What Happened in Sweden!

I was lost

in a sea of oneness.

I chose you,

and I show myself completely.

And in that vulnerability,

you choose me back

and signal to me

that choice.

In that space,

we meet

and create the gift

of unconditional love.

On my last day in Sweden, the course had finished and I was walking down the road, practising what I thought I had learnt about empathic interbeing.

I found myself wondering: how do I distinguish this tree from every other tree?

So I stopped and listened.

A name formed.

Bob.

Suddenly, this was no longer simply a tree. This was Bob—a particular living being whom I could recognise and address.

Later, I sat beside a rock at the edge of the lake and listened again. Another name formed, this one carrying a deeper significance. The names gave individuality to the beings I was meeting. They created edges between us.

This mattered because, at the beginning of the course, I had struggled to find my own edges.

The idea that we are all one had felt like a vast sea in which I could disappear. I could not work out how to choose one horse, one tree or one fern from the whole. It even felt selfish to say, I want to connect with this one.

Did choosing one mean turning away from all the others?

Slowly, I discovered that I did not have to connect with everything or everyone. I could stand still and notice one particular being.

I was reminded of David Wagoner’s poem Lost. When we are lost in the forest, the poem tells us to stand still. The forest itself is not lost. It knows where we are; we must allow it to find us.

Standing still became a way of allowing myself to be found.

Rather than reaching indiscriminately towards the whole, I could listen. I could notice a fern. I could recognise a particular horse. I could feel when one being was signalling for me to draw closer—and choose whether I wanted to respond.

Some encounters carried more weight than others. There was a difference between trying to create connection and experiencing one that was returned.

I see you.

You see me.

You signal.

I respond.

This was not obedience. It was relationship.

I have been thinking deeply about obedience, particularly in relation to horses. Boy is so obedient, and his obedience has made me question almost everything I thought I knew. Perhaps those questions were part of what led me to Sweden.

Domestication teaches an animal to trade parts of its true self for the illusion of safety.

If I do what is expected, perhaps I will remain fed, accepted and protected.

Humans learn this too.

We become skilled at reading the room, anticipating what others want and making ourselves agreeable. We override the signals of our own bodies to preserve attachment, belonging or protection. Obedience may help us survive, but the safety it offers is conditional. It requires us to leave something of ourselves behind.

This is particularly significant in my work alongside people who have experienced sexual violence. The body may become still, compliant or absent because those responses once offered the greatest possibility of survival. What later looks like passivity may have been profound intelligence.

But survival through self-abandonment is not the same as safety.

And obedience is not the same as integrity.

Integrity asks something different of us. It asks that what we know inwardly and how we live outwardly become part of the same truth. It asks us not to abandon our own signals simply because acknowledging them may disturb the familiar world.

Allora chose to carry me; her role is to Scout in the herd, so is looking for danger to warn the others - much like Boy. I let go of a lot of tension through my hips and found more space to connect to my true self.

This brings me to Hine-nui-te-pō.

There are different iwi traditions and understandings of her pūrākau, and I do not want to reduce her to a therapeutic metaphor. Yet there is something in her story that speaks profoundly to what I have been learning about truth, consent and integrity.

Hine-tītama, the Dawn Maiden, discovers that Tāne, her husband, is also her father.

This knowledge changes everything.

She cannot unknow what she now knows. To remain in the world of light and continue as though nothing has changed would require her to divide herself—to carry the truth inwardly while outwardly living a lie.

So she leaves.

She descends to Rarohenga and becomes Hine-nui-te-pō, the Great Woman of Night and the guardian who receives her descendants after death.

Her descent is not simply a disappearance into darkness. It is her decision to live her truth.

She chooses the uncertainty of Te Pō rather than remaining somewhere that requires her to betray herself. She finds her boundary, takes a new name and becomes sovereign within the darkness.

That is integrity:

I cannot unknow what I now know.

I will not abandon myself to preserve the appearance of safety.

I will allow the truth to change the life I am willing to live.

Later, Māui attempts to overcome mortality by entering Hine-nui-te-pō’s body while she sleeps. He does not wait for an invitation. He does not ask to know her or to be known by her. He treats her body as a passage through which he can accomplish his own purpose.

Hine-nui-te-pō awakens, closes her body upon him, and Māui dies.

Her story holds a formidable truth: not everything that wishes to enter is invited.

Connection cannot be claimed simply because one being desires something from another. Empathy without consent is not interbeing. Oneness without boundaries can become another form of disappearance.

A recent dream brought these threads together for me.

In the dream, Temuera Morrison and I noticed each other among many people. There was warmth and attraction between us. I then found myself moving through a crowd until a younger man took my hand and led me back to Temuera.

We lay beside one another. I kissed him lightly, including the back of his neck. He responded, encouraged me and kissed me back.

I wondered why the man in the dream was Temuera Morrison. Perhaps it was because I could recognise and name him. He was not an anonymous man within a crowd. He was someone.

And within the dream, I was someone to him too.

When I became lost in the human sea, the younger man guided me back to the particular connection I had already recognised. Then, lying beside each other on equal ground, one movement was met by another.

I approached.

He responded.

His response signalled that I could draw closer.

This was the opposite of intrusion—and the opposite of obedience. Neither of us disappeared. The intimacy developed through mutual recognition, invitation and response.

The dream helped me understand what had happened in Sweden.

Empathic interbeing does not ask me to dissolve into everything. It asks me to become fully present and distinct enough to meet another living being without abandoning myself.

The first of the seven lines of the Hashemite horses, as shared by Emelie Cajsdotter, is courage. I remember within that teaching the experience of being seen by Creator with complete love—not because I have performed, made myself useful or become acceptable, but because I exist.

Perhaps that is why being truly seen requires courage.

I must first become visible. I must emerge from the sea of oneness as a particular being and say:

This is me.

I am here.

I am showing myself to you.

Then comes the vulnerability of discovering whether the other will turn towards me too.

At twenty, I found Thoreau’s words in Walden: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” I wanted to live deep, to suck out the marrow of life, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived" - the words claimed from the famous movie "Dead Poets Society" starring Robin Williams.

In Sweden, I found myself living those words again—but differently.

When I was younger, I went to the woods to discover my own aliveness. This time, I entered the more-than-human world and discovered aliveness through relationship.

Who are you?

Can I recognise you?

Can I remain myself while meeting you?

Can I allow you to recognise me?

Perhaps this is the journey from domestication towards integrity.

I do not need to obey in order to manufacture safety. I do not need to merge with everyone, respond to every signal or make myself endlessly available.

I can stand still.

I can listen.

I can choose one—and recognise when that individual is also choosing me.

Like Hine-nui-te-pō, I can allow what I know to shape how I live. I can decide who may draw closer. I can choose the uncertainty of living truthfully over the familiar safety of abandoning myself.

And when the invitation is mutual, I can show myself completely without disappearing.

I see you.

You see me.

And neither of us has to trade our true self for the illusion of safety.