Mountain Girl

Labels: death, poetry, prayer

My 31st anniversary:

Silence and a gentle pain in my chest,  tears,
a reminder of a bigger pain at a young age
nothing now is comparable to back then

a sense of utter solitude, lost in a world of sterilized white colour
the eyes could not see
but my mind was roaming around lost and in despair.

a presence next me like a sweet angel: my mother

what do the people know about me:
absolutely nothing

they think they understand they nod in piety
they seem to show empathy
but I can't shake off this feeling of utter indifference
I learned over the years to not talk about it.

Only when someone has lost a dear one I attempt to reassure
for the little I saw at the door of the bejond
there is nothing to fear
that the most exquisite peace is  awaiting for us.

And the living are still in suffering missing excruciatingly the departed one.
Maybe a little comfort in my words, yet again I am not sure they can grasp that really there is nothing to worry about the other side.

It is remaining here that is a bummer.
Every one has to carry its own cross....
and not complain about it.

Labels: 8 January 84, death, poetry

Labels: death, poetry

After almost three months in Italy taking care of my parents and assisting to six funerals few days ago I was finally able to have a day in my favorite mountain: the Luco ( Laugenspitze).

A post about death and dying will follow. I am kind of out of writing muscle in this last year, but I am determined to pick that up again.
In the meantime as I am approaching to return to Amsterdam to my beloved husband enjoy the picture and the poem.

What did you whisper in my ears in the silence of a mountain top?
Is it death and dying so hard to take when the sorrow and the pain are unbearable to tolerate?
How come I see so much of this pain all around me and yet my heart feels light and in peace as the tears are naturally flowing?


Behind all that anguish and despair in front of the inevitable I stand still and breath
in a bath of hope, under a shower of faith
because You my dear Lord are showing me every day that this is the way to go.
And I follow it with grace and gratitude.
A tear and a smile. 
(Milena July 2012)

Labels: death, Mountain

27 September 2011.

Thanks to the Lord, to my parents and to Driek

For this special day I was hoping to be on a remote island with nobody to be seen and the calm tranquility of a blue sea. I was blessed to have my dream fulfilled.


On a very small island near Rhodos, I prayerfully swam in the crystal clear water, kissing and gently caressing the sea. The silence, the immense space and the wonderful colors of nature around helped me to release the deep sadness and longing to have already walked on this earth for such along time. Meditating on living and dying, as each birthday marks a step closer to sister death. So I want to be able to welcome it and prepare for it and not going along in denial and pretending it doesn't happen to me.
It almost happened to me, so I have no illusion about the mortality of this life.

At times I do feel like hundred years old, and life seems so heavy just like the rocks of the mountains, but mostly I go around with an inner sense of youthfulness that never dies. Deep inside, I hold the secret of a second life, a second chance that no many can claim to have. The time stood still the evening of the 8th of January 1984, when I was 22 years old. Something of me died that day, and something else in me awakened for the first time and was born out of fire. Indeed I feel more like 28 years old, and who cares about wrinkles, they show the love and pain I had in life.
God blessed each and every day of my life and those who cared for me and love me.
I can only thank Him, each day.

Labels: 8 January 84, death, poetry

Labels: death, Friends, wedding

Short essay, autobiographical.

8 of January 1984

There was a premonition, though only later I could make sense of it. A poem jotted down hastily in the back sit of the car, only half an hour before, on the front page of my little address book. Inspired by the French poets of the nineteenth century it was decadent, pessimistic, self destructive.

I remember only few lines, I lost it in one of my travels and I regret not having it anymore.

The flat tire required we stop the car on the National road 7, near Aix- en –Provence, in order to replace it. I felt a sort of agitation and didn’t want to remain sitting in the car as my friends asked me. We didn’t possess the car warning triangle sign. So I offered myself for the safety of my friends.

Last thing I remember was the kind voice of a man who stopped his car offering help and suggesting me to be careful. I declined his offer and he drove away. After that just a flash like a lightening bolt.

I opened my eyes and there was only blackness, as deep as a night without moon. Utter nothingness. And yet no fear.

What has happened? My mind is roaming frantically trying to answer. Thoughts flying around that had no connection with each other. I only recall the most trivial of them: “I lost one of my contact lenses. It never happened before.”

Why am I lying here? Whose are these voices screaming from a far distance? 

Then as quickly as the thoughts came they also disappeared. I felt a gentle hand cradling me in a place made of air. I can almost touch, now, the incredible Peace that pervaded my whole being. I was carried in a dimension unknown to me. There was not a battered body, neither a mind that was thinking, only the soft caress of this invisible hand.

I didn’t wanted to leave, but the forces of gravity were stronger and pulled me down. I was lying on my belly and felt no sensation from my waist to my feet. Worries. I was wondering what happened to my legs, I felt as my lower body was not with me, instead was left behind on the road where I was a second ago, or perhaps long ago.  I didn’t know where I was, who I was, which day it was. Just a great emptiness in front of me.

Strange languages. Not Italian not English. Voices. Terrified voices. People were calling what it seemed to be my name, not founding me, lost as I was in the bushes far from the road.  I was trying to say I am here. No sound. Annoyed by their frightening screams I left them behind and once again I was suspended above the ground. What an incredible pervasion of immense Peace. There was a sense of perfection, a delicate state of being, limitless, serene, mystical. A serenity of now, here and everywhere. A sound with no melody and no silence but a wave of tranquility gently embracing the essence of me.

The disturbing noise from below called me back to my body and although no physical pain was experienced, my mind was worrying about the numbness in my legs. A terrible question started haunting me: Do I have my legs? I could hear someone saying yes. Than, I thought, everything is all right. And I was transported again into that peaceful state where nothing could touch “me” anymore.

A drunken driver was overtaking on the right side. His car hit my body at the speed of 100km/h and then I flew 50 meters away in the bushes. Twice heavily injured. Still today, 27 years later, I carry the consequence of that day.

I stayed 6 months in hospital, 2 weeks in an Intensive care, I underwent around 9 long surgeries  in the first 6 months that saved my life. Over the years I had many more surgical operation, mostly to my legs and knees. 

But I didn’t die. What is left is a moment, a moment of eternity, when I lingered at the door and glimpsed into the beyond. And that Peace.

I woke up five days later in the intensive-care unit, unable to move, not recognizing my own body, wrapped in white bandages like a mummy. My mother’s wet eyes were warmly smiling at me and the doctors started to call me “petit italienne”.

My life as I knew it was over, and a second chance, like a promise, was all I had.

July 2010 over the Alpine house Brentei-Brenta group-

Labels: 8 January 84, death

Labels: death, Friends, poetry

†09.11.

Labels: death, Friends, poetry

I was driving along the Val Venosta to visit my friend Valeria just after the day it happened.
The 12 of April the train that was taking people around 9.30 in the morning to Merano was hit by a landslide. Suddenly, deadly, without any warning sign.
The 9 people whose life was taken away didn't even probably realized.  The other 30 wounded and deeply shocked could tell their story. Most of deceased  were student. They were sitting in the first wagon. One minute before or later and nobody would have been hurt.

So unpredictable is mother earth, although sometimes there are human mistakes, that provokes a situation and creates a disaster. I only know that when I stood opposite to the place of  disaster I could not hold my tears.
I parked the car and walk towards the train. I had a deep burning feeling of sitting in prayer and mourn for those lost lives. Many people were watching, mostly from the valley, apart from journalist and television. The grief was unbearable.

A group of student were sitting next to me crying and sobbing for having lost their friends. Seeing them broke my heart and more tears for mercy just wet the ground.

I was only 22 when a car hit  me 100 kmh of speed as I was walking on the right side of the road and threw me 50 meters away. I landed in the bushes completely unconscious with severe multiple fractures.
Every accident I witness since then pierces through my memory like an arrow and touches for few moments the space between life and death.  I am always so deeply moved by the inevitable and there is nothing else I can do then cry and silently pray.

So in front of the devastation of the train I cried, feeling those people who cannot go to work anymore, seeing their family and friends anymore, cannot finish their study, marry and grow old. A  prematurely born  child, held in the hospital since 3 weeks, will never see his mother again, because she was sitting on that train that she took every morning since he was born to bring him milk in the hospital.

Few candles and some flowers on the road side to remind those who stayed to never forget.
May the mercy of God give strength and patience to those who mourn  their loved one who lost their life on that train. A train that never came to its destination.
May the journey into the beyond take them Home.
May those souls find peace. 

More about the train accident.

Labels: 8 January 84, death, prayer

I have moved all the Miracle of love blog post to a dedicated site.
You can find this article on the new blog here: 

My life with miracle of love  (8)

You can still read the comments made on this blog here.

Labels: death, Miracle of Love, Osho

A few days ago I found out that Tim Guest died last Summer, on the first of August 2009. He died at the young age of 34 of a heart attack. And I felt extremely sad when I read this news.

Right after the bomb explosion in Poona in the German Bakery, I had an impulse to google for Tim Guest' s name. His book was in my hands again in the last days and I wanted to know how his journalist career was unfolding.
I never met Tim Guest aka Yogesh. I was never in Medina, I only knew his stepfather Martin -previously Sujan- because he was one of my teacher in the Rebalancing Advance Training in Amsterdam '86 and I worked for a while in his studio in London in '91.

Tims autobiographical book is the story of a remarkable childhood as the son of a sannyasin woman, who was one of the commune leader in Medina. "My life in Orange" - 2004 is considered one of the best autobiographical account of the decade in his obituary in The Guardian and in my humble opinion I agree completely.
I read the book in 2005, when I was immersed in my process to undo the harm of my participation both in Miracle of Love and in the world of Osho sannyasins. I already wrote my thoughts on other books written by ex-sannyasins (Hugh Mine, Kate Strelley). Now I finally put down a few words about Tim Guest' s book.

First thing I thought was, if one day I will write a book about my own involvement in spiritual groups I would love it to have the wit, humor and plain truth of Tim Guest's book. He writes from the eyes of the child he was and describes brilliantly how it was to grow up with so many people who were pursuing the dream of enlightenment and experiencing a community lifestyle of love light and laughter.

I praise him for the literary achievement and for the honest recollection of his own experience. Beyond the dream, beyond the illusion of perfection and freedom.
Let the kids speak what they felt in the commune time. This is how it felt, if you are humble enough to hear that not everything was a horn of plenty in the world of Osho. Not at all!!

Osho sannyasins are ever so often ready to put the blame on the individual, whenever someone is asserting his opinion, voicing his doubts, questioning Osho's teaching or simply saying how different is his/her experience from the main stream devotee.
But if there is some good to gain then it is all because of the Commune lifestyle, because of the outrageous and visionary teaching of the Master Bhagwan/Osho.
This is a kind of a black and white way of looking that characterizes a group as very selective with a "supremacy syndrome" - we/us better then they/them. How arrogant! Certainly Osho sannaysins suffer from the "being special and better" syndrom.
And I indulged into that too, to wake up years later and recognize my shortcomings.

I read an obituary on Tim Guest online from a sannyas website that made me shrink for the lack of depth and foremost lack of respect for who Tim Guest was and how he dared to speak. Not to say about the cheap comments that follow the article.

Personally, I found the book amazingly well written. I can see this little kid running around the commune, looking for his mother, straining his ankle and back to try to grow taller in order to meet someone' eyes and receive full attention to his needs. He didn't have one mother, he had all the women of the commune as his mother, and consequently no one had the time to really take care for the children so they ended up roaming around like in a fairy land of "everything is allowed".
Some time ago, a sannaysin friend who lived in Medina and with whom I shared my thoughts about 'My life in orange', turned to me and said: "I remember that boy running around always so lost. He looked to me so out of place and very sad". She was still defending the commune life and condemning the child. If he was "lost" it was his fault.
I am still disturbed in seeing so many of my sannaysin friends being so 'brain washed', acting aloof and judgmental, while simultaneously professing to be such a caring and understanding person. My friend didn't read the book. Anything that points out defects, contradictions or even is just questioning whether the world of Osho was at all 'sane', is often discarded as untrue or not worth reading. How sad and how one-sided way of life.

My life with Ohso

Your book, Tim, is a must-read for those who have the eyes and a heart to recognize that it was not only a blissful land to live with Osho, whether in his presence or in a commune with his gigantic picture hanging in every room, to remind everyone who was the boss.

Certainly there were moments, at least for me, in my years in Poona (from 86 to 96) when you could feel that everything was possible, that all the limitations are inside your mind, and that if you have a complete trust everything will work out fine. Those were words, ever so often spoken by the average disciple, and at times you could even realized them for real.
Since I left the Ashram in Poona and changed my sannyas name back into my old dear name, I had those experiences maybe even more often then when I was in the Commune, as I had them also before Osho in my solitary walk in the mountain.
Freedom is not limited to following a master or anyone for that matter, the real freedom is in knowing yourself and where you stand.
And Tim in his book is slowly unfolding his journey to find who he really is, searching in his past, lucidly expressing even the most agonizing pain for a child: missing the love of his mother.

From "My life in orange"
-We all want a way out of pain and the fear of death. The way out Bhagwan offered was Enlightenment, but even Bhagwan died. Sannyasin believe he "left his body". But those are just words. Bhagwan snuffed it. He kicked the bucket, jumped the perch, shuffled off his mortal coil. He is an ex-guru. He pulled a stiff one, popped his clogs, booked a One Way Sleeper-Ticket on the Night train to the Big Adios. as the French say: He will have toothache no more'-

I chose this bit, just because I like to wake up from dreams. And in memory of Tim Guest I thank him to have done his part in seeing through the lies.

It was very sad to me to find out about his untimely death, that it took me few days to recover and write about him.
My heart reaches out to his wife, and all of those who survived him.
May you all find comfort.



From Driek on the same book: Reflections on "My life in orange"

Labels: books, death, Friends, Miracle of Love, Osho

Labels: Amsterdam, death, Osho, poetry

I went to explore the forest of the mountain Macaion during my holiday in Italy at Eastern. I knew that the amount of snow fallen in winter provoked the fall of many trees and damaged the sweet hut where I spent precious, meditative time in summer, in utter solitude. Paolo already told me it would be impossible to sleep in the little cozy cabin in this season. I wanted to check out by myself the damage and bring my homage to the holy place of my summer retreats.


I parked my car at the beginning of the dirt trek and armed with snowshoes, snow stick, some food and water, up I went just to stop 50 meter after the start. And so it went, every 50 meter or at times one after the other, huge trees were blocking the path. I had to climb them or walk around, put on and off constantly my snowshoes. With a smile of my face, I felt totally in tune with my beloved forest, the birds and the sound of the reek streaming down soothed my soul. I gave myself a name for the day: Sweet Rambo Milena.


It took more then the double of the time it normally takes to the hut. As soon as I saw the opening where the little cabin stands my heart felt instantly a deep recognition and an incredible sweet feeling of Love and of Belonging.
After a well deserved rest, an hour lying down in the only place, under a huge tree, not covered with snow, I made my way down. The mountain and the forest spoke to me with their silence and the natural sound of bird happily chirping, singing their joyful song to the Lord of Creation.
I was happy, in peace with myself, in deep preparation for this special almost mystical Easter I was experiencing inside.

Tired of the long walk and utterly wet till my calf for the sinking in the watery snow, I was also daydreaming for a warm rejuvenating bathtub.

I reached my car and tried to opened it. Surprise surprise....the key didn't go in. I look closer the lock was vandalized. In shock I went to the other door and found that lock even more ruined, the door completely crooked. The door opened by itself. I entered. Nothing was stolen from the car. It was pure vandalism for the sake of sick fun. My heart sank to my already soaked wet feet. I drove slowly home, arranged an appointment with the Carabinieri and felt furious, very angry and deeply hurt. I expect things like this in Amsterdam but not in my village.

The car as my house is a bit of an extension of my body. Anything that happened to them is directly hurting my body, more then 6 hours walk in heavy conditions. I felt covered over by those feelings and I was finding hard to have understanding and compassion with stranger who go around damaging cars and houses.
I finally entered the bath tap and prayed to let go of any hatred in me, to find peace again, and acceptance for the situation. "I can't go into Eastern with evil in my heart even though evil is out there and exist. I am not going to feed it with any of my energy."

I could finally fall asleep in peace and while everyone else of family and friends around were upset for days long I truly let go completely. My mechanic friend was so sensitive that managed to repair the damage "only" for E 250 instead of E 1000.
At the end I was lucky and I learned that every situation has an opportunity for uplifting your soul even the most terrible.

Two nights later a strong earthquake in the region of Abruzzo in Italy destroyed the life of many people and the houses of many more. There was much more to grieve then from my poor car.
That night without knowing anything while turning my head I hurt myself. I couldn't sleep anylongetr. At 6 am finally with my shoulder and back totally frozen I made myself a coffee. My mom turned the TV on and the truth hit me in waves of shock.
My heart reaches out to all the victims and survivors of this devastating earthquake. I pray they will be able to rebuild their lovely cities and villages and feel safe again.

Labels: death, Friends, Mountain