Entering A New Stage Of Life

With old goodbyes and new hellos, time, space and opportunity combinedly provided the chance for me to move into the circle of the Vegetarium community in the mountainous area of Zhelen, Bulgaria.
Here, I have the outlook of living for 8 months and learning practical skills towards integrative permaculture, animal and plant care an am able to gather some basic experience in construction work.

Since my arrival a bit more than a week has already passed and now I get to wonder what I’ve been learning here most thus far. Walking through this world in ist current setup and with the life I’ve lived, I believe to sense vague expectations of having to name thrilling external things that sound catchy and all nice that my soft organ of a brain might or might even not remember correctly, (even though I might want to retrieve them eventually, to be able to pass them on, when asked for) but I also feel it would not enjoy listing them right now. Surely, in current Zeitgeist, masses have skillfully trained themselves to do what is not enjoyed „for the greater good“, and „because the world is rough, so better toughen up“. That also might have it’s place to a certain degree, yet we all know we’ve overdone it on that one, we just don’t want to be the first ones to let our guards down, because it’ll start hurting and who knows how to cope with that?

So let me go first in this instance and make my small steps into the more subtle world of in-betweens that is so seldomly payed attention to.

The first few days, I would have loved to both withdraw into my familiar little world of dreams, sleeping the day away in my known routine, while wanting to connect with the unfamiliar to allow energy to flow more freely. What does that mean in a less abstract way? Waking up and sleepily, dragging myself to the morning meetings which are way before my preferred waking hour, covered in warm comfort clothes in memory of my old self as my internal world meets curious eyes, – passionate, determined, serence, creatively twinkling ones – which make me yearn for integration of bits and pieces of their genuinity. And with that, I found (or was granted) some genuine will and curiosity within myself to mingle with what seems so far from what I deem safe to me.
In them, I see some distant vision of becoming more comfortable with what for now, I feel is not.
I’d like to find in me such humility and grace in the dedication towards the plants and animals we take care of. Their eyes offer me the vision of a realistic possibility of the transformation my soul is longing for.
Having struggled with health issues for so long, I yearn to find gratitude in simplicity and the lense of humbleness and appreciation for what I am still taking for granted. I need to repaint the picture of my expectations towards life and not frame it after what I’ve been taught to demand for the sake of protecting false pride and dignity that generations way before me built up and pushed us to follow. I want to clear myself from that bit by bit.

Because, admittedly, I don’t feel all excited to engage with every task here all the time, since I can feel the challenges they confront within me immedeately. I also am not the biggest fan of starting interactions – they seem like scratching nails on chalkboard to me. Nervous laughter of unfamiliar get-to-know-each-other’s, somewhat helpless smiles filling gaps of lost-in-translation-communication, the loud silence of culture gap that is not only found between nationalities, but even more so between ways of thinking.
I couldn’t have jumped through all these burning hoops fairly unscathed without the good intentions and well meant (or so I (want to/choose to) interpret) open-mindedness of the fellow beings surrounding me in Vegetarium.
And that, I am grateful for, which in turn, made me – maybe ironically – decide to write this honestly here, which is a gift from the heart for those, who don’t need shiny words, but rather need to be recognized in the messy complexity of what we call life.

Here, I meet the nature, that my wounded soul has longed for and been terrified of for all of my life and I’m learning to surrender to that in hopes of finding myself renewed.

Luckily for me, with the current constellation of Vegetarium, that might not be a wish too far away. My fellow souls that I am finding myself surrounded by have gently made space for me to arrive, curiously, patiently, hesitently probing. With uplifting encouragement, dynamic acting classes offered by another participant, personally moving exchanges of heartfelt honesty, curious questions and a birthday celebrated with memorable moments shared in Sofia, I can now honestly say that I am glad to have the prospect to share this time with such beautiful souls together. They give me the strength as involuntarily I start projecting into this place what I perceive as magic, filled with dedication, visions and dreams, yet also the rawness of manifestation, which gives the birth of its externalisation its raw edges.

So what did I learn here so far?

Most and foremost I became aware of my own limitations and I am trying to not see them as a confinement, but as my personal bubble that allows me to move within the world (of Vegetarium). Because respecting my limits and boundaries strenghtens my will in those paths that I do choose to follow. Most difficult for me in that is to observe and accept my need to integrate myself into a new group while entering with my true colours. Because getting to know them and developing deeper connections with them, comes with the deep-seated wish to serve the group.
Yet, with me not being particularly practically skilled, I struggle finding resources to offer without allowing myself to grow what I lack.
I am starting to distance myself from expectations, that I might have encountered in times long passed and applied them here, though they might have been compromisable in the first place. Learning to play with them, learning more flexibility towards them while still protecting my needs. It’s a search for being connected to the source of my energy, which I have lost along the way and to find ways to spend it wisely.
Which shall mean, filling myself with what I need so I can overflow and share as much as I can.
The how and what with are the main theme I am still working on.
With a bit of practice, I’d like to reach a point of effortless action, while still choosing, adapting and creating them consciously anew, without making them an extension of myself, but simply because I might want to. I am yearning for some healing of my soul, an internal restoration in order to unfold dormant creative potential within me to grow and train my willpower.
Because, for me growth means to allow myself the choice to refuse it.
And with that new possibilities are born.

So that’s the road, I’m trying to follow for now: Growing deeper into authenticity, while slowly opening myself up to the wonder and fascination the souls around me are experiencing and following them into the unknown.

~ Michelle B.