Adventure, Arctic, Art, Artist, Awareness, Beauty, Buddhism, Chronic illness, Culture, Dharma, Everyday life, Finnmark, Health, History, Mythology, Neurodiversity, Neurological, Photography, Photoshoot, Poems, Sápmi, Spirituality, Yoga, Zen

A colourful death – Something greater


If you knew that one day someone would be helped and inspired by exactly the trial you are going through now, would it then be easier to bear? I believe that the knowledge/thought that another person can benefit from your story; your experiences and how you solved problems and trials makes the burden lighter in a way; because then you are doing something for something greater than yourself. There is a self-sacrifice in the picture that gives momentum, and you no longer think only of “me and mine,” but also of the well-being of others. I don’t know if this makes sense – I think it’s the autumn and the colourful death and devotion of the plants to the cycle of the seasons that made me write this 🤭🍂💛

-M

Adventure, Animals, Anthropology, Arctic, Art, Aurora borealis, Beauty, Culture, Duodji, Everyday life, Finnmark, Genealogy, Health, Heritage, History, Indigenous, Landscape, Motherhood, Mythology, Nordic, Outfit, People, Pets, Poems, Quotes, Reindeer, Saami, Sámi, Sápmi, Siberian, Spirituality, Uralic, Womanhood

The Sacred Bear in Sámi mythology

The Sacred Bear and “the Origin of the Sámi People”

In Sámi mythology, the bear is a divine ancestor, not just an animal.

One myth tells of a heavenly bear who descended to earth and married a human woman. Their children became the first Sámi people.

Because of this, bears were/are honored as ancestor spirits, and when a bear was killed (very rare and ritualised), its bones were carefully placed in a tree to allow its soul to return to the sky.

A ceremony called the Bear Feast included songs, dances, and apologizing to the bear spirit for the killing, inviting it to be reborn.

The Bear Who Fell From the Stars:

A Sámi Creation Song of the First Bear

In the hush before dawn, where no footprints fall,
Where the wind hums secrets to the pine,
A star broke loose from the roof of night
And tumbled down through time.

He fell with a roar through clouds of gold,
Bathed in *Beaivi’s light.
He landed not dead, but dreaming still
In the heart of the forest’s white.

The reindeer bowed their crowned heads low,
The lynx stood still in her track.
For this was the First of Bears,
The Sky-Child, fallen back.

He walked like thunder on ancient snow,
His breath, a wind of flame.
Yet gentle were his dreaming eyes,
And wise, and without shame.

A woman came from a northern vale,
A weaver of skins and song.
She found him sleeping in a ring of birch
And stayed with him all night long.

They spoke without words by fire and frost,
By the rhythm of blood and bone.
She taught him the names of the winds and streams;
He gave her dreams of home.

And so their children, wild and wise,
Were neither beast nor man.
They sang to trees, they hunted clean,
They walked where few else can.

But then the bear, when spring had sung,
Felt longing rise like steam:
His fur grew light, his eyes grew wide
He vanished into dream.

And so today, when the bear is seen,
The Sámi bow and sing
“Child of stars, our ancient kin,
Return again in spring.”

If ever a bear is taken in hunt,
The people weep and pray.
They dress his skull in flowers and moss
And lift his bones away.

*Beaivi is the Sun (as a deity)

Acrylic painting, Adventure, Animals, Anthropology, Arctic, Art, Artist, Aurora borealis, Awareness, Beauty, Carnivore, Culture, Duodji, Everyday life, Family, Finnmark, Health, Heritage, Indigenous, Landscape, Nordic, Painters, People, Pets, Photography, Reindeer, Saami, Sámi, Sápmi, Shamanism, Shop, Spirituality, Tromsø, Uncategorized, Uralic, Womanhood

Way of Life | Art print

This is the landscape nomadic peoples of the Arctic have travelled for decades and generations. Moving their herds and homes and children safely tucked onto sleds, across the tundra. This is still the case in some areas. If you’ve witnessed the ever-changing play of colours and atmosphere during the Arctic winter and Polar night, it looks something like this; pastel skies, crisp clear air, moon in daytime and the sun hiding behind the horizon, blessing us with a few rays here and there before leaving for a few months. I am in awe at how my ancestors have survived and even thrived here for so long; I feel moved to my core by their know-how of the elements, seasons and animals. “Way of Life” art print, 2400 NOK 🩵💜🤍🧡 89 x 46,5 cm including white edges. The prints have the title written on the white part in front, and signature on the back.

Can be shipped anywhere 🙏🏼

Shown on dark wall 🖤
Shown on light wall 🤍
Acrylic painting, Adventure, Arctic, Art, Artist, Aurora borealis, Beauty, Culture, DIY, Finnmark, House, Indigenous, Landscape, På landet, Photography, Siberian, Uncategorized, Uralic

Never tire

I simply never tire of seeing the auroras, no matter how often they appear. Here above our house 🌌 My phone camera didn’t do them justice of course.. Also, did a small aurora painting in December that I gave away on my Christmas Giveaway on my art page. 🩵

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The shortest way

“Maintain the state of undistractedness, and distractions will fly away. Dwell alone, and you shall find the Friend. Take the lowest place, and you shall reach the highest. Hasten slowly, and you shall soon arrive. Renounce all worldly goals, and you shall reach the highest Goal. If you follow this unfrequented path, you will find the shortest way.” -Milarepa

October photos. Colourful sky, sunny days and snowy days.. It’s always shifting very fast here, you could almost say there is four seasons within one season 🌅🌦❄️
Prayer flags in our garden ☃️ The weather was interesting that day; grey sky and sea, white landscape and a heavy kind of silence.
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Photo series: Everyday life

In my summer sea sámi gákti. And small baby “shoes” made by mother-in-law 🙏🏼
Shades of blue shell
Rusty colours
Blue and purple hues
“Det er morgen igjen, vesle håp
og verden frotterer seg med nyvasket solskinn.
Livets ansikt er aldri det samme
selv om vi ser på det i all evighet.” – Kolbein Falkeid
#home #kitchen #midnightsun
Curious little guy on a short hike in the rain. ☔️
Summer details in some of my older paintings.
Just playing and experimenting with colours and techniques so that I will hopefully find the Joy of painting again 😄 I guess I have a little dry spell in my creative life at the moment..
Blue, orange and yellow are great together.
A bouquet I picked by the side of the road.
Details
Beef tallow.

Son and daddy 💙💛❤️💚
My partner of 14 years meditating. #yogisondisplay
Our shed with some new flowers.
Curious little rabbit in our garden.

Xx Monica Amrita Mani

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“Ancestral” 80 x 80 cm

Food and how to get that food is a huge part of any culture. In the Arctic, that food culture has been mainly catching, hunting, fishing and herding, making the foundation of our food for thousands of years an animal based one. We don’t have a lot of local edible plants here, with a few exceptions like berries for example. With the influx of trading and new borders, new foods were introduced, but if you are like me, I don’t tolerate them well at all, especially grains, and a lot of carbs . So I stick to an ancestral Arctic diet that my stomach and body loves, and I feel extremely passionately about food culture, so I guess that is what I made this painting about. I also added 3 samoyed sled/herding dogs, as a little head nod to another Uralic Arctic people neighbouring Sápmi; the Nenets. (An obsolete name for them used to be the Samoyed people, a name not used by themselves).
Acrylic on 80 x 80 cm canvas, details in silver and gold pen, oil pastel crayons.
🩷🩵💜🤍💚

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Why be an artist?

I am tempted to just answer my own question with “why not?”, but that is not satisfactory at all. Especially since there is a very good answer that comes to mind, although it is a cheesy one;

My soul needs it. It is who I am, and art helps bring out my authenticity. I feel ill when I have long periods of low motivation and inspiration, and thus don’t paint.

As probably many other children who loved art, growing up meant finding out how fragile art making can be. How vulnerable you make yourself. How other things in life seems to creep in and take over your time, to the point where there is not much time left for art making. All children are born with an innate sense of wanting to create and learn, and it can take a long time to find back to that once you have entered the hectic adult world of chores and time schedules. What a shame. But also, what a journey.

Like in all good stories, the main character loses herself at one point or many, and falls into some sort of despair and discontentment. She wants to find herself again and strives to get rid of the layers of inauthenticity she has adopted during adolescence and adulthood. Deep down, she knows herself, but too much junk has accumulated, and she feels frozen and trapped.

“Energy that is in motion, stays in motion”. In other words; just start something, and the momentuum will keep going by itself. The more we create, the more we want to create. Do 2 mintues of art making, and before you know it, time ceases and you enter the timeless realm of creativity, where it doesn’t matter how long you do it, all that matters is that you enjoy it and you feel yourself being in a flow state.

You may ask; why paint? Does the world really need another painting of a mediocre rose or the aurora borealis? The answer is No, it doesn’t. But the world needs your interpretation of a rose or the aurora borealis. Your superpower is and will always be that there is only one of you. When someone buys your artwork, takes it home and put it on their wall, they are bringing a piece of your soul home. They want that unique thing you made out of nothing to remind them of what they perhaps have forgotten themselves. Or, they wish to have a feeling or memory your artwork inhabits in their home through their eyes. This is a huge compliment for any artist.

You may also ask; but how do I find my own style? You don’t! It finds you. And you can’t get rid of it, even if you wanted to. Unique personal style is something that happens on its own. Don’t worry about it, it will reveal itself, if you just keep making stuff.

It’s hard being an artist. It can be lonely, it can be difficult to get into the desired state for creating, it can be challenging to make a studio/workspace, it can be close to impossible to find motivation some days and it can be a job in itself to make something out of thin air. But then again, it can also be the most rewarding soul nourishing work.

Xx, Monica

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Autumn and winter in Arctic Sápmi

Winter is on our doorsteps, snow is here, polarnight is 2 weeks away, and it’s time for cosying up, hibernating, perserving our energy – and perhaps do some more icebaths. A small photo series from September, October and a few from November so far 🤍 Much love from Arctic Sápmi 🙌🏼

Crips air
Half autumn, half winter
Woman walking…
Kitchen view 22.oct. The adults were watching over the white baby reindeer.
Colours of autumn
We are 6-7 women doing ice bathing every week together
Helps to have a fire when icebathing
Sálasvaggi
Frost on seaweed
Frosty boat
When winter crept down the hill side
12:30 light
Ida swimming
Kali on a reindeer pelt
Ladies ice bathing
Me ice bathing
Afternoon light in autumn
Reindeer heart…Cooked it with onion and full fat cream
Norwegian, Sámi and Kveni flag next to each other
Blue tones by the river
Pastel hues
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Nature heals

Been spending most days outside this past few months, especially since we discovered that we have mold in our house, that has been contributing to my health issues, and resulted in me being diagnosed with CIRS/mold illness. It’s a hell of a thing to live with, and we are currently looking for treatment and a new place to live. I hope and pray these things sorts out, so that we can focus on our daily lives as a family and not live in a state of emergency.

In other news, I am (still) working on my film on remaining and recently extinct Arctic Indigenous languages in Europe and Asia. It will hopefully be done sometime soon, and I am so looking forward to share it with the world. I hope that it will be interesting and valuable information for people to watch.

Wishing you all a great and bountiful autumn (or spring if you are on the other side of the planet😅) 🙏🏼🍂🍁

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The healer within

The following text is from Barbara Brennan’s book “Light Emerging”, page 337 – 343 💜

“Once upon a time, aeons ago before time was known as it is today, there was a spark of light in the heart of the divine. That spark in the divine burst forth into millions of stars. Each star had a name that was written in the word of God. One of those stars is you. As a star, you grew and developed and sang across the heavens to the other stars. In this time before you were born as a human, you knew light, love, and wisdom. Being unborn, of course you had no body, so there was a great deal of freedom. You were completely aware of the essence of your being. You had great freedom to move about the universe at your will. You moved in the direction that you focused in. With your intention, you began creating things. If you had a wish, you automatically created it. You created stone and earth; tree and flower; star and planet; even cloud and wind.

Your essence moved easily, changing from one form to another. You experienced being a cloud, a moon, a sun, or a fish, or a cat. You continued to move as your pleasure led you. As you moved from one form to another, creating more forms, you slowly became identified with form, and shadow was born. You got so excited in the creating that memory slipped and you forgot who you were. You were so busy creating, you didn’t even notice that you began to think you were form.

Shadow grew darker, and pain was born out of forgetting that the true self is essence. The true self is the creator, that which is beyond form. That is how you created shadow and pain. You forgot who you are. You split yourself in two: the part that forgot and the whole that remembers.

Within every human being, there is the spark of the divine in every cell of your body. It is the essence of self. Within that true essence of who you are is the healer within you who has all of the creative power of the universe. The healer within you is named according to the word of God. That is who you truly are. Move your awareness now to your inner essence, your power and light that are completely unique. You are the word of God made manifest. Move your awareness to the total essence of your being—that is the healer within you. You have felt it your entire life. The golden threads of this power have been woven through the tapestry of your life since before you were born. You knew as a small child, as you know now, what this means. Feel the essence, the power, flowing through you. It is your uniqueness. It is your beauty. It is your love. It is the sweetness that you experienced life to be as a child.

Your power lies within the sweetness of who you are. It is within the sweet longings you have protected and shielded from others. You are like a flower unfolding in the sunlight. Feel the power and the nature of your divinity, unlike any other. Now ground that well in your body. That part of you is still free. That part of you can still move freely through space, time, and other realities. Feel yourself in this freedom now. As you are moving through time and space to different types of reality, in the far distance you hear a cry. That cry wells up and becomes more audible, and you say, “Oh, what could that be?” You hear the longing in the cry for help. Then you spot it and you see the beautiful blue and white shimmering planet in the sky. You are drawn closer to that beloved planet by the cries of need. As you get closer, you say, “What can I do to help? How can I answer this cry, this call? How can I help heal the pain that is upon the earth?” Then you have a great idea. You decide to create a physical form by drawing it up out of the earth and drawing the pain with it. You intend to use the physical form to heal the pain. You descended into a tiny physical body.

After nine months or so, you were born into this world as a human being. The longer you remained attached to that body, the dimmer the memory of your original essence became. As a child, and perhaps way before that, you began taking on the pain. During the experience of the pain, you completely forgot who you were. When the pain would leave, you would remember. When the pain would come back, you would forget. The pain that you chose to heal grew inside of your body.

Look over your childhood. Find the deepest pain that you have carried in all those years. With that pain, you will find your deepest longing. What is it that you want to be? What is it that you longed to be as a child that you now and then thought you could never be? Did you want to move among the stars? Did you want to heal everyone on earth? Did you want to paint or to create beautiful music? Did you want to make everyone feel safe? What was it that you wanted more than anything? If you could be or could have anything you wished on earth, have any fantasy come true, what is that fantasy? How is the un-fulfillment of that related to your very deep pain?

Look backward over your life. As you moved through each moment of your life carrying that pain, there is one thread: a repeated cycle on the spiral of life, where that deepest pain from childhood has been repeated over and over and over again in the many different experiences that you have had. If you look at all of those experiences, you will find a common thread among them all. When you find that common thread, then allow yourself to begin feeling that pain. Allow your body to experience this pain. Where has it affected your body? When you feel it in your body, where does your body tense? Explore now throughout your body where that pain has affected your psychic, your spiritual, your mental, your psychological, and your physical being. That thread runs holographically through every portion of your being, and as it runs through your body it hits in particular places that eventually become experienced as physical pain. Find it in your body. If you are sensitive to the auric field, then find it in the auric field.

As you find that pain, on whatever level it has manifested most profoundly—perhaps a fear, perhaps a problem with relationship, perhaps in a physical disorder, perhaps in your profession—then ask yourself a question: “What has this to do with my deepest longing? How is this particular problem associated with my deepest longing of who I wish to be, what I want to do with my life, where I wish to live?” The first job you have is to heal that pain within the body. For it is by the pain in your body and life that you will learn the personal skills that you need to fill your longing, no matter what it is. Find that pain within your body, and put your hands on it: that which you have carried for a lifetime, that darkest belief system that has the most profound forgetting, that one major, deepest pain, be it in your heart, your belly, or in your throat. Put your hand there now, and experience the consciousness there that believes in separation. It is the shadow. It believes it is separate and isolated from everything, isolated and separate with no hope. Find that pain that has been there from the earliest of days, and let that shadow begin to dissolve. Enter into the shadow. Accompany yourself into the dungeon within the self that needs healing. Do not deny the human experience of that real pain from the human perspective. It is not a new pain. It has been there ever since you can remember. It is not the kind of pain that goes away easily, for it is deeply, deeply ingrained. Spend some time with the pain. Then when you are ready, move your conscious awareness to the healer within you. Here is your wisdom. Here is your longing and your light with which you came here to heal the pain that is in your body. Move back to the pain and feel the pain. Then move to the longing and feel the longing. Move back to the pain and then to the longing again. Continue moving from one to the other until you find the association between the two, until you can answer the question, “What does this pain in my life mean to me? What is it trying to tell me? What is the message it brings to me?”

While you are feeling that pain with your hands, from the human perspective, ask the essence of healer that you are what you need to do. What is the deepest cause of this pain? Ask for help to heal this pain. Ask the healer within for help to heal that which you have been unable to heal in yourself up until now. Truly ask, and it shall be answered. Ask very specifically what you can do. What is the cause? What is the belief system? What do you need to do every day? Allow the essence of the healer within you to work through your hands to heal your body. Be a channel to heal the self. Let the light flow through you. After you have received as much information as you can, reach for the highest spiritual reality you know; your higher self or your guides. Reach for the memory of who you are from that highest spiritual reality. You will find that the pain within you is precisely the pain that you were drawn to earth to heal, way back before you were born, when you were that wondrous spiritual being. That is who you truly are. So reach up to that part of the self that has incarnated in order to heal the very pain that you carry within yourself and that you have carried since your birth. For it is precisely the pain you have come to heal, and it is you who have chosen to take on this pain and in doing so you chose to incarnate with precisely the best combinations of energies and wisdom and love to heal that particular pain. That is what you have come to heal, and you are fully equipped to do so. You have fully equipped yourself to heal it. And that wondrous spiritual being that you were before your birth when you heard the cries and the longing from the earth and were drawn toward the earth is the healer within you.

You are the person who knows how to heal that pain more than anyone else. That is your healer within. Be the healer within you, and heal that thread of pain that you have carried throughout your whole life. Touch your body in places you feel pain. As you are working, move your consciousness back and forth between the healer within and the inner person who is in pain. As you continue to move back and forth, you begin to understand the relationship between the healer within you and the pain that it has come to heal. You have drawn this pain up from the earth to transform it. Give yourself plenty of time to complete this process. You are integrating the pain within, the longing that you carry within your heart, and the healer within that can heal you. Let the healer within you draw out that pain and return you to wholeness. Move back and forth between the human with the deep pain, and the healer with universal power. Move them closer and closer together as you move back and forth until they merge. Continue the process until you become completely merged. When you feel satisfied that the merging is complete and has stabilized, I would like you to remain silent for at least an hour. Remain silent, sit in meditation, or simply get up and go for a walk in the woods.”

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November in photos

The sky is always so colourful right before polarnight sets in
Early in November
An important topic and film (“The silence in Sápmi”) Saw it in the cinema, I think it will be put online later.
Made some Christmas decor with our son ❤️
From high up! Propeller plane ride from Arctic to Southern Finland ❄️🤍🌌
His third plane ride, and he isn’t even two!
Amrita Mandala yoga retreat
20+ people in person and online, practising yoga-dharma together for 4 days.
In Porvoo
Me doing Dzogchen Metta practice with Jenna ✨️
Photo of calender I printed with my own photos. These are for June, because they were taken in June at midnight.
I chose this photo for March because that is when these little birdies return.
11 am 💜💛🤍

Soon we enter December and thus the last month of 2022. Hope you are all staying warm and safe, and that Christmas is not a source of stress, but a time for relaxing and magic ✨️❄️

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My creative energy

Can I just say, this is the best photo anyone has ever taken of me? Susann, thank you for capturing my essence. Here I am wearing a headdress and silk liidni I sewed myself, and the gákti summer dress is made by Nadezda Johnsen.
Autumn wind…🧡🍂🙌🏼
Life is a lot of chopping wood and carrying water… I think that is how the saying goes 😉

“Your healing journey will, of course, include a consideration and use of all the best tools modern medicine can offer you, as well as the best tools holistic healing can offer you. From a deeper perspective, illness is caused by unfulfilled longing. The deeper the illness, the deeper the longing. It is a message that somehow, somewhere, you have forgotten who you are and what your purpose is. You have forgotten and disconnected from the purpose of your creative energy from your core. Your illness is the symptom: The disease represents your unfulfilled longing. So above all else, use your illness to set yourself free to do what you have always wanted to do, to be who you have always wanted to be, to manifest and express who you already are from your deepest, broadest, and highest reality. If indeed you have discovered yourself to be ill, prepare yourself for change, expect your deepest longing to surface and to be brought to fruition. Prepare yourself to finally stop running and turn and face the tiger within you, whatever that means to you in a very personal way. I suggest the best place to start to find the meaning of your illness is to ask yourself: “What is it that I have longed for and not yet succeeded in creating in my life?”’ (From Barbara Brennan’s book Emerging Light)

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Photo series: Arctic autumn, pt. 1

Yellow birch leaves bathing in the sunlight. Ramfjorden/Gáranasvuotna.
Calm sea….
🍂
The yellow trees against the blue sky is a sight to behold. 💛💙
Very happy with this shot, was thinking for many weeks that I wanted to take this photo and feel like I nailed it just how I wished 😄👍🏻
This one is with phone camera, because I could not find my Panasonic camera (found it 2 days later, exactly where I put it!) Tinden / Sálašoaivi.
Another phone shot, but feel like I really captured the mood of the weather, even though it is bad quality! ☔️
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A thimbleful of light

“Darkness, no matter how ominous and intimidating, is not a thing or force: it is merely the absence of light. So light need not combat and overpower darkness in order to displace it – where light is, darkness is not. A thimbleful of light will therefore banish a roomful of darkness. The same is true of good and evil: evil is not a thing or force, but merely the absence or concealment of good. One need not ‘defeat’ the evil in the world; one need only bring to light its inherent goodness.”

– Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson

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Photo series: Arctic summer, pt 1

My mum staring into the ocean 💙
Little flowers in the sand at our hidden secret beach.
Beach view.
Our son got to see and play with the ocean waves. He was kind of scared, but also curious!
Prestvannet / Báhpajávri
Some lotus like flowers at the Arctic Alpine botanic garden.
In the forest 💚
Some gorgeous tulips outside the Polar Museum in Tromsø.
My beautiful coffee bag sewn by duojár Inga Nilsen Eira. It’s made from reindeer skin, wool and cotton bands, and braided reindeer skin string. Perfect to bring my coffee on walks and trips ❤️
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21 photos from my summer

Håja and Hillesøy
Håja mountain. We drove up and got the best view ever. Very happy with this photo!
Arctic July.
More furry neighbours.
Rainy summer day.
Ilo, a cute little dog we met at Reinøya.

Early morning at Reinøya.
Seal at Reinøya.
Summer swim.. Me and my boyfriend’s mother. 8-9°c!
Tromsø centrum, the pavillion.
At the Arctic-Alpine Botanical garden in Tromsø.
Blue Himalayan poppies. 💙 In the World’s Northernmost botanical garden.
So many beautiful colours and shapes.
Midsummer, 23rd of June.
Tiny Arctic dolphins.
Sunlight over Lyngsalpan.
Rainy evening at Spåkenes.
Kali 💚🖤
Picked a small bouquet.

“I love the Arctic summer, it’s the best day of the year!” Short but sweet. How was your summer?

Adventure, Animals, Arctic, Dharma, Dzogchen, Everyday life, Finnmark, People, Photography, Quotes, Saami, Sámi, Sápmi, Self portrait, Uralic

An open heart is the best medicine

“Practice being here until ‘now’ disappears. Dwell nowhere. Be beneficial to others, and you will lack nothing. Flash open your heart. Be a child of wonder, playing with generosity. Floating in a sea of billions of universes, whatever that is, “That” is all we are. It is as much out there, as it is in here. How amazing. Trade in all your wrongs, injustices, hurts, and fears for mercy, hope, compassion, and kindness. An open heart is the best medicine, open it a little more with every breath. Be like a little kid, running with Wonder, “What is this?” – words by Tilopa, the mahasiddha.

Photo from way back when. I used to love horses but now I must admit being a bit scared of them 😄🙈

How is your spring going?🌻 Myself, I am very busy with the new mama life. Barely time to write this post 😄🙏🏻 It’s hard, wonderful and all worth it.

Will be back with more photographies and updates soon. xx Monica

Adventure, Arctic, Beauty, Everyday life, Health, Landscape, People, Photography, Pregnancy, Sámi, Sápmi

An eventful, colourful January

It’s the last day of a very eventful January, and I am spending it curled up on our big sleeping couch with our newborn baby boy who is about 2 weeks old now, in his little baby nest and my partner who is sitting on the other end writing away on the computer. Outside, it’s already dark again. Polar night is officially over here but I have not seen the Sun yet. I am not outside so much, hardly at all as all time and energy is spent adjusting and taking care of this new amazing creation. I did however manage our first little walk with the pram!

Life is new and different and surreal as parents. Giving birth was intense and hard work, and unfortunately not how I envisioned, but nontheless a very powerful experience. A rite of passage of sorts.. At one point during delivery I felt like I connected with all other Mothers giving birth naturally, experiencing the same pain at the exact same time. When he was born, there was an incredible silence and love that I have not experienced before 🤱🏻

January is also my birthday month, and this year I celebrated at home with my little family and my friend Katharina. 29; last year in my twenties, first year as a mama! 🎉✨

How was your January?

Acrylic painting, Adventure, Animals, Arctic, Art, Beauty, Indigenous, Landscape, Photography, Sámi, Sápmi

Always shifting

“Just like water, snow and ice, life is always shifting, changing forms.” (This photo is from february 2017).
Beautiful texture and shapes in the frozen water.

One of my paintings inspired by the icy landscape:

My little pregnant polar bear. Wrote a post earlier about this painting 💜 Here she is framed.
Adventure, Arctic, Everyday life, Landscape, People, Photography, Poems, Saami, Sámi, Sápmi

Away, away..

Senja island. The pointy peak is Segla. Hiked it once, amazing view. Apologies for grainy mobile shot, it doesn’t do it justice.
I love driving. One of my happy places, for sure.

“Away, away,—to the mountains away,
Where the pine trees murmur and sway,
And the foamy waterfalls sing and spring
Over the boulders gray.

Hills—
Blue and green hills, near and far,
The farther they lie, the better they are.
The near ones I can climb and see
But the beautiful far ones call to me”

Unknown

Adventure, Art, Everyday life, Landscape, Photography

Ask the mountains – blog upgrade, new domain

Me and my little racer car, Laura.
Grøtfjord beach.

Just updated my domain and header. All in all, still the same blog with same content; art, photography, occasional personal thoughts and ideas, adventures, health related stuff and maybe some tantra/dharma. The name Ask the mountains comes from my favourite song by greek artist Vangelis and swedish singer Stina Nordenstam.

Adventure, Dharma, Landscape, Photography, Spirituality

Sky

When one looks toward one’s own mind –

The root of all phenomena –

There is nothing but vivid emptiness,
Nothing concrete there to be taken as real.

It is present and transparent, utter openness,
Without outside, without inside –
An all pervasiveness
Without boundary and without direction.

The wide-open expanse of the view,
The true condition of the mind,
Is like the sky, like space:
Without center, without edge, without goal.

By leaving whatever i experience
Relaxed in ease, just as it is,
I have arrived at the vast plain
That is the absolute expanse.

Dissolving into the expanse of emptiness
That has no limits and no boundary,
Everything i see, everything i hear,
My own mind, and the sky all merge.

– Shabkar

Adventure, Culture, Landscape, Photography, Spirituality

Riddu Riddu 2018

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Noen blinkskudd fra årets Riddu Riddu-festival i Manndalen! Herrefred, kor æ kosa mæ 😀 Topp fem mest minneverdige øyeblikk fra festivalen:

1. Tyva Kyzy – et tuvansk strupesanggruppe. Fikk sett de hele 3 ganga; en intimkonsert i en yurta, en gang på hovedscenen og enda en gang under frivilligfesten.
2. DJ Shub + Classic Roots, de spilte på fredagen (sjanger: pow wow dub). Du kan sjekke ut en av de beste sangene her.
3. Møte med andre urkulturer.
4. Koselige stunder rundt bål.
5. Alle de vakre koftene som var å se.

Adventure, Everyday life, Landscape, Photography

Blått vær

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Litt bilder fra de siste ukene. Ramfjord, Ersfjord, Storelva og Lyfjord 🙂 Jeg har til og med vært på skitur; tre ganger! For første gang på fem år. Selv om det tar all energien jeg har, og krever mye planlegging både før og etter, så føles det verdt det å komme seg ut og bruke kroppen. Jeg elsker jo å være utendørs, skulle virkelig ønske jeg kunne gjøre slike ting oftere, ja – faen heller, hele tiden! Springe på fjellet, gå lange skiturer, klatre på berg og i trær..:) Naturen, ass.

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Adventure, Everyday life, Photography

Min påske

I år hadde jeg en helt super påske! Har ikke vært på hytte-påsketur på masse, masse år, men nå hadde jeg overskudd nok til å bli med på en aldri så liten ekspedisjon til Målselv og Faksfjorden sammen med en gjeng raringer 😉 Badstu, scooter, brettspill og veldig mye god mat. Kanskje en god del vin. Ikke noe skigåing på meg, men var koselig med litt alenetid også i helt fantastiske omgivelser. Tusen takk ❤