Author: maxbesana@gmail.com

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Words of silence

Today’s trend of self-love and self-development has invaded every corner of daily life, from your sleep to your job, from your bathroom to your family gatherings. The information on how to love the self is endless, techniques, gift bags, courses, retreats, etc. All these products market how to love ourselves. However, the constant linguistic reminder that street advertisements and algorithm-based product placement send us only leaves us feeling that we do not love ourselves enough, regardless of what we do. If we did, we would be successful and happy. But we aren’t; we need all these tools and techniques that some have not heard of before. Wee need to look at everything we are categorising our experience of the now, of the past, of the need, of the want, of our imperfect perfect bodies. However, the image of happiness and success we pursue does not differ from the idyllic images of the advertisements of earlier years of brute product pushing we have seen in the 00s and before. The market is you, and whatever you may feel you lack, it is ready to prefab and monetise it with your wallet, hard work, illusion, and past.

Where did we lose our self-love? Is self-love something we never had? How has humanity gone without “self-love” for thousands of years, and suddenly, we discover the lack and start craving it? I am not sure. I can keep asking these questions forever without ever finding an answer or a bit of solace from the trend, except when I am off to the wilderness. Out there, without mirrors, without billboards and signals, without indications of human existence, there is absolute silence.

. The realisation that the world we live in is relentlessly talking to us is shocking. Telling us what to do and how to do it might have a useful function, but when it starts to determine your life choices or, even worse, makes you feel bad about yourself, it is time to say “stop”. It is a toxic relationship red flag. It is not a choice we can make; street advertisement is unavoidable, and even if you think you are not paying attention, your senses are receiving and processing the information. Our eyes, ears, nose and skin recollect more information about the world than we consciously acknowledge. And marketing agents know this. They are not the evil doers, the marketeers; they are doing their job, selling you stuff. Like the story of the scorpion that bit the man helping him cross the river. It was in its nature. However, they both drown.

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The pretty, the beautiful and the the sublime.

After an intense and magical solstice, contained by stone walls whikle the roof were the stars, and under the bright moonlight, I had a vision. It involved overlapping timelines and parallel universes. My field of vision and tact was altered under the almost full moon on the darkest night of the year. The whole landscape became crisp, everything defined and distinct and yet faded depending on the layer of reality I was trying to understand. The trees were both small and gigantic at the same time. The abandoned cairns were being functionally used and yet forgotten, new and old. The beings were ancient and newly borne. No substances were added to my brain chemistry that day, but the exhilarating experience of sharing this magical night with many and my soul brother with whom I have a deep, dark connection that remains a mystery to me now that he is long gone from my field.

We sneaked out from the group, standing long after the celebrations were finished, glued to the fire pit in the parking area. We walked into the central cairn inner circle. There is no artificial light out there, but the silver moonlight made it all spooky, and I doubt I would venture to stand inside the cairn if it wasn’t for his presence. Both safe and scary, loving and despicable. I don’t know if it was the intensity of the solstice energy or that we finally made it to a proper ancient celebration together. Still, he held both my hand and his friend’s, a tender act I didn’t see coming but brought me back to when we just met and we had ideas and hopes of love. It moved me deeply, and as I write this, I think this tenderness, this one moment of humbleness he expressed for the first time after we reunited, triggered the visions.

Like the feeling of knowing that there is something inspiring, beautiful, powerful and yet vulnerable, pure, deep and kind between you and me, and nevertheless, it has the potential of being terrifying, capable of wrath, destruction and pain so intense that understanding and imagination can no longer comprehend. Just like this is how I see you and how I see me. Eternal and finite, ephemeral and timeless, swinging between being and non-being. Battling between preconceptions of how and who we should be and the humbling surrendering to unknowable loving forces compelling us to feel above thinking. I am happy this doesn’t scare me. I am happy I can move beyond the fear of the known attachments into the fierce dream of the rebel soul whose ideas are unrealised in time and space. That night, I saw beyond this time and the forms of human connection that destroy freedom and consume identities.

I wish you could, too.

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Kessock Bridge (Drochaid Cheasaig)

A personal challenge, my private hell. Even before I got close enough to appreciate its size and height, I knew I would have some panic attack while biking across this bridge to the Black Isle. Indeed I did. I put on a stoic-Buddhist cap twice. Although this is my primary stance in life, in cases of anxiety or panic, stressful situations, or unexpected turn of events, we all tend to get a bit overwhelmed by these intense states and stumble, lose our balance or (humanely) fall to the ground (or of a cliff…).


The first crossing found me dismounting the bike not even halfway (the bridge length is just above 1km). I was alone, with no other passer-by or biker to reassure me that it was ok, that I would not be blown away by the strong winds or trip over my foot and fall down in the Moray Firth, some 30m below. I wasn’t as proud of myself as I set out to be. I realised I was a lot more uncomfortable with the self-challenge. And although walking seemed like I chickened out, I did not give up. Humbled by the experience of feeling small in the vastness of the landscape and vulnerable to the elements and the man-made structure, I was alone in this challenge since it was all in my being, and I knew the irrationality of the state I was in. Therefore, I continued in the simplest way I could: I walked.


After 3 hours of cycling around the Isle, I cleared my senses open. The smell of the forest on Ord Hill, the steep climb I took, the bike on my shoulders, the rolling hills and fast cycling down to North Kessock rearranged my mind. On the second crossing, I cycled through the bridge back to Inverness in one go, and honestly, I could not lift my eyes from the ground in front. My will to overcome the fear provided the strength to maintain a single-focused mind. And I was aware of my surroundings (and profusely sweating) but kept it going despite the raging adrenaline rush provided by the fear. However, I could not deny its reality. Emotions and feelings precede rationality. I have recently heard so much talk on rationalising emotions, yet I am not convinced we can do such a thing or should. We meet the world in emotional states as we discover ourselves and the things around us. We are born emotive, feeling, sensing, and perceiving. The sense we make of the world is based on our use of language, a tool we have to convey those feelings, sensations and perceptions to others. Emotions are the roots of our “thinking”; they are like tree roots. The depth of our connection to everything else nurtures them. Denied them, and you’ll deny your primal nature, the source. And your thoughts, like cut leaves and flowers, will wither.

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To Loch Ard


You find yourself walking through a dense forest, branches and bushes scratching your surfaces, entangling and pulling your movements, holding you back. The frustration of feeling deterred by nature, who you know and admire, yet the task of biting through the lush growth overwhelms you. Each miss-step feels like a disaster stroke that you wasted precious energy and ended up literally bogged down. In an act of defiance, in the act of (false) sublimity, you believe that to take charge of destiny is your call and tell yourself you are better, you are stronger, and you will survive… Right? It sounds lovely in an inspirational video. But what happens if this is real?

I felt smaller and smaller, lonelier and lonelier, every step more tired, more willing to give up, to crawl into a hole under the tree’s roots and sleep forever. I remember thinking about how many people would find this hilarious, and I laughed with them. I thought about those that would say I deserve it, inspired by the uneasiness that self-confidence and independence evoke in their judgements. I remember feeling stupid, mentally retracing all the wrong decisions that lead to that moment. It didn’t help. It only made me despair about my mind’s state and questioned my worth.

I knew the way. I was not lost. I knew where I was and where I should be going. I couldn’t see a decent path… it was either crawling through the bogged pine forest or wading through an open bog, knee-high in water and mud or worse. 

Those are no paths, Google… those are deep bloody bogs.

The lesson was simple, and the experience made it an effective practice. Stop. Breath. Release. 

Stop, physically. Stop moving, walking, and crawling. On your tracks. Stop. Sit down where you can. If not, squat down. Breath counting your breath in 1, 2, 3,4. Hold for a second. Release 1,2,3,4,5,6. Repeat the breathing three times.

I did, but before I got to the point of breathing, I screamed in anger; I cried in frustration. Then I did breathe. And I felt better. As my mind stopped rushing around between past, present and future (why did I get myself into this? how do I get out? what will be if not, if yes?). I gave myself the space to be in this moment, knowing I had no control over time. Sitting on top of my backpack, I managed to smoke, and as I cleaned the tears in my eyes, I saw a clear opening, not a path, just an opening through the dense bog and bushes. As the Mad Queen, I laugh hard at my human idiocy. It was still another 3 hours until I could set camp. At least 90 minutes of knee-high water and bush. But I was humbled, broken down, and rebuilt with a new sense of being here. To know that this is my place in this world. A tiny dot in the wild. In charge of breathing through. That’s all you need to be in control of. Breathing. 

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River Tay – Perth

Another day, another view…
As the pouring clouds move towards the mountain forest, a doom-filled cold breeze wakes me from the dismay that numbed my brain and moistened my eyes. And as the rain falls, tears and drops form one river, the cycle of water that cleans all that is manifests in front of me. May we never forget we are made of nature, made of earth, made of water, made of air, made of fire! May we always honour pure hearts, true love and meaningful connections, the same way forests, rivers and mountains love, support and sustain each other. 

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Rannoch Moor

rannoch moor
Rannoch Moor

For someone who can proudly call herself a ‘polyglot’, there are things and perhaps beings that can render me speechless. Not long ago, I wrote a long paper on how non-sense language (word games, koans) can support us in readjusting the way we see the world we think we are. I wrote on how the words we use to describe our experience shape the way we experience; thus, we are sometimes trapped in a möbius strip.
I have learned not to count much on the support of people’s words but on their actions & reactions. The good is not in words but in deeds. Except for nature. Here, my legs give in, and I kneel; I bend and kiss the ground that holds me together as it holds itself. And I feel, not think, without a subject or an object, unconditional love. 

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Skaill – Orkney

Between you and me, there is a gap; this is the abyss. The space, the depths, separates me from you and you from me and is the origin of our fears. For to walk into the abyss is to have the courage to overcome that which seems to keep us whole.
Separation does not exist as a line. Lines are boundaries, but a line being a non-material thing can not cause separation. Emptiness does. Thus, the unknowable emptiness that stands between you and me is our common ground. To reach it, we ought to live the place where we both stand; if not, it is still either mine or yours, either here or there, and not everywhere or anywhere. It means living all I know and all you know and finding a we-know place. (You know that place, I know that place, we both stood there once, and it was immense, unlimited, timeless and omni-existent).
Isn’t the unknowable what we pursue? Isn’t the unknowable our last and most inevitable destination?

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Meeting others

Although we all want to be seen for who we are, pure and free of labels, categories, preconceived ideas and judgements, it is challenging, if not impossible, to look at someone without any past experiences influencing the perception of the other.

Even our best intentions can be contaminated by past unresolved hurt and anger, therefore tainting the other with that experience, blinding us to who the other truly is. The result is rejection, fear, anger or distrust. A general term to describe this is bias. A bias is precisely that, and even thou not everyone is willing to accept their judgement is biased, most people will recognise that they enter new encounters with previously programmed categories and tend to want others to fit in them. It is an automatic attempt to make sense of the world in terms of the past. Yet, mechanical or forced, conscious or unaware, they are not compassionated towards the other, limiting the possibilities of expressing their reality.

The process of learning something new comes into play when we meet a new person or try to create a relationship, whether a friendship, business or romantic (and everything in between and beyond). The categories we learn to use to identify the other can be distorted by our emotional attachments to the experience. The pain or pleasure we feel when someone plays a role in our lives is the most private label we create and thus belongs only to subjective experience. Sometimes this can be confused with a “gut feeling” about someone. A gut feeling that this person will do us wrong might as well be an unconscious projection of past pain triggered by some physical similarity between the two agents.

Could we meet each other as if we were discovering a new word, an empty graphic/soundbox that can be filled by only one thing, only what is uttered by a person?

That contained is unique, individual, and unrepeatable essence. Even when we are reminded of previous experiences, we should always remember that each breath we take is one, the first and the last of its kind.

And like that, should we meet each other every day, the box, now flexible and changing, allowing each being to adjust, change, grow and shrink as necessary, like the lungs, filling and expanding, absorbing and assimilating, releasing and detaching. Then starting again, in complete confidence, there is something new to attain.

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Boreray – North Uist

I love you. You know who you are. You know your worth. You know how much more there is to you than what people see. You know that others’ thoughts are theirs, and you resent them not. You know the depths and darkness within. You know how to reach out for the sun with a laugh. I love you. You know magic. You know how to love the universe with no judgements. You know how to be free in a world of controllers. I love you. Your laughter, your stance, your proud heart, your smile. You carry on despite the drama; you carry on despite resentment; you carry on despite rejection. I love you. Through known and unknown dimensions. Through the loops, the torus and the expansion of matter-energy. I love you.