Today I want to share my story of how I came into contact with the divine in life and why it has been at the center of my life ever since.

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In the middle of my architecture studies, which I was enthusiastically pursuing and in which I was very good, I fell into a crisis out of the blue. I was suddenly confronted with the fact that everything was going wrong at virtually every level of my life. There was a major break-up in my family, my relationship at the time was in crisis and I fell into a state at university where I was suddenly no longer able to do things that had previously been a matter of course – and then my body went on strike. I regularly had physical breakdowns, especially when I tried to continue my studies, to the point where I could no longer go to to university because I got massive back pain and tremors. I didn’t know what was going on.

Of course, I tried everything possible… doctors, physiotherapists and even (completely foreign to me at the time) a therapist on the advice of a friend. I spent two weeks in the desert, cleared up and felt much better – but when I came back, everything was back. Nothing helped permanently, everything was just symptom treatment and I felt more and more like I was trapped in a downward spiral. My mental state was also getting worse and worse and I could feel that I couldn’t go on like this for much longer. Until one day I was once again lying on the stretching bench at my orthopaedist’s and I realized… “I have to get out of here. Something is very wrong here and I need to find out what’s wrong with me.”

That was the starting point for what was probably the most important turning point in my life. And so I pulled the ripcord and went OFF for a while: Flew to an island on a one-way ticket, with only my best friend knowing where I was. It was completely open whether or when I would come back. All I knew was that I had to sort things out for myself and my life:

“WHAT IS THIS REALLY ALL ABOUT?”

Because life as it was laid out, this predetermined social path from kindergarten to retirement… it all seemed so weird to me. It didn’t touch me, it was a feeling of “working through” what everyone was doing, but it had no soul, no strength, no joy. Where was I in this? Why do we actually do it like this? And how can it work for me – without breaking down? Because obviously my system wasn’t made to function in this way, at least that’s what my body clearly showed me!

What was interesting was that as soon as I was on the island, all my symptoms went away. I was able to carry my heavy backpack (and I was really worried about that) and became more and more confident in trusting my nose. Looking at every moment to see where I was going, what was next, without a plan, that was the way. And step by step, I experienced how I became more and more “guided”. I had taken myself out of the usual paths and planning – and something else took over.

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What I was allowed to experience still sits deep in my cells today. Every step became a door into the unknown. I always met the right people, was guided to the right places, felt nature like never before. I immersed myself deeper and deeper in the experience of unity with everything around me, with everything I encountered. Everything had so clearly to do with me, with my question, with my path. I learned so much about my dreams, which led me far beyond physical reality to other planes and beyond death. And so I dived deeper and deeper into the EXPERIENCE that everything is connected and – I am much more than just this body in the physical reality and the timeline in which I live here.

And all this, this being deeply interwoven in space and time, the vastness of the field that I perceived and that I somehow also was, brought back to life in me what I already had very strongly as a child: the feeling of the GREAT WHOLE, of which I am quite naturally a part, and with which I am quite clearly always connected, indeed one.

There were moments when I cried my eyes out when it became so clear that I could no longer deny that inside and outside were ONE. The most profound moment was when I found a stone formation on the island that “coincidentally” was exactly the same sign as the one I had drawn in my diary the day before… Like a “hello” from the island, an “I see you”, a “we are the same”. At that moment, it rushed into my entire system as a deep, profound truth and I couldn’t help but acknowledge and accept it:

I am one with everything that is, as well as EVERYONE and EVERYTHING that is here.
Nothing falls out. I do not fall out. I am held, seen, meant and loved in it.

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And what happened to my question? What is this all about?

With all these experiences, I realized that this life is not primarily about having a career, starting a family, being successful, saving enough for retirement… that’s all secondary. What is primary is the relationship to life, the relationship to the unity of all things. And not just the relationship to it, but really really letting it sink into me that I basically AM that. That we basically ARE that. That we are God. And the only truly meaningful endeavor in life seemed to me to be to REALLY REALIZE this unity, this connectedness, this divinity within me. To bring it fully to earth. To live it – IN all aspects and levels of my human life.

And I came back with it. Healthy. I went back to university and finished my studies – as second best, deeply guided and with a lot of relaxation and joy (but that’s another story for another time…).
And since then, my life has been a constant path of connecting with the divine and unfolding into very concrete, human life. It is not a straight path, but rather a meandering one. Many layers have been and continue to be confronted and dissolved, and I am allowed to learn many new things.

Since then, the basic feeling has been one of deep, deep gratitude that I was able to experience this, that it opened up to me. That I was able to wake up from the narrow structures of the “normal” world view and see and experience life with so much more depth and breadth. It is by no means always easy, sometimes it really pushes me to my limits and beyond, but I always come back to this thread of connection. I know why I am here and what I am here for. What that means for me as a person keeps finding new forms, but at my core I am at peace with how I live. I am on my track.