Salto Mortale - The practice of dying and living - poetry podcast laughing brook
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Salto Mortale

The practice of dying and living

There is a curious thing: When I hold life very tightly, everything becomes a rather tiresome and exhausting affair. When on the other hand I hold things loosely, I may discover that things seem to come to me without me really doing a lot. This doesn’t mean I’m passive. 

The way to this direction leads through most unlikely doors of which death is an essential one. The tiny deaths we have to die in our life, and sometimes ugly big ones, allow us to prepare. Facing death brings a most remarkable insight.

Chapters:

  • 00:00:00 Intro
  • 00:00:26 Salto Mortale – Solo
  • 00:03:23 How to fly
  • 00:12:38 Salto Mortale (Remix)
  • 00:16:13 Outro

You can find the Sacred Sensuality Retreat Brazil here.

Transcript

Salto Mortale

Life’s not a given
Even though it is given

It’s a ride we’re taking
Even though
The magic is
Not to take it

I rather let it unfurl
Into who I am
And everything is

Life is all around me
Always is
It’s where I come from
It where I live

I’m one with this
This is one thing
And all is one

What is death
But a gliding
Into the ever
I already surrendered to

I die
And so I live
In wondrous other
Beyond all fears and dreams

I do not hold
I’m being held
Everything just is

What is death
But gliding
With life’s forever whiff

PS: Which rhymes with live

©️ Laughing Brook/Peter Müller 2025

How to fly

As you certainly can tell, these intros I’m giving here aren’t spoken out of the blue, even though their creation kinda works that way. Nevertheless, I’m speaking this as I have written it, lying in the hammock in front of my little bungalow during the Sacred Sensuality Retreat in Brazil. It’s all about coming to being fully alive via the path of your senses, those doors through which the world at large can access us. If you wanna know more about it, check out the show notes for this episode on laughingbrook.net.

Yesterday we were at a place called Paradise Pools, which doesn’t owe its name to some smooth marketing gig, but has sort of canonically developed. Canonically means, people go there time and time again and have similar experiences, and they then try to find something that captures the essence and quality of that experience. So that’s where the name comes from. 

We where doing our hike up into the Serra do Cipo national park with respectful support of a South American medicine plant. Despite a heavy bout of rain in the morning each of our participants had a quiet impressive journey through inner worlds, held, touched and guided by the incredibly beautiful nature up there. 

At one point I was checking on one of the participants and asked him a bit casual about his well-being ”on a scale from one two ten.“ I can see his hands move up and down in front of his chest, as if he is trying to gauge a level. Then he drops his arms and on his face is an expression of both enlightenment and wonder, and answers: ”A scale doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s just good.“

In order to fly you have to let go of the ground. Life’s whiff can only carry you, if you’re not clinging to the ground. On the other hand, despite of all the times when life plays havoc with our clever plans and we have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again, there is something to be said about becoming aware of where I’m going, of me leaning into the wind and choosing a path on which I wish to traverse along. Circumstances may be tough and uninviting, yet in the end it will always be me who choses how I go about life. Just like we did there in the rain up on the Serra do Cipo.  In our retreat and in our work we call this an intention. 

Grabbing and holding on is one way of going about live, one intention, and creates impressive and yet not all too rarely effects which can be extremely devastating, as we are currently seeing so well on the large stages all around the world just as in individual lives, who mirror, correspondent to and enable the big dramas in the spotlight. Some of those ways last for many generations, like colonialism for example, or even worse, patriarchy. The grabbing seems to benefit the people grabbing. What is missed, denied, scapegoated away and hidden is its life-denying poison, which invariably and slowly eats away the heart.

There is, though, a different way, which is about not holding on, and not being attached, as Buddhists call it; of doing by not doing, as Laozi has called it in the Tao Te King; of taking up my cross and following into death, as Jesus Christ has called it. From a perspective of grabbing all of this sounds like utter nonsense. Yet once you go along this path of letting go, and it may be quite brutal in stretches, you may discover ever so slowly how things eventually begin to feel lighter, once you let go. And what may start as a heavy endeavour turns more and more into something that has a certain effortlessness about it. With this effortlessness come joy, playfulness, new experiences, freedom and ultimately a lightness that feels like I am flying – that is, being carried by something that does not come from my strength and my doing, but is connected to something larger. It feels like a flowing, but it might as well be the wind under my wings. 

The heart is reached when there’s nothing more to hold on to, and everything just is. 

Outro:

So here I am, in front of my little bungalow again. We’re dying our little death for this episode, as the end has come upon us. This is a bit of a special episode for me, as it all has taken form and shape within ten days of the Sacred Sensuality Retreat here in Brazil – writing the poem at the very very beautiful top of a waterfall, when reflecting on life. Some of the wildlife around our centre has entered, instruments I used in ceremony, and Natalie Vickers, my co-guide, supported me also for this one. I guess I can say that this episode has completely come out of the moment here. And should you be curious about the Sacred Sensuality Retreat, there’s a link in the show notes, and there will be another one in a year or two. It’s all about coming alive more fully via the door of your senses.

My name is Laughing Brook, I am a poet, dancer, mystic, nature coach and man whisperer. 

If you like this podcast, please leave a positive rating and a comment on which ever platform you are listing. Recommend it to friends. And, of course, come back for the next episode. 

For more info about me and things beyond this podcast, please check out laughingbrook.net. Thank you for listening, and, as always, – keep on flowing, bumping and jumping with the stream of life.

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