"About a year before I got my Compass, my daughter was standing behind me while I was combing my hair, and she said: "Mum, you look like the universe." I loved it the moment she said it, even though I had no words for why. It was as if it put a strong feeling inside me into words.

Then my Compass gave me the same metaphor! It told me, among other things, that in relationships I tend to put myself at the centre. And that for me as a Reflector, the more natural place is a different one: less central, less personal, more all-encompassing. More like being the backdrop or the stage where relationships unfold. The Compass used the image of a planet versus the space between planets. Without realising it, I tend to behave like a planet, like something fixed, and that essentially limits me. It shapes how I experience relationships, and it's where my difficulties come from. Relationships are definitely my biggest challenge, and I'm well aware of it. That was the main thread running through my Compass and my journey with it.

I feel this space my Compass is talking about most easily when I'm out in nature, looking all the way to the horizon. I need that view into the distance to feel the vastness of Being and “dissolve” in it naturally.

I had a similar experience recently at a worldwide Puja, a ceremony where giant gongs are played all night and the players take turns. When I played, I didn't feel like one person standing in the middle of the gongs. I felt like the space around them, like I was everything, one with everything. I was the sound, I was the wave... Then a fellow player came over and told me I was playing too quietly and should play louder so it could be heard more. And just like that, the oneness was gone. 

And that's exactly the challenge: to let myself expand into that space and become it, even around people, not only in solitude, when nobody is there to disturb it.

I got the chance to experience this among people, too — at a spiritual retreat, which I went to with the Compass already in mind. One day everyone was getting things ready for the evening ritual. I felt a strong urge to lie down in the hammock hanging in the middle of the community. So I did, and just took in everything that was happening around me. I was enjoying it. Until someone noticed there was a person in the hammock, and I suddenly felt out of place, just lying there doing nothing.

But when I got home, I received interesting feedback. The facilitator who led the retreat wrote to say it had been a joy to share “space and time” with me. That resonated with me and made me happy, because it's exactly what my Compass told me: my contribution isn't in what I do or say, but in the kind of space, the frequency, I hold within myself. He had no idea what it meant to me that he put it that way.

I notice allowing myself to be that space comes much more easily in relationships that aren't so close. In my closest relationships it's still a challenge. The pressure my closest people put on me, through situations they create themselves, pulls me into very personal and mostly defensive behaviour, and that is tough. In those moments it feels like the only option I have is to walk away. But the Compass gently showed me that even in moments like that, it's possible to hold that space within, whatever is going on around me — "You all fuss as much as you like, I'm holding my space." 🙂

In one of our sessions, Veronika pointed out that I only link experiencing that space with being alone, and that I tend to run away from people to find it. It's such an automatic pattern, and I'm glad she brought it into my awareness and back to the essence of my Compass. I'm looking forward to seeing how it continues to unfold."