"You'd better use a shiny gloss. And something more in the direction of orange, which then clashes so nicely with the pink leopard pants. It will look even more shabby," the director told the makeup artist.

When this sentence was uttered, I was sitting in the Masken-Caravan, already made up almost beyond recognition, clearly darker than my natural skin color and rather... indecent, part of the preparation for my three-day role as a prostitute in a southern German crime series for television.

That was the moment.

I looked at myself in the mirror during his instruction and suddenly there was a question in my head, loud and clear: "What am I doing here?"

There I sat, after twelve years in one, my dream job, dressed in a pink and black spotted polyester catsuit, a squeaky green bolero, mismatched cheap platform shoes and a red scuffed plastic handbag, knowing that I was about to embody a not too intelligently blessed curbside swallow and that as g'schead as possible, as the director had already let it be known. "G'schead" is Bavarian and means something like mean, nasty, crude, vulgar.

Here I lend my face, my body, my consciousness, my skills to a female fantasy, and I do it as vividly and naturally as possible, so that the degrading cliché of the role is not even noticeable.

In my private life, I was engaged in goddess research and the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, which was to be followed a few centuries later by the birth of the theater.

This means that this cliché, this image of women, with my help, fills millions of German living rooms. fillt.

That was the end of it. That was the so-called "point of no return".

That was my "outer awakening". I believe, from experience with now thousands of clients, but also from private conversations and articles, books and social media posts, that there are two forms of awakening.

One is the external, social, worldly and systemic.

The other is the inner, individual, intimate-private and metaphysical awakening.

The external awakening can take place, as it did for me, in a professional environment. But reading the ingredients on a food package can also bring it on. Or the renewed conversation with the class teacher.

It is the moment when a hitherto unknown voice suddenly speaks up from within and questions the previously unquestioned normality: the world, my world, life as it is. A life for which we are educated and prepared from an early age and which feels coherent insofar as everyone moves in a similar way.

Until, yes, until suddenly such a question arises. A question that invites you to consider whether your own life suits you. Do I want to live like this? Do I want to consider it normal? And why do I consider it normal? Does it have to be like this? Why is it like this? Is there something I want instead?

David Graeber stated in his book "Bullshit Jobs" that about 40% of all jobs in our western systems are completely useless, but well paid. But that good pay cannot compensate or replace a person's need for meaning and the resulting fulfillment.

In her book, "Five Things Dying People Regret," which has become popular around the world, Australian palliative care nurse Bonnie Ware recounts the conversations she had with people in the last moments of their lives. "If only I hadn't worked so hard," "If only I had allowed myself more happiness!" and "If only I had had the courage to live my own life!" are three of the classics.

"I have often said to clients that "working time is living time. Life cannot be postponed. Those who allow their own ratiocination to stay with them, "for the money" or whatever the reason, get used to a life "for the sake of": I have to do this and that to survive, to get my family through, to pay off the house, to make a career. And thus to the normality of an unfulfilled, externally determined life.

But, as mentioned above: it doesn't have to be work at all. The list of ingredients in a food could suddenly raise the question of why it is actually normal to feed your own body with so much chemistry. Or why school forces the highly gifted, creative son with individual learning rhythms and behaviors to adapt in ways that cause him to lose his enthusiasm and become a stranger to himself in ways that are deeply painful for the parent to witness.

The decisive factor is how we deal with a moment like this. Many people brush it aside, let the inner voice compete against the voice of reason and lose, and this so often that it only comes forward again on the deathbed - when there is nothing left to lose and nothing left to defend.

The so-called inner awakening can, but does not have to, happen in meditation. Often it is a mystical experience that suddenly and irrevocably makes clear: I am not my body. What I am is clearly greater than my personality, nonlocal and all-connected. Bigger than the product of my imprints, than the social roles, functions and identities I hold. And bigger than my thoughts and emotions.
Or the heart suddenly opens and floods the body with a love that is not comparable to anything from the previous life, but which at the same time feels primordially familiar and henceforth forbids to pretend and do something that does not correspond to this love.

Both forms condition and promote each other. If one has the courage to face this voice, to trust it and to curiously follow its suggestions. And it remains a lifelong pleasure to grow further and deeper into one's own fulfilling existence.

I will comment on this several times and in more detail in this book.

How did I deal with it myself?

To be honest: I don't remember the rest of the shoot today.

At that time, I was not courageous and perhaps not yet clear enough, as a so-called freelance actress, in addition to being too dependent on money, to get up and go straight away. A lawsuit from the station would probably have ruined me.

But it was precisely this moment that justified my exit, which then actually took place a little later. As if life wanted to make this choice easier for me, in the same year I had to play exclusively prostitutes and nuns - female lifestyles fragmented by social morality.

What was no longer possible for me from that moment on: satisfaction from dressing up, slipping into and embodying different|n characters, that is, merely being a "medium" that serves as a canvas for the author, the writer, the director.

"Mission-conscious" actresses are not as welcome, that is, actresses who use the role as a canvas for a personal cause.

From that moment on, I was considered "difficult". In truth, I had only outgrown this profession. And come closer to myself.

By the way, awakening does not yet mean the dissatisfaction that makes one look for the next partner, another city, the next higher career level, a new toy, or another job. Therein still lies the illusion that there is something "out there" that is "it."

When all external paths lead ever more quickly to the same - or more violent - dissatisfaction, it becomes clear that there is only one thing that all new jobs, new partners, next toys, or higher career levels have in common: The own person with its states of tension, the diffuse fears, the pressure, the boredom.

This means that the time has come for the essential question: Why am I here? Who am I actually? What does a life that fits me, reflects me and fulfills me look like?

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Only then are you truly ready for this intense, profound process of transformation.

This connects you in an irreversible way with yourself. And it gives you an understanding of yourself that no longer allows you false compromises, superficiality and disembodied activities, even for a lot of money.

You trade recognition for fulfillment, prestige for meaning, control for feeling, growth and aliveness, and (false) security for a truthful future.

With that, you become increasingly "congruent." This means that there is a growing need in you to have everything in your life be of one piece, so that how you dress, how you live, with whom you live and how you relate, and how you feed yourself is of one piece and consistently reflects your values.

You live more and more from the inside out and no longer from the outside in.

You design. And you respond to events. But you react less and less. The expectations of the world, of the others, play a less and less role. Until one day you are no longer able to take back the apparent threat to your existence, because the fulfillment of this consciously shaping and designed self-connection means so much to you that maintaining it becomes more important to you than keeping existential fear at bay, no matter how strongly it is stimulated. From this moment on you are completely free, no longer systemically or socially blackmailable or bribable. Along the way, you've gathered (experienced!) enough evidence that you don't have to be "competitive" at all to live well, successfully, and fulfilled. And that your values and vision will carry you.

The fact that you have to pass some "tests" until then is another matter.

This book is for people who have completed either an inner or outer awakening - or find themselves in the midst of either. Who are looking for both guidance for their deep emotional, soulful, mental malaise, and a clear path and concrete tools to address their "But then what?" issues. What instead? Who am I now and how do I go on?" in a satisfying way. And thus subsequently put their "horsepower" back on the road in a much more fulfilling, meaningful, self-connected and truthful way.

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This is the current foreword to the book "Find your Mission," which I am writing, among other things.