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THE CRAFTS
My path into life has been steep and rocky. But rich in insights and experiences. These are the four crafts I have picked up along the way and which I am deeply passionate about.
What I have to offer you today has matured along this path. It's not just learned. No, it is the result of years of personal unfolding. It arises from encountering obstacles, contradictions and crises and has been experienced deep within.
buddhist peace work
I have grown into Buddhist peace work through the bridging of two worlds: my academic studies in mediation and conflict resolution and two decades of delving ever deeper into the heart and mind of Buddhism. Born from the insight that conflict and confrontation are existential and unavoidable human realities it is at its core the application of Buddhism's highly developed experiential understanding of the human mind to the experience of those realities.
As such it is based on the realization that humans are relational beings that find themselves embedded into the ebb and flow of a stream of communication that faces them with a movement between self-containment and connectedness. Let's put it into a nutshell: it is Buddhism with a strong tilt towards the often neglected realities of communication.
From the perspective of Buddhist peace work attempting to avoid conflict and confrontation can be a very bad idea. It can breed deep human suffering lock down almost all the potential for human flourishing that us inherent to most relationships. It further suggests that conflict and confrontation need to be consciously embraced, fully experienced, and transformed through the cultivation of the roots of peace and cooperation.
To that end Buddhist peace work provides you with a new way of perceiving, interpreting and speaking about conflict and confrontation, as well as their complementary opposites: peace and cooperation. To get you there you only need to learn five Buddhist words: presence, space, contact, energy, clarity. Words that you will find are deeply rooted in and suprisingly close to your non-conceptual experience.
There's more: there's the insight into the three marks of the stream of communication. The cultivation of those inborn human qualities that support you in staying present and free in the face of the unsetteling experience of conflict and confrontation. The dynamics of self-image, human perception and world view. And much more. If you are interested I have written two books on this: klick here.
But obviously all of that means nothing if you cannot perceive the experiences behind those words in your direct experience. That's where I come in. I offer you the transmission of knowledge, support you in the learning of a new language, and aprovide you with a reflective space for the schooling of your awareness until you can solidly embody a new state of communication conciousness.
So how does that tie into Urdcraft? That's suprisingly simple. If you don't know how to work with conflict and confrontation and transmute them into peace and cooperation it's going be terribly hard for you to individuate. More often than not that will keep you from breaking free from your karmic cage and embrace your destiny.
body-mind energetics
I was fortunate enough to meet one of the great masters of embodiment when I was in my mid-twenties. Back then I was working on my PhD in physics, and to no surprise almost all of my awareness was bound up in my mind. He showed me that humans are more than their minds: they are body-minds. Studying with him has created within me an awareness of what it is like to be grounded, centered, open, expressive, and focused. To name but a few of the generous gifts he has bestowed on me. To put what he taught me into a nutshell, he helped me shift my awareness from the mind to the body-mind.
Body-mind energetics is rooted in the realization that we are all not just physically embedded in our environment but in an ongoing state of energetic exchange that impacts us heavily. Whether we have the awareness to notice it or not. Energetic intensity and emotional expression pervade seemingly empty space. They activate or shut down parts of our body-mind and, in so doing, fundamentally change our perception of what's going on inside of us and around us.
Unsurprsingly, body-mind energetics is all about coming to terms with that reality. About coming more fully into the body-part of the body-mind. About the cultivation of an awareness for the flow of energy in one's body-mind. About the creation of an awareness that informs us when parts of the body-mind are shut down. About the ability to dynamize blocked emotion and reinhabit the body-mind: physically, energetically, and mentally. And how we are all affected when conflict brings in intense energetic and emotional states. Of course, ultimately it is about the development of an awareness that encompasses all of the above.
If you have an experiential lived experience of what you've just read, I can't teach you much. If you haven't, and most of us haven't, I am happy to work with you. I will guide you into a profound awareness of the experiences of groundedness, centeredness, openness, expressiveness and focus. I will initiate you into the tools you will need to intentionally connect with these states of consciousness. Furthermore, I will help you reflect on the energetic reality of intense energetic states and the body-mind experiences they can create. And I will do much more: I will hold the reality of the energetic field for you so you can experience somatic resonance, energetic co-regulation, and energetic self-containment. And yes, all of that can be done online. I am still sometimes baffled by that too.
Now, what's the connection of all of that to Urdcraft? At the core of body-mind energetics is the intention to help you integrate the left and the right hemispheres of your brain, the rational brain and the imaginal brain. It's that integration that will enable you to step into a bigger frame of awareness and give you the skills to reconnect to it quickly if intensity makes you lose it. But there's more to it: it will enable you to start accessing your past life memories.
evolutionary astrology
Astrology runs in my bloodline. I can trace it back to my great-grandfather on my mother's side. Everyone has had a bit of an on-off relationship with it. No wonder: astrology doesn't fit well with Catholicism, and even worse with today's reductionist cultural mainstream.
Given that four generations of my family have been tuning into the music of the spheres and listening to the voices of the stars, it should come as no surprise that I consider my mother my first forming astrological influence. Of course, it didn’t stop there, over the years I've taken a dive into various schools of astrological thought. Until some time ago I found a more permanent home in evolutionary astrology.
A few words on the craft: Astrology is based on the realization that the cosmos holds meaning. That it matters when and where you were born. Evolutionary astrology adds the understanding that all of us are partaking in an evolution of consciousness that unfolds over countless lifetimes. An evolution paradoxically rooted in our free will, individuality and capacity to turn difficulty into learning.
From the perspective of evolutionary astrology most of the realities we experience are a collision between our free will and a vast archetypal field of astrological possibility. The chart is both a map and a compass to help us navigate that field. Contrary to other astrological schools evolutionary astrology does not believe that there are good or bad charts, signs, planets, houses, aspects, transits, etc. Sure, our consciousness is limited. Granted, our free will constrained. Still, every chart is perfect. And yes, we are the architects of our own happiness. It’s up to us, we can be struck down by our fate or embrace our destiny.
The better we understand our chart the more we will lean towards the latter. Now, becoming fluent in the language of astrology is quite a project. So, you will need an interpreter. That’s where I come in. Together we will tune into the music of the spheres to decipher your chart's meaning and gain an understanding how that meaning becomes manifest within the scope of your life’s experience and biography.
What’s the connection of all of this to Urdcraft? Obviously, evolutionary astrology is only one path of self-knowing. Yet, it provides you with an awareness of your karmic predicament and your core nature. That’s a massive step towards embracing your evolutionary future. With it comes a sense of self, and a sense of direction. Obviously that kind of self-knowledge isn’t enough. It needs to be embraced and embodied, that's where the spirits come in.
scandinavian shamanism
In a way, shamanic states of consciousness have become second nature. I started experimenting with them in my mid-twenties. That’s now roughly 20 years ago. I just never quite knew how to work with them. That is until I met my shamanic teachers. Little did I know that back in my mid-twenties I was embarking on what feels like a lifelong apprenticeship to spirit.
Shamanism is based on the realization that there is a more-than-human world right beyond our doorstep: that of spirit. And that the forces of spirit shape the realities of this world at least as much as we humans do. To put it in a nutshell, spirit appears in myriad forms, colors, and shades. As manifestations of the divine. Christians speak of angels and powers. To Buddhists, they are devas and nature spirits. Shamanic traditions simply refer to them as the spirits.
Scandinavian shamanism is a special breed of shamanism. It is, at its core, non-dualistic shamanism. It does, therefore, not distinguish between good and evil but between sacred and profane. More metaphorically speaking, it sees darkness simply as the absence of light, the absence of the divine. Spirits, like people, are understood to be forever in the possession of a fundamental goodness. An understanding that it shares with Vajrayana Buddhism. To the Scandinavian shaman, the spirits are striving for joy, and they love to teach.
Even today, in our postmodern technosocieties, there are good reasons for seeing a shaman. It’s mostly when life presents us with challenges and problems that are beyond us and everyone we know that we turn to a shamanic practitioner who can act as a mediator between us and the more-than-human world, that of the spirits.
Shamans are trained to put themselves into the shamanic state of consciousness. By rattling, drumming, whistling, toning, singing, and dancing, they call the spirits who they ask for help.
In Scandinavian shamanism it is the spirits who do the work. Simply because in the world of spirit they are the experts. The spirits have a clear agenda; they help us by giving us what we need, not what we want. Help can come in many forms: information, advice, guidance, power, initiation, etc. It can feel like they are playing with us. Their intentions can be unfathomable. Shamanism is anything but escapism. It is always about bringing the help received on the shamanic journey into everyday life and anchoring it there. It's always about becoming more deeply human.
Urdcraft and Scandinavian shamanism, what do they have in common? There’s one thing that the spirits really love doing: nudging us into embracing our unique individuality and, with it, our destiny. And while evolutionary astrology can provide us with a blueprint and a sense of direction, the spirits love to be our guides in making it all real.