Friday, June 24, 2016

Holidays? Time to let go and reconnect. Nature offers a helping hand.

For a lot of people holiday season is starting (soon). Time to leave the rat-race they call life for a while and to take a rest. 'Me time'. Time to let go and be available to reconnect. Time to communicate with yourself. Not to be lonely but to be alone (all-one). Being all one you are not only serving yourself in the best possible way but, reaching that state, your also available for your love ones and surroundings in the best suitable way. Not an egoistic thing. Nature nearby or further away, as a for most people (different) comfort zone, offers a helping hand.  

Holidays, time to recharge, you can embrace as an invitation to connect again with nature. To discover the many wonders in life – as personal mirrors to investigate - that are available for you in the here and now to learn and grow. To get flow in life, love, family, work and career again.

Running our life we are less and less connected with ourselves and the available mirrors in life and nature. We are not even aware anymore of lots of free energy sources.

Technology supplies us with many devices to help us and stay connected with the outside world. But even when we are connected, we continue to feel lonely. We check our e-mails, send text messages, and post updates several times a day. We may spend our whole day connecting but not reduce the loneliness we feel. Lots of people spend a lot of time in meetings or e-mailing with others, and not a lot of time communicating with themselves. The result is that we don’t know what is going on within us. It may be a mess inside. How, then, can we communicate and connect with another? All our technological devices disconnect us from ourselves, from coming home.

Holidays are an invitation to connect with yourself again. To analyze your living and to be aware and get rid of the so called three poisons in life called greediness, anger and ignorance. To live the art of smelling, tasting, touching, watching, listening and to calm down your mind. To communicate with yourself.
Nature is the most wonderful available source to be inspired and to help you with that reconnection. To leave your technological devices at home so you can connect with your real home. The place where all the answers and suggestions on questions, and situations you are in, in your life are already waiting.
Stop trying to change the world around and find satisfaction in the outside world. It’s most of the time hard working and at the most getting temporary solutions. Connect with your own programming. That’s the place where much easier, when you understand and listen to yourself, can find sustainable solutions.

Connect with nature. Feel the rest and available free energy. Calm down. Be touched by the seasons and mirrors you can find. Need some suggestions to connect with some mirrors in nature?
# A hill (stability and connection with the earth),
# A dropping leaf (effortlessly letting go and creating space for something new that’s already waiting to become),
# A ‘simple’ attracting tree (just only being. Undisturbed by what other people think of it),
# An animal (not suffering about the past or the future but living in the now and accepting life as it is),
# A small stream (go with the flow),
# A cloud touching a mountain top (interacting in harmony, no debate, no dialogue),
# Life and death (the ongoing cycle of life. You come with nothing and you go with nothing),
# NO car or other materialism to find (desires do not make sustainable happy. Spirituality does),
# Autumn (every leaf turns into a flower and time to harvest),
# Winter (time to recharge and connect with the core of life again) Connect to be all-one again,
# Waterfall (Water has never been broken when it falls down into a waterfall. Stay like water),
# Storm at a lake (emotions just need time to heave down to. One meter under the surface it’s silent)
# Sounds (Signs to silence. Silence is not the absence of something but the awareness of the availability of everything),
# Day and night (Day connection with the Sun, action. Night connection with the moon, time to recharge and build up wisdom),
# High-tide and low-tide movement (the natural times in life to rise and fall),
# Flower (invitation to watch androgyny, duality and to smell),
# Newborn animals (playful carefree discovering),
# Caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly (transformation from crawling, temporary captivity to liberation), 
# Natural attracting forms in herbs, vegetables and nature as a whole (Golden ratio),
# New branches out of a tree that's cut (there is only one goal in life. It's called LIVING),
# Etc..

Have a great experience with and in nature discovering ‘home’ again during your holidays.

Frans Captijn
Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight“Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow in life and work. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.” 



Friday, June 17, 2016

Back to THE real world or back to YOUR real world?

In January 2014 I already gave some attention to the as I call it ‘Real world theme’.

It happens nearly on a weekly basis that not at least one of our guests who did a program or retreat at the last day says; “Good bye, thank you so much, I had a wonderful time and learned a lot but now I have to go back into the real world again.”

For sure, I understand what they mean with that saying. I never say but actually my response should be; “I hope I or we see you back soon because for sure you did not learn enough.”

When guests - who had a great time with us and want to thank us - out of their heart it really is the best thing there is to receive and accept. It makes me happy and supports me to go on living my mission. It reminds me I am grateful and thankful with the life I am living.

Looking more deeply into this statement of guests in fact they tell me, in their opinion, I am NOT living in the real world. Sometimes I look around, I pinch my nose, smell and still feel I am and walk around in the (in my opinion same) real world as well.
Other people really enjoyed the time with us and see it as a romantic way of life. But they see it as unreal, different, maybe even unrealistic. 

How is it possible they see it this way? Do they live a life that forces them the way they live? A kind of feeling of being ‘free’ as a bird in a cage of expectations, responsibilities, choices they made in life, situations where they are in? A cage created by believes and traditions of their society and culture and by the ideas, prejudgments, habits, attachments and fears of their past experiences? 
When this is the truth it's almost impossible that they will ever break out and make contact with the richness of life and love and freedom that lies beyond that cage. So second best is to adapt to the situation they are in and see it as the real world. But still, showing me with their response I am not living in the real world...??? Like them I am standing on the same planet and live in the same REAL world!

It is only you who create your own real world. The reality of the world you experience has everything to do with your programming and with your past life experiences. What you think what’s right and what you think what’s wrong in relation to your background, culture, life experiences, and so on. But we are not even aware of this because we are already adapted to the situation we are in. 
A wonderful example I found is the different approach of a house address in Japan in relation to for instance America or Europe. Derek Sivers in a not even threeminutes Ted-talk offers a good understanding that opposites can also be true (inthe same real world).
Your real world has to do with how you see your world and actually want to act in that world you created as ‘real’ in your mind.  

The other thing in your reality is the fact that you think you cannot change things. You think you are forced to act the way you are acting and you have to live at the place where you live. It’s your responsibility and you have to satisfy the needs. You are stick to (worldly) attachments and you know what you have. It’s a secure and safe base and with going on doing the things you do, nothing can and will go wrong you (only) think. You never know what the future brings… It’s all unknown. When you take the time to look deeply into yourself and connect deeply with yourself you will dis-cover this are only thoughts in your mind, general excuses and fear. And again fear for the unknown. So you are more ‘happy’ to go on living the way you are living and for sure you will find out you will stay in your vicious circle (still in exactly our SAME REAL world and your own ‘real’ world).
You created your own world in the real world. The way you look at things, the way you respond, the way you want to transform things so they suit you and so you can feel happy, for a while, again. Actually it’s hard working and does not support your well-being at the long term. So you do not feel totally well and so you cannot share this 100% well-being with the world around.

My world is as real as yours. It’s also not a romantic things because just as your world reality there are valleys and mountains in it. The romantic thing about living the life I live now is that I have the experience of two different ‘ways of living life’ experiences. Having this, now I know it has everything to do with choices and your own created reality (the way you look at things). This word ‘unknown’ has a scary part and an exciting part. When you trust the exciting part there is more to discover and to enjoy in the same real world.

The real world is everywhere. Find your own reality to be and stay happy.

Frans Captijn
Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight“Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow in life and work. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.” 

Friday, June 10, 2016

We cannot think clearly anymore

"As a child you unlearn clear thinking and as an adult you completely lost it." was the message I received last week. A firm statement whilst in my opinion I so far - and certainly in relation to the job that I had - could think quite clearly. Many psychological tests and assessments established not even this thought but also my inner believe. So how is it possible someone can spread such a statement? An invitation to do some research ...

Buddhism often works with crystals. They are a visualization of so called “visible emptiness”. Not a state of nothingness because for sure there is a crystal you can hold and see. I wrote a blog already a long time ago about the use of this crystals in meditation. Only last week I found out that the same round crystal balls are a symbol for the clarity of your mind, your way of thinking. And indeed I discovered that crystal clear thinking was not available anymore for a long time. The crystal balls are an invitation to get back this clear thinking again and to bring into practise.

How about this?
I got the next example: “Just think of a little child in the arms of an old, disfigured housemaid. The child is too young to have picked up the prejudices of its elders. So when it snuggles in that woman’s arms, it is responding not to labels in its head; labels like white woman, black woman, ugly, pretty, old, young, mother, servant maid, it is responding not to labels such as these but to reality. That woman meets the child’s need for love and that is the reality the child responds to, not the woman’s name and figure and religion and race or sect. Those are totally an absolutely irrelevant. The child has as yet no beliefs and no prejudices. This I the environment within which clear thinking can occur. “

To achieve this, one must drop everything one has learned and achieve the mind of the child that is innocent of past experiences and programming which so cloud our way of looking at reality. What is needed is not learning but unlearning, not talent but courage to let go. To search for that clear thinking mind you had as young sensing child, innocent of experiences. Be aware you will see extremely more.

Behind all our actions prejudiced thoughts hide. Actually our developed feelings, you can say from your heart, immediately create the related thoughts for you. Your heart immediately gives you the conclusion and directly gives the mind the command to find the proof to confirm and defend if necessary the conclusion. You react facing a certain situation out of your principles, ideologies, beliefs, religion, political affiliation or background. Actually thus you limit the reality. You shut the door to the ocean of other possibilities and ideas that are available for you because, at first sight, they do not fit. You immediately label things as 'good' or 'bad' for yourself while others can have an exactly opposite reality of your good or bad, not being wrong.

And our prejudices and beliefs are not the only clouding clarity makers of our thinking. Do not forget our desires, attachments and fears which we learned ourselves. Look how hard it is to just get rid or let go of our first conclusions (the ‘first impression’) we have directly we meet other people. If they are not related with our ‘reality’, perceptions or needs, if they do not fit into our thinking pattern, they are wrong. But….are those people wrong?

Once a prosecutor I worked with in Middelburg – NL said to me when I asked him information about somebody he knew as well; "I say nothing about him/her. After all my experiences and your experiences can be very different." I think someone with the right demeanor and attitude. Many images and thoughts of others are formed out of their experiences or just out of ‘stories’. So who are you to accept them as the truth?

Our thinking and vision therefore often are not at all related with clear view of the reality (which is infinitely much wider than our own reality). They are connected with finding the key of connection to our own (limited) ideas. To find whether your interest is mine. To connect when your desire or your fear is the same as mine. This is the biggest source of not understanding of- or agreeing with each other and so not being open and willing to connect with a bigger reality.

There is a heart sutra philosophy – a little bit difficult so maybe you have to read it more times to find the wonderful underlying meaning - it says: “In emptiness there is no form. No perception no conception, no religion, no consciousness, no eye, no nose, tongue, body or mind. No form sounds, smell, taste, touch or objects of mind. No strike of the eyes up to no strike of consciousness. No ignorance, no extinction. There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no extinction no path, no wisdom and also no attainment because there is no object to attain.”

If we learn uninhibited thinking a fantastic world reveals. An ocean of reality where diversity and creativity get more chances.


Frans Captijn
Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight“Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow in life and work. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.” 





Friday, June 3, 2016

Did you ever met your private doorkeeper?

At least once a day we take a shower or wash ourselves. We take care of our body. Lots of people join fitness programs on a daily or weekly base or work on and with their physical body to try to keep it healthy. We are more aware of what we eat and so forth.

But what about our mind? We forget that the real ‘computer’ of our body is the mind (and not the heart). What, on a daily base, do you do to take care of your mind? I think lots of people do not know what to answer on this question. And some maybe will say I meditate. And yes at least that’s something but how do you keep free space in the mind?

Our mind is full, most of the time more than full and even overflowing. At a certain moment we want to take a break or a holiday. A one, two or three week period of rest or something else. Most of the time it creates some space and rest but only for a very short time. Being back and going on living the way we did before brings us back on the same track of stress and mental overflow soon again. Disturbing our sleep etc..

Even during our holidays we do not really take time and give attention to a form of mental cleaning. We cannot live without our mobile devices anymore because we are addicted to them. They are more and more related with a lifestyle that support us to fly away from ourselves. Marketing supports us to ‘help’ us to give attention to all kind of things we have to believe they make and or keep us happy and healthy. Quicker and more information. And what we actually do is throwing more and more rubbish in our mental garden called mind. Not strange we get a headache sometimes or are not really connected with our love ones and environment anymore.

Did you ever met your private guard, your personal doorkeeper? We do not even know her/him and if we know do not give attention or listen to this personal guard.

YOU are the only one who can reign your own life. So manage your life. And one of the things in managing your own life is to make use of your private guard. She/he is the one who is in charge of all the information that comes in and goes out of your mind. So switching off, disconnect to connect, actually is not a bad thing. What are the things in your life that are really worthwhile to know and to support your personal well-being and growth?

Do not disturb! Be your personal guard / doorkeeper and make the decision of what comes in. You will see, after making up your room first, - empty and organize your ‘personal backpack’, clean the garden of your mind, letting go of things from the past that do not support you in your grow any longer -, you are able to keep space in your mind. It gives you resilience, freedom to breath, clarity and less stress.

Manage to be less disturbed less. Reduce (get rid of) the unorganized rubbish in your head - make up 'room' - and use your private guard to keep things organized, with space, neat and clean. Nothing wrong with also paying attention and taking care of your brain on a daily base.

Frans Captijn
Host / Catalyst / Talenteer at Captijn Insight

Captijn Insight“Catalyst in your process to new sustainable flow in life and work. Whether you are an individual, couple, team or an organization.”