Every story has a beginning and so, let’s talk about mine.
I am beginning to think that we all are here to remind ourselves what inspiration means.
So, that will be my beginning for now. I was born as a gatherer of stories and sifted through the manure of idea’s to establish the kingdom of my own choice.
One of the things a kingdom needs is a secure foothold in forgiveness. The furniture could be shaped out of boldness with a touch of wholeness. I can see a sliver of silver floating around the rooms where we hide.
So, I decided to go on a road of forgiveness. And it worked. Several years went by as we all know and through the heartbreak and experience, I found my own forgiveness.
But enough words; it is time for my brother to enter the stage and take over the blank pages of my future.
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My forgiveness had one last choice to make and it reminded me of a child who sought attention.
Throughout my years, I established great things: I found a way to belong somewhere, I found my calling, I released my father and mother from the expectations I had towards them and I found refuge for the heart that I carried.
I was proud of the legacy that I had shaped for myself and it was time to give in to the last desire of my wounded Self; my happiness could only begin when I left the troubles of my family behind me. And so it was destined to be that my older brother and I went on a journey.
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For anyone to fully understand what happiness feels like, it is almost necessary to understand that no-one has ownership on you. You choose to be owned by something or someone. And that ownership can be transferred to a person, a feeling or an independent source beyond time and space; or nothing at all.
I always find it fascinating to discover that the acts that we go through in life are only linked to eachother in an unbreakable chain because of a certain idea that we want to hold on too. We are linking our moments in the wheel of time and forgetting about the complete simplicity and elegance of what we CAN be.
We have the tendency to give our ownership away because we will have this other person or idea to justify our existence. We want to allow our Self to project fear onto someone or something because we are scared to own this fear. And we want to believe that this fear can be shared so we push reationships or bonds that were never meant to be. So that we are not alone on this world.
The fact that my brother got Schizophrenia always bothered me. It took a chunk out of the self confidence of our family and we tried to believe in ourselves but we always wondered if we did wrong by him. We were scared to admit that he had changed. Nobody had taught us how to live with a family member wh had schizophrenia and it gnawed at our souls. Some of my family, like my mother and me, took ownership of his Self in order to obscure that fact that he was ‘lost.’ We felt responsible to justify his existence. We held on to the past.
My mom and me at least felt responsible to achieve a bond with him and sacrificed our own path to give him space. So the decision to take him into my world of traveling was met with eagerness and excitement. We all believed that he just had to see the world and discover and magically heal. My motives were heroic and dangerous but my mom and me both had the utmost trust in each other and we did not want to see, we could not see the fault in our plans: My brother had it’s own path and he did not need to be healed.
So there we went. We arranged a money income, traveling gear and the freedom to release my brother from the mental hospital.
I did a few trips with him around the Netherlands and decided to begin our journey in Switzerland. I Already was faced with his temper and it’s inconsistent behavior to change topic and his fascination to discuss about the voices in his head. I was faced with a mad man who listened to music and sang along; A cute friendly bear who could erupt in ridicule nonsense speeches to prove his points, and later stroke your cheek and forgive and forget. It took me some restraint But the ownership that i gave him over me could finally transform into a story.
My brother was quite the charmer. He could have an outburst right in front of you, dedicated to the anger which he felt towards you and switch to the personality of a teenager who remembers nothing about responsibility. His outbursts were an experiment that were momentarily and meant nothing. If you would reflect on what had happened, he would deny it and get another outburst because you believe in anger. “I cannot be angry.” He said. Only living in his perception of reality.
My brother’s perception of the righteousness of his deeds are narrowed to his own believe. I would listen, as many of you to the different ways in which I could see my deed and have many fears and doubts that I take into account but my brother doesn’t do that. He deflects all different aspects and stays single minded in his own little bubble of timelessness. And even if you could convince him that he is wrong, it would have no ripple effect: he would simply accept the surprising fact that you were right and continue living his life.
In short, he takes no ownership and gives no ownership. He is a source beyond time and space and any attempts to put him back in his body is met with failed attempts and angry outbursts.
So, maybe by now you understand a little bit about the troubles that I went through; choosing this responsibility and pridefully hold on to an idea that was impossible to hold on to.
But I did it. I am not proud of it, I will never believe in the positivity of it but it was life. It was life lived to the fullest extent.
I have only tears and heartfelt sympathy for the ones who did or do or will do the same adventures with their family member as I did.
I tried to describe my journey in here with as much care and precision possible; realizing that I know nothing and any attempt to justify my own existence should be met with fierce resistance. I am sorry if that is not the case. May we all find and feel understood, wherever we go and whatever we do
I dedicate this journey to all the lives we threw away, to the ones we could never safe and for the life that we live today
I will begin with a small observation that I wrote in my diary:
I travelled five months with him. I started out saying that I would travel six months with him so I am happy, I never suspected that I could hold out so long. I went with him all the way to Turkey and back. It was a healing process for the ones who were open to accept it as such.
That was always a mindset of mine: I would open myself up and see whatever healing came my way because I always thought that you should never leave the universe hanging: if it knocked on your door, you should always open it for him. I forgot sometimes that the universe could open the door himself. I forgot that the universe could still exist even if I didn’t open the door because somebody else could open it. What I could have filled, could be filled by someone else. The universe is not dependent on my attention towards it. if it wanted to bloom, It could bloom everywhere. It would find a way. So, It was possible that I was not the answer for it’s chance to grow. It was the possibility that i had not created reality. This was a shocking revelation.
It is not necessary to share the responsibility of harmony but I wanted my brother to, because I projected my desire. It was my longing to make him conscious about the responsibility that he had to make , to make us feel good. I wanted him to justify my existence.
I went on my travel with my brother because I saw myself as a solution to his problem. There were many other reasons of course but I was aware of the amount of self love I had and thought that he would be inspired by it and change.
He couldn’t care less...
And when I figured that I could only inspire myself, I began to invest more in this aspect.
We met Laura in Switzerland. She was living here for three years, taking care of her grandparents. I met her in Athens. I didn’t really know who she was but we have had a good conversation when i was in Athens so I decided to contact her. She was a girl, coming from New Zealand, on a trip to meet her Swiss family. She replied happily and with such open arms that I was curious to find out more about her.
Later i reflected that my eagerness to jump in open arms to share the responsibility that is only meant to be mine is a constant pattern of self doubt that i went through. And i justified it by saying that i was curious to share what life offered us. It was still too beautiful to see what life offered me as an individual. But Laura gave me a chance.
Firstly I observed that she was very open minded towards Demian and his presence. I felt awkward and shy, realizing that I disturbed her grandparents rest with my brothers boundlessness but Laura didn’t see any problem and so she was an inspiration for me. Demian would place comments and give compliments to the family that were filled with his being. It was for me a challenge to not feel shame or guilt when he expressed himself. I often said sorry for my brothers behavior, but the only thing that he did was express with eagerness to connect and to show how much he loved others.
This was not always done in a proper manner and it shocked most people. I was always afraid or on the lookout; for what he could do the next moment.
I compared a lot and I didn’t accept it.
But I refused to see it. It wasn’t my time to accept that part of myself so I worked with what I got and that was a Dutch girl’s contacts and willingness to meet us somewhere in Switzerland to climb a mountain.
Demian and me met her in the train that went to Switzerland. and when Laura offered to drive us somewhere to climb a mountain I instigated a meeting between all of us. It were adventurous times. Laura’s uncle invited us to stay in his part of the house for a few days until we went to the mountains and it was a gesture that exceeded my own bravery. I was touched in a way that reminded me of shame. Demian just normally owned the consequences that happened to him as if they were, of course, on course and as if they could not have lived without him. They needed him! But For me, it seemed to be a gift that I could never repay. A once in a lifetime paradise that I would honor for the remainder of my days.
My feeling of unworthiness drove its roots so deep inside myself that it controlled my behavior: I kept the king who I was, far from any human contact. I kept pleasing others even though they crossed my boundary.
The thing is: Demian could not give a damn about my unworthiness. He knew that I was the king and left me in my own fears. I did not feel replenished by his presence or taken care of. I was afraid. I was afraid of being with my brother alone. I could not receive and accept him without diminishing my own energy so I placed ourselves in the company of others. I possessed not yet the skill of eternal peace.
After a few days in Laura’s house, we went to the mountains and climbed one. Demian was ready? He would go?! And he would carry his backpac..........?
Cestmir is seen with two backpacks hiking a mountain. Demian settled and relaxed every now and again to catch his breath. Laura just collected the moments that happend.
At first I tried to make sense of my brother but then realized that I could not explain him nor depend on him. I could only carry the burden of being with him. And I had invited him into my world, so it was my responsibility to conquer all the consequences that would happen and drape myself in the wisdom and strength that was going to be created out of them.
In many ways, it made me understand more what a person was capable of and why we lived in this world. If it was not to maintain the system and preserve the bloodshed of fear, than it was to take care of our family and shed pride of its privacy.
The three of us found a place in the mountains and pitched up our tent. In the middle of the night, Demian’s tent began to move and move faster towards the cliff. My instincts made a surge of prosperity. I slept outside and was wide awake when i heard a moving tent. I saw the sneario in an instant and tried to grab my brothers hand but he was out of reach. I screamed something and then the tent stopped moving. There was a fence holding it in place. My brother stumbled out and waited for me to put the tent back. Many years of traveling had made my instincts sharp and precise and my brother instincts were slow and all over the place. That made our trip interesting. He would always say that I was a goblin with haste.
We spend one more night on the mountain and began our journey to the car again. It was at this point that I made the decision to stop the medication of my brother. I did not want to travel with a slow version of him. I wanted to travel with my brother. It was a very, very risky and dangerous move and not my most proud moment but that was what happened and I take full responsibility.
Being with him made me realize how I loved to control the pace and agenda of life. I could! Because I was the good man, I was the strongest and smartest. It was a foolish wish to expand my empire by force and don’t make compromises. My patience and order were tested and chaos and randomness tried to overthrow the natural protection that I established to make sense of myself.
Demian was all wet when he came to us. He had just entered the river with his clothes and was ready to enter the car. I had a panic attack and felt my anger rise when I explained to him that he could not enter like this. He stubbornly disagreed and said something about that I was not the Cestmir of him and animals were attacking me.
In a way, he was right. I took more interest in the panic and the car than in the freedom of nature to just do what we feel like doing.
In the following days, Demian and me and Laura met the Dutch girl and a friend of hers and we camped together in the country side. We had a campfire and some stories about friendship. I had met the friend of the Dutch girl already some years ago at a party and it was nice to meet him again.
In the morning, we drove them somewhere and we went back to Laura’s home.
The time with her came to an end.
The next chapter of my travels with my brother came to existence when Adam joined the party. As i said before, i loved to share my responsibility and so invited Adam. Adam is not his real name but you dont have to know his real name.
A few months ago, i had come with Demian to Adam's place and a plan was formed there. Adam wanted to travel Europe and i invited him to join us in Switzerland. He is a man of white hair and has lived for over 66 summers. I admired and respected the person he was. That's why i invited him. Our friendship consisted of mutual understanding of who we were or that is what i thought. He always had no qualm to pay whatever costs we had and, i have to be thruthfully honest with you, it was partly because i believed in the great abundance of him that i spend my life with him.
When he met us in Switzerland, we were staying for two weeks at the riverside. After Laura we found this little private spot. It was perfect for the ones who were hiding from reality. Demian had a few episodes of crazyness where he just stared at me as if he ripped out his soul and gave it to the blank realities of his mind. These moments were hard for me. At these times, i felt complete helplessness and the torment of existence was as a surge of lighning that gave me it's power to channel the fires of desperation, directed at my older brother. I asked him why. " why do you stare at me like that?!" " why are you completly ignorant about my pain?!" Have you learned nothing about your responsibility to be!!"
I admired and repected Adam for who he was and therefore had invited him to meet Demian when we were in the Netherlands. We visited his place back in the Netherlands and had a fun time so when Adam wanted to travel Europe this year i said to him that we could combine and travel together. He had a campervan and didn't say no but from the start i felt a tension between him and me and my brother. It was a tension that was normal for me because i was Adam's friend for 7 years and it stood for our incapability to release ourselves from the pain of the past but our friendship was to be tested and our illusions shattered. A pure child like demian had no self awareness and therefore could not be blamed for anything he has and would do but i saw how eager Adam and me were to blame ourselves for the mistakes and the experience of life. Our inner child wanted to reconnect to us and make us pure again but it were the trenches that we dug for ourselves that made us believe in pain. He was 66 years old and he had lived a life of hardship wherein he placed himself as the victim. Together with Adam, i felt that i could celebrate a bubble where my father never left me and his son never left him. Together we were using eachother to fill the emptiness inside. I started to see therefore a privilidge that i gave him over the next few months. I pushed aside certain acts that gave me stress and neglected the mental prison that i created around myself to protect myself from a part of his personality. We all live in fear sometimes and it is normal to live inside your own illusion, and sometimes you see clearly where you have lived in and you want to break out, and you have to let go of the relationship you have in order to grow.
He picked us up in his campervan and paid for everything. We were travelling from Switzerland to Austria and then Poland. Many arguments and mis placed intentions were created in his moving home and we started to teach Adam 'Magic the gathering' a fantasy cardgame which we played almost every night that made our group feel united. It is difficult to describe chronologicly what happened for i feel it is all a blur of motion and happenings but i think it is 'funny' to see now, as i look back, how fast Adam got irritated by my brother and how i dismissed or -did not want to see- the troubled water that i asked for. I was still scared that i could trigger hatred inside 'my dad.' I was still scared that i might find out after all that he left me as a young boy because i triggered him to hate me. I was not scared to find out that he hated me, i could live with that but my heart would just die if it would find out that i could trigger someone to the state of defiance. I was afraid of playing along. I wanted to be this perfect being that never triggered anyone. Because i might get abandoned.
The trip in this moving home was an exploration of boundaries for me. Adam and me were in our bubble that slowly, very slowly and without notice gave in to my brothers presence and what it did to our personalities. Demian taught me that i hated people who played a victim role for more than a few days and i could not stand these stubborn ego centric beings that would allow their suffering to consume them. He taught me that he is a pain in the ass and he never listens to me. I was always found as a middleman between my brother and Adam whenever Adam had some issues with him but overal Adam kept saying how they were becoming best friends, so i minded my own bussiness. It was very confusing because sometimes i would ask Adam if he had enough of my brother and i would say that we could jump of at any moment and he would get offended and confused and ask me why i would say that.
When a person is scared to touch the subject of abandonment, than the connection ensnares you in a confused state of being that feels more and more as a comforting hug that squeezes secretly the life out of you. I also felt so scared that i could trigger Adam into defiance that i just shut my senses and hoped that i would not have to stand up for myself against him.
But i write too much about mistakes.
Let me share some of my writing that i did at that time about my brother:
'We would need to digest his values, absurd and outrageous ones. He would not care about the property of someone else but he would be furious if he could not find his charger. He would lay down every 5 minutes and his instincts would refuse to find a solution for us both. He had a distinct odour of beer and sigarets about him and a dashing appeal to his greatness. But he would say that you are standing on a higher pedestal that him. I think just to justify his wish and pleasure to stand there himself. Demian was all wet when he wanted to enter the car. He had swam in the river with his clothes on and seclusion from values led him stray blindly in the confrontation of denail. He denied himself the pleasure of doing good but he would be cute, stealing oppurtunities to touch, heal us with his hands, caress, compliment and talk about the illusions where he believed in. Everyone should agree with him. His first friend was Laura, who had the skillfull teaching of oppurtunity that gave her peaceful strides, organized and organically. Enterprised in the entertainment of guidance. She would teach me about the laughter that resided in completion, after analazing my brother's frequency she would dance with him and open up. She went through the constellation of dreams and brought unity. Complaints were there to speak about them. Humbly going through change and a feeling of emptiness that cascades, that riffles through the mind and all information was independently valued and fortified. 'What do you mean by this?' A language that was born to feast on the rumors of knowledge. She taught demian the casual jealousy of friendship. 'I envy you.' Laura detached honor from information.
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As you can see, i was pointing my fingers at everyone and claiming them so. A writer does so to comprehend his own mind. By allowing me to observe and critisize my brother i allowed myself to not only think about surrendering to the foolish acts that my body wanted to dispell from itself but actually surrender. For example, my brother would question my authority, or he would find a way to poke my anger or anxiety and that in itself would be valued, observed and reflected on. I would ask myself always the question why i acted or felt this particular thing or refused a certain behavior. My unconscious mind would collect all this information and, by time, all of this information would find their way to their proper places where they could be digested and truly valued and weighted as something that belongs to me or something that belonged to the pain and suffering that i thought was me. My brother dared me to share my existence.
So, this travel with my brother was truly a gift of the highest order because it made me able to learn how to surrender to the devine body of love and its incapability to stay peaceful. The process of becoming love in all it's forms was and is a quest that reminds me of a dream that humanity once had. A dream that dispelled aĺl the anger from the world and allowed fear and anxiety and loneliness and all these neglected emotions and feelings to have space to find love and acceptance. A dream of humanity that freedom of speech could revel in it's potential of being and becoming existence.
But, anyway, because i loved my brother so much and because he allowed me to 'experiment' with him was i able to discover lands of peril that quivered my heart and gave me the reflection of death. We have all death inside that is glooming with life but we do not enter the darkness underneath the grounds of what we are afraid of for we know that if we do that, we would awaken the truth: that our expression rejects and refuses and neglects always something and that therefore all justified things that humankind has established are illusions that harm the organic structures if the justified expressions are used to defend stubbornly their desire to express.
As a friend of mine said, 'let's not chase big happiness but be aware that life is a lot of smaller parts of happiness and a few big depressions.'
My brother was teaching me that my expression had justified a lot of things without taking care of the peacefulness in which my own life wanted to fall in love with itself.
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'One with the cheecky silence of love. I got very angry at Demian when we had arrived at Laura's town. I wanted to walk and arrive at her house but he wanted to sit in someone else's garden and refuse my anger and anxitiety to change his ways. I still was fighting to blend with his personality. I was afraid to become him so i put my values upon him. This made me hit my backpack with fury. Demian sat in the backyard of a house as if he owned the place. Later i realised that i broke my laptop. 'Are you afraid?' He would see right through me and my unconscious mind knew that i had a prophet next to me on this journey to teach me about letting go.
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We all are prophets and teachers for eachother, as well as students and pagans. The trick is to be aware that we all exist.
And we influence everything with just the slightest touch or the favourite jumper that we wear.
Embarassment could trigger me to stay out of trouble but it is embarassment who knew how exciting the trouble is. It was a constant learning process to inhale and exhale air and instigate an intervention before the trouble could arrive. To use our embarassment as a tool to reproduce prideful compassion. I often would point out the big elephant in the room in a casual manner. As if i already had found the answer and the solution to this obvious answer. This helped me to keep my emotions to myself and let the people respond and interact while i watched from the sidelines and sometimes gave my perception on things. I was afraid to mingle with the silkiness of love. The flow, the transition that left all thoughts behind and took my chance to feel embarrassed from me.
Demian in a lot of ways resembled this flow of love. As if he was afraid to leave it and mingle with the people who are choosing to be in despair.
Some would say that he himself is in despair but i don't think so. I think he is capable of perceiving his own failures and that makes him sad but he could clearly see his own objective and heal the roadblocks that are in his power to change. He was conscious about every little detail that he allowed to affect him. This makes him crazy, to be constantly surrounded by emotions that were vibrating of every living and non living thing. He is paranoid because he does not understand why you are not honest to him, why you are not honest to yourself about who you are and what your true intentions are.
Truly he is trapped in his own illusions and perceptions but it made me very curious what he perceives and if there was any global coherence to his 'crazyness.' Surely, it could not be the case that he grabbed these perceptions from thin air and they were based on imaginary unimportant thoughts that had no value.
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With a menace he is constantly on the move. His face contorts into the object of a screenplay. His mind interacting with fire with the spirit. It's manifesting a circus. With his hands, he scribbles symbols in the air and he cannot believe his own face. He has a nervous breakdown, his face contorts and moves and nudges it's need. Suddenly entranced by something in the distance, then back again, rolling his eyes, moving swift, falling into a dissaray of laughter that seems to have no origin, then silent again. Sways his head from left to right, rubs his hair, sips his water, his movements controlled and updated. Then his head rolls around. He forms a smug on his face and then he asks for a toilet and then he asks for a sigaret.
'He might die from laughter once upon a time. It's the only thing he does. He is not scared nor ashamed. He is an example of all the schizophrenics out there. But he is choosing to give attention to his own mind instead of interacting with the people around him. He sleeps all day and he does not communicate but what can he do? We can just give him our curiosity and move with the flow of energy. I am flying like the wind around him while he moves like a teddybear.
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My brother really is a subject of great mystery. Gladly, he communicated and interacted enough to move with me and instigate existence but he was not a person who would share with care and importance the difficulties of being. This was why it was stressing if your goal in life is sharing the difficulties, because then my advice would be that you change your goals and values. You would have to create new ones, such as being polite to the impossible randomness of life and ask for nothing in return. No good night sleep, or peace when you want to. Some times he would shout and have panic attacks for three days and nights. Or he would stand in a supermarket and demand his money so that he could buy alchohol. Then i would have to smash the bottle once we were outside for he would easily wait for eternity untill his wants were met. Ofcourse, i could not escape feeling cornered, alone and terrified of his presence but he would say that it was not me, it were the ants attacking me and if i acted out my emotions of anxiety he would curse at me for not being his Cestmir. I guess this is similair to having a child, demian would always stay this pure light that would always antagonize your doubts.
After a few weeks of travelling we came to Vienne. A very dear friend of mine lived here. I met this friend a couple of years ago in a rainbow gathering and we shared some intimate friendship moments. He was endearingly cute and that was why i loved him so much. He agreed that he wanted me to stay and his roommates were agreeing to. I brought once again my brother to a house who was unprepared. My brothers limits were non existing and he would do whatever he felt like doing without accounting for the welbeing of everyone's worries. His impulses were his greatest form of expression. And to be honest i must say that my impulses also don't take into account the fragile grounds of other people's perceptions. I learned ofcourse to deny myself somethings and be happy about it but my brother couldn't deny anything, for that was sacriligious and unholy, not fit for a god like him. But he had sense to not move against an unmovable object so if you were very stern with him and you used the right amount of deception and skills to reach his needs in another way you could communicate with his soft side and he would surprisingly do what you say. I often thought that he was so compressed in the present moment that he had no notion of linear time.
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'We said that he could not smoke inside and he got angry, saying that he smoked outside, even if we could clearly see that he was smoking inside'
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Demian existed in many different timelines all at once. So if he was smoking, he was smoking everywhere your mind could think of. That makes it very hard to argue or ground him in your reality. Timelines exist because existence is creating movement and this movement is called; walking, talking or interacting etc. And this movement is seen, by everyone around us. We can see people play the guitar or pick up a stone. But what if there was movement that we can not see. Movement that exist only in the abbillity to imagine this movement. Movement that exist purely because some people can see it. Would we say that it was existing? Would we or could we give it any of our value and understanding? This different kind of movement is called; the power to imagine, and is easily discarded as something that is not real because we tend to belief that life is not imaginary.
We would say that we are not imagining that someone plays the guitar or picks up a stone, but what if everyone else does not see someone playing or picking up a stone. Than we would think that we went mad, crazy. That we imagine things and before we can fall into doubt about what is real or not we discard it and move on with life. But what if you have a familymember who seems to not stop with interacting with this imaginary existence. Would you discard him? Would you say that it is not real what he sees? What if you see the movement that is normal for you: women in the park doing yoga, cyclers and cars, you meet your friends in the pub and you have whole conversations about what you want to do in life. And then someone comes along and tells you that he cannot see the women or the cars or even your friends.
Human existence is based on belief and if we take belief out of the equasion then we are suddenly struck with fear that we are not living. There is a time for not moving and that is called sleep and everyone should respect that. In our sleep we can finally let go of all exisiting things and imagine and fly of to unknown realms of non existing belief. Our perception of reality is that it is something which is stuck into place and cannot move.
I think it is all a matter of how brave you are to see reality as perception. If you are able to discard your own reality to find yourself in the reality of the other person. To adapt fluently to the absurd notion that reality is perception and therefore a construct of the human mind. Then reality becomes multi dimensional and it's width and length and it's possibillities become far more than it's original idea that there is only one reality.
But why should we discard our own reality and find ourselves in different ones? We might ask.
To seduce ourselves ofcourse. To release ourselves from pain. To serve the legacy of our ancestors. To not waste our lives fueling our own reality but create together a web of realities that communicate and live together. To find ourselves in all of the realities and discover that we are accepted and loved in the way we express our existence.
Demian finds himself in all of the realities and accepts himself and loves himself for the way he expresses himself. That's how he can say that he is smoking outside when in fact we see him smoking inside because his love for himself is so great that he wanders into every timeline that he can think of and perceives it as real, as real as we perceive our own realities.
My older brother can do many things with his mind but he has not learned, or his mind does not let him, to serve at any cost the global structure of insecurity and fear. I perceive him as a man who knows a great deal about the illusions of existence but he does not use it to sustain grip in this world. He uses it to communicate with his realities and fly of. To be honest, me too sometimes.
There was a night in Vienne, in the flat where we stayed where he smoked weed and drank alcohol and for the entire night was having wildly strange and endearing conversations and manic attacks of laughter in the kitchen when we were all 'trying' to sleep. In our reality we would say he was alone but if you had asked him than he would look at you as if you were trying to fool him and say: 'didn't you see everyone i was talking to!?'
I was troubled. I could see how, slowly and gradually, my patience and courage seeped away. I dared myself to find strength again and again but i felt how my faithfulness to other people left me without my own hope. Adam and my friend and his roommates all were affected in one way or another because of me. My brother's journey was weighing on me and i could not take any step without being highly cautious with the infinite triggers that that step can cause. That's why, when i saw a beautiful girl writing in the park, i abandoned my brother, my friend and adam to rest my mind. I wrote a poem for her, and my brother, who wanted to meet the girl and seduce her, entertained her when i wrote.
I did not ask money and i gave myself some extra time in order to soak up her beauty without her knowing. It was finally a huge relief from the burdens that i gave myself.
When it got too awkward i said goodbye and moved on.
This was life, and i breathed in it's fumes.
Life was a beautiful girl on a sunny day.
And when i continued walking with my burdens i felt lighter, more able and a smile was seen.
Another three girls passed the revenue and i let myself be seduced. It was at a river when the last girl came to me. A strange feeling crept up my spine while i was sitting, looking at the river. My head wanted to turn around and it was a girl who walked past who caught attention. I followed her image with my eyes and she stopped all of a sudden, pondered for awhile if she wanted to sit on a spot that was next to us and arranged herself so.
I could't see her face all this time. It was blocked by a spell of some kind. But i felt some kind of energy that was intriguing. It took some time for me to go over and give her a poem but i did. When i saw her face, it was not an instant desire to jump her so i decided to approach her as a friend. The conversation went very smooth and desirable. She was a funny, charming seductress and i was invited to swim with her. I think she liked me. After awhile i had to bring my attention to my brother again and invited her to join us in the evening.
She did, and she went back to our appartment with us. There was a party first and it seemed that we could kiss but i didn't want it. So i said that i was not interested in kissing her. This didn't seem to upset her and it brought us even closer. There was a certain connection between us that was very trustworthy and therefore ideal for experimental interaction. I found out that we loved body contact and the sensual innocence of friendship. My friends had to see how we were intertwined as lovers in the kitchen all evening. Our conversations were open and ranged from our early childhood to our desires and the way we expressed ourselves.
In the morning she went away and we hugged passionatly. Kiss on the cheek. Turning away. Walking in grace.
"Parents! Meet Cestmir, The master seducer!"
I woke up in the hallway of the appartment with a family looking at me.
My friends parents came to see where they lived and i had been eager to meet them.
And so began the second part of my last choice:
From now on, the story takes beautiful girls into account and the true nature of Cestmir would divide him from Adam.
After a few more days in Vienne it was time to leave because the roommates couldn't handle the amount of people anymore. I had a friend in the south of Austria and we went to see him. I was pressuring myself to make decisions and engage in the mind. The house on weels that Adam had was a luxury beyond my meager existence and i wanted to honor it by seeing and visiting the capabilities of the world.
But i am a dreamer who takes upon himself too much. And escape was always on my mind. We stayed with my friend a couple of days and then we decided to turn back north because of the covid regulations. It was a blessing to see my old friend and he liked the people i brought with me. He has a funny way of being truthfull and very honest. He was incapable of manipulation and he cared for each and every one. I love him very much and it was an honor for me to let him meet my brother.
That visit ended quite early and it was in Poland when i was suddenly surprised that a dear friend of mine was at her childhood home for a few weeks.
She was visiting her mother and she invited us. It was in the south of poland and we spend a good amount of time eating and drinking in the midst of friendship. My friend had a brother with schizophrenia who commited suicide. It was a special and rare occasion for the family to be able to see and help my brother. It reminded them ofcourse of their loss and i was more than honored to see how they treated him.
There was a rainbow gathering in the north of Poland and a decision was made to travel there. My friend joined the team and there we went.
At the entrance of the rainbow i had a fight with myself and i screamed at Demian. The news spread quikly that an angry man had come to the rainbow and i had myself a reputation. Adam reminded me of my responsibility towards my brother but i didn't want to play the bodyguard and look out for my brother all the time. I engaged myself with the scene around me and gave my foolishness to beautiful girls.
And there were attentive, weird, open, judgmental personalities that surprised me with their constructions and beliefs and instincts. I was more than happy to dive in the streams of stories and become a part of everyone's misery.
I checked in on my brother from time to time and he had found the pirate camp. Made friends with a good man and i was happy to see him having found his place. One day, some youngster was on acid in the pirate camp and had a conversation with my brother. A fe days later he came to me and exclaimed with wide eyes that my brother was a genius who was enlightend. I responded that i knew.
To be enlightend means nothing more than that you have the gift of seeing through matter and space. To realize that you are a channel for joy. And any arrangment of your perceptions are illusions that helps you act in a certain way. I had a bond with a girl on the rainbow based on nothing but the smallest details of insecurity. It was a phenomenon that exceeded my highest expectations. This girl could teach me exactly when i derailed from the path of confidence: When i went into the mind and didn't trust her anymore. It were the smallest atoms of change that i discovered when i was with her because her awareness was given so committedly to the darkness that consumed her. It was an extraordinary blessing to walk the path of love with her.
I was given also an apple from a girl who was spinning loops in my mind. Her name was Ania. This apple poisoned me and by the end of the evening i felt as if i was dying. In the night, a campfire and a shaman appeared. He tended to my ilness and spoke to me in strange confessions. It was a perfect setting for a disillusioned practice that gave me forgiveness. With my curiousity intact, i gave myself many questions and he made me answer them.
Such sceneries of life are not to be disturbed by frivolous liberty. Sometimes it was the mark of a wise man to chain yourself to a certain faith.
In the morning my brother came to me and i said that i had been jealous of him all this time. He said that he knew and then he went away.
I felt reborn and a part of me wished that i could end this journey with my brother. I had taken the liberty of confining him in yet another prison: my own. I had not set him free nor given him the oppurtunity to be as crazy as he wanted to be. I was his guardian and it grew heavy on me. I could not hold the fortress for much longer. In my vanity i had wanted to give myself some measure of death by tying my faith with his. But in doing so, i had not calculated how far the measure of crazyness went. My brother was a loose projectile in a world with rules.
So i sought redemption and found solice in the identity of the girl who gave me the apple.
Ania was in love with a girl who was jealous when she went away from the house where they lived. She was looking for a breath to remember and calm down. I found comfort in her words and heart and she liked me too i guess. Together we spend the days acting as two weird concepts who followed their impulses towards prosperity.
There were a few other stories where i was involved in and many paths that took me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. I saw a vision of the female version of me together with her dog wanting to go to portugal. I saw a gay boy who was in love with me, a lovely lady who wanted to go from the rainbow as fast as she had arrived. And inbetween all of these stories a gentle old teddy bear named my brother who had my priority.
I was lost in stories and went with awareness and surrender into my own stream of bravery.
The boy who was in love with me received my tender care and forgiveness. I gave him my frivolous desire and honesty. I was not attracted to him but it made me think why i was not so head over heels in wonder with boys as i was in girls. It took me on a honest path of self discovery. The girl with the dog received my immense hope for togetherness and reconcilation. For days i tried to force the future to make us travel together, with my brother and her dog to portugal. But there was also Adam and he wanted to be a part of everything. He felt obliged to stand by my side and help me but it was sufficating me and finally, after the calmness of the lovely lady who drank tea with me and explained why she wanted to leave, i found the words that i was looking for all this time.
"People can get so consumed by their own stories or their own desires to escape these stories that they forget completly to honor guests with their presence. To drink tea with eachother and put strive and worry aside. To see what life is really about: the gentle practise of love. The discovery of your abillities by laying down all the fuss and desired reactions."
And i asked her where she came from. And the space was given for her to entertain me. We became eachother's emotions and she let me have this life experience of futile meaning.
- Generally, when people make a lot of noise, it means that they are stressed or worried about something. Maybe they have a secret stored away, scared that their inner choices could be condemned or not approved. It is a rare gift if you find someone who cares for you in a funny and easy way.-
So many things in this life defy all logic but somehow we tend to excert ourselves with looking for meaning and proving that we are the rightfull heir to survival. We occasionaly discharge other peoples weird habits and confronting emotions without taking in account that we are not giving them space to find common ground with us.
This whole journey with my brother was my way of seeing if i could give space to my brother and what would he do with it.
It was a constant wave of trying to find logic behind every move that my brother did. And every concept he believed in.
He made me open my eyes to creativity and i was slowly learning the trade of space and time.
There had been a moment. A moment on a field of grass where i shouted at him. In this moment he tried to convince me that all of his eight hundred children were as real as you and me. He said that i could see them if i only surrendered. Intrigued and faitigued i gave in. There was no possible way that i could convince him that he was crazy. Okay. It was time to call myself crazy. I went with it and asked him what i should do to see them.
"You know." He said. And after some unreasonable conversation wherein i said that he was not being reasonable he gave in and said, "you should say that you see them."
So with my last breath of sanity gone i said the sentence that brought me closer to the definition of crazyness.
"I see them."
And, poof! As some sort of magic spell i saw suddenly all of his children in that field, playing, singing, whispering and wandering.
They were fragrances of vibrations, concepts of a long forgotten abillity to see your own childhood friends and forever stay young in their timeless appearance. It was truly remarkable. It was brilliant. Another joke of the universe. I could converse with them, give them the loving attention of their father and tell them that i see them now, i believed in them now. A part of me was not sure if i did not cheat my brother by fabricating illusions. He would see right through my charade, for it could not be possible or that easy to transport myself in his concepts and earn his attention. For it were merely focused beliefs that created this absurd reality outside rational thought. But my brother suddenly saw that i saw them and asked me sincere and honest questions about their appearances and values. My brother could not see them. That was his lifetime misery. He wanted to go to Mountaingrass( the place where his children dwelled) for years now but was unable and i found myself now inbetween them. Ah!... you should have seen the reaction and the look on my brothers face. It was total surrender to a key that he had longed for, for so many years. But it was not what i wanted in the end. I did not want to dwell with his children any longer than i needed to and i came back to this world.
The powers of sincerity are hugely disregarded by our time. The brutal honest reflex of believing or feeling a concept that could be seen as dramatic is our gateway to pure laughter and a world of love.
When my brother, due to some inregularities in planning, went away with Adam to some city, i stayed behind to play and laug with Ania. I had said goodbye to Adam and my brother and wished them luck on their adventure together.
I found through knowledge a path to follow Ania and give her my sincere interest of love. She didn't mind and we left the rainbow together to go to a scouting camp for youngsters. Here it was where i met her brothers and where her jealous girlfriend was schocked to see me again.
We met on the rainbow. She had decided to come and she had expected to have some lovers time alone with her girlfriend when suddenly she met me. It were a few experimental days of comfort but we could not find peace in the tumultuous feelings of difference. So i gave them their space and invited myself to be the weird crazy friend on the side lines.
So, when she saw me again her doubts began to trigger confusion. She didn't know what to think about my appearance and existence in her life. Scared that i came to take her love away. To be honest, i didn't really know what i wanted or did, i just knew that i liked a beautiful girl and i wanted to follow her around. It was so endearingly childish that i hoped that it was worth it. Every time i looked at Ania I sensed a powerful surge of rightfulness. I had no life other than the one that was presented to me.
In the end i was invited to their home and i spend a few days giving my loveliness to both girls. Caroline (Ania's girlfriend) wanted to face the threat head on and asked me straight to my face if i was here to take her girlfriend away.
She seemed to make her up mind. She began to like me and i knew that my foolish time with Ania came to an end.
I often dwelled in the prospects of undying love and admiration. People started to be confused after awhile. It was as if i used these admirations to validate my existence. My logic was that nothing else mattered. Admiration was the only reason of human existence. So, if some beautiful girl was to be neglected, i didn't have to think twice: i would give my life to make her see that she is granted her beauty and i would admire her and flirt. Ofcourse, i went too hard into this and i started to loose my sense of pride. Some girls didn't want to be saved and the others: i didn't even want to save them.
I had done my best to casually be best friends with Ania. I said that i would not leave her without saying goodbye and i tried to be the hero of the day. Sometimes i get tired of myself.
I got some news from Adam. He sounded angry that i left and I decided to go to the city where they were. To take up the responsibility that I had forsaken in the rainbow. It was time to face that i was the guardian of my brother and resume my travel in that concept.
Even though i wanted nothing more than to kiss Ania for all eternity. As it would happen, Caroline and Ania went to the city where my brother was and I hitched a ride.
The following days were disorganized and futile regarding love. I was too tense in wanting Ania to stay in the city and spend time with us. I just couldn't let myself surrender to the most obvious: it was time to move on
But eventually we did and we went to the house where my ex girlfriend lived. I was part of the crew again and we went to our next destination.
You remember Sasha! The polish beauty that was studying in Athens. She was back in poland for some time and i was excited to meet her. She lived in a house of a friend. It was quite complicated. The house was actually owned by the mother of the friend but the friend had moved in with his family( girlfriend and children) thinking that he could live and work here. He had spoken with his uncle (the brother of the mother) who was also owning the house and he had agreed on his stay. It was a house that was empty and not used so there seemed to be no problem. Unfortunatly his mother was an alchoholic and she still needed some convincing. There was a slight tension because of this but we arrived and were welcomed as happy guests!
"Can we still kiss of what is our relationship?"
I needed to be clear with Sasha and it seemed that she was happy to reunite a spark but without the intimate privilidges that were now her boyfriend's.
I cherished our connection whatever it was and she allowed me to sleep with her but only after i washed my feet. A few days were spend in the embrace of this house when suddenly the police came while we were drinking tea.
It seemed that the mother had convinced the uncle that noone was allowed in the house and everyone was kicked out. Sasha cried while i danced in the kitchen. "Why do you dance," she said
"Because it is a new beginning." I answered.
After some shuffeling of adaptibility, we all ended in Sasha's sisters apparment in the city close by, Wroclaw. The family, which i had more and more respect for, were trying to figure out a plan where to go next and i offered Sasha a place in our mobile home. She happilly agreed because the plan was to go to Greece and her boyfriend waited for her. In these last couple of days she had decided to leave her studies and return to Athens, where she could develop a new life without looking back.
We went too slow for her. After a few days she left the mobile home and went on her own, but we had a really good time with her as we travelled in Wroclaw and the surrounding area.
There was also the woman called Aga.
Oh, she was as beautiful as a fast wind.
I will let her remain a secret for the time being. Although she helped me realize how strong i was. And she was my savior in the weeks to come.
When Sasha decided to leave we all felt a bit down so I offered to visit the shaman who helped me on the rainbow when I was poisoned with that apple. He was a big collector and player of magic the gathering and he was open to invite us. He had a wife and three daughters and it was lovely to spend time with them.
But as the days stretched and we were still in that house, something became very clear to me. I wanted to travel with my brother alone. I wanted to say to Adam that i could handle it now and it was time that i picked up my responsibility and did what was too scared to do: travelling with my brother alone.
These last few months were a luxurious holiday. It was the opposite of what i had wanted to do. So i told Adam and he reacted with a stagger and a schock that transported him in feelings of denial and regret. I felt abused by the words that he used and he was not happy. He stated that i just couldn't throw him away, as if he is garbage. He stated that i was throwing our friendship away. He stated many things that schocked me to the core.
Aga was my sanity. Without her i could not have had the peace and patience to deal with the responsive upheavel that lasted for three days. My friend did not wanted to talk. He was sure i would come around eventually, as i always had done. But this time i knew that i could no longer stay in denial of my desires. And on the last evening, i invited him in his own Camper and, when confronted again by his stubborness to belief that i made the wrong choice, i exploded.
Sometimes, our bodies and mind and spirit are too tired. When they are constantly put under question, they want to defend themselve from any lie that is thrown their way. I justified my stubborness and shouted with determination very loud and full of hate. Adam was schocked once again and he left the next day.
I had freed myself from my own choices but at what price. I could only be joyful because i knew i had done the right thing.
And so the journey continued. We both had two flixbustickets given to us from a stranger who supported our travels so we used them to go to Macedonia.
I would like to talk in the 'we' way but it was still a real struggle for me. Life never stopped and the learning process that the mind can be capable of wanted to see how deep it could go. I was very tired. But I knew that there was still some hope somewhere. And i was the leader who could bring the flame back to the heart that felt cold. When we were in Bulgaria, we walked towards the border of Macedonia and we found the mountains. Demian loved the scenery but it did not take him out of his 'ilness.' I could clearly see that the aesthetics of the world were not influencing him. He could not learn beauty from nature. We met my friends in Skopje where we stayed for a week or two and I could be able to see how they interacted with so much respect and love for my brother. They gave me the insight that beauty had many shapes and sizes and, sometimes it was allowed if beauty did not integrate with the worries and fears that run around. For them, my brother was an inspiration. After two weeks we took a bus to Turkey where we stayed at a family place in the mountains. I met them some years ago and I loved their energy. They had a small boy and a piece of land where they had build a house. It was amazing to see how the boy interacted with my brother. For many days after we left, the boy was still saying to his parents that they could not sit in this particular seat because Demian had sat in it and it was his seat. The trip through Turkeï found us in states of frustration, confusion and a lot of friendship. In the beginning, I hated my brother but then I saw him through the eyes of my friends and saw the beauty. we went to the city of Mersin were friends of mine were planning to go to another Rainbow gathering in a valley in turkey. Me and my brother stayed in a hippy appartment for a few hours, meeting all the people who either went to the rainbow or had gone. There were a few of my friends there who guided me towards redemption and asked if they could share my burden. They could see that I was devasted somehow from the responsibility that I took upon myself. I tried to relax in the rainbow. Instead of the girls, i focused on the boys and the friendship I had with a lot of them. One of my best girlfriends danced with me and I played chess with Pawel: who is a polish man who I love dearly. We saw also a young English Boy who reminded us of ourselves and the innocence that we had missed for so many years. He jumped around the fire and did his best to integrate with joy. I didn't pay too much attention to my brother. It was only afterwards that I heard that he pissed inside the main fire and people were really angry and scared that I would take him to another Rainbow without taking care of him and their worries. People can be so judgmental in a negative way about experience that it sucks the possibility for growth right out of them and they hide behind big words. We think sometimes that most people are conscious about their mistakes. But i don't want to be in a relationship where I make my partner aware of their mistakes. We should all see that we love our partner because of their mistakes and their other things . This thought made me go to Mersin again with Demian. I wanted to continue this adventure with him and see if I could grow some more. Mersin was a city where three hippy houses were closely intertwined in a collaboration of freedom. The English Boy showed up as me and my brother strolled around on a street in Mersin and he guided us to a cafe owned by a man called Ali. I didn't know but it was the same Ali who I had met four years ago in my first rainbow in turkey. He had embraced me with all my innocence and he loved it so much that he adored me. And therefore I adored him. When he saw me, he was very, very happy and he gave me and my brother a shelter for a few weeks. It was embarrassing. How could I bring chaos into a world of unity. Maybe I had a secret desire to undermine my own existence but I felt ashamed many times. Demian would have lots and lots of mental attacks in these days and Ali endured his love for me. It was incredible. He was and is a true friend. He stayed with me and chose my side. He saw that I was an innocent child and forgave me for the chaos. Every day was filled with adventure in Mersin. Joey (the English Boy) became a very good friend. He loved to eat baklava with me and swim in the oceans of emotion and discoveries. We spend Christmas in Mersin and then we went to another reality.
We stayed in the south of Turkey with another family. The rainbow world was over and I had to take leave. I saw that Ali and the others could not help or support me anymore and I gave Ali 60 Euro's for his troubles. As we went and arrived in the village of Kas, it was here where we really tested our courage. I had become very best friends with a man who was a proud and sensitive father and husband. He had one son and he lived in this village of Kas. He grew up in this beautiful place and Demian and me could be hosted in the garden house that his parents had. It was a disaster. Demian would pee in the garden and walk away every single day or stay up all night, because he couldn't go to sleep due to immense panic attacks. The parents who were in their seventies were incredibly human beings who endured these random stretches of reality very endearingly. The mom would have high fits of panic herself whenever Demian would enter the house and plunder the fridge of cheese and other delicacies. He would leave a mess on the table, leave the door of the fridge open and continue his parade of scribblings when he entered his room. The husband of the couple was a joker who watched it happen and felt sorry for his wife. And she herself was trying very, very hard to see the beauty in the actions of my brother. I am forever grateful for their incredible capacity to ensure the safety of everyone's perspective. I ran around in all of this as a young brother would who judged the outside world. I tried to be the bridge between everyone. As Demian would walk away, my friend created this amazing platform on Facebook where he would get updates on the whereabouts of my brother. I lost the willpower to be motivated at this point but he kept me going. Lots of people from the town and the surrounding villages knew him from his own private bussiness and he had a social circle that allowed us to get enough updates on my brothers whereabouts so that we could find him. He was climbing hills and strolling the rocky mountainpaths. He was screaming at the skies to finally accept him in the paradise of mountain grass. We asked him to get in the car. We were still in the lands of materialistic money making and my friend had to go to work. So we had to believe in time and hurry up. It was a journey that took all of my inspiration from me and i had no motivation anymore to feel my emotions. It was time to think about home. It was a hard clarity that hit me: I could no longer sustain life energy through the practise of curiosity. I had been taking care of two minds in this travel. The choice to let that responsibility go was a very good choice but I could only do that when I had delivered Demian safely to the Netherlands otherwise he would end up in a Turkish prison or on the streets of Izmir as a homeless wanderer. And I didn't want to take the chance that he could find his own way back to us if I left him in Turkey so I had to muster my last spark of hope and begin the movement that would lead us both back to the Netherlands.
I have no idea how I did it but our mom waited for us outside of a German train station , close to the Dutch border and my last choice was final. I had achieved, conquered and witnessed the state of being on a whole different scale.
For many, I believe that the story that was just told is a fantasy or a fairytale where they just could taste the beginning of frustration or hopelessness. For others, this story is a resemblance of their own fear or their love for their brother, sister or other family member.
I can only say that this is my story.
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