Our  biggest strength is to embrace our biggest weaknesses.

Soulchess, a 3  minute 22 seconds listen to.

Well here it is.I have to admit it. I’m addicted to the chess app on my phone.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed — when the world gets too loud, too close, too much, when there’s too much yet to perfectionate — I reach for the little green icon and disappear.

My chessapp is my hideout.
My digital monastery.
A safe haven from the dreads and threads of daily life.

While I’m playing though, I know deep down inside I’m avoiding..

Something I don’t want to face.
Something I should be doing.
Something inside me still unfinished, unsaid, undone.

I used to scold myself for that:
But then someone — or perhaps I should say something — made me realise:

It’s my Soul who is doing the playing
All my Ego does is move the pieces.

My Ego plays fast.
It defends the familiar, even when it hurts.
It jumps to conclusions. Reacts rather than creates.

It often assumes the worst.
and most of all fears to lose, even when winning means staying stuck.

And my Soul?
My Soul waits.
It plays the long game, without a care about the score or winning

Soul makes its silent  moves without Ego being aware….yet..

Soul watches for openings — not to attack, but to invite.

Soul is not interested in checkmate.
It’s Ego’s Soulmate.
Only there to make Ego aware what on earth it is doing….literally.  It whispers into my subconscious; nudges me into the moves I COULD be making, by making me aware I’m addicted to my chess app.

Sometimes, she lets a piece fall on purpose.
So I’ll notice what I’m clinging to.
What I’m scared to lose.
What I keep guarding, instead of releasing.

And when the board is chaos,
When I don’t know what’s mine or where to go
My soul stays calm.
She stays.
She observes.
and sets the board again.

Soulchess I found is an initiation,
a beginning to insight of who I am.

It isn’t about winning.
It’s about remembering who’s playing.

When you recognize this…
Maybe you’re at a board too.
Or at some other distraction.
Maybe you’re a serial binger.
or workaholic or a diary-filler from dawn to midnight.

If so, know this:

Your Soul is patient.
She bides her time waiting to implement her own purpose.
waiting for you to stop blitzing through your life…
So you start to create and  feel her next move. Until you get bored and delete your chess app to focus on what matters and play your two cents to make this world a better place.

So what’s your vice? What’s your Ego getting at? And what is your Soul secretly making you aware of? What really moves you? What moves did you recently make?  In our Pilgrim gatherings we talk about things like this. In the end we all walk our our path on the same earth. Find out more on the pilgrimpage. energycounseling.nl and the blog Soulchess, the difference between checkmate and soulmate.  Bring your own set of Ego and Soul and let’s play…

The post Soulchess appeared first on EN Energycounseling.nl.

It might well be an unusual subject to start a new season of spoken Dutchbuzz blogs with, but this first week I want to talk about silence.

Take a moment to sample that word….Silence…
Play with it, say it out loud, think it, feel it.
What differences do you perceive between saying it out loud and thinking it.
What sort of feelings does the word ‘silence’ evoke from within you?

You see, at times people fail to perceive the true meaning of the word. That is because they blabber a lot leaving little to no space or time for actual silence.
They blabber to find reassurance on what they have been blabbering about before and about what they heard other people blabber, that way blocking their own thoughts from within to surface.

For that is another unusual thing; did you ever notice you can’t think while you talk?
Talking is basically thinking out loud. As long as we are talking we can only sort of think of what to say next, but we can’t think while we speak. It is always beforehand we do the thinking, which leads to an interesting deduction:

The more you talk, the less you are inclined to think, let alone meditate, i.e. allow the words to rise up from within.
There’s this general misconception that in order to meditate one needs to clear ones thoughts completely and stop thinking.
Truth is one only needs to stop talking silence the chatter of the brain, to then see what comes up from within, that source of silence, staying away from the blabber.

Would you agree that in the Western World we tend to , as they say ‘live in our heads’?
We have constant chatter in our heads. Boss-chatter, partner-chatter, financial chatter, commercial chatter, culturally conditioned chatter, parent-chatter, court-case-chatter, shopping-list-chatter, no wonder some of our children grow up to be chattering human beings.

This is where meditation should come in.
Clearing the mind from chatter, I’ll use the word one more time and then no more…..silence.

You’ll find when you meditate and reside in that place of silence,
the most profound thoughts will come to mind….mindful thoughts.

Try it once, sample the silence, sample the word.
Play with it, say it out loud.
Think it, Feel it, Live It

What differences do you perceive when you think the word silence and when you say it out loud?

This blog was written for the Dutchbuzz podcast of September 8 2015 and can be listened to on the Duchtbuzz.nl programm archive.
You can leave a comment to this blog on the ‘leave a comment form’ at the bottom of this page or sent me a personal response at: info@energycounseling.nl

I wish you a silent week.

Next Dutchbuzz blog: Tuesday 15 September.

The post Thinking Out Loud appeared first on EN Energycounseling.nl.