Written by Jan Rejfek.
Jan Rejfek has also selected and compiled the photographs taken by Peter ERZVO Zvonár 

Sometimes it’s good to stop, look beyond the everyday routine, and ask: how am I? 

It’s good to review the balance between your inner joy and the things you feel you “have to” do. What you “have to” do shouldn’t have more value than your joy. 

Life is actually very simple. You only need to be keen to hear, see and feel yourself. Then you can find out how you can be who you are. And when you are who you are, you will also like yourself. And when you like yourself, other people will like you too. 

Thank you for the time you’ll spend reading the following lines, for having accepted our invitation. 

Come in, come closer to yourself. 

You have been absorbing ideas of who you should be since the first moment you came into this world. 

The ideas of who you should shape your idea of yourself, mixing with your ideas of who you want to be and who you actually are. 

Later, when you’re alone and not well, the ideas of others and your own ideas of who you want to be and who you actually are seem to be in contrast with where you are going in your life. 

At that moment, loneliness is a blessing and you need to come back to yourself, review what you want and where you want go in your life, to become who you want to be and who you feel you actually are, and to live on accordingly. 

Good or bad advice, with good or bad intentions, can come only from the people you let give you advice. 

You listen to them only because you cannot see or don’t know the right direction – or because you still don’t realize that nobody can tell you where to go and what to do with your life. You listen to them because you really want to move on; you want someone to show you the way you haven’t found. 

Your instincts always know what’s best for you: do listen to others, but mainly listen to yourself, your heart and your inner voice – follow them, and you’ll follow the best direction you’ll ever know, your own. 

Your own direction will be fulfilling, and your synergy with others will bring joy into your life.

Our words are some of the strongest creative forces in our reality. What you think of yourself is reflected in how you talk and what you say. People around you hear what you say, and make their opinions. 

That is how you create your reality – what, where and who you are. 

Think about your words and don’t use them against yourself or other people, not even in a joke or hyperbole. 

Some words are like stones that hurt and weigh a lot. 

Other words can caress and carry you on like loving wings. 

The choice of words is up to you.

When you watch someone, being jealous and wanting to have what they do or have because you see they’re happy, it doesn’t mean the same things will make you happy. And when you find out they didn’t make you happy, your despair might get even worse. 

The core of your happiness is only in your heart, and the key to revealing your mysteries is only in your hands. 

Sometimes we dwell on things we’ve only heard about but haven’t experienced – they’re only assumed by others and we have accepted. 

When we start to dwell on someone else’s truths, somewhere deep inside, we are frustrated that following these truths doesn’t us happy – as if we were in a fake program, suppressing our feelings at the expense of someone else’s truths. It doesn’t make us feel well, which may be the reason why we behave badly to others – we blame them for the fact that our supposedly “perfect” world doesn’t work. 

When this feeling deepens, you can fall into a deep depression, and to get out of it, you need to review the learned assumptions about life and realize what your real and true self actually craves for. 

Sincerity to yourself and the others will drive the fog away and lead to true happiness.

How much do you lie to yourself, and how much do you believe those lies? 

Have you ever felt you’re doing the opposite of what you really feel and want, but you’re afraid of how the others reacted if you did what you feel? 

What have you decided? To live in a fake synergy with others? 

Or have you followed your feelings regardless of others? 

Both the paths can be painful, but which of them makes you feel better about yourself?

He who has a good nose can smell the scents of all flowers. 

Who knows which flower in the meadow is hiding the greatest secret? 

He who keeps running about the meadow, trying to recognize the scents, has a chance. 

There is a lot of rejection in the world, often quite unnecessary. 

Sometimes it’s about the trained ability to reject something that feels good and nice out of fear – just because we haven’t heard of anyone else who would try doing such a thing. 

The fear of what might happen if we actually liked what we reject also plays its role. 

People who don’t reject what they fear and find out they really like what they once used to reject, say that it was probably the most fantastic thing they have done for themselves. 

You need to be brave for such great steps. 

Be brave and inquisitive. It’s better to remember something I did once, although it wasn’t worth much, and to learn this isn’t what I want than to eat my heart out all my life because I’ve never done what I think might be what 

I’ve always wanted to do. 

When you wait, you only keep piling up the reasons why something cannot be done. 

Don’t wait for anything and go!

Love is harmonic; it doesn’t sort or divide people. Love either is or is not. 

Sorting and dividing love is caused by judging whether love can or cannot exist. Love that can be and brings joy and fulfillment. Love that can be but is not, is a free decision. 

Love that cannot be but is makes you feel guilty. Love that cannot be and is not causes tension and frustration. 

I don’t need to forbid love I don’t want. 

But if I have the need to spread tension, frustration and guilt in people who want the love I have refused, I’m probably struggling because I’ve refused the love I actually seek.

Whatever you think, preventing yourself from opening the door to your life will make you happy only if you stop doing it.

He who stops looking for his self or loses the will to be himself, being afraid to be who he is – for example, because he doesn’t think the others would like him or because he doesn’t have the strength to be himself – cannot like himself and cannot think he’s good enough because he has never found the courage to show how he really feels.

He doesn’t like people, blames them for not being able to be himself and doesn’t feel welcome in the world.

Then he can be used in the struggle for someone else’s ideals, sects, and hate ideologies.

Then he tries to change the world and the others, for example through violence and killing, to establish the rules of an ideology that in its essence always suppresses the human nature in the same way he has suppressed his nature. He often fights even those who have become the kind of person he feels he really is – because he’s afraid.

He’ll find a kind of identity, fulfillment and meaning in the ideology, but whatever the struggle comes to, in the end, he’ll be alone and unhappy because he has betrayed his humanity.

If you don’t want to be your own master, someone else will. 

When you lose control because you don’t know where to go, it doesn’t mean that the one who takes control does know the way.

Then you can be happy only if your and the other person’s interests are the same.

In human history, however, this synergy has always been as a permanently unsustainable state. The question is what happens after we find out this doesn’t work and find the strength to get rid of the control.

Another question is how to fine-tune the new direction so that we don’t give the control to someone else. Falling gods don’t have faith, they can only demand it. History has shown that demanding faith doesn’t bring love, friendship and happiness, but wars, pain and death.

Today we know there has never been a time when the Earth and all beings were united by an idea of a common world, when everyone was truly happy, when there were not disputes and illnesses, no loss and pain to achieve this state.

But we can still hope because we know that sometimes, some things did happen even though they had never happened before.

The world is largely created by the memory of our ancestors, and we are here to continue their work, not to repeat their successes or mistakes or memorize what they’ve done.

We’ve got a lot of information that is basically useless.

Life is here and now, and we cannot study history forever to learn how to live in the present because then we could miss the present.

To study the past means to escape the present time.

A great thing might happen when a bookworm – a student of history who escapes his everyday reality (shopping for butter and rolls, greeting his neighbors, paying his rent and the boredom of talking to others who are also interested in discussions about what happened, when and why, about who said what and when) decides to make his childhood dreams true – here and now, no matter what the others say or think.

This way, he turns the wheel of history, and we have to thank him because maybe he’ll be able to accomplish what he hasn’t done before. He’ll make himself happy and inspire other people by showing that “something” can be done. 

Future generations may learn something from him.

Parents teach their mental habits to their children, and sooner or later, the children resemble their parents in something.

If the parents have a quality they don’t like about themselves, they want to suppress it. They can see themselves in their child.

They don’t want to accept what they haven’t accepted in themselves.

And so more they try to suppress the quality.

They start to use such pressure and methods that may be uncomfortable to the child who doesn’t understand the situation and doesn’t know what’s going on. And so the child begins to move away from their parents. The child starts to think there is something wrong with them because the parents don’t like them as they are. By moving away from the closest relatives, they may feel the whole world is moving away. The parents have transferred their feelings to their child.

In a better case, the child finds someone, a teacher or life partner, who lets them see the problem from another perspective, and understand and solve it by accepting and loving themselves as they are. 

In the worst case scenario, they may meet other children with similar problems, and their frustration and feeling of misunderstanding can become even greater, for example, by escaping to alcohol or drugs.

Therefore, it’s wise to let your children free. Then they don’t leave home wanting to never come back. If this positive approach doesn’t work, something good might be even their leaving.

They get a distance and they’re no longer the lightning rods of their frustrations.

They’ll stand by themselves and have time for reconciliation.

If they’re lucky, after some time, life will bring them beautiful moments in reunions and mutual forgiveness. 

A long time ago, I met a jolly, self-absorbed young guy who told me that old people are useless and worthless. 

Then I met him years later, when he himself was an old man a very sad old man because he thought that old people were useless and worthless. 

He kept saying the words so long they came back to him. 

He had no idea older people can help him on his road to self-discovery. 

Listen to the stories of your parents and grandparents in peace, alone, and ask them about the life stories of other family members. 

They can improve the story, add or omit something, but the overall picture will help you understand yourselves. 

One boy told me how much he missed his father he had no chance to meet. 

Another boy told me he had a very bad relationship with his father, who had abused him, admitting there was time when he thought it would be better if he had no father. 

Both of them longed for what the other one had and both lacked the same.

Some parents have a need to live through their children. 

They want to make their best dreams come true through their children because they hadn’t managed to do so when they were young. They believe their dreams are the best for their child – if they had made their dreams come true, life would’ve certainly been better wouldn’t it? 

But every child has their own dreams. 

Let the child pursue their own dreams and make your dreams come true in your child’s efforts. 

Do you remember when you were a child and you missed something? 

Give to the world what you used to miss today! It will make you complete, and the world will become a better place than you remembered.

We celebrate the ideal partnership of two people, but how many of us really experience it? How many of us are capable of such a relationship? And when we have one, how many of us are really happy? 

How many of us are lying or lied to keep appearances? 

How much time and energy do we need to hide our true face? And how much time and energy do some of us spend stalking and controlling their partner to find out if they up to the idealized role of a monogamous partner? 

My jealousy is directly proportional to how much I project my own doubts about the quality of the relationship to my partner, and to how much I doubt myself. 

Do you really think and believe that a single person – your life partner – can fulfill all your sexual, social, and other needs and dreams in your life? 

Do you realize what pressure you put on your partner when you expect all this from them? 

Rather than to stay alone with you unfulfilled dreams of a perfect relationship, it’s better to relax, come to terms with the fact that your relationship doesn’t have to meet the ultimate standard, and accept your and your partner’s qualities that don’t fit the perfect image. 

Trust me, you’ll feel better, your fear will disappear and make room for joy, and maybe you’ll discover your partner is actually great and you love each other as you really are. 

Will they condemn her because she has revealed something everyone knows – or because she’s too shy and she hasn’t revealed anything? 

Would more people be interested in her if she is shier, because her shyness stimulates their curiosity? Or fewer– because she’s ashamed to show her beauty? 

So many people look at her and have a need to judge. 

Can you imagine how clear is the mind of someone who living just from the love to his body? 

She doesn’t think a person who’s accepted the daily, rhythmic and illusory need to produce, record and count something is better off. 

Those who judge her mostly try to justify the fact they look at her and the fact she’s done something they’d never dare to do. 

Nobody can tell you how to stand the test. 

(In a very secluded spot on the other side of the world, there is a blue-eyed, blond boy, playing with his friends in the clear bay water close to their village.) 

A gentleman who was holding a book and chalk spoke to the boy. 

He said that if the boy came to him every day, he’d tell him what names somebody gave to the animals in the forest and when. 

“But me and my friends have already given them some names,” thought the boy, but he let the man talk. 

“When you learn all the names, you’ll get the recognition and honor in the society,” continued the man with chalk. 

The boy has never felt he isn’t recognized or respected at home and didn’t know what the strange man was talking about. Then he looked in the distance, watching his friends running along the beach, smiled and said: “No, thank you.” And he ran after them. 

Your inner feeling is your guardian angel that is always by your side, with you, willing to help and serve. 

If you move away from yourself, live the life of someone else and can’t stand it anymore – you’ll start hearing the angel and realize he’s talked to you all the time but you just wouldn’t listen. 

You’ll realize you’ve occasionally heard the rustle of his wings and glimpsed his feather falling to your feet. 

You’ll remember how stupid you were when you wouldn’t listen and tried to explain all his attempts contact you “rationally“, to put his messages aside, to the bottom of your soul, to the file of coincidences and non-existent nonsense. All this time you’ve been running into a blind alley, having lost your faith in fairy tales about children who end up in hell if they’re bad or go to heaven if they behave. 

Sometimes your inner angel or the so-called providence can lead you in such a way you don’t know where or why you’re going, but everything keeps telling you “Go!“ anyway, and you’ll know what happens and what to expect only when you get there. 

Be glad for going your own direction before you have no choice. 

Every one of us has a responsibility for the small part of the World we control and we’ve been given – our body and soul, ourselves. 

To care for the soul that the outside world perceives in your body and for the body that is reflected  in your soul is your own work, your contribution to the big picture of the World. 

Keep looking for your own harmony, your own Holy Peace. 

That is your contribution to the harmony of the World. 

Nothing else in the World can bring you more profit and joy than finding your own harmony – the Holy Peace deep inside. 

When you’ve got the Holy Peace, you can spread it around – to your family and to the whole World.

© Text: Jan Rejfek  

© Photo: Peter Erzvo Zvonar

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