What is a Good Life? #78
Resting Into Being with Simon van der Els
On the 78th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Simon van der Els, PhD. Simon is a student of the invisible realm. He holds a PhD in the empirical tradition of molecular microbiology and also explores the subjective realm of shamanism as a way of rediscovering the interiority of the living cosmos. He enjoys time in nature, dance, and other sensory embodied experiences. Dialogue is one of the practices in which he can encounter a flow state, and it is one of his favourite activities.
In this glorious conversation, Simon shares his explorations of a greater sense of being in life. He highlights the importance of connection—to ourselves, each other, and the biosphere—in terms of feeling a deeper sense of being and belonging that goes beyond temporary moments of flow or peak experiences. We touch on the grief that is necessary to navigate in order to feel the depths of love and joy that are freely available to us, and that much of the way is more about remembering and resting than turning life into checklists for being and productivity.
If you are struggling to feel a greater sense of being or alignment in life, or if your explorations into being have yielded more processes and things to do in order to be, this conversation will point to fundamental aspects of being that could greatly shift your present perspectives and experience of life.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (64 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
There are a few really important aspects of being that Simon touches on in this discussion, which go beyond our usual ideas of being in the sense of “being versus doing” or people associating a momentary frictionless flow state or a peak experience as evidence of a greater sense of being in life.
Firstly is the sense of connection we feel not just to ourselves and the people around us but to the biosphere itself and the wider natural world that we are a part of. As humans, our modern ways are so alien to us (time spent living this way as a percentage of total existence) that it leaves us completely disconnected from our environment, and we feel on some level like we have lost our sense of home. Without a sense of connection to everything around us, it can be quite difficult to feel an embodied sense of being, irrespective of any meditation or yoga we pencil into our busy diaries.
He also points to the depths we are yearning to connect with each other. I see the level of busyness we have in our weekly schedules as a considerable contributor to the lack of depth these human engagements have in our lives. Not because we as people are naturally shallow, but the container of our lives and the time afforded to them doesn’t allow for any depth. We have cultivated a scenario where many people exist in our lives but we remain hungry ghosts when it comes to connection and a sense of being.
Over the last five years since I moved to Berlin, I have continuously chosen to slow down regarding my schedule. I plan very little. When I have the energy or desire for it, my diary may fill up on short notice; when I don’t have energy or desire, it remains fairly sparse. My life moves more to the natural rhythms of my own energies rather than the expectations or requests of others. It means when I do show up for people, I really show up, and I’ve noticed I need fewer engagements with people to maintain meaningful relationships as we go much deeper when we do connect. My style of connection would be more akin to a stone plunging into the water rather than skimming along the surface.
That’s not for everyone, and that is fine. I simply see it as important to recognise your own natural way. However, the more space I have in my day and diary to simply slow down and notice, the more profound effect it has on my general sense of being in this life. I would say in years gone by I was far more disciplined with mindful processes, but my sense of being still felt more manic.
A huge element for me that is missing in our lives is also a sense of rest. In this interview with Simon, he references meditating less regularly but instead taking a blanket with him into the forest and lying on his back and taking it all in. If he sleeps during that time, he simply sleeps instead. Since my 10-month-old baby has arrived, I have often gone for daytime naps with her either lying on my chest or lying by my side. With no phone or distractions around, it can often feel like moments of stepping outside of time. Given I work for myself, I am sure there are better things to do for short-term revenue, but longer term I am quite sure there are few better things to do for my sense of a good life.
The more my life slows down, the less I realise I need from a material or entertainment perspective, whereas for our society in general there seems to be no end to this need for more. On Saturday afternoon, I dozed off with my baby on my left arm and my dog nuzzled into the right side of my body. I have no idea how long I slept for, but I spent a good amount of time after I woke just lying there appreciating how much I enjoy the presence of these two creatures. I felt a real joy in just watching their diaphragms rise and fall, over and over again. Simple.
I suspect slowing our lives down gives us the chance to develop the subtlety to appreciate what really brings us joy or to notice the connection available to us. In this conversation, Simon points to the difficulty many of us experience when we start to live life from a different perspective; we can struggle to know what actually brings us joy. We know what brings us dopamine and hedonistic pleasure, but not really joy.
As we point out in this conversation, it is often because in order to feel life and therefore joy more deeply, we also need to navigate the grief that can exist within us either individually or collectively. Without engaging or acknowledging that grief, often keeping ourselves manically busy to perhaps avoid it, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to see that it is okay to let it run through us. When it does run through us and we let go of what is there, it deepens our riverbed of life to experience joy and love in ways previously not known to us.
Once we allow ourselves to feel it, we are more likely to fall back into the natural rhythms of the nature we are. From there we can see that we are already enough; there is nothing we need to become or to interfere with what we are becoming, we simply are. From there a sense of being and connection can emerge that mindfulness classes packed into an already packed schedule won’t allow you to experience.
Is there any moment that you could choose to rest in more today rather than busying yourself with something to do or picking up your phone?
3. Full Episode - Resting Into Being with Simon van der Els - What is a Good Life? #78
Click here for Apple and Amazon
4. This week’s Questions
What value do you ascribe to resting for your sense of a good life?
What do you feel interferes with your natural sense of being in any given moment?
About Me
I am an artist based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me to explore your own lines of self-inquiry, experiences I create to stimulate more meaningful group conversations and connection, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.