Birth of the root question

Allowance of new perspectives

I feel called towards belonging to a bigger family, and lately I have found more of this at Opaker farms community gatherings, which are centered around the seasons. Here I have been meeting wonderful and colorful people and more of what I am calling Soul Family. It is like a feeling of belonging to a tribe that are moving in a common direction. This last winter gathering in January 2026 I had a powerful and inspiring session with a wonderful and insightful person called Torstein. Torstein invited me to look deeper into what lied behind the insecurities and fears I felt in the body, and also to stay in the feelings and bodily sensations, without going so much into thought patterns. Together with Torsteins introspective questions and guidance, I saw more clearly that I had developed habits of moving into spiritual concepts and thoughts to explain what I felt. This for me I feel made me not go into the feelings and where it was in the body, and putting responsibility on something else to handle it. 

For me this can look like saying something like “I trust the Heart and that the path it shows me will bring healing”, and then feeling that I do not have to look at the underlying feeling and emotions. Because the Heart will fix it, or my ideas and concepts will do it. I do believe that the Heart knows a path to healing, and that there exists a bigger intelligence that has a fuller understanding of how I can heal, and that it is beautiful in its own way. What I am beginning to understand is that I might be giving away my power and responsibility of looking into the feeling and where it is in the body, and ultimately what the root cause is, by explaining it with concepts and ideas from my own spiritual understanding. So when a problem arises, the habit is to not center myself in the body, but rather go into thought and spiritual concepts, and in the end I feel I avoid the responsibility of shepherding myself. The talk with Torstein I feel invited me to stay more grounded and in the body, instead of going into spiritual knowledge and concepts. This a bit scary, but eye opening experience and new perspective gave me more insights into the development and sharpening of my core. 

Sharing from my experiences

It would be a lie to say that I am not comparing myself to what other people are saying about spiritual concepts and ideas. And that it creates a pressure to talk about something I feel I do not know much about, or that I have not experience and lived. I feel that what I can truly do is to share my continuous explorations, based of my own experience and reflections, and stay centered in that. How much have I lived what I share, and maybe even more interesting, how humanly, bodily and feelingly connective is it? This I have for the last periode been reflecting about, and the continuous evolution of myself and Way of Elmod. 

Evolution of the root question

I believe that a part of life is to find balance between the Yin and the Yang. I feel I have for a longer periode floated away in spirituality and that my own essence has become a bit too airy and less grounded. I keep saying to myself that nothing is important and nothing has any meaning, and that I can choose for myself what is important, and create and give my own meaning to life, based on my own experience, feelings and ideas. The challenge I see is to center it from within myself, and not without. I am absolutely perfect as I am and I can let go of all need to compete, produce and stress. By staying more centered in myself, I feel I connect more deeply to intuition and the source of my own truth. What does this truth tell me? Its whispers keep having a dual flavor, where one points down to the earth, and another up to the sun. The part that points downwards, inspires me to become more grounded, and integrated as a human being towards Mother Earth. The part that points upwards, inspires me to lift the heart through increasing my own capacity to hold myself, and feeling more light in the body. Mahatma Gandhi inspired us to be the change we want to see in the world. Therefore my biggest task is to become the change I see is needed. A truly heart-lifting and earth-grounded life, LIVED, is the first priority. To first change myself, then express this change outwards in a humble way.

I also choose to recognize that I can not possible write about all the situations, people and places that have had an impact on the root question. I can only say that it most certainly has and that I am forever grateful for the continuous inspirations that keeps flowing to me. Through within myself, but also that of people, animals and plants I meet and spend energy and time with. The root question is never finished, because life is in a constant change. It represent my latest reflections and iteration through my own process of removing layers. Therefore I allow it to change in the future, but as of this writing, it stands as the guiding lantern and north star.

First of all, my thoughts and ideas are great tools in the continuous creation and evolution of myself. I work a lot through visualization and images of the possibilities of my own life, but also that of the world. I feel the intuitive body tells me to let go of layers of fear, and to deeply feel and experience that I am holding myself. This text serves as my bold attempt to declare my own vision, centered around the greatest idea and truth I dear to express and communicate outwards. This for me is the practice of being in integrity. To stay centered in my chosen values and expressing those out. Let me then start to explore how a truly heart-lifting and earth-grounded life can feel and look.

Inner peace in the stomach

What do I love being and doing, and what does the human part of me tell me to express? I feel that (other than to completely cease to exist) I am as simply as it sounds, scared of being nauseous, or not feeling a deep peace and ease in the stomach. This I especially felt during my own experience with plant medicines. During the medicine work it felt like the un-ease and nausea would never stop. If I just puked everything would stop, but in my own way I have a hard time doing it, so then the option was to ride the force for the periode it took. Kind of experiencing being and holding myself in the storm and talking and caring for myself through it. Then softly the nausea quieted down and I start to see the light and feel the ease. The peace that came after the storm was such a profound and long awaited peace, and it told me how important it was for my stomach. So, what my stomach tells me is that it wants to be peace, security and self-belief. It is a feeling of not being insecure, in doubt and full of fear. For me it is a gut feeling of knowing I am secure in myself. Developing this inner peace is something I am profoundly interested in and holding myself in intense experiences. To be like a cliff that securely stand against the roaring waves. Not closed in and closed off from the outside world, but fully self-regulated with and through all the waves that washes over it. 

True freedom from myself

I long to feel and experience freedom from my own attachments and cravings. Freedom from excessively thinking too much of what others think of me. Freedom to be less in the mind and more in the feeling body, and freedom to carve my own path. I believe that freedom has many forms, and that one of them is to know what and when is enough. I believe that freedom is not in controlling others or the external world, but to rest and relax in my own reactions. True freedom for me – is to be free from myself. Freeing myself from the expectations I have taken from society and all the layers of fear I have built my identity around. Freeing myself from sexual fantasies that makes me needy, conditional and chaotic. Fantasies that makes me not be in the precent moment and that creates a “perfect” image I am putting on people (and especially women) I encounter. This I understand makes me less capable to meet people just as they are, and that it ultimately makes myself less free. For me it is to untangle myself from my own built habits, thoughts and ideas that I look at as a mental jail. What am I, if all the fear and tension in the body is gently let go of? This is the question.

Reintegrate the whildling

I feel inspired to connect powerfully and deeply to my own radiant power. This for me is birthed with the feeling of belief deeply rooted in the stomach. It is a feeling of knowing that I am holding and being responsible for myself and my own healing. As a man I feel that my own radiant power is sourced from my most sacred and precious life force. The white essence which dwells in mans testicles, semen. I strongly believe that when semen is dispersed without control, it drains the system, and when accumulated without flow, it creates illness. That the virtue is placed in the balance between the two. I have experienced that the greater capacity of flow I create within the body, the less pressure I experience is built up in it. The greater capacity I create to be and sit with feelings (anger, joy, happiness or sadness), then the more powerfully, deeply and primordially I feel I connect to my own radiant power. My inspiration tells me to get in touch with my most wild, dangerous and savage parts and reintegrating them with myself. The inspiration is to integrate fully these qualities, and then have the ability to unleash them when needed, with full control.

Integration of the primordial human

Primordial power might be as simple (and difficult) as the full embodiment and integration of all emotions. I feel it connects to something primal and ancient in me, and that it is a wildness of forces that can seam uncontrolled, scary or dangerous. I feel my inner wildling spring forth when I howl to the night sky, dance openly and vividly around a roaring fire, or let myself go crazy in a viking sauna. It comes up when I am in the forest and feels the wind gently moving through the trees, and when I take a cold plunge and allow myself to feel more aspects of myself. For example feeling emotions that normally is suppressed and allowing them to move through the body. Not necessarily doing anything with them, but allowing them to exist. In what way have we as a society suppressed our primordial self, and how can we allow it to more naturally and whole fully surface and become part of us again? This for me is the integration process of my whole self. To become more whole as a human being. 

Bringing light to the shadow side

I have come to the understanding that I have learned myself to trap and keep scary and negative energies and emotions in the body, with the belief that it protected me from them. The truth as I feel it and what the stomach tells me (especially when I am in intimate relationships), is that parts of me is scared of letting myself open up and trust. I often feel a knot of something heavy in the stomach telling me that it is unsafe being close to someone else. I observe scared feelings comes up in the stomach, because opening up might mean that I can explode from internal anger and hurt myself and others. I feel I am avoiding looking at what is scary, by going into positive thinking, gratitude and acceptance as a coping mechanism to not look at and feel where the scared part is pointing towards. I do believe in practicing positive thinking, gratitude and acceptance, but when it comes in the way of looking at and feeling the scary feelings, then I see it becomes a hurdle instead of gateway. I have this belief that I often am trying to be something that I am not, and one of those beliefs is that I should be a secure person, when the truth is that in different contexts, I am not. The truth as I see it is that I am for example safe and secure when I build shelfs and handle construction, but regarding relationships, I feel more messy and chaotic. I feel a calling to be close to someone else, but push them away when it gets scary. I can feel secure and comfortable, but at other times un-secure and chaotic. Regarding relationships I feel I have an underlying insecure energy that radiates out from me, which those open enough can feel. This I think can create a feeling that deep down that my words and actions differ and the integrity is not aligned. That I at any moment can run away. Which I can see is difficult to built a stable and reliable relationship on. I believe that the crying and hurt sides must get space to be healed. As long as I do not do this, then I do not move forward. 

Illumination to remove illutions

I belive that I can experience love, contrasted through the amount of fear I also go through. Taking responsibility for me is to say that I forged the situations that created the entrapped feelings, so I could experience working them through and out of my body. It is to say I did it to myself (through others), and not that someone or something else did it to me. Then I feel, I put myself in the creative space to own it myself, and change it more profoundly. I have come to see that it is easier to change something I have done, then changing something someone else did to me. Therefore I further belive that it is important to not judge the (insert all negative feelings and emotions), but to bless them. Blessing them by giving them space to be seen, felt and to function as they are intended to. For me, I feel I have built an iron fortress surrounding fear, guilt, crying, anger and other energies I learned myself to be scared of. At the same time creating complex solutions to avoid them. Solutions I have for a long time not been aware of, but now starting to see more clearly. The first act of being responsible is for me to put everything out to be seen. What I resist presists, but what I look at dissipates. Meaning it looses its illusionary form. I experience it as a sensation (often centered in the stomach) that first comes up, bringing with it often scary feeling and emotion. When not resisted, but looked at (especially in an accepting and loving space), then it evaporates and the illusionary form I first believed it had, looses its grip or form. This for me is the process of healing.

The Cup of Happiness

To be sovereign in the cultivation of my own inner happiness and wellbeing, I feel, gives me the opportunity to give people back to themselves. Taking responsibility of my own needs, so I do not grasp or make others responsible for it. How full is my Cup of Happiness? Empty and dry, half full, full or flowing over? How would a society feel and look like, if many was complete in their own inner happiness? How does a society look like with more and more people living from a place of overflowing inner happiness? Would we share it with others, or be more closed in? My own experience tells me that the more capacity of inner happiness and abundance I nurture within myself, the more I have it in me to naturally give out. By choosing to fill my own cup, I believe I can meet people just as they are, and not needing them to be anything I crave or grasp after. This for me is connected to many years of insecurity and need for external validation. Which made me put to much focus on the values of the external world, then what my own experience told me, and in the end choosing my own values. Now I am in a beautiful process of discovering all of this for myself, and this text serves as a perfect sharpening exercise for that. I observe I need less and less from the external world, to be happy with myself, but the need is still there, but changed. 

Holy and sacred relationships

If I center the source of happiness from within myself. How does the need for relationships then look like? For me the answer is placed in the interconnectedness between everything, and that I cannot experience a part of myself, without a relation to something else. The need has changed from needing someone to complete me, to need someone to experience a more loving and grander part of myself. So my relationships has change from needing it to feel happy and content, towards needing it to heal past wounds, and in the end transcending them. For this reason relationships and especially the romantic and intimate, are holy ground and the most sacred. Do not take it for granted and give thanks for the opportunity it gives. I believe that the most attractive quality a person can show is a quality of not needing, because for me this is the quality that represents the essence of Life and Nature. Does a flower need me to be anything else then just what I am? Elmod, the invitation is to be more like the flower. 

Crafting co-sustainable and regenerative practices

When I touch wood I feel the essence and spirit of the it calling me to become a traditional wood-craftsman. It whispers to me to build shelfs to store the gardens bounty. It inspires me to craft my own house from natural resources, and create structures that serves a local regenerative community. I feel my viking foremothers and fathers are calling me to craft my own beared axe and use it to carve out beautiful structures. When I walk in the presence of a forge I feel the spirit of it calls me to forge tools made with traditional techniques. Tools of all kinds that serves both my own experience of forming it, but also the local community. When I touch the earth I feel it calls me to plant seeds and grow deep roots that reaches as far as Yggdrasil itself. Roots that connects back to ancestral wisdom, and practices centered around regenerative value. I feel called to craft my own traditional cloth with a Viking flavor and experience become more co-sustainable in the production of food, cloth, tools and resources. As I see it, the current way many parts of our society are structured are not sustainable and change will occur sooner or later. Ether we as a collective change, to be the source of sustainability, or the change is created by forces outside our control. As I see it, my choice is how I react now in this moment and I feel it is placed in regenerative practices that give more back, then was originally taken, and doing it together with a collective of likeminded people.

Gardening - a gateway to Mother Earth

I choose to live with the seasons and using gardening as a spiritual tool to deepen my own connection with Mother Earth. Caring and nurturing a garden is for me a practice of living with the seasons, because the garden itself changes with them. I learn that observing and listening are important skills to see the changes and adapt myself according with them. By taking care of the earth, the earth takes care of me, through the abundance of vegetables and nutrients it gives back. I am a part of the garden and surrounding ecosystems, and by playing my role gracefully we all can sustain, flourish and blossom together. A garden is for me so much more than a place for food production. It is a home for a variety of insects, animals, plants, mushrooms and humans, and serves as a hub for life giving processes. It is a place to nurture my connection to the earth and cultivating regenerative practices. To have a successful garden that nurture a rich dynamic of life and food production, I feel it is essential to do things according to the seasons and practicing being more like the forest itself. Listening to the plants silent whispers and a world of playfulness, curiosity and wonder opens up to me. How aware and precent can I be with each sapling and nurture them with the utmost care?

Going deeper with questions

I often ask questions and feel that they contain a special power of leading into more insight and direction, then trying to explain everything. Therefore I would like to move towards an ending with questions I am often asking myself:

How is it to be fully connected to my own masculine and feminine power? What does a life centered around the seasons really look like? How is it to live in a fully regenerative and sustainable community of people? How do I build my own house from timber from a local forest? How can I nurture and care for the earth, so it nurtures future generations? How is it to feel like I am becoming more like the forest and feeling its deep rhythms? How can I tap into more of my own radiant and primal power? Is it possible to cry fully like a baby? How is it like to co-create sustainable solutions with other regenerative communities? How can I be part of creating a regenerative future? Will I be able to integrate the scared and lonely part of myself? Do I have the inner belief in me to nurture and grow a family and children? In what way am I still fooling myself and avoiding looking into different aspects of myself? Can I become enlightened during this lifetime? Will I dare to expose and open myself up more and more on social media? Will I find my true voice and way of communicating? Will I ever get over the fear of death and the notion of not existing? WIll questions ever stop?

Closing reflections

My truth and reflections tells me that what I simply want is to be free from myself. To be free to dance naked around the fire and create myself in the version I feel drawn to become. I wrote earlier that a true heart lifting and earth grounded life lived is the first priority, and this feels true. It feels like I am here to lift my own heart, and connect back to a grounded life. Way of Elmod can be the whole hearted attempt to explore this question: How would a truly heart-lifting and earth-grounded life feel and look?

I offer thanks to the profound insight, healing and growth this text has already given me, and those it will touch. I offer thanks to the inspiration to look inward and staying more centered in the body and feelings. I offer this text to the collective consciousness and may it bring strength, bravery and insight to all the beings that is led to it. And may it inspire me to open myself more up and heal through the illuminative light of transparency. 

Let me beforehand offer thanks to everything that is opposite of the direction I choose to walk. Thank you for existing and letting me experience the version I declare. You are a sacred and honorable part of existence.

With the bravery that open all doors, Elmod Drage Nofer