Come Closer with Uroš & Tadeja - Episode #1

It is one of the most natural reactions of all living beings to run away from danger. This is nothing we can change even though humans try to do just that all the time by hiding, denying, masking, and pretending to be strong, capable, and persistent. We mask our feelings and sensations; we pretend we are not touched or hurt.

British have an idiom saying “Stiff your upper lip” which would mean you stay steady and determent, not showing any doubts, regrets, or softness.

I say this is not human. From time to time, we also need to take that position. But we are much more than that. We have feelings and thoughts and sensations – we are very complex multidimensional beings. We are many things, not just one.

When we pretend or play that we are something that we are not, we do that by distancing from our feelings and thoughts, we distance ourselves from the self.

There are 2 major elements at play here.

First is recognizing the danger. By danger, I mean anything that we perceive as threatening including our feelings and thoughts, reactions to others…

The real question we should ask ourselves here is how often the real danger is threatening us and how often we only believe it is dangerous because of the painful experiences in our history. One way to tell the difference is to come closer.

The second element is in the question of why we narrow down the options we have to mostly just one option - to run away.

The answer is in the fact that we are trained to not be fully present, trained to not be connected to the whole self, to everything we are. This comes down to very simple and elemental things like thoughts and ideas that we have about ourselves.

• Who we are and how do we think/believe that the world sees us?
• Do they judge or accept us?
• Do we judge or accept ourselves and others?
• Can we tolerate the discomfort of not being whole self?
• Can we bear the pain of pretending to be who we were trained to be, and live as it is expected of us to live?

It is very difficult to constantly maintain the image of something that is not in alignment with all of us.

When we decide to come closer, we cannot do this only by talking about and meeting the good stuff. We need to be ready to take it all.

It is not about accepting everything. Some things cannot be accepted.

We first need to know what we are accepting!

It is not about solving things. Some things can’t be solved.

We need to understand the problem first before we jump into decisions about solving them!

It is about building a relationship. It is about training the muscles to build the capacity to stay with what is. It is about evoking the skills to not be mostly in reactive mode – fight or fly

Coming closer means we stop – we stop running, denying, and acting for any cost...

Coming closer means, we take time to look and get to know what is there. It means we consciously create space for everything to appear and exist as it is.

Today we will come closer to ourselves. This is the first step. To give ourselves some space and time. To test what happens if we are witnessed in places that until now, we thought are less than, not acceptable, bad, broken beyond repair...