Hi y'all, fine folks & fellows of the STEEMIT clan!
Hereby I'd like to introduce myself to you as like-minded people, pushing the fringes of benchmarking this revolution in written content creation!
I am very happy and excited to have arrived on this social media platform where that gentle slide into the warm writer's bath is actually embraced in a community-form and where getting connected with the new-school's cool in penning out one's brain-pickings has made it to pedestal of appreciation!
I am Lysander, a Dutch guy from Amsterdam, and I am a psychologist, life coach, traveler, all-round explorer and Self-Investigator who is afflicted with a dead serious passion for writing.
Further there's a lot to say about who I am and how I got to where I am at. So where to start? If I just would pick something central defining me... Which is, now I come to think of it, experimentation and change. Yes. Ok, let’s go.
I love exploring, learning and experiencing new things and this happens along the lines of “as within so without”. This means that self-investigation and investigation of the external world, in all its different shades and (sometimes shady) ways, go hand in hand.
Yes, investigating things has that definite allure I find hard to resist, whether it's a book on cannibalis.. ehh exotic cooking, a travel magazine or the local weirdo: it all captures my interest with the same immediateness as the noble moth experiencing the existentialistic pull to the beautiful lights as it buzzes itself wholeheartedly into the blue-purple zapping deathdevice in some far-off quarter in my room. So yeah, new information, skill-building and learning are those type things I just can’t resist and love to do – little dirty bookmoth that I am.
So let's talk about 'me and change' and 'me as change'. As a kid, change was initially something that happened rather unexpectedly with the occasional kick in the door TADAA-ing!! itself in my life by more or less random events, like parents wanting me to change schools and moving to new places. Yet, later on in life I started to embrace, embody and live the concept of Change myself - operating and moving myself from the actual PRINCIPLE of Change. And in exploring different styles and predilections, I got the hang of (and the taste for) living Change – this even to the extent where I started to label exploration and change as the determinant of 'Living Freedom'.
Armed with this conviction I started to make it an integrated expression of my personality. And thus I aimed to live out this ‘Living Freedom’ through an active exploration of what the world has to offer in all its myriad (and sometimes bizarre) ways. Looking at life was done by peering through my Freedom-etched goggles that screamed: “HAIL THE NEW TO LIVE THE DREAM”. Those precious and explorative goggles I wore permanently - and as soon something became ‘old hat’ I meticulously cleaned them from the crusts of boredom with all the grace and thoroughness of torched gasoline (all or nothing, baby - what's next, let’s explore the new with heart and soul - for the days are short!).
Change and The New (and later on 'Freedom') manifested itself on many levels of my Being, as it was something I BECAME and EMBODIED as myself. And yeah, it of course came with the classic threesome of the good, the bad and the ugly.
Becoming Change as myself, I lived BOTH the external, more physically manifested version of experimentation/change (like traveling, doing all kinds of sports, having had a lot of different (types of) friends, exploring different types of art, wading through various subcultures, doing many different studies, courses and workshops, and having passed through 5 schools and 3 different dads before hitting adulthood) - AND explored ventures into the psychologically unknown, integrating myself into ways of thinking that see reality in a ‘different’ way, trying to penetrate the deeper levels of the 'post-conceptual' through living ideologies, doctrines and off-beat movements; ultimately trying to expose those buried bare bones bedrock beanies of this bedevilled bedlam we call our Mind and Existence.
The external exploration (through traveling, doing many different sports, adopting myself into different subcultures etc.) was something worthwhile, interesting and enriching - yet it also carried the problem of superficiality and never really hitting the core of places or activities. Regardless, I saw my lifestyle as something praiseworthy as I also (subconsciously) felt I lived up to the ideology of the times where ‘exploration’ and ‘the New’ was seen as something cool and ‘self-expansive’. So through doing all these different things I was also living up to a cultural ideal I held within myself, as much as I did fuse it with a more genuine personal expression of wanting to see and experience new things. This actually makes me think…
Yes, so Change… Is actually something many people try to live up to nowadays, as it is a popular idea and desire to live life as that One Big Experiment where the world is our juicy oyster, ready and willing to be cracked with the blunt knife of consumerism and sensory titillation – where the ‘explorative personality’ that is change/freedom/individuality is hailed with the desire to live out limitless fantasies of being in a world that is our Gucci Garden of Eden infused with the pink pop-soul of a metamodernistic candyshop – chorally shouting the neon-lit hashtag of the times where we “must go forth and oscillate!”. And so our stacked and bricolaged personalities are filled with informed naivety that breathes the lush dew and evergreen of stylized relativism, fuelled with the heartfelt passion for exploration of the sweet unknown where we fashionably cocktail our admiration for the pure and indigenous with the hottest designer drugs. And within it all, we sexy-up ourselves with casually equating the eternally fleeting and superficial with the apparent mileage we make within our heads and hearts. Is this real change, investigation, exploration and expansion? Well, my dear readers, who am I to say? It is ultimately all about the grounding and honesty within yourself that determines your potential of self-expansion and-expression within living out the cultural highlights of a particular day and age – where we hopefully end up embracing its newly generated freedoms, unexplored potentials and budding vistas whilst avoiding its self-deceiving lures, hidden mind-traps and vicious loopholes. I mean, culture is just as much a gun as anything else: it’s not good or bad in itself, it’s about how you use the thing.
Ok, got a little detoured there – showing a bit about a particular dimension of (losing) myself with participating in cultural’s cool of Change/Exploration/The New. Now let’s get back to the real point where I did some more serious inner work, trying to find out what the hell was going on a deeper level of myself and existence.
So, regarding my INNER exploration: this was all within the aim of understanding the reality of Self and Existence and where finding the Truth has been the underlying aim for about 12 years now. To attain and realize this I have investigated many strands and types of knowledge and wisdom. This I did through investigating and studying science and psychology, expressing myself in art, changing my life-perspective with philosophy, finding the ‘higher’ Way with religion and spirituality (light and dark) and at times imbibing a couple of copious cups brimming with the conversational comradery in some nocturnal hideout. All of these proclaimed eye-openers of Truth had some of their individual (and valuable) pointers, as they all equally lacked others.
Within this process of discovery and experimentation I did not only lean back comfortably in my Freudian sofa smoking the pipe - no, I practically practiced all that I picked up on and encountered; this in order to KNOW instead of merely adopting a belief-system. And so, to practice it all, I needed to embody CHANGE and OPENNESS within myself, juggling with (belief)systems and my set/determined sense of Self in order to EXPERIMENT and in order to enable myself to VERIFY the TRUTH as TESTED and EXPERIENCED by REAL PERSONAL PRACTICE.
All in all it has been an awesome trip that gave me a lot of insight and life-experience, yet the whole circus of Self didn't come without its price, as it came also with a crisis: venturing (and sometimes escaping) into change and the unknown can bring inner confusion and a sense of (self)alienation - for who the hell are you when you can just as easy align yourself with the Darker spheres of the cosmos as with sharing some soul-time with the Divine? How does one logically reconcile the rational foot of scientific reason with the sensibility of etheric experience? And where exactly do you find yourself in the chaos and raging stench of Mumbai? Or is it perhaps located in the isolation of the Himalayas with two injured knees? Is it then in a woman's arms where the true meaning of fulfillment lies? How do we become whole again? Is it through the fiery passions larger than life or in surpassing and sublimating our urges and drives? But why does it all then never really last and just becomes so fucking emotionally unstable until you find yourself again back in the blue? Where does balance exist in discovering and living life's purpose as represented through emotions and rationality? Is the ultimate purpose in some spiritual/philosophical doctrine or are we just meaningless clumps of breathing stardust? Who are we? What is the best way of living? Is there a purpose for myself and others, in the big and the small, and what is it?
At a certain point I got quite lost within all my insights and experiences, exactly because of the frequent Change in my soul-searching identity that continuously uprooted my inner world – which additionally prevented me from having actual self-clarity and a deeper-rooted anchorage within it all. It has definitely been worthwhile exploring (inner) boundaries and outrealms, but ultimately for a saner way of Self-sailing one has perhaps to set a certain limit where one’s doesn’t paradoxically lose oneself while actually trying to find oneself. How does one do that? Where are the limits to the boons and insights of living Change?
Well, 'They' (you know... these obscure yet illustrious guys that come up with these wise things all the time that everybody refers to as if they actually knew them) say 'balance is the key' and they have a good point. The ability to change CAN be, and IS good as it keeps you flexible within yourself and reality – freeing ourselves with the fluidity of being able to flow like a river in a life that is often marked relentlessly by the black banks of habitual containment and inner constraint. So Change CAN BE good for sure - provided one makes an inner deal with oneself where one commits to stay true to oneself when looking for finding oneself.
What? Yes, a tricky thing to conceive because the point of the quest is change and self-exploration (and therefore one needs to ‘leave parts of Self behind’ – stepping into the unknown) while one apparently still needs to hold on to certain parts of oneself. My answer: check your energy-levels. You want clarity? Be clear. Look beyond energy and thought and seek out and ground yourself within the stability of yourself. Once you’re unmoved and able to clear yourself in stability you can venture out, embodying and looking at points of Change clearly – and from that make an informed decision about what to do and where to go. Changing from that starting-point is awesome and opens up vistas of opportunities. From there you can really Change and Become who you want to be.
YET and SO, being MARKED as living in change continuously, especially in energetic states, is ultimately not much different from living RIGIDITY manifested in a different form - as it is just as much a SYSTEM of HABIT/PROGRAMMING repeating itself over and over and over until you get stuck all the same at a certain point; even to the point where you completely lose yourself and are always championing some DragonQuest pt. MMXLVIII of going 'beyond' your limitations and into so-called self-expansion. Which is ultimately cycling in the same and never really changing or moving forward. And I know, I've been there 100%.
While this all might seem like a self-bashing piece of an introduction, it's actually just a short sketch of a big part of who I used to be as a process of seeking and living Change and Freedom (and with it the investigation of Self and Reality). My self-experimental journey into Self and Reality has mixed me up at some point, but as we know: the sour comes before the sweet, and there's no epic quest that doesn't know its tougher obstacles. The same goes for the quest of Self-Investigation and Self-Realization - finding the Truth has never been easy.
Now, after spending more than a year on a farm in South Africa, two months in refugee camps on Lesbos and two in Iceland with my partner, I have cleared, grounded and stabilized myself a lot, and gotten to know myself on much deeper levels – actually to the point of hardly recognizing my old self when I see it represented, as for example in the Facebook posts from only two years ago. Well, how then?
I walked a process of Self-Change through thorough Self-Investigation that is aligned with hardcore (and often confronting) 'Self-Honesty' that leaves no stone unturned – especially the dirty hairy ones you really do not want to see. In this process I realized that REAL CHANGE is not something ‘out there’ that you can chant yourself towards or read yourself into; it is effected through a thorough and raw 'knowing thyself' through mapping oneself out in a way that is clear, specific, sound and grounded more than any spiritual doctrine or scientific paper can promise or deliver.
And that is and always has been the ultimate point of my journey of change; to find myself and my pure expression, hidden in the unknown Truth of who I am. And in doing so, making the inner unknown known as to shed a light on what's real within us and how we can become the best we can be.
What I walk personally in my self-discovery combined with my insights on this matter - and how it applies to all of us - will be shared in my blogposts to come. But wait! Before you run away now with a throbbing headache, I will at times spare you (and myself) the deep mental bonkers and thus will expand on the utter mundane, as for example the finer details of crappy airplane food, the neutrality of a glass of water and the heightened sensory pleasures of sticking Silly Putty up your nose. Deal? OK! See ya next time!