Fear

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Digging deep

Deep in the darkness beyond that which is known lies the secrets nowhere else to be seen. In the silence behind what can be heard lies the answers we have been searching for for so long. When we walk past the line that indicate our own comfort zone we will learn something new about ourselves.

Its most often not a truth that can be told in fancy words, but still in a comforting way we will grow as wise human beings. Going beyond that which is known means we will have to face our fears because the unknown implies fear. But our human experience will also grow, and that is what i think everyone is secretly searching for.

Of course, the freedom and the painless state is in a world of no boundaries – of no concepts. But as this is a place most beings don’t even understand; why not start with stretching the boundaries we do know. Why not fight and/or love an opponent we do know?

Winning by this society’s standards implies, of course, loosing because we would not know one if we didn’t knew the other. To really win, then, means we can’t play by the game rules of winning and losing, we can’t play the game at all.

Ascending a mountain alone in the darkness when you are more tired than you ever been before, is a stretching experience of ones mind. The fear will creep up on you and there is no where to hide. There are no virtual reality, music, friend or TV that can distract us from seeing whats there in front of us. There is nothing more than the pain, the beauty, the tiredness, the fear and the darkness surrounding you.

Of course you can turn around, but if you are someone pushing this far, you are probably also someone scared of failure as well. Maybe you have to be, to be able to push your self to places where most don’t go – and see things most men do never see.

When you in the end are done and home in safety, and the drugs of sensations have played themselves out, then when everything is still, that stillness is somehow bigger than it was before. That great living room in your head you called consciousness feels bigger than you thought you knew it was before.

This is for me the biggest reward life on the edge gives me. I can not say what its worth in this and that. But, for me, the reason we are living this life is to explore space – in a real kind of sense. You chose your own tools, then answers are always there for those who put forward the questions.

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

Thin air

It’s pitch dark and I just know something is wrong. A creeping panic is taking over me but I’m too tired to understand why. For a few seconds that feels like an eternity, everything is silent. With raw power that I cant control, my lungs are screaming for oxygen and eagerly suck in the cold mountain air. I roll over in my sleeping bag and kneel up to focus on my breath. I’m nauseous, my head is aching, it’s hard to breathe and I’m surrounded by darkness in the middle of the night. Maybe I should not be here, but I am. Cope with it Andreas. This night was supposed to be the summit night, but this time you have taken it a little bit to far. If you just had taken it easy today you would have been in prime shape for the summit push. But no, you went half way up the mountain and then down to the base to get that heavy bag, just for training, just to get as much in as possible. Acclimatisation works hell of a lot better when not wasted, and you knew this, didn’t you? Well, showing serious signs of AMS, the only sober thing to do is to go down first thing in the morning. We will lose this weather window, but that’s just how it is. On the other hand, after a few days rest in town, the strength will be back and even stronger than before.

Lesson learned – time at first glance wasted, at second thought well invested. That’s why I’m here, for my own inner reasons of course, but also to learn from the mountains first hand. Its just always there; the fight with the ego, the fight for success in the short-term perspective. It’s curious how the ego doesn’t seem to understand that it’s not about one battle, but about winning the war in the end – if you like to use the warrior term analogies.

The debates and the chattering in the head continue in the dark. The pain keeps on vibrating in the silence. But there is also this inner smile observing it all, taking away most of the apparent importance. Left are only the thin air, the cold and the moist steaming from my frightened breathing.