Resting in the Embrace of the Universe. Nothing to do, think or feel.
Cosmology and the vast Universe
When I was four years old, I was looking at the night sky with my father. He told me that no one knew where the universe ended. It blew my mind, and since then, I’ve tried to understand infinity.
I’m still struggling to grasp the vastness of the universe, although science has made tremendous progress during my lifetime and today we understand so much more.
The book The View From the Center of the Universe, by Primack and Abrams, made me feel more at home in our beautiful and vast Universe.
As the Embrace of the Biosphere – I am life.
My body is all living beings on this planet
Our diverse and beautiful Planet
During my teens, I spent my free time outdoors together with my friends in our local Field Biology Club in Södertälje outside Stockholm, examining flowers and birds, lichens and butterflies, and just enjoying the sunrise, the snowfall, and the colours of the autumn leaves.
Learning to distinguish between different kinds of moss while walking across wetlands trained my awareness.
We were also a part of the growing environmental movement during the 1970s. I had my first political insights and realised that the grown-ups didn’t know how to solve the problems our modern lifestyle causes.
The fight against the others, the destroyers, is over. The views from the Wider Embraces help me navigate differently.
The Environmental Movement
From my first job, at the Field Biologist Organisation, up until I started my web company in the year 2000, I mainly worked in different environmental organizations in Sweden, from the Anti-Nuclear Campaign to Friends of the Earth and The Green Party.
Two of my primary sources of inspiration around how to think about the relationship between Humanity and the Biosphere are Ecosophy by Arne Naess and Eco-philosophy by Henryk Skolimowski.
During the last twenty years, I have been more or less away from the environmental scene, exploring other aspects of life. With the Wider Embraces project, I’m back again, but from a very different angle.
I practise Aikido constantly, the principles are universal and can be applied everywhere.
Aikido – Connecting to Others and Other Cultures
For twenty years, the Aikido dojo was a significant part of my life. I spent about ten hours a week on the mat, exploring the depths and limits of my body and mind and how to relate to others with both force and harmony.
For most of those years, I was running one of Sweden’s largest Aikido dojos together with a friend – Lunds Aikido Dojo.
Diving deeply into the Japanese culture, which is very different from the Swedish way of equality and consensus, has broadened and deepened my view of humanity.
I remember the first time I surfed the web in the late 80s – Wow, I was looking at information stored on a computer on the other side of the Atlantic!
Computer Science and Web Design
There is a way of writing code where the function is calling itself in a deep loop; it’s called recursion. It’s a very special way of thinking, and my mind learned how to switch to a different mode of working during that course. It was the first time I became aware of my mind as an object.
It was in the mid-80s that I studied computer programming at the university. Since then, I’ve worked with computers, mainly with databases, communication systems, websites, and graphic design. Since the year 2000, as self-employed.
To rest in our wider Embraces is the best healing method I’ve experienced so far. No magic rituals, no exclusive skills – Just open to the unconditional Embraces.
Healing, Morphic Fields and Dowsing
In the mid-90s, in every new group I joined, there was always one person to whom I felt particularly connected. After a while, I realised it was the one doing Reiki healing. So, I joined a course and later became a Reiki Master. It took me a year of practice before I could feel the subtle energy, but eventually, it became a natural part of how I perceive the world.
Around the year 2000, I met Rupert Sheldrake and learned about Morphic Fields. His ideas and all the experiments he has done have contributed enormously to my understanding of our profound connectedness. I see our wider Embraces and Morphic Fields as overlapping concepts.
Both my parents worked a lot with dowsing, measuring lay lines, and other types of subtle energy around ancient constructions but also helping people find water and a good place for the bed. So I’ve been immersed in a worldview stretching beyond the visible.
Dag Hammarskjöld: … så såg jag att muren aldrig funnits, att ”det oerhörda” är här och detta, icke ett annat …
Zen Meditation with an Open Mind and Heart
When I moved to a cottage outside Höör, in the south of Sweden, in 1998, I found a zen centre five hundred meters down the road. After a while, I joined, and bit by bit became a dedicated practitioner.
Enekulla Zendo is run by Pelle Bengtsson, and he was the perfect zen teacher for me. The zendo is a beautiful blend of traditional Japanese culture, with strict rules on the one hand, and a lot of open minds and hearts on the other.
Zen was not my first encounter with meditation. My whole family learned Transcendental Meditation (TM) when I was in my early teens, and we all practised twice a day for some years. After that, being out in the forest, alone or with friends, became my way of connecting with something more vast and still.
My photography has taught me to see beauty everywhere, literally. The challenge is to make an image of anything that transmits that beauty to the spectators.
To See Beauty Everywhere – And Catch it
My camera connects me to the planet and its beauty, and it allows me to share that connection with others. I love being out in the forest by myself, and also offering courses and creating slide shows and exhibitions.
Thanks to my first digital camera and the internet, I found other photographers who saw images in a similar way. In 2005 I was accepted into the Swedish Association for Nature Photographers, as one of their first two female members.
You can see some of my photos in the portfolio.
In 2010 three of us from Malmö Integral arranged the first and only Swedish Integral Summercamp at Holma.
Integral Philosophy and Friends
Integral philosophy by Ken Wilber offers a useful toolbox for thinking about almost everything; how different areas of Life and the Universe relate to each other and have developed over time.
I’ve been part of the integral community since 2008, and my first four years were a deep dive into complex thinking and meta-theories, together with my wonderful friends in Malmö Integral. We studied Wilber’s work, Subject-Object theory by Robert Kegan, Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Chris Cowan and much more. But most of all, Malmö Integral was a safe, yet challenging, place to share our ideas and applications; to experiment, meditate, move, and discuss.
Later on, I found other inspiring sources like Roy Bhaskar and his Critical Realism.
Is Domesday real or not? Until you deeply know it’s not, you live in fear, consciously or unconsciously.
Fear of Domesday Despite a Secular Upbringing
I’m a third-generation non-religious person, living in the most secular country on the planet; Sweden. Despite that, when I started to challenge the Christian doctrines, I found an intense fear of God, of Domesday and eternal punishment deep inside me.
Around 2009, I read the whole Bible, and the Koran, and I had to ‘blaspheme’ from the bottom of my heart, to push through the fear and get out on the other side, free. Now no one can threaten me with God’s punishment, I know there is no judgmental God, but there are unconditional Embraces.
James’s emails always had this quote: “The most important thing in the world is to be willing to give up who you are for who you might become.” Nachman Bratzlav.
Integral Coaching – Out of the Comfort Zone
Suddenly one day, an offer from Integral Coaching Canada appeared in my inbox, and the photo of James Baye looked at me and told me, that if I was ready to move out of my comfort zone, he was committed to challenging me. And he did, for sure.
We worked together for three years, more intensely during some periods and less during others. During the intense periods, I had daily challenges, and I wrote reflections in my journal every evening, we met over Skype every second week, and I received new tasks.
Looking back, I’m amazed that I took on all the challenges, but most of all, I’m so very, very grateful for the beautiful, skilful, precise and invaluable coaching I got from James.
Sane or insane, the world or me?
Big Mind and the Fear of Insanity
I don’t think I have ever felt such intense fear, as when my arm rose by itself at the Big Mind seminar with Genpo Roshi in Copenhagen in 2010, and I received the microphone. We were exploring ‘owned and disowned emotions’ and had come to insanity. I have no memory of how he walked me through my terror, but on the other side, there was light and love and freedom.
So I don’t care if it’s insane or not to take collective perspectives and rest in the wider Embraces, and to dream of a world where this is normal and sane.
The playful Ladies!
The Dojo Ladies – Playful Exploration
A gathering of a close circle of female friends has been my most creative and beautiful playground. A place to experiment and dive into the Embraces in a very profound way. Dancing, meditating, eating, and talking, all with open minds and hearts.
The WE Dojo – Online Unfolding
Unfolding the Wider Embraces wouldn’t have been possible without my thoughtful and lovely friends around the world. We have met online weekly and explored and developed WE as a theory and practice.
All photos, except the ones of me, are taken by me.
