A process

By: theintrovertedtree 12th Jun 2025 Being and Self, Inner search, Liminality, Looking for the IChange, Identity, life, Process, Writing2 Comments

Our body exchanges atoms with the environment with every breath, every touch, every meal. The proteins in our entire body are renewed at least once a year on average. Pretty much nothing in our body is the same as it was a year ago, safe perhaps the pattern, the shape. Our psyche has also changed.…

The empty throne

By: theintrovertedtree 20th Dec 202322nd Apr 2025 Inner search, Philosophy, PsychologyAcceptance, life, Reality, Soul searchingLeave a Comment

I was reading an earlier post in my blog that felt as it had been written by somebody else. A ‘past me’ that exists no more, not because I no longer subscribe my own opinions, but because the language and reasoning sound… distant. I look at my hands typing. Are they mine? They belong to…

The Narrator (I/III)

By: theintrovertedtree 21st Feb 202322nd Apr 2025 Inner search, Musings, Waiting and HereSoul searching, Waiting and Here, Writing2 Comments

I think about those writers today. Not about their characters, but as the voice-over, the narrator recounting the inexorable succession of events. I wonder if the narrator suffers more anguish than the characters. If he knows what is going to happen, if he feels he cannot feel as his characters do. If deep down he…

The soil, the seed, the gardener

By: theintrovertedtree 11th May 202222nd Apr 2025 Inner search, Introversion, Psychology, Second half of life, Waiting and HereAcceptance, Openness, Soul searching, Surrender2 Comments

There was a moment a few years ago when I stopped defending from the world. When I understood my aim was not to look for a more appropriate place, different from this one, but to fuse myself with this world to which I belong. To be one with it, accepting life as a permanently changing…

Clones

By: theintrovertedtree 2nd Feb 202122nd Apr 2025 Inner search, Introversion, Liminality, Philosophy, Psychology, Second half of lifeIndividuality, Life cycles, Personal ideas, Soul searching, Uniqueness13 Comments

Am I unique? Am I not repeating the pattern of so many human beings before me? Haven’t I been ‘me’ before, in another one? Am I the first of my kind? Don’t I make the same mistakes as that who was like me? Won’t another come later who will be like ‘me’, with my same…

The Anchorite

By: theintrovertedtree 2nd Apr 202022nd Apr 2025 Inner search, PhilosophyLanguage, Perception, Reality, Words6 Comments

A succession of words does not have only one meaning. Carl G. Jung, The Red Book In one of my favourite chapters in the Red Book, Jung encounters (in his dreams or imagination) an anchorite living alone in the desert. He has a big book, a gospel of some kind, which he reads constantly, from…

Our friends who do not exist

By: theintrovertedtree 3rd Mar 202022nd Apr 2025 Books, PsychologyFictional characters, Introversion, Projections, Reality5 Comments

It must have been more than 20 years ago, one of the last small things that my brothers and I did together, before each of us went our separate ways. We got up in the morning and brought our cereals to the living room to watch some anime on TV, as we did in the…

Possibilities

By: theintrovertedtree 4th Feb 202022nd Apr 2025 Inner search, Philosophy, UncategorizedChange, Philosophy, Reality10 Comments

Of the many things that can be, that can exist, only a few do exist. Only a few come to be. The rest of possibilities remain as just that: possibilities. Every time a choice is made, thousands, millions of possibilities disappear. Possibilities that existed, even if only in theory, and will exist no more if…

Liminality

Unconscious

Waiting and Here

A process

By: theintrovertedtree 12th Jun 2025

Being and Self, Inner search, Liminality, Looking for the IChange, Identity, life, Process, Writing2 Comments

A floating note

By: theintrovertedtree 2nd Apr 202512th Jun 2025

Being and Self, Musings, UncategorizedBackground, Music, Reality, WritingLeave a Comment

It is the next note that makes sense of this note. It is the shift, the transition from one note to the next that makes the melody. If only now exists, if the past is no longer here and the future is just a projection of past experience, what is music? A representation of the…

A Something

By: theintrovertedtree 6th Mar 2025

Inner search, Liminality, Looking for the I, Waiting and HereFeatured, Inspiration, Waiting and Here, WritingLeave a Comment

There is something in the act of writing. A something one hopes to reach, yet it is already here, floating in front of me. A something in opposition to a nothingness. A writer’s longing. A sphere of whitish smoke in front of my eyes. It is not enough for me to contemplate it, I need…

Richter

By: theintrovertedtree 25th Sep 202427th Sep 2024

Introversion, MusingsFeatured, Minimalism, Mrs Dalloway, Music, new-music, Richter, Virginia Woolf7 Comments

I often listen to Max Richter while I write. In his music illustrating Virginia Wolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Richter captures the atmosphere with such majesty. The unyielding rhythm, the drama but also the compassion, the admiration and, above all, the flow. With Richter you never know whether you are dragged or suspended, but you do know…

The sacred fire

By: theintrovertedtree 10th Sep 2024

Inner search, MusingsBooks, Featured, Soul searching, WritingLeave a Comment

Back in Easter I attended a conference in which the speaker cited some quotes from books his father had wrote. The ideas resonated with me, so I looked for the books. After a few days, I realised they were nowhere to be found. All that effort, those ideas, those thoughts… erased by a soft wave…

Just a thought, am I?

By: theintrovertedtree 8th Feb 2024

Looking for the I, MusingsBeing, consciousness, Ego, Featured, Looking for the I, meditation, spiritualityLeave a Comment

I try to remember that I must forget myself, that I, the ego, am only a thought, a perceived object floating in a conscience. That I was but am no more. So, it is true that I have no soul, after all… That everything is perceived in conscience, and I am an object in the…

The apology

By: theintrovertedtree 23rd Jan 2024

Inner search, Introversion, Second half of lifeAcceptance, Featured, Forgiveness, Soul searchingLeave a Comment

A few years ago, I decided to write a letter to my younger self, the child I was. I explained the difficulties he would face, encouraged him, gave advice… as if I actually had something to teach. Then, one day, with a very vivid image in my mind that I will remember for life, I…

The empty throne

By: theintrovertedtree 20th Dec 202322nd Apr 2025

Inner search, Philosophy, PsychologyAcceptance, life, Reality, Soul searchingLeave a Comment

If I had more words

By: theintrovertedtree 5th Sep 2023

Inner search, Musings, UnconsciousFeatured, Soul searching, Unconscious, Words9 Comments

I feel I sometimes don’t write because I lack enough words, because my vocabulary is so short, so restricted. If I had more words in my medieval chest, what else would I say with them? Would I be able to describe the beauty that I see, that I hear, that I smell? Would I be…

At the End of the World

By: theintrovertedtree 17th Aug 2023

Inner search, PhilosophyAcceptance, Featured, Knowing, Not knowing, Uncertainty4 Comments

We humans love placing limits on everything. It helps us define reality, contain it, assimilate it. It gives us a minimum sense of control in an ever-changing world. Placing limits is our way of clinging to a rock in the middle of a sea storm. It’s the same reason why we build houses, to find…

My imperfect world

By: theintrovertedtree 22nd Jun 2023

Inner search, Second half of lifeAcceptance, Featured, Second half of life, Soul searching2 Comments

There is always something that is not right. If only it was a little bit cooler, if only that plastic bag was not spoiling this perfect view, if only that noisy chatterbox would shut up in the table behind us. We have an eye for imperfections, a capacity to identify that which is amiss and…

A world of our own

By: theintrovertedtree 27th Apr 2023

Inner search, Philosophy, Waiting and HereFeatured, Projections, Reality, Waiting and Here3 Comments

I am fascinated by idealisation, the way the mind changes reality to suit its needs. We have limited senses and a limited capacity to interpret the inputs we receive, with which our mind must draw a picture of our surrounding reality. Our mental representation is our only reality. Things are as they are, but not…

Drops

By: theintrovertedtree 12th Apr 2023

Inner search, Musings, Philosophy, UnconsciousCollective unconscious, Featured, Soul searching4 Comments

Last week I came across a brilliant line in one of the major social networks*. Sometimes, when one of these messages resonates with me and I see so many people sharing, circling a common place in this search that is not a search, it feels that it is not an individual quest, but that it…

Death of the hero?

By: theintrovertedtree 15th Mar 2023

Inner search, Musings, Waiting and HereDeath of the ego, Death of the hero, Ego consciousness, Featured, Second half of life, Soul searching6 Comments

Am I to die, then? – asked the ego. I, the ego, the intelligent mind who carried myself around, walking the unfulfilled path. Am I the only source of suffering? I can see my own spiral thoughts. The categorisation of the classification… Every thought is analysed, conceptualised, labelled and stored. And that is who I…

The Narrator (III/III)

By: theintrovertedtree 7th Mar 2023

Inner search, Introversion, Waiting and HereFeatured, Reality, Soul searching, Waiting and Here4 Comments

(continues from here; begins here) To come here in the mornings to sit before this Rothkian void. A filled void that contains everything. The narrator wonders, do I care? But there is nothing to care about or not, there is nothing to feel. That seems to belong to another reality. Here is everything that is.…

The Narrator (II/III)

By: theintrovertedtree 2nd Mar 2023

Musings, Waiting and HereFeatured, Soul searching, Writing2 Comments

(Continues from here) The narrator sits and stares into the darkness. The characters have stopped moving. He picks them up and looks at them as he holds them in his hand. He puts them back on the floor. They looked so alive… more alive than he himself. And yet, here he is. Alive. Sitting. He…

The Narrator (I/III)

By: theintrovertedtree 21st Feb 202322nd Apr 2025

Inner search, Musings, Waiting and HereSoul searching, Waiting and Here, Writing2 Comments

How do we know that we don’t know?

By: theintrovertedtree 14th Feb 202314th Feb 2023

Inner search, Waiting and HereAcceptance, Featured, Soul searching, The Void1 Comment

Our knowledge is stored in memory, classified, at least partially interpreted and ready to be used to predict future outcomes. But how do we know that there is something we don’t know, that something is missing? I know the basics of how a car engine works, but I ignore the details. I am aware of…

The familiarity of the distant world

By: theintrovertedtree 19th Jan 2023

Inner search, Second half of life, Waiting and HereAcceptance, Featured, Projections, Soul searching, Waiting and Here3 Comments

Sometimes we fantasise how it would feel to live in a world full of elves, trolls, fairies, giants, hobbits, unicorns and, of course, dragons. We see ourselves drifting towards that realm of fantasy, which we idealise as a much better world than our own. More suited for our spirit. But if we had been living…

Travelling

By: theintrovertedtree 1st Dec 2022

Inner search, PsychologyFeatured, Soul searching, Travelling6 Comments

And when I will get there, will I still be me, always me? Carrying the cross, the burden, the occasional light… is it me? If we always carry ourselves with us, why do we like travelling so much? We like the change of scenery, the change of reality. Even if the inner reality remains the…