Journey: Snowy winter archipelago retreat - what’s that all about?!

Today I will write about my retreat out here in magical Värlax - why this place and more specifically about my goals. There are four photos in this post also all shot today after last nights snowfall. It was actually almost a snowstorm with a hard wind and snowfall. 

Värlax XII

My contract for my apartment in Helsinki ended on the last day of November, 2017 and I had been emptying the flat for about the last six weeks full time. My friend Frank had earlier in the autumn gotten a great deal on renting a cabin out in the archipelago outside of Vaasa and we had talked about the possibility for me to come there with Bianca and spend a few months concentrating on my own things. 

To get to this place you need a car or you need to walk since there are no public transportation going here. The closest you get by bus is approximately 25km from the cabin. The closest grocery store is in Replot about 30km away and the second closest is in Gerby (Vaasa) 35km away. The roads can be hazardous since there is snow coming and all the cabins are generally considered summer residences (it is actually illegal to keep this kind of house as your primary residence and have your mail delivered there). In my opinion it is very ignorant if you in Finland, a country where you have absolutely a maximum of three summer months, build a cabin where you can only be in the summertime. However the cabin Frank is renting is built in the late 1980’s and is fully functional and habitable in wintertime. So my stay here is rather comfortable since I have running water, a proper toilet, shower, sauna, electricity, stove and a garage. 

Time is going by so fast when you are having fun, ain’t that right? During my three weeks here I’ve basically just gotten used to this place and getting into some kind of a routine. I start off every morning by meditating. My alarm is set for 9am every morning, I get up (but if I wake up anxious from  a dream, I stay in bed an extra 5-10 minutes and do one or two mental rehearsal, where I visualize something awesome I’m working toward), go out and take a leak in nature and let Bianca go outside at the same time, go back in and sit down cross-legged on the bed with my robe and headphones on. Next I remove my glasses and turn on a guided meditation tape from my iPhone (which still is in flight mode since before going to bed). 

Having snow makes everything seem so much more bright.

Since coming back from Lofoten I’ve done the Dr. Joe Dispenza “You are the Placebo meditation #1” meditation every morning, with the rare exception of two weekends when I was out partying and didn’t have any sleep. I will make a post on Dr. Joe and the amazing work he is doing, but if you are interested I suggest you check out some of his introduction videos on YouTube and take it from there. I can also very much recommend his books, I would start either with ”Your are the placebo” or “Breaking the habit of being yourself” and start doing the related meditation when you are finished with the book. 

As a xmas present to myself I went ahead and got a bunch of new meditations from Dispenza, that go along with his newest book “Becoming supernatural” and also a couple of older ones. This morning I did a new meditation where the focus is on producing very organized, integrated, brain-wave patterns and as a result of the exercise my brainwaves became more coherent as I shifted from Beta to Alpha. 

After my morning meditation I quite often need to use the toilet so I get dressed and walk up to the main cabin, put on the water boiler and go to the toilet. After doing my business I either get a nice cup of tea and sit down or I‘m going for a morning run with Bianca. I tend to run two days in a row, then have one or two days with no running. My runs are around 4,5-7km and I get a very uplifting emotion in my body from going for a powerful morning run after my meditation. 

Värlax XIII

The rest of the day I spend by learning something new and by being creative. Currently I’m quite heavily into learning about cryptocurrencies and what the internet of money will eventually lead up to and into. This is very exciting and fascinating to me and naturally that is one reason why I have now started my steemit account. I will be moving to northern Spain in mid march so I’ve taken up a Spanish course, Learn Spanish with Paul Noble. I also daily watch or listen to some kind of modern spiritual teacher and every once in a while I do another meditation in the daytime, for example a loving-kindness. 

Being creative out here is pretty amazing because I can whatever I want and I have a lot of gear to use. As my main camera I have a Fuji X-Pro2 with a couple of lenses. For editing I have a iPad pro (which I also use for all my studying purposes and also do a bit of drawing). This combination is very minimalistic and works very good for producing high quality photographs. Might be doing a post on this also, if interested let me know! 

Bianca was sooo happy this morning. She loves when I throw her some snowballs that she can catch in her mouth.

Frank has an Hammond organ in the musical studio which is in the garage. The organ is so much fun to play, last night I did a few recordings with my Zoom H4n so don’t be surprised if there are some tracks coming up in the future. I’ve never learned to play an instrument so for me it is quite interesting to play around with the musical equipment. 

When I moved out here we went to the shop with Frank and I bought a lot of very simple vegan food. Many vegetables and legumes. There will be a post dedicated to the kind of food I make here. As a reference I can tell you that I used to only make food out of a cookbook and really follow the recipe. Now I see food as nutrition, which you can easily make good, but you don’t need to stress about it. 

My intentions for this retreat is to create a new personality, to get over myself, over my silly thoughts of insecurity and darkness. I’ve had my dark night of the soul, but I‘m still in the middle of the river of change and I’ve decided that I will not go back even if my body sometimes falls back a step or two. It’s ok.

#Fuji-Xpro2 #Finland #Winter