Who looks outside, dreams - who looks inside, awakes

by Bettina Langehein (Germany)

A leap into the unknown Indonesia

Who looks outside, dreams - who looks inside, awakes. (Carl Jung) . So what may happen if we use dreams as a way to finally awake? This is what happened to me last year. After many years of acting in a theatre company, I was burned out. I experienced #metoo, had a miscarriage and was deeply wounded and stuck in PTSD. I knew something needed to change. One day I woke up and booked a flight to Bali. One way. I looked for a yoga teacher training and there I was - doing my 30 days teacher training in Ubud and tapping my way into a long healing journey. There is a special vibration going through Bali - an air of love and gratitude. An air that I would have never imagined to be existent back in Europe. Is this paradise? From Asana to Asana, from breath to breath and from tear to tear I let myself fall in the energy of the island and could finally find my smile again. Still, there was something wrong with me- why did I still feel so broken? My host and beautiful friend Wayan took me to a little ride one morning to the president of the area. He was a healer too. One of the many. A beautiful man, looking at me, talking in a language I couldn't understand. But still - I could feel everything he was talking about. The energy of the island was in him and swopped over to me. Without understanding, something inside changed. It came back into where it belong. This kind of things happened to me day by day. The kindness of the poeple, the beauty of nature and the warmth of the air lifted up something inside of me that could not be expressed in words. It is something beyond which can be named into words. Finally, it made me realize that 'through the outside' we can get 'to the inside'. I stayed for six months in Bali, and little by little I started to understand my past and the hurt that has happened. The feeling became an understanding and the understanding became awakening. Awakening became aliveness and happiness. I now know that we need to dream first to have the energy to start the travel of our life in the inside. We need to dream - to be brave enough to take the train or the plane or the ship to go wherever our imagination tells us the world is better, bigger, more beautiful. And gives us hope to be in paradise, where nothing hurts. We then forget sometimes that we always carry ourselves with us - and the need to look inside will not disappear. It will knock on our door until we open it and welcome everything that wants to be said. I am so grateful that the world has helped me to do that. 'wherever we may go, we looked for what we have dreamed - and finally found - ourselves'