Coming Home to Myself
By Inge Klokkeide
For most of my life, I believed I was here to understand life.
As a marine engineer, project manager, and later a leader, that felt natural. I trusted logic, experience, and my ability to solve problems. I had been trained to look at a situation, identify what was missing, and find a practical solution. That way of thinking served me well at sea, in industry, and in large energy projects.
I brought the same approach into my private life. I believed that hard work and efficiency were the way to meet the demands and expectations around me. If something was difficult, I worked harder. If it was still difficult, I assumed I had not worked hard enough.
I even treated my body like an engineering problem. When I experienced aches and pains, I assumed that something was missing. I tried vitamins, supplements, and various products with impressive labels. If the body was missing something, I reasoned, surely it could be ordered.
When my body protested, my first response was not to stop and listen. It was to find another solution that would allow me to keep going.
And that worked – until the day it did not.
When the Old Way Stopped Working
Around the year 2000, I was working in Oslo as a Completion Manager. I was responsible for preparing a production platform for handover and operation in the North Sea.
It was complex work with significant responsibility, and my usual response was to keep going and make sure everything was handled. I believed that working harder and being more efficient would carry me through.
But my body was running out of energy. My face became pale and grey, and I developed severe pain beneath my ribs. I also had intestinal bleeding, became increasingly tired, and generally felt unwell. The pain finally became so strong that I decided to leave Oslo and return home to Haugalandet.
I did not analyze the decision. I simply knew that something was seriously wrong. After returning home, I went to the doctor and was admitted to the hospital as an emergency patient. I remained there for three weeks.
When I was discharged, I could barely walk. I needed help with most everyday things and required three months of recovery. A doctor at the hospital told me that I would probably never return to work and might remain permanently disabled.
I felt empty. My profession and my ability to work had been important parts of my identity. Suddenly, I was left with a simple and frightening question: What do I do now?
Alongside the physical illness, I was also completely burned out. My body had reached its limit, and so had the way I was living. Looking back, I see this period as the beginning of a new chapter.
Working harder, becoming more efficient, and trying to fix everything no longer worked.
An Unexpected Door
Without my work and my usual ability to solve problems, I had to face a question I had always avoided: Who am I if I cannot fix this?
During the months that followed, while my physical recovery continued, I began looking in an unexpected direction. At that time, I trusted engineers, doctors, and instruction manuals. The spiritual world had none of the documentation I required, and I mistrusted healers and alternative ways of thinking. Still, the familiar solutions had stopped working, so I decided to try something unfamiliar. My attitude was simple: I will give it a chance, and then whatever happens, happens.
I found a healer and went to see him. He recommended three sessions. Later, he told me about a group that met once a week at his center. The people in the group were each struggling with life in their own way, and I began attending.
One thing led to another. Someone in the group told me about Crimson Circle and suggested that I read some of its material. This was during the early Tobias years. To my surprise, the material deeply engaged me. It gave words to questions I had carried for a long time and opened a new way of understanding myself and my life.
I did not find a new set of answers that I had to believe. I found a space where no one asked me to follow and no one tried to save me. I was invited to breathe, to experience, and to trust my own knowing.
I was still skeptical, but I kept reading. Something in the material made sense to me, even when I could not explain why.
Returning in a Different Way
Despite the doctor’s prediction, I eventually returned to work, but not in exactly the same way as before. I moved toward administrative and leadership roles, as well as work involving the verification of technical projects. I could still use my engineering experience without returning to the same workload or pushing my body in the same way. The work gave me greater freedom, flexibility, and balance.
Over the years, another realization slowly emerged. I am not my profession. I am not my achievements. I am not even my search. I Am, not because I have achieved or become something, but simply because I exist.
Everything began to change when I stopped trying to become something more and allowed myself to simply be aware that I exist. For the first time, I began to understand that my value did not depend on my profession or how much I achieved.
Listening Instead of Fixing
My relationship with my body has also changed. Before, I wanted to repair it. Today, I listen. I used to ask, “How do I get rid of this?” Now I am more likely to ask, “What are you trying to show me?”
Sometimes an answer comes. Sometimes there is only silence, but I have discovered that silence has its own wisdom. My body has never asked me to become someone else. It has simply waited for me to be with it.
Some mornings I wake with pain and very little energy. In the past, I would have judged myself and tried to push through whatever I had planned. Now I allow the day to change.
I rest and breathe consciously. If it feels right, I walk near my home, through the forest, or down to the sea. I may spend time doing something that appeals to me even when it is completely unproductive.
Once, I would have called such a day wasted. Now I consider it a successful day with nothing to show for it. I do not have to justify the day by producing something. I can simply experience it.
This is what living without struggle means to me. It does not mean that my body never hurts or that every day is easy. It means that I no longer turn every difficult day into a battle with myself. I still make plans and take practical action, but I do not measure my worth by how much I accomplish.
Awareness and Intelligence
Recently I’ve also begun exploring artificial intelligence. It can help me organize words and explore ideas, but it cannot live my experience. It cannot feel my body, walk with me through the forest, or breathe beside the sea. AI can help with the words, but the experience and awareness behind them are mine.
Already Home
When I look back, I smile – not because everything has been easy, but because I can see that life was never trying to make me into someone else. It was asking me to slow down long enough to discover what had always been here.
Today, I search less. I breathe more. I allow more. I trust more. I no longer try to improve myself every moment. I practice being here.
If another Shaumbra asked what I have learned, my answer would be simple:
Trust your own experience.
Be gentle with your body.
There is no need to hurry, and there is nothing you must achieve before you can be who you are.
Take a deep breath. Pause for a moment. Feel that you exist.
I Am.
For me, these are no longer just words, a teaching, or a goal. They are the quiet knowing that I am already home.
Thank you for sharing this🙏♠️❤️
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Danke für das teilen ihrer Geschichte. für mich ist es immer hilfreich…weil ich oft dadurch auch ein besseres verstehen für meine Geschichte bekomme. danke Margot
Thank you for this. I listened to myself in February and left my job at 63 because I sensed something very bad was about to happen with my physical health and somewhat with my mental health if I stayed. It’s been a varied year since. Sometimes characterised by a grace and flow, and many other times full of self judgement, resisting the feelings of loss of identity and deep fear about the weekly reduction of savings to pay a mortgage. I live in a country very different to Norway regarding social services, pensions, medical services etc. It felt there was no safety net. All of this I have sat with often uncomfortably, watching and sometimes married to ‘poor me’ and ‘why me’ positions. Aend I have found courage to stay with “I exist” and feel into that especially when my mind said I didn’t want to exist anymore. Your clear, direct and honest writing is helpful, thank you. Today it helps me free up a bit more.
Robyn
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