{"id":200,"date":"2011-01-05T15:38:38","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T15:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/wp\/?p=200"},"modified":"2013-09-20T18:38:44","modified_gmt":"2013-09-20T18:38:44","slug":"odour-1-the-essense-of-essential-oils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/?p=200","title":{"rendered":"Odour 1. The essense of essential oils"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

( http:\/\/preview.tinyurl.com\/38y8wsf )<\/p><\/div>\n

Month ago, I promised to write a column on the essense of essential oils before
\nnew years eve.
\nSo now is the time, although the emotions out of which the text was thought to blossom are gone.
\nBut only gone in the meaning of not\u00a0 present at the moment.
\nLuckily (for now) we can remember emotions, or imagine them to be at work.
\nWe do our best.
\nThere we go, in one go:
\nThe context of this is me, of course.
\nPlus what surrounds me.
\nThe ongoing world is what surrounds me, a chemicals loaden envirement,
\nwhere bathrooms smell of apricots and shopping malls of carefully composed odours.
\nAnd those surroundings crowded with more and more smelling people, as if in
\nunspoken but fierce competition to stand out in Odour Space.<\/p>\n

A specific part of what surrounds me can be summarized as the New Age.
\nAnd given that this body\/mind system is hyper sensitve if not plain allergic
\nto odours of all kinds, it seems fair to say that, like the Middle Ages, the New Age is a Smelly Era.<\/p>\n

How come? Didn’t we leave behind the frankincense of the churches, the waving smoking thuribles?
\nYes, more or less, and it is rapidly replaced by the Asian variant of it, the incense stick.
\nAnd, in general, the cleaner we have become the more agressive the ads for\u00a0 more agressive odours
\nlike after shaves, deodorants, chemicals loaden perfumes and a kind of war on terror when it comes
\nto fighting the imagined contaminations living in flush toilets with strong and strong smelling chemicals.<\/p>\n

The New Age variant of this, quasi healthy and implicitly meant to testify of being spiritually Angehaucht,
\nis the use of pure essential oils.
\nThey smell kind of a million times to strong for me, but for more and more people the use of them
\nseems to communicate that they have seen the Light, or are at least longing to see the Light.<\/p>\n

Twice a year I go for a 2 week silent retreat.
\nAnd then suddenly, shockingly, surrounded by some hundred and twenty folks.
\nAll having their own favourite smells and wearing them from very subtle to
\nuncredibly abuindant.<\/p>\n

My system goes into a kind of hyper active slightly allergic fire alarm state
\nin that surrounding.
\nSo, twice per year I fight for my fresh air by asking all the participants to use
\nas less of all those products as they dare.
\nDare? Yes, dare. People hide all kinds of stuff under their odours.<\/p>\n

My request brings up deep emotions in people, time and again.
\nThere was this young lady that at a point I dared ask to also use less of her
\nfor me very strong perfume. I told her that she was putting it on twice a day.
\nShe was totally amazed: she was, especially for me, almost wearing nothing of it,
\ncompared to her usual habit, and she only put up a tiny little bit after lunch these days.
\nMeaning that in the mornings I was constantly smelling what was left from right after
\nlunch the day before and noticing the sharp increase after lunch.
\nSe promised to use even less from that moment.
\nDays later we spoke again. (People come to me to let me smell them and ask if it is okay like that)
\nShe told me that now she had to shower twice a day, out of fear to stink.
\nTotally irrational, I can assure you, this lady is smelling clean and fresh by herself,
\nbut she is excessively afraid for smelling natural.
\nJust one example of many. Hers was by the way a top French perfume brand.
\nThen last time, there was this alsogivinghimselfsatsangwiththisformeblasphemicbuddhaname,
\na man that from my perspective, my wiring, is behaving and acting in a way that is called in
\nmy dictionary self-satisfied and in his one probably exquisitely elegant or something like that.
\nWhen he would enter the room I sometimes already smelled him coming.
\nSoon\u00a0 I would walk over to the other side of the\u00a0 place and stand in front of one of the open doors.
\nalso I started telling him that his cloud of odour for me was really bothering and really overdone
\nin any way that I could think of it. As we are both males with a strong sense of presence,
\n(mine a bit hidden in shabbyness, but nevertheless the same energywise), his first reaction
\nwas one of waving my words away. This teasing game went on for a few days.
\nAnd slowly slowly things moved a bit, he using less of the essential oil that he sprinkled
\nin abundance on himself.
\nAt the end of the last retreat we had a last talk, where I shared that he was one of the
\npeople that used the fact that essential oils are pure nature as an argument for my
\narguments to be of no importance. While I think that once people start using those in pure
\nform, they get used to the strenght of them as normal. And they get insensitive about
\nothers in a very subtle way: they never ever can smell others. They only smell their
\nfavourite smell, wherever they go. A subtle form of arrogance only for those that are
\nnot oversensitive to them. For me it is gaseous trigger to a state of alarm.
\nIt communicates almost literally: when I walk in, you walk out.
\nEssenstial oils in their pure form used as body odour communicates for my system
\na totall lack of …… yopu name it.
\nEnfin, I promised the guy to write a column on the essence of essential oils
\nbefore New Years’ Eve.
\nWell, sorry, I’m a week late.
\nAnd not really done yet.
\nInstead of getting it done now, lets make this the first in a series on odours,
\nand, lets say, the make up of make up.<\/p>\n

hans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Month ago, I promised to write a column on the essense of essential oils before new years eve. So now is the time, although the emotions out of which the text was thought to blossom are gone. But only gone … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/geurige-peperbus11.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tD9I-3e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2512,"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/2512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}