Blog Post

I came across this Rumi quote a few days ago, and it has instantly touched a place very deep down within me, as it couldn’t depict my journey this year any better. This year has been an intense experience of thirst for me indeed. I moved into love and surrender in a way that I had never considered possible, nor understood what it would need to hold.

When Rachel and for the first time acknowledged what was moving between us, a wave of fire, passion, and love washed over me. A deep desire that exceeded everything my mind could grasp. A fire burning deep in the core of my being, deeper than my soul, burned its way through and broke my heart and my body open to a longing that just consumed everything. This vibration piercing through me was clearly not sourced from within this body or this personality.

This desire kept growing and growing, seemingly fed from the infinite, exposing the limitations of my physicality, and challenged me profoundly. I found myself in a constant struggle, looking for ways to express the magnitude of my longing for this woman, for her heart, her soul, her body, her womb. Ways to satisfy this craving, to find words that could do it justice. Fixated on an idea that this craving should be met in some way, that if I don't find an adequate way to answer it, I'm ingrateful to the gift of this love, not worthy of it. With every cosmic lovemaking, with every attempt to quench this deep thirst, even just for a moment, every time our bodies met and coalesced in ecstasy and surrender, the craving just grew larger, making me more incapable to contain it, even more thirsty than before. A feeling of falling into a black hole kept coming up, exponential acceleration, and nothing to hold on to.

My mind was in constant pursuit of doing something. How can I fully answer this fire? There must be something I can do to meet this profound craving, to honor this love, this sacred union, this precious gift, this desire at the core of my being, which is constantly growing. Something that feels adequate, the right way to worship the sacredness of this meeting, something equivalent to a thirsty mouth reaching a nurturing stream of water in the desert.

A constant feeling of lack and inadequacy lived in my system, while my heart was being met in the most beautiful and profound way possible. A painful, torturing conundrum. This doesn't make any sense! Where is this pain coming from? Why am I suffering? I felt like a starving man walking through the garden of Eden, incapable of seeing the abundance around him.

It took me a while to understand, that this thirst didn't come to me to be quenched. This fire was the same fire that burns in the core of stars, the attraction that eventually makes them collapse into a black hole and spins whole galaxies around them. I felt us like two black holes spinning around each other, the gravitational force increasing with every inch they come closer, but taking billions of years to finally collapse into each other, bursting the illusion of separation, realizing they've always been an expression of the one.

Last week I continued the Kambo process that I am on for 10 months now, twice a month sitting with the frog, meeting my most hidden wounds, feeling what needs to bed felt, letting go of what is done. After having drunk more than three liters of water already, I kept feeling thirsty and asked my guide, for more and more water. Suddenly she stopped giving me water and said: "You don't need more water. Feel what's underneath the thirst." Surprised yet curious I followed her prompt and felt the thirst more consciously, more fully, let it become my whole experience, became the thirst.

"Neglect." I mumbled through my swollen frog face.

"Yes! That!" she replied, "Feel it all! Go through it now!"

Meeting this old sensation, I gave myself to it fully, allowed it to wash through my whole being, completely feeling what a younger part of me didn't want to feel. The thirst eventually burned through the emotion and made space for an entirely different experience.  A pulsating sensation of fullness started flooding my whole system from within the core of my heart. My chest started glowing, gentle warmth moved through me. I suddenly felt connected to an infinite source of richness, energy, nourishment, and utter abundance. There is no lack in this universe. Lack is an illusion. I don't need anything.

This experience kept vibrating through my body for days, seemingly reprogramming my relationship to thirst on a deeper level. And the cosmic joke dawned on me: There is no lack. This thirst, this desire, this craving is not an expression of lack, it is the sensation of utter abundance. It's the core of the sun, the black hole spinning the galaxy, the center of our spiritual heart, burning through our whole being, revealing the absolute, the truth, the richness of the one. This thirst is literally god pouring himself into the vessel of our body as an infinite river of love.

Our minds' unwitting response to this thirst is what creates the suffering. Our futile attempt to quench the thirst, to fulfill the craving, to satisfy the desire. There is nothing to quench. The thirst already is the abundance we are seeking in the water. Nothing is needed.

What was a constant and painful needing, turned into a calm yet powerful wanting, a wanting that doesn't need any satisfaction, that is complete in itself. A fire that burns from the inside, hollowing out my heart, my body, my soul, exposing their utter emptiness, leaving nothing behind but space for the river to flow through.

After researching a bit more, I found out that Rumi had more to say about thirst...

"What, indeed, is the thirsty man’s business in this world? To circle forever around the water reservoir, around the channel, around the water, and the sound of the water, like a pilgrim circumambulating the Ka‘ba of Truth."

I'm forever a lover. Forever thirsty. Forever complete.

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