Thank you!

Here is the piece this is all about, the story I carried with me for years before I found the rest and the time to write it down.

The nucleus of my work, my calling, my message.

Am I not holy enough?

I have been sitting on this one for a long time. Maybe for all my life.

So this story is a biggie for me, not just 'another blog'. And a long read...

A little disclaimer: if I kick some shins with my story, or challenge your beliefs, this is not what I intend to do by means of attack.

I am just asking questions. Probably mainly for myself, but allow me to take you on my journey as we go. Let's go.

This story is about life. About incarnation. About spirituality. About religion. About materialism. About the feeling of not good enough, not holy enough, not spiritual enough. Imposter syndrome too. OK, you can see why this is one that goes pretty deep... I have no clue yet where this story will lead me, but here we go.

Let's go back to when I was a child. (Yes, my favourite subject, but that's where the real gold is hidden.)

I grew up in a spiritual family. Originally part catholic, part Mennonite, but both my parents were no active churchgoers, yet practiced spirituality and the belief in God as a profound way of life. So yes, it has been a theme in our family life.

We prayed before dinner, we talked about God. About reincarnation, about karma, about the afterlife.

About heaven or hell. About light and dark. About Christianity but also about other religions in the world and in our history.

About prayer and living your life to the best of your abilities to be a good human being.

How we lived did not feel dogmatic, like the church, and actually most religions, do feel to me. (And I want to type 'thank god' now, which is funny and illustrative in the context of what I am about to write!)

Because still... why did it always give me the feeling of being not good enough yet, not holy enough, not conscious enough, not enlightened enough, not spiritual enough? Yet?

Like something we always have to strive towards? To ascend to something? Whether it is heaven or 5D?

Why did I always feel a little apologetic about my life?

The fact that I was building my life, my little growing family, and was therefore focused on a lot of mainly material things?

Like providing for my family, a nice and safe home to build (and first buy, so working hard was part of that too), putting food on the table and clothes on their little bodies?

For my deep rooted urge to connect to the land, to animals, to soil, the beach and dunes, to wide skies, to give shape to my biggest dream since I was little (yes, horses, what else?)

How materialistic can you get? That's what I have always felt. A bit of shame really. Apologetic almost.

I do not want to eat the bread that represents the body of Jesus, or drink the wine that represents his blood.

I do not want to go to church.

I do not want to eat in silence to be able to be fully conscious of all the blessings I receive through my mouth into my body.

I do not want to stick to almost religious dogmas about food, about music, about being a good person.

I do not want to meditate the way I always thought it had to be done, and be able to live solely from the light.

I do not want to go on retreats to Buddhist monks and see if I can meditate my way to ascension and/or levitation.

I do not want to do ayahuasca.

I do not want to live in celibacy to show how far I already ascended away from the average human being.

I would love to be a vegan/vegetarian, but I do not want to feel shame and guilt if I feel I need meat or dairy at this stage in my life, because I choose to listen to my body. (Yes, always organic and as ethical as possible!)

I do not want to feel inadequate or stupid because I cannot name all the theories, religious and esoteric leaders, scriptures and movements throughout the history of the whole world. (Although I would make it pretty far, considering my classical education and family perspectives.)

Do you FEEL the endless web of rules, dogmas and duality I have been dealing with all my life already?

Growing up in a very free family, mind you!

A loving family that offered me all these perspectives and never forced me into anything! And still... this is MY quest. MY path to explore.

And I think this is exactly what I needed to get where I am today. Shaping my life, and what I have to offer the world.

In the last couple of years, actually looking back, mainly since I became a mother.

With the biggest bang in 2012, when I lost my newborn son Klaasje, things became pretty clear. And got turbulent too.

Because giving life and holding death were both wrapped into one big, life-altering, confusing mess. I was thinking about the relativity of time. Of life. Of flesh and of spirit.

It was pretty damned holy, actually.

Of how your darkest hours bring an infinite amount of light to the whole meaning of it all.

And then it dawned on me...

I want to LIVE.

I want to embrace LIFE. Life is for the living.

I want to enjoy life at the fullest. I live here NOW, in this body, on this planet.

And I want to stop feeling guilt or insufficiency for who I am.

I am INCARNATED. In the flesh.

I myself am a particle of god/source/creation, whatever you want to name it.

We ALL are. Not some guy on a cloud or on Olympus, not the guy on the cross.

And realising YOU are as much 'god' as the ones mentioned in the Bible, or other religious scriptures throughout history, gives you a big responsibility too. Because there is no one left to outsource it to.

The FLESH is the whole sacred deal in itself, that funky, miraculous meat suit that gives you all the experiences of pleasure, pain, hunger, joy, thirst, sadness, tears, snot, shit, blood, degeneration and getting older, uglier, etc etc.

And all we do is detach ourselves somehow from it, to feel worthy.

Dismissing the miracle of it, pretty often.

I want to hold WARM bodies (after holding a tiny cold one. The coldness has etched its way into my soul on that day.)

I want to enjoy myself. Enjoy nature, company, good food, loud laughter and music, yes also during dinner.

I want to be able to enjoy pleasure in sexuality too, with the man I love and have procreated three magnificent human beings with. (And yes, writing this down gives me the creeps! Oh, the conditioning.)

I want to feel free.

I want to feel rage without guilt. I want to be able to put up a fight, if necessary.

I want to feel passion and fire. Without guilt, without dimming down to polite, accepted, and holy enough.

My rage is sacred. My passion is sacred. My love for life, and earthly stuff, is sacred!

My body, my home, my cooking is sacred. Me caring for others in my own way, is sacred.

We do not need to BECOME anything.

We do not need to worship anyone or anything outside of ourselves, no posters pinned above our beds of idols.

We do not need to dismiss ourselves, our earthly needs, our desires, our instincts, to become something holy and earn permission to enter the gates of heaven. We already ARE.

Does that mean I think there is no place whatsoever for religion?

There sure is, but only as long as we are 'allowed' to be ourselves, and have full autonomy.

Whenever a religious figure tells us to outsource ourselves, our inner knowing, our instinct, our power, our authority, by using shame, guilt and fear, the red flags pop up in my system. Big time.

And yes, while we are in the flesh, we need to strive for love, light, righteousness, peace, conscience.

But we cannot dismiss the dark side of the whole experience on Earth too. There needs to be darkness too, to balance it all out.

There will always be grief, pain, sadness, anger, illness. It is part of the earthly experience, a package deal. It is the only way we can fully explore the light. Love, joy, peace, fulfillment, contentedness. Balance.

And even though you and I might try to be the best person we can be, you and I will also function as the bad guy for someone else, in a certain way.

So yes, I think there is a place to perform prayer, meditation, art, or whatever form works for you as an expression of your spirituality, but the outtake of it is HERE and NOW.

With your two feet firmly planted on the soil of this earth.

Creativity and creation. With your hands on your loved ones, a spoon in a pot, a shovel for manure, a hand that plants a seed, changes a diaper, or wipes a nose. We need to honor the snot, the blood, the shit and the mud too, and not be ashamed of it.

Because yes, there is a lot of shame, and I cannot leave this emotion out of the equation. It holds a key role. Shame for our needs, our bodies, our urges, our sexuality, our human shortcomings. It has been rooted deeply in us, on purpose I think, to keep us disconnected from ourselves. To keep us small and obedient.

I am totally done with that.

We are all sacred.

So, going back to when I was a child. I visited the Catholic church with my grandmother, who went for holy communion.

She told me it was the bread of Jesus. I yelled through the church, "I do not want to eat that old bread!" (Yep, poor grandma...)

I guess I always felt things pretty well: what does and what doesn't work for me. Churches give me the creeps, because I feel stuff, and I remember some even darker stuff from loooong ago, not in this lifetime.

And at the same time: the architecture of churches and cathedrals does something very special to me, and stems from something entirely different in my belief. Maybe more about that some other time ;-)

So, this looooong story is not here to tell you what to do, or how to live, or how you should feel or believe spiritually or religiously. Au contraire.

This is an invitation for you to feel for yourself. To always feel the freedom to question everything and everyone.

And writing this all down feels pretty cathartic to me. It came from the heart and it needed to get out.

Thanks for your patience if you made it this far!

Love, Annemarijn

PS

This story is the "why" behind everything I do and create.

If you want to actually experience it instead of just reading about it, I made something for that too.

It's called SPINE, and my favorite part, Treasure Hunting, is available for free.

This is where it begins: click here to get started