When life gives you cabbage…

I am one of those who quit their job and walked out.

It happened very fast and unexpected. I worked for a big corporation and one day I sat in a meeting and I suddenly knew I could not do this any longer. So I got up and walked out. It was a weekend and I gave it time, but did not really think much about this strange situation. Instead I enjoyed my weekend, went for a pedicure and a movie, had brunch with friends on the next day and visited the museum. On Sunday I went for long a bicycle ride and later for a casual dinner with friends. I did not talk about what had happened to me.

On Monday I handed in my resignation.

This impulse carried a lot of consequences. Not only had I left a job, I also abandoned a career. It was my only source of income and it was clear that this decision required me to move. I remember the few months of getting ready to leave the big city as one of the happiest in my life. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew I would be alright. I spent most of the time walking about as physical exercise kept me from thinking and getting worried. Most of my friends thought I had a screw loose somewhere and the rest thought I had screwed up and got fired. But I was just happy and excited  and knew I had done the right thing.

It was also the time I met my first spiritual teacher, who without so many words, put me on the right track. I did not get it tough and started to look into energy medicine instead, as I have had a lifelong interest in it and was somehow pulled to go in that direction.

When I returned to my hometown in the beginning of 2007, I had the idea of going into stress medicine. So I found an apartment and opened a small medical practice.

I started to read a lot and freshen up some of my skills. At the time I met another spiritual teacher who exposed me to a lot of energetic exercises and practice. Soon the first patients came and I started to develop an unconventional holistic approach, primarily based on diagnosis and initiating the first steps on a journey into healing. In the beginning I was focused very much on acupuncture, simply because I was very comfortable with the needles. Later I experimented with holistic methods, in particular in terms of diagnosis and I developed some diagnostic tools and ideas for intervention. I started to give small seminars and lectures and step by step my new purpose became apparent.

I realised my particular skill was diagnosis and bringing the different pieces together. I had a lot of patients who were suffering from symptoms of chronic stress – like sleep disturbances, digestive problems, weight issues, allergies, headaches, pain, addiction etc. I soon found out what the crucial step was helping them to admit to being stressed and then finding the causes. There is not such a thing like a single cause in medicine – we would like this to be so simple, but it is not. Chronic stress is usually a combination of lifestyle, environmental influences and chronic conflict. To make people see how all was connected and to help them find the first step to bring about sustainable change.

In the meantime I continued to develop too and after a while I realised that most people who came to my practice were at some stage of spiritual awakening. So I started to take this dimension into consideration and began to include spiritual counselling.

At the same time I started to get invited to talk and I discovered that I suddenly had developed a penchant for public speaking. I spoke freely, without slides, making contact with the audience. In the beginning I was still relatively scientific, but more and more I started to simply freestyle, talk in simple terms about stress and what it does to body, mind and soul.

People appeared in my practice reflecting my own state of awareness. More and more my only tool became listening in presence and I am asking questions, as they come up. Of course I still write a prescription from time to time or use the needles, but this is really the exception.

More and more I also have the sense that the interface of medicine and spirituality is going to be my call. I have the sense I am turning into some sort of guide. Not a teacher, not a physician – but a mentor.  This is still early days but I am very clear about my intent to help people to help themselves and I am very committed to the path and to follow wherever life wants to have me.

Sometimes I am impatient. At times money runs low or I am getting bored. At times I get frustrated. But I have learned that these things happen in stages and you never know what life wants you to learn or experience next. Often a major frustration turned out to be the beginning of an unexpected turn.

Even this blog, Geli and I have started, is another step on the way. It is an experiment but it is at the same time an important step along the way.

I am happy about what I am doing and I see many people getting a lot better. I have seen healings and that is beautiful to experience. I am still not as busy as I would like to be – but then I also know I am still in the making and this process takes time. It takes time to develop skills, confidence and stamina.

My life has changed completely over the course of 3 years and it continues to change and I am just tagging along, without big plans, but with an open mind and full of excitement.  I came across Eckhart relatively late in the process, April 2009, and it was only then that I realised what this was all about.

And then everything suddenly started to make sense.