawing pencils on the dining table. Then I remembered the princesses, mermaids, cavemen, ghosts, vampires, cowboys, Vikings I had drawn as a child. I turned up the music, dipped my brush into the paint, my heart beating wildly with excitement, and set to work painting them. And I worked and worked for hours, without even realizing how the time had passed.
Sometimes I think that in order to find ourselves, we must first lose ourselves. And that getting lost is an art... No, getting lost is not an easy thing. It is difficult to get rid of all the questions and problems that rightly occupy one's mind for a while and immerse oneself in the game. But once you do it, once you manage to forget about the world, it feels like you can actually turn back the clock.
I have learned over the years that for me happiness is possible only when I am in contact with that girl lying on her bed, writing in her diary. Maybe painting will be replaced by other things in the future. But I know now that I will never lose that amateur spirit because I need it to feel alive. I need to do something just for myself, without the pressure to be good at what I do. To create something just because I want to, without worrying about others.
I won't be able to write my books as if I were writing in my diary. But I know that I can keep getting excited about new things as long as I live. And I can revel in the pleasure of keeping things to myself and be my own confidant. After all, we never really grow up. That child who is trying to discover the world is still somewhere inside us.
I finally found you
For years I believed that love was something I had to earn. That I could only be loved if I was very hardworking, very productive, very successful, very beautiful, very strong, in short, perfect. I kept striving to be perfect, only to disappoint myself in the end.
I knew that I had the kind of perfectionism that is found in individuals who, instead of experiencing unconditional love in their childhood, felt that being loved depended on certain conditions, but I didn't know how to solve this problem.
Therapy had helped me to see the underlying causes of my behavior and to develop awareness about it, but it had not taught me how to free myself from the desire to be perfect. I had to do it on my own. Finally, instead of searching for an answer, I decided to ask a question.
As I sat meditating on a sunny Sunday morning, just when I was able to focus on my breathing, my cat Yoko came and sat on my lap unbidden and began to lick happily. I opened my eyes, looked at her, and then couldn't help but smile. Yoko looked at me and opened her mouth wide and yawned, then continued to purr and lick happily.
At that moment I realized something very important: While I was devoting myself to being perfect just to be loved, my cat was doing it without doing anything, just being. Just being herself, just existing, just being Yoko. And after a moment of reflection, I asked myself: Can I be loved just by being?
Then I closed my eyes and continued meditating with my cat on my lap. But this question haunted me for a long time. While listening to my breath, I gently placed my hand over my heart. And this time I asked: Can I succeed in loving myself just for existing?
I now know that I cannot demand unconditional love from others. Childhood is over and adults cannot and perhaps should not love each other unconditionally. Yes, sometimes I want to resign from being an adult too, but that's the way it is.
And that being the case, there is only one kind of love in life that we can be sure is always and forever with us, without any conditions, and that is the love we have for ourselves. The love we have for ourselves is always with us somewhere inside us, and if we manage to get in touch with it, we will never feel alone again.
Yes, when I put my hand to my heart that morning and felt my heartbeat in the palm of my hand, I thanked myself for being myself at all costs. And in that moment, I decided to replace "me" with "perfect". "I don't want to be perfect, I want to be authentic," I said out loud. I don't want to be perfect, I want to be myself. And I consider myself enough as I am.
I used to be distant from such things. I thought it was funny and strange to say these affirmations out loud. But over time I realized that when I said them sincerely, with real conviction, I felt much happier and more peaceful. Somehow I saw that they worked. Those wellness gurus must know something! I said to myself.
Nowadays, just like my cat Yoko, I tell myself every day that I deserve to be loved just for existing. Moreover, that love is not something to be earned and that no matter what happens, it is always with me, inside me. Every time I am surprised how much we can learn from cats.
I know very well that nothing from outside can make us as happy as we are. At the same time, I know that there are others in this world who want to join me on my journey of self-discovery and self-love. They love me not because I am already very hardworking, very productive, very successful, very beautiful, very strong, in short, perfect, but simply because I exist.
Love does not live in a perfect place. It has been waiting for me all my life in a complicated, messy, imperfect, melancholic, chaotic place. Deep in my own heart, I mean. So, as I finish my meditation, I touch my heart for the last time and whisper to it: There, I have finally found you.
The words spilled from the pen of hope in my heart
Dreams are hidden in the crystal chandelier inside me.
My heart is a unique diamond.
No shame, no sadness, no reproach...
The red blood cells of words gnaw the white blood cells of images and a pale wind is waiting to blow in my window...
The one who warns is the Creator and the one who destroys and manufactures the feelings of contemplation, of course, to circumambulate this treasure by being able to escape even from my body with the time I am burdened with contemplation.
Maverick words and the night in assembly.
And the men with their hair on their heads, head to head with the pitch darkness, how majestic and noble they appear, and all humanity is waiting.
There is no frame for this rebellion and is it the only branch the infidel and bigot can cling to?
Somehow, after falling off the cliff many times, I don't hit the ground and I keep my dignity hidden.
I live and present the geographies I have migrated to.
There are people who understand or not.
As if it was once upon a time...
Smiles are planted in my soul and the lines are on vigilance and I bounce between the lines and I visit the heart of one reader to the heart of another, in fact everything is relative and here I am alone with the unknown.
Of course, the hope that gives hope is the words sewn by the pen.
The life I started is still my joy of life that I keep hidden.
The cruel and individual creatures whose names I unfurl a flag for are faceless and soulless, each with dark eyes, and the firmament calling me, which I set my eyes on.
If it is an invasion.
If it is a gift of the universe that I disclose.
Beyond everything I fulfill, waiting to be written and here is my soul and my diary that remain unattended and that familiar breeze on my face that carries me from far away to me closest to me.
When I write, I cannot tolerate even a spelling mistake.
I don't give a right of passage to a rebellion or perverted beings, and here are the poems and stories I write in the west of western words and a west.
My painful formation is a delusional slope.
Bargain hearts and bullion songs, unbearable abilities and hobo night fugitive grave guard.
In the lane of life.
In the culture of humanity.
With the miraculous expectation of living without the rookie putting dust on it, the troubles that I destroy with a single d/read, and the sometimes inconvenience of my existence and the stable silence of loneliness and being a VIP, whereas I am a creature in its own way, I am most proud of being human and most ashamed of my humanity, and underage images stand on my doorstep, and the faint phrases accompanying the night's light climb the straight wall, and here and here is a fire that grows and grows inside me.
There are abandoned syllables.
Knife-wielding and fugitive city bandits.
I escaped from a day equivalent to sadness and took refuge in the bosom of the night...
I think of lives hidden in women's shelters and abandoned babies and persecuted women and the oppressed...
Cruelty is not in my vocabulary.
Lie is not in my dictionary.
I am sometimes June and sometimes spring and that fire grows and grows.
My harpoon-eating heart.
The perverted property of malignant souls and who is who is unknown, here is the loneliness of people between the fingers and the mobilization of forgotten abandoned people and consciences.
The life I shovel and the roar I roar is true.
The people I have fallen for and the people I have bled for are not lies.
The ink mark on my wings is a heirloom from my father, after all, with the enthusiastic mood of being raised in a family of educators, I liquidate the season, I evacuate the season, I evacuate the dreams stuck in yesterday and I spray water cannons on the words and here they sober up and I remove their locks one by one.
I celebrate my salvation.
And I want to hang the rabid dogs on the gallows.
Humanity in crisis and broken homes and young girls and women victimized by violence and babies and children who have no sin.
My reproach is cruelty.
Souls in clusters.
A prose and a poem hidden in the fall...
Young people whose captivity is to people's souls and who have no immunity and whose lives are hidden in the barrel of a gun or in the scabbard of a sharp knife in front of a single word.
Love is my victory.
My victory is faith and judgment.
My victory is my words and my mental warehouse where I press the write button and my words that I hope for help and the dawn of dawn, the end of the night, the execution of love, the distance of happiness to the dungeons...
With my age and my mourning and my life and my pen and my humanity...
Let's discover the power of societies guided by values
Establishing healthy communication with people or institutions should be the primary duty of every human being. However, communication should be one of the primary duties of those working in the service sectors. Last week I made some visits to meet old friends, to talk and chat. There are many ways of communicating with people, verbal communication, non-verbal communication, communication by signs, communication by phone, communication by writing, etc. I am one of those who prefer face-to-face communication methods, and deciding to use this method means visiting institutions or people.
Face-to-face meetings inevitably lead to very good conversations, memories and anecdotes. When I visited a friend for this purpose, we were talking about human rights, the culture of democracy, the protection of the environment and the production of science.
My friend had lived abroad for a long time and had returned to our country. At one point in the conversation I said, 'We don't like them, but we try to escape to those countries by smuggling and drown in the seas while escaping. If we don't like these people, why do we yearn to live in their countries?
Let me tell you something that happened to me and you will understand how much they care about human rights.'
My friend started to explain, saying that I would listen with impatience.
They have a serious set of rules, and when there are rules, it is easier to protect human rights and develop a culture of democracy. You know, one payday I realized that my account had been overdrawn and I went to the accounting department to inquire about it. Only I know how embarrassed I was by the answer the accounting department gave me, and only God knows how embarrassed I was.
What did he answer?
We have been employing workers for years and this is the first time you have come to me and told me that my account was overpaid.
I was very offended by this statement, but I still insisted on my question as to why there was an overpayment, and as a result of my insistence, he gave me the following explanation.
I said yes
Then look, you fasted for a month and did not eat from our organization. We calculated the cost of each meal you didn't eat one by one and deposited the cost of the meal you didn't eat into your account. This is your right.'
'Now, brother, I see that these people have taken the values of our culture and added value to themselves, while we have taken values that are unknown and created a worthless community.
Societies are sustained by their values, and societies that use values as a guide can take their place among the more pioneering societies in democracy, cultural and scientific development. Societies without rules and principles, on the other hand, are always doomed to remain under the yoke of other societies.
In this sense, Mahatma Gandhi says the following words that should be in people's ears.
Be careful with your thoughts; they become your WORDS,
Be careful with your words; your ACTION will follow,
Pay attention to your actions; it becomes your habit,
Watch your habits; they become your CHARACTER,
Beware of your character; it becomes your destiny.' I wish you a life where values prevail.
@sophiarggen
