Tag: Writing

Prayer

Yvet YoussefLeave a comment

I am reclaiming my prayer from the dungeons of dogma and fear

It’s not that I have been godless after losing my religion at 15
It’s that my sense of God existed beyond scripture
Beyond demarcations of insulated groups
Beyond right and wrong answers from rulebooks
Misinterpreted and abused
For public control and political gain

I studied philosophy to get to the bottom of things
But there too
Limitations reigned the playing field
Old, white, deceased men deciding what was and was not intelligent enough to uphold the status quo of intellectual escapism

But this KNOWING
I can tell it doesn’t come from me
I can sense it does not belong to this body or mind
I have known this long before they sent me to confess my sins to a bearded stranger
Long before they told me my blood was too unclean for communion
Long before I was silenced and shamed for my desire, my critique, my questioning

God is in the depths of despair and in the heights of glory
God is in the wind through the leaves and the ocean waves crashing to shore
God is in the stars and the moon and the lines in my hands
As far and as close as everything
Always

God is in the simplest truth
*I love you*
The simplest truth
The most unfathomable majesty
The most intuitive path

A relief
A surrendering
An uncontainable smile
Birthed from cosmic knowledge swirling through this finite physical form
Able to perceive itself

Guesthouses

Yvet YoussefLeave a comment

For 14 months I have slept in spare bedrooms and on couches, in hostels, in tents and on the occasional bus or balcony – relying on the hospitality of others, unable, still, to recreate what I lost, and establish a new home for myself. I know it seems strange to some people, but I also suppose most people don’t know what it feels like, so it doesn’t really matter what they think. I write this last sentence with relative ease now, but this understanding hasn’t come easy. We have to unlearn so much of our cultural and psychological programming to truly care less about other people’s judgements of us… I am still diligently working through it.

Since having been involuntarily uprooted and catapulted from one continent to another, I’ve struggled with a need for my own space, and I have wrestled with my dependency on others. It’s been a challenging time on many levels. But I have also felt a strong resistance at the thought of living in a new permanent residence by myself while pretending to be a well-adjusted independent single woman in her early thirties. As if I could lose home and hearth one minute and, without blinking an eye, feign having my shit together while painting the walls emerald green and millennial pink in some other house for me to occupy. As if it doesn’t hurt like hell. As if it hasn’t fucked me up. As if I am not still grieving a loss that extends from the material into the emotional and spiritual aspects of my being.

For years I had poured myself into the creation of a home-space and it got suddenly ripped away from me. My identity as a spouse, a stepmom, a homemaker, a caretaker of cats and plants, a maker of family meals, a collector of eclectic furniture; it all vanished one moment to the next. My hands left empty, entirely unsure of who exactly to BE now. To truly learn the lessons from this predicament, there was one message overruling all other sentiments in my mind and it sounded like this: STOP.

Stop. Stand still. Wait. Sit in this astounding agony. Be broken down for as long as it takes. Resist all external pressures towards “normalcy” – be wholly, repulsively, irritatingly, frustratingly “abnormal”. Not because you want to be recalcitrant, but because it is the healthiest thing you can do at the moment. However long it takes?

Yes. However long it takes.

The second message of equal weight has been ringing through the hallways of my heart repeatedly during this time: TRUST. Whatever this is, trust that it will bring you closer to yourself. Trust you are supported even in times of relentless turmoil. Trust the light will return. Trust your love and your vision and your intuition. Trust this path. You don’t have to know exactly where it leads.

And so I have been defying norms and convention, a full-grown adult, homeless, single and childless, without even a damned coffeemaker or vacuum cleaner or piece of furniture to call my own anymore. If life has a reset button, someone took a small pin to mine and relentlessly pressed it until the whole system was rebooted. Back at the factory settings. It’s confusing and torturous at times, yet when I look in the mirror I can look myself in the eye and say: “I Love you. I am so unbelievably proud of you, you sensitive, courageous spirit. You are doing so well with all of this”.

There’s a learning curve to losing everything. There’s a learning curve to accepting support. There’s a learning curve to living in proverbial guesthouses for a while. We are all guests, I guess. It’s just easy to forget when we crown ourselves rulers of our insulated Queen and Kingdoms of Domesticity. But do we truly own anything? The planet we get to live on? The bodies we move around in? These roofs, these couches, these cups of tea, these blankets? Take nothing for granted.

We are all reliant upon each other. We have just been taught that we can and ought to be in complete control of our own little private corners of reality, and that if we lose that control, we have somehow failed at life. We judge ourselves and feel the judgement of others. “I didn’t plan for this.” “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Turns out we don’t really have that much control, not as much as we think we do by a long shot. Control is a rigidity that feels like strength at first, until it reveals itself as a barrier to a life blossoming.

I am, for the time being, experiencing life as a transient guest in other people’s houses, relying on the goodwill of those around me, family, friends, hospitable strangers and hostel hosts. I am floating through a vast stretch of liminal space, which I presume I have to learn to soar through freely now. To live with something I can only describe as a fluidity of presence. To receive gifts, over and over. Receiving is a difficult task for many of us self-reliant, control-freakish, independent creatures of habit. But it’s a powerful exercise. To say “thank you” again and again and again, until all uncomfortable fear-based-pride is pulverized, THANK YOU.

I know deep in my heart, there will be a time I will occupy a home-space to call my own again, with a coffeemaker, millennial pink walls, and a bunch of amazing rugs. I know that I will open that space for others who are then where I am now. To pay it forward. To give what I have learned to receive. To support others on similar journeys. I find solace in that knowing. And I trust it will happen in exactly the right place and in exactly the right time.

“She Feels the Music”

Yvet Youssef5 Comments

Some weeks ago I found myself at one of the most mesmerizing concerts. The sound was perfect, the music was pure excellence, and the venue was beautiful. World class musicians producing sparkling melodies and stirring rhythms. Imagine yourself in this space for a moment. Can you see it? Soul uplifting gloriousness. While I am taking in this incredible soundscape, a group of tall Dutch white men gather several feet away from me. I notice they gather so close to me because I was dancing, and they kinda took my dancing space… I get slightly irked when people invade my dancing space whenever there is actually plenty of room everywhere else. It’s like being in a long row of completely empty toilet stalls, and the next person entering the bathroom picking that one stall right next to you. And now your pee won’t come out until they leave, so you are just staring at the shoes of your new neighbor thinking: “Of all the stalls, in all the world, you had to pick the one right next to mine?” And I know they can tell I am being exceptionally quiet, so there is this awkward silent standoff happening until one of us flushes first. Yeah, OK, so I have public-toilet-issues, I know some of you out there know what I am talking about…

Anyway, I digress. We were at a concert. The men were closing in. But that was not all. In a completely silent concert hall, where everyone is moved by the gorgeous sound, these men begin an absurdly loud conversation amongst themselves. Let me tell you this: Nothing gets me out of musical ecstasy quite as fast as a group of insensitive men talking way too loud about absolutely nothing to each other through a performance. Let’s call this the sonic equivalent of man-spreading. It is incredibly annoying and energetically invasive. Since I feel like I can no longer afford being very shy about making my needs known to people, I begin frantically waving at these guys to please be quiet. But, as was already clear from their irreverent talking, they were not aware enough of their surroundings to notice me. I try to immerse back into the music while attempting to ignore their chatter. The band announces their last song, and as they begin playing the men start talking yet again. I decide to tap one of them on the shoulder and gesture my request for their silence during this last song. One of them nods at me. They stop talking for a while.

As I go back into the soundscape, I feel thankful for getting to witness this music. I close my eyes and my body naturally sways to the beautiful melodies when suddenly a voice interrupts from behind me. One of the men. This guy had apparently been observing me dance and felt the pressing need to unsubtly inform his pals: “She feels the music” – followed by one of those utterly stupid Beeves and Butthead type of chuckles: huhuhh huhuh. I don’t visibly respond to this, but again jolted out of my communion with the sound, I think to myself: “What the hell else is a person supposed to do with music?”

At a different location I am attending a concert by an incredible band that plays some of the best psychedelic rock of this generation. I notice the crowd exists primarily of men and that the venue is a little bit too crowded for my taste. My friend and I find a spot in the back that has slightly more wiggle room. As should be clear by now, I am pretty particular about space during concerts, and if I don’t have at least a little wiggle room, I will likely leave. The reason for this is that I feel the need to move my body when I hear good music, and if I am prevented from doing so in an overcrowded space I get pretty intense claustrophobia. Additionally, I find that if I can’t move freely with the music, I am less capable of receiving it completely. I want to hear it with my ears but, since I have the physical ability, also with my spine and my arms and my legs. As the concert ensues, I look out over the crowd and notice that 95 percent of the people is standing completely still. Two young guys are standing still in front of me. One taps the other on his shoulder and says: “You could also play this” – in a tone that reveals a certain criticism of the sound. As if the fact that this music is playable by other musicians is somehow reducing their ability of enjoying it. 

I try it out for a while, to stand completely still, no movement, just observing. The music comes in through my ears and stops at the brain. I experience the music maybe at a 25 percent, if not less. As soon as I move my body with the melodies I start feeling the music more intensely again and start enjoying what before was merely alright.

Then it hits me. In our intellect driven world the experience of live music for many people is also reduced to an intellectual affair. The very art form that is meant to move every cell in your body and vibrate your entire Being to a different level of consciousness has become, left in the hands of the cultural descendants of the European enlightenment, something to merely observe with the mind. So if you are not feeeeeling the music, then you must be thinking about it: …Is it good, is it not good, can I play this or can’t I play this, which guitar brand is that, how does it compare to the record, are the band members interacting with each other, I think I think I think I will give this performance a 6.6 on a scale of one to ten… 

I look around the static crowd and suddenly feel sad. Because this precisely illustrates the biggest problem of our time. Our inability to feel. Feeling, our society instructs, is something not to be taken seriously, something to be made fun of, ridiculed even. Especially (though not exclusively by any means) by men, who have been systematically trained to repress their feelings and to rely entirely on intellectual capacities for “survival” in a hyper-rational world. A woman intensely experiencing music and swaying her body to the sound is so peculiar that someone feels the need to comment on it followed by an awkward chuckle. Because the feminine, the creative, the physical, the embodied, the sensual has been repressed for so incredibly long it makes people feel uncomfortable.

We are collectively so afraid of the body. So afraid of sensuality. So afraid of expressing ourselves in abundant bliss. We have created repressive barriers where unbridled ecstatic flow should be. (And BTW, this also includes the fear of peeing in public toilets for the strange anxiety of someone else hearing you during the most basic and essential task in human-body maintenance…) We have this idea that we live in relative freedom, but we don’t take into account the ridged complexes of our collective culture of emotional, spiritual, and sensual oppression. And we are primarily just talking about dancing here, but think about what this means for the ways in which people make love to each other…. Holy shit…. That’s really awful. Hyper-rational sex, anyone? I think I’ll pass, thank you very much. I don’t want that. I don’t want that confinement. I want to move. I want to sway. I want freedom.

I have lived for decades with detailed instructions from the headquarters of our culture on how to hate my body. I have been told time and again to “act normal” – which is actually the commandment of invisibility. Don’t show yourself too much, don’t express yourself too much, don’t enjoy yourself too much. I have spent decades struggling to unlearn those messages, and to learn how to love my body regardless. It’s an ongoing process. We are here on Earth in physical form for a short amount of time. Nobody really knows what happens afterwards. Can we afford to let our time here be controlled by fear of our own capacities? Or do we wake up from our disconnected slumber to wholeheartedly, profoundly, and unapologetically FEEL the music?

On Meditating Through the Mess

Yvet YoussefLeave a comment

I am living the cliché: The newly separated woman in her early 30’s seeking guidance from the realms of spirituality and psychology in order to make sense of the chaos that has become her life. You know, the woman who has just lost such large chunks of the identity she had eagerly been building for about 8 years of marriage and step-motherhood in a different country that she now – after being unceremoniously rejected by her partner – simply doesn’t know how to set one foot in front of the other. I have always been deep diving into philosophical quandaries and explorations of consciousness, so this is not new territory to me, it’s just all that’s left now. During this transition phase, I rapidly chartered the help of a Jungian psychologist; I regularly visit spiritual websites trying to find some solace for the godawful, heart wrenching pain I experience every single day; I visit stores that sell self-help books and chakra colored candles to inspire some kind of healing in this wreckage of a human heart. Needless to say: I’ve been having a really shitty time. As a diligent seeker of wellbeing I, of course, have been pointed to the power of meditation repeatedly by every single person who has had anything to say about helping oneself recover after such heartbreak.

Now, I am not an avid meditator. My biggest barrier during the slew of meditation and sound-healing classes that I have taken part in over the years has been my body. If I have to sit cross-legged, straight up, on a hard pillow for an hour, I get so distracted by the aching pain in my lower back that emptying the mind is virtually impossible. Yes, I hear you: Yoga, right? That’s what yoga is for, to train the body for meditation! Well, it is not trained for meditation, and it’ll take some years to fix that. So, in the meantime, I have been laying in bed with my headphones on, listening to a variety of YouTube’s guided-meditation-videos where the soothing voices of strangers lead me through imagined landscapes of lights and colors and energies, through the body and into the Universe. I don’t know if they help, but I can’t afford skepticism right now.

When my psychologist also implored me to meditate to clearly distinguish between my consciousness and the drama that unfolds around me in the shape of my life, I figured I should try to graduate from the kindergarten of mediation, to, well, let’s say 1st grade. (Not dissing the YouTube variety, I love everyone who invests time in making solid meditation videos – especially if they also manage to keep the notifications from their phones silent during the recordings!) So, I got the sage out that I had recently bought in one of those spiritual bookstores, I wrapped myself up in scarfs and blankets, and in the thick sage-smudge that filled my brother’s apartment, (which I reside in when he’s away because I am homeless – in the sense that I don’t have a home of my own anymore/as of yet) I closed my eyes and began to meditate.

Breathing in and breathing out slowly. Letting the thoughts arise as they may, and – without judgement – releasing them. After a couple of minutes of unhooking my mind from solid thoughts I marveled at the astounding variable density of thinking. As in; there are a lot of very obvious robust thoughts, but there also also very elusive thoughts that make themselves so thin and sheer that it almost seems as though they are not there. However, upon deepening your awareness, they sure are there, almost transparent, trying to have their moment! Sneaky bastards! There are bison thoughts, unapologetically barging in. There are mice thoughts, scurrying around in corners, difficult to catch. And there are chameleon thoughts, blending in with the backdrop of your mind so well you have to look very hard to recognize them. So, I sit there for a while clearing away these thoughts, and after some time of stillness I hear myself thinking: “This is going pretty well, I think I am not that bad at meditating” – and suddenly I begin laughing really hard.

I can’t stop laughing for a while and think: “Why the hell do you need to be good at meditating right away? Who is keeping score? What are you trying to prove?” Suddenly all these identities come rushing by, and this need to be “good”. I wanted to be the “good” daughter, never really rebelling, and always being home 10 minutes before curfew. I wanted to be the “good” student, even when basically impossible, I read all the assigned articles in graduate school – all of them – way, way, way too many of them. I wanted to be the “good” wife, making sure I had coffee and dinner ready for my partner exactly after he awoke, right before he had to leave for night shift, hoping to ease his stress, and hoping to connect with him in the unsustainable schedule we had involuntarily acquired. I wanted to be the “good” stepmom, so even when my stepson was pushing my buttons by arguing every single sentence that came out of my mouth relentlessly, I cleaned up his room so he could feel comfortable and at home. Fuck, I even wanted to be the “good” “other woman” to my husband’s ex by watching my stepson whenever she needed it during her scheduled days (nope, didn’t work!) And when I go to an institute for intuition and energy healing in yet another attempt to find some meaning in all of this mess, I get nervous, because what if I don’t have a “good enough” aura? Haha! What?!

As I am laughing at myself, I feel this surge of warmth rise up from my heart and I hear myself quietly whispering: “It’s OK, I already love you” – and tears start rolling down my face.

There is nothing wrong with acts of service, with care, with being responsible, and treating others with kindness and respect as much as possible. Those are wonderful qualities. But there is nothing to win there, there’s no approval to gain, no appreciation to distill from the hearts of others in an attempt to feel safe or accepted. The amount of love others are able to give is simply a reflection of the love they are able to give themselves. Therein lies our true work; to love ourselves. I am an amateur meditation practitioner who is probably going to fall asleep to another one of YouTube’s “guided meditations for empaths” or something along those lines. And each day, as a practice, I am going to love this sweet heart of mine so warmly that it will slowly heal, so that it will be able to meet others along the way with sincere love and kindness. And I will try a bit more “grown-up” meditation tomorrow, because, they keep saying it can lead to some real insights about yourself…

A Journey Begins and Ends and Begins Again

Yvet Youssef2 Comments

I have begun and deleted many blogs over time.

This one has my name on it. I sense that I have an ever-increasing and indisputable commitment to excavating my truest essence through writing and making art in general. I can’t think of a name more suitable for that journey than the one given to me at birth.

I have been writing and sharing photographs on an Instagram account with my name on it (@yvet_youssef) for a year now and I will continue to do so. It’s a space that I love and one that’s been exceptionally helpful to me. Now it’s time for this accompanying sister-space where I get to write beyond the caption limitation of Instagram, into the verbose blogosphere.

Thank you for visiting. It is my privilege to greet you here.