My short personal history

I was born on 9th February 1966 in Slovenia, which used to be part of Yugoslavia back then. I was told by my mother that I had ceased breathing soon after the birth, and that the doctor had to work hard to keep me going. To me this sounds as if I were not completely sure whether I really wanted to live this life. And to this minute, to be honest, I am still not.

My early childhood was, as far as I can remember and according to general standards, quite happy. I was a single child, raised into obedience, fairness, modesty. I used to spend a lot of time alone and I didn’t mind that at all. I actually loved to have my own little fantasy world, from which I was observing the real world, trying to figure it out.

At about the age of ten, my life became, in the matter of months, very confused and much less happy. Alcoholism entered my world – my family, and brought about fear, more fear and even more fear. And confusion, isolation from everybody and from everything. And a huge gap between what was going inside and what I managed to express on the outside.

Adolescence intensified the loneliness I had felt, isolation and, perhaps most importantly, my need to make sense of my life. I spent days thinking about my existence, expanded my mind a bit experimenting with various soft drugs and finally decided I did not want to continue living. I thought if there were anything after death I wanted to get to know it right then, rather that wait for decades. And if there were nothing after death, than it really did not make any sense to struggle with life that had been so painful and empty. At the age of 16 I attempted suicide. I made the choice and took all the necessary actions, however, my body started vomiting out the pile of pills.

After another year of emptiness I decided to do something with my life – I was quite certain about what I did not want, but went completely blank about what I actually wanted. So I had figured out to follow the tiniest bright wish I had been sensing within myself, namely to travel somewhere South, to where I imagined more pristine and meaningful ways of living were still present. Without telling anybody, at age 17,  I packed my backpack and hitchhiked away. For half a year I was, with no money at all, travelling across the Middle East and North-East and East Africa. These were months of learning how to open up to people, of tasting the world, breathing freely for the first time, exercising the freedom of choice over my life, wondering at the world with eyes wide open.

Due to several very unsophisticated reasons I was semi-brought home and upon return started to read books about spiritual processes and existential issues of life, and get the first glimpses of meditation practice. After a year I had to join obligatory military service for 13 months, in Montenegro, which proved to be something completely opposite to the African adventure just a year back. But it was a good lesson in friendship, self-control, diplomacy, self-sufficiency.

Coming back from the military service, at the age of 20, I embarked on a journey of a dedicated self-exploration. Those were the years of taking Enlightenment Intensives (intense meditation retreats) almost non-stop, doing a lot of various types of meditation, spending half a year in diverse ashrams in India and experiencing mind-blowing and eye-opening experiences about the nature of myself, others, life and existence. I felt I was finally in touch with what life was supposed to be. I was bathing in the meaning, love, contact, openness… In this period I had a very influential and deep relationship with a woman from the same group of people, which I soon found just too intense for me to handle at that time and, with a broken heart, decided to back off.

In 1988 I started to lead group processes, primarily communication trainings, Enlightenment Intensives and meditation retreats. I entered a relationship with a woman whom I soon married, and we both flew to Australia, to spend nine months with Charles Berner, the founder of Enlightenment Intensives and Mind Clearing, a psychotherapeutic method I wanted to be trained in. Life in the community in Australia added new insights and experiences, and my wife and I decided to have a child. She got pregnant in Australia and delivered my/our first son, Filip, upon our return, in the midst of the 10-day war for Slovenian independence from Yugoslavia.

The following years were those of seeking stability and grounding all the not-from-this-world experiences and realms from the recent past. We got another child, a girl named Lucija. I was giving psychotherapeutic sessions on a daily basis, leading about a dozen of trainings and seminars per year. On the outside I probably looked like a perfect family man,  a good father and a good husband, financially and in other ways supporting the family. But on the inside something started to boil up slowly. In 1996 I was beginning to realize that I was actually suffocating – killing some of the most vital parts of myself, out of fear of being rejected, cursed and abandoned by the society. It took me another four years to gather courage and face the reality which was that I could not stay in the relationship with my wife and all the setting any longer – although she was not the reason for it at all. However, every cell in my body was telling me I had been on the wrong track, and I felt like I was going to explode because all the built-up frustrations. In 2000 I separated from my wife and moved away. With her we have managed to have a good cooperation in taking care for our two kids. They continued to spend about half the time with me and about half the time with her, but gradually this shifted into kids spending almost all of the time with me.

The inner process of choosing to separate from this life opened so many already heavily rusted realms inside me that I was barely able to stand the acceleration that my inner life was gaining. Freedom, happiness and inner peace that I had never experienced before arrived, and I felt I was reborn. Towards the end of that year I started a a serious relationship with Marjeta, a woman whom I have since then experienced as the woman of my life, somebody I had been searching for a long long time. I felt I was sitting on the top of the world, completely at peace with it.

We decided to move in together in 2002. In 2003 we went, with a converted van and our three kids (my kids Lucija and Filip being 8 and 12 than and Marjeta’s son 10), on a half a year overland journey through ex-Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India. Magical months of being together, observing the wide-open eyes of children, being here-and-now, exploring the world, exploring ourselves, savouring each day fully.

Upon our return, life continued in a fairly natural pace. With my kids and Marjeta’s son Dev spending most of their time with us, we grew to be a big combined family, facing all the emotional and mental challenges this situation created. I became a rather sought-for business trainer, specialized in communication, conflict resolution, leadership, teamwork. I ceased giving psychotherapeutic sessions due to burnout and life seemed easy, successful, up-going.

After a couple of years of this seemingly worriless and successful living a new form of restlessness started to creep in. Nothing was wrong and nothing was missing – in fact my mind was peaceful and most of inner troubles had long been gone. However, my motivation to proceed in this way began to slow down and I, despite apparently finally having it all I had ever wanted or needed, started to feel empty and to hate the idea of spending the rest of my life scratching my balls in a seemingly perfect life as a successful business trainer. I felt I was again betraying my deepest nature. A lot of pondering has been done in the last six months and I am happy to say that some clear and more meaningful and inspiring possibilities about my future are starting to emerge.

On the other hand, since I am losing my hair rapidly, feeling a lot of rust in my bones and joints and lacking the basic life-motivation, this may simply be the beginning of my midlife crisis – therefore nothing to write home about really.