the nature of genuine change – part 2

Education in Western society rarely teaches us how we should properly deal with our “negative” side, the side of us we wish not to show to the outside world. As a result, a lot of people spend their entire life searching for ways to get as far away from it as possible, not knowing how to decently cope with its threatening shadows. But I sincerely doubt if anyone has ever succeeded in getting fully rid of “their other side”… People search for ways to climb up to the Heavens, where “all will be good, peaceful and beautiful”, seemingly without realizing that human life is a balance which is preferably kept in a more or less stable, thus healthy equilibrium between both scales of giving and receiving. Heightening one scale only results in a lowering of the other one so that when we try to run away towards the Heavens, our flight will be compensated by an equally intensifying darkening of our other side. Most people don’t seem to realize this, until it really breaks through in their life of every day, e.g during a midlife crisis.

There are countless ways to become balanced again, and they usually include the very difficult path of letting go. As an example, I’d like to talk about a patient of mine who’s been visiting me for almost thirty years now. His name is Ego. He consults me daily, yet even though he’s been sitting in front of me for all these years now, it’s only been very recently that his chaotic path forced him to engage in a real dialogue with me. For the longest time he would just ignore me. He knew he could not escape sitting in front of me, but he still had the hardest time of facing me. In his darker days, I sometimes felt as if he would rather die in agony instead of trying to face me. I always tried talking to him, but then he would just play his little game as if I was invisible to him, as if he was the only one in the room. And yet I noticed he could not completely ignore me because I could see his eyes wandering off to the large window, as if in his mind he was trying to escape from my attempts to connect to him; as if he was trying to escape from me within his unnatural dreams of claiming ownership over me. Because that was what he was doing: he was seemingly trying to get rid of me by seeking ways in his mind to bury me as deeply as possible so he could claim ownership over his world without any interruption on my behalf. He could play this little game for quite some time, because he would always find new dreams, new superficial distractions to keep him busy, running towards just another empty shell.

One day however, he was behaving more fearful and desperate than before. I was still talking into him when he suddenly looked at me in utter fright. In that second, all his protective shields fell off and he stared at me with the gaze of the being he truly is: a naked baby, screaming with mortifying fear as if he had just entered a strange, alien world full of unknown dangers. He quickly restored his escapist dream and looked back out of the window. Nevertheless, something had happened. It was there. I saw it. Brief as it was, a first glance had just been made. Apparently he seemed to have reached the end of his dreams. It was only when all of his escapist dreams turned into ashen deserts, when he had reached the end of his alien world, that he finally came to realize the inevitability of the situation: he hád to face me or he had to succumb to self destruction. Although he had hurt me alright by denying my very existence, I still loved him more than anything. In secret I cried for him during these long years of monologue and utter loneliness. He should have known he was not alone in his battle, yet he still could not embrace me, even though I embraced him with all of my Heart. He preferred to live his life in a silent suffering because he thought it would always be a lesser pain compared to the pain of confronting me. How narrow-minded can one be! The only thing I have to offer him is unconditional Love! But I can not blame him. Not at all. Because he rejected me all these years, I must probably appear to him as the bare Devil himself, as an endless Night lurking in the dark shadows on his path, ready to suck all life out of him. And it ís draining him, but instead of putting all the blame on me, he should really blame it on his own actions, on his own choice of living his life in one-sidedness. He chose to live his life one-sidedly, so he should accept the extreme tensions resulting from his choice and not put all the blame onto the “other side”, that part of him which does not fit into his picture of how his one-sided life should have to be.

Yet with this first glance, the winter ice seems to be ready to be melted away in the awakening warmth of spring. Gradually, in time, he extended his frightful glances towards me. I tried to comfort him by giving signs (or symbols as they would have occurred to him) that it IS alright and that confronting me IS the right way to go. At first he did not notice them, but then, for some reason, he did start paying attention. It was as if he had finally come to the conclusion that he cannot expect the world to change if he himself is not even daring to become more receptive to the change waiting to unfold within himself. It was as if he was gradually forgetting the layers of clothes he had been wearing which had made him into a man, and was now starting to feel the human being he truly is, that helplessly crying baby, washed upon the unknown shores of a land yet to discover.

And so the balance started to shift again to reach its point of equilibrium. At the moment we are still a long way from that, but some important steps have been made. With a lot of trial and error, he is learning to see the deeper, healing aspect of redemption which lies beyond the pains and suffering of acknowledging one’s own deep responsibility towards himself and the world. He is learning to acknowledge suffering as a way to step down from his almighty throne and to become Human again amidst other Humans. Nowadays, we are already having small conversations. Even though he is still very tense and his mind is still very fragile, painful and cloudy, he has somehow found a way to proceed more naturally, more harmoniously with the other side of the balance. His suffering is slowly transforming from an agent of fear to an agent of change. It is even growing into becoming thé agent of change, because only in his suffering can the alchemical fire be lit to the extreme temperatures necessary to dissolve the oppositional tensions into the waters of their deeper oneness.

So one day, not so very long ago, he came to me and he told me “My Lady, I have to confess to you some of the things I have done. I feel compelled to bow deeply towards you and the whole Universe, confess my terrible deeds and humbly ask you for forgiveness”. He was weeping deeply and his tears melted with my own. It was the first time that he was not asking for my attention because he felt pity of himself; for the first time I saw him crying tears, not for himself, but for me, others, the world at large and… Life. Self-pity and self-absorbance became compassion for others. Of course it was only a very small step on the road to redemption, yet a highly important step, because for the first time in his life, he understood the consequences of his deeds, of his one-sided behaviour, and what his behaviour really meant for the rivers of the Life he was given. Perhaps for the first time, his bitter loneliness melted away into the sweetness of his solitude amongst the people and the world.

He wept, and he wept for so long…

He was genuinely moved to the point of finally letting go, because only now was he able to bow deeply enough to humbly ask to be forgiven so he could finally forgive himself and the world.

And so, he confessed…

(to be continued)

the nature of genuine change – part 1

The way people behave and act in this world is not as nearly as important as the underlying attitude through which it was possible in the first place to act and behave in such way, in that particular situation at that particular moment. It remains necessary however to keep in mind that this attitude has a natural dynamism which requires growth to sustain itself in a healthy way. If an attitude needs correction and adaptation to a more natural state of mind, it’s up to us to positively answer this invitation. However, this is not always the easiest thing to do. We appear to have the tendency to largely ignore the relativity of our attitude and logically regard it as an almost absolute, rigid moral power whose existence becomes so self-evident that instead of an attitude, actions are now used as the basis of judgment. Furthermore, it’s a judgment based upon the difference between right and wrong instead of sense and non-sense.

To facilitate radical change, attitudes need to change, not their resulting actions. When only the actions are changed, nothing will essentially change. It will be more like a continuous replacing of mirrors to reflect different perspectives of a subject who remains essentially unchanged. The key lies in not mistaking the mirror and the reflection it contains for the reality which is being reflected. Changing the mirror doesn’t change the reality it reflects.

However, change the attitude and motives and the resulting actions will inevitably adapt themselves.  Something essentially different can grow now, because one becomes much better adapted, first inwardly, then outwardly, to one’s own innate humanity which always will be deeply entangled with the natural mystery of Life itself. The subject himself changes so his old patterns will slowly begin to disappear and be transformed into what was once merely a distant dream beyond the horizon. When the subject changes himself, no replacement of mirrors will ever be able to capture the old patterns again.

Actions which are inherently forced to change by first changing the subject are genuine changes. These are the true changes which we individually seem to seek so immensely desperately and which have the power to change the world, starting from ourselves all the way through all layers of society up to all of Mankind.

Evolutionary changes and adaptation isn’t merely a physical phenomenon, but especially an individually psychological and spiritual one which then illuminates the collective.

Yet historical, social and cultural developments made us largely forget about the specific subject by keeping us extremely focused on the collective mirrors which reflect the image of whole societies. In fact, because contemporary society is based upon this distorted fixation on the material world and its shallow reflections, it needs us to live continuously in this state of outer strivings and collective delusions for its very survival. The natural rhythms of human existence have become the arch-enemy for contemporary society; a society which even fears its own shadow because somewhere, deeply hidden, it knows about the fragility of its foundations.

For so long now we’re trying to evade the subject and change the mirrors instead, not realizing the destructive nature of this inner denial coupled with outer fixation. For so long now we’re ignoring the desperate pleas of our inner world to recognize its very existence, to face its dark Beauty beyond its painful veil which we have so tragically woven out of our deep ignorance. Jung once said “nothing changes anything else without itself being changed”. If someone decides to stop focusing on this external world spinning out of control, but tries to cultivate his inner speck of light so he may roam the immensely dark and deep inner world of the soul he was given, he might find the true keys to change, made for the doors of his own imperfections. The key to avert the pending world catastrophies of overpopulation, climate change, nuclear tensions, pollution, massive extinctions, and what not, doesn’t lie in political decisions but lies within the soul of each man, woman and child. This task to change the world by changing individually, against the doctrine of contemporary society, is the huge responsibility each of us carries. One does not necessarily need to roam the planet in search of teachers, because the only true teacher who might help you is the one living deeply inside your Self. Changing the world is about befriending its natural inner imperfections, not running away towards a utopia of unnatural outer perfection.

Each one of us can only proceed on our own pace, in our own uniquely creative way. A speck of light is enough to create a soft twilight needed to proceed in silence and solitude towards the roots of one’s being, an inner journey filled with suffering, continuous and painful confrontations, hardship and old wounds torn open again; yet it’s also an inner journey filled with such simple, yet amazingly beautiful moments that one would like to weep endlessly because words fail to show enough gratitude to have been a witness to those moments. Those moments we’ve experienced our whole life, but up to that point we may have never truly felt the Beauty throbbing beneath its material veil.

It all boils down to positively answering the utterly frightening invitation coming from within to explore whatever lies beyond the control of one’s limiting ego.

May you have the courage to find the Will to proceed through all difficulties which you may find upon your way, not past them.

May you have the courage to tear down the huge and thick walls around your world and to trust Life that it will not be the end of you, but merely the beginning of a new you, a natural you, a genuine you.

May you have the courage to take away the fear to let the old you die, not by relying on the tight control mechanisms of your ego, but by trusting Life itself that everything will be alright in the end.

May you have the courage to grow an inner bridge towards the much greater darkness of the Unknown, while overcoming this pervasive fear through the realization that its factual darkness is not nearly as important as your attitude towards it. Change your attitude towards its existence and it will also change accordingly. Acceptance leads to a humbling allowance to pluck its healing fruits; rejection on the other hand leads to an ever more frantic flight from its twisted dangers.

May you have the courage to deeply change the way you look at the world and become an individually unique human being, less restricted by the movements of the herd.

May you have the courage to become a beacon for other people without clinging to its emitted light; to become a rock in the sea, deeply embedded in the good ol’ Earth without clinging to the sound of waves crashing onto its surface.

May you have the courage to become soft like water which always seeks the lowest places.

May you have the courage to deeply change the world by deeply changing yourself.

When will She come ashore?

When will She come ashore?

During the past years She lived underground, deeply sheltering within a vast, wildly breathing sea. All this time She was hoping, praying for a grain of attention of those who govern vast lands, deep valleys and high mountains.

But She was given no mercy.

She should and would remain repressed, pushed away by the ignorance and stubborn foolishness of a king who boundlessly overrated himself, a modern Amfortas suffering the same wounds as centuries ago. Still not healed, still denied, still desperately seeking the cure which at the same time he doesn’t want to know about.

Gotten used to his wounded situation, it doesn’t matter anymore; no dangerous adventures anymore in dark, unknown lands, no arranged confrontations anymore with old enemies, no giving up his role as supreme ruler for the benefit of a better case, namely the healing of his old wound. No, leave him in his castle, in his arid empire of desert storms. His throne will crumble and silt until there will be nothing left except his pitiful stupidity.

But the urge remains, that subtle pressure from within, that … undefined longing. She grows and grows while the king holds on ever more tightly to his paling straws. He effectively realizes he needs to let go and plunge into the depths of Her abyss. But he doesn’t, he won’t, not unless he’s actually forced to do so, when the tension of the opposites grows to such extremes that he’s about to be torn to pieces if he should take one more step.

Maybe he just has to let go and take his leap of faith.

Maybe then the topography of Her depths will finally be illuminated by a weak light, a small light slowly wafting towards a bottomless depth; a candle in a universe of dark, but fertile Earth. Maybe then his pain will become the sweet lullaby it truly is, which She always sings during cold winter eves, so he might close his swollen eyes and dream the dreams of Her Soul. And if he doesn’t try to run away again, but tries to listen carefully, his own voice will emerge; the voice he had before he was born into this world.

And he will weep, and weep… So much tears will be hatched by the disentangling warmth of his throbbing Heart. Deserts will be filled by the floods of his warm tears, and through the pain and suffering hidden within his rains, flowers will find their way again through the grains of sand, towards the fresh breeze of a still pale sun. Centuries of dust are made to bloom by one act of tearful surrendering. As Heaven will not be high enough, so the Earth won’t be deep enough for his tears for Her.

Perhaps then She might come ashore.

Perhaps then his wound might find its cure again.

breaking the circle of habits – part 2: the art of wrestling with God

(continued from part 1)

By acting this way, possibilities are offered to break the vicious circle in time. If the Unknown is approached with respect and deep humility, She might show mercy and for instance send you the gift of a dream which captures the essence of the circle much clearer than rational analysis could ever achieve. He who looks beyond apparent dream absurdities, can discover an extremely subtle and precious wisdom between the lines, which is purer because She is directly derived from the soul itself and doesn’t have to pass the filters of the ego first. This wisdom is no sudden understanding of the mysteries of the universe, but a simple yet effective push in the right direction to show you the things you need at that exáct moment.

But the gift of this wisdom rarely shows itself freely; it requires a certain commitment, a certain surrender to the Mystery within oneself. This commitment seems to be an attitude which is truly hard to obtain, because it’s the exact opposite of how ego desires you to behave. The soul can only grow towards its natural purpose if Man’s innate free will is consciously applied to his inner growth. The flower wants to unfold its fragile leaves, but it can only do this by the use of an energy which is diametrically opposed to the very idea of growth. It’s the potential hidden within the flower’s core which can transform this energy so it becomes an agent of growth. Likewise, ego is a concentration of highly conservative energies; the way to change them into agents of transformation is as difficult as it’s necessary. Consciousness is an enormous blessing because it brought light in the darkness of past aeons; yet it created the huge struggle between an unknown, still unconscious soul urging to use consciousness to unfold itself, and a consciousness (ego) struggling to control its own inflationary urges to become the “totalitarian leader of his world”.

That’s why only a deeper hope, a deeper faith, a deeper trust into the Unknown will enable him to proceed beyond his boundaries, to break through this vicious circle of highly restricted, pre-determined modes of behaviour; a faith, hope and trust which will grow slowly into a solid platform if one accepts the signals continuously reaching him out of the Unknown, telling him there’s so much more to be found beyond the horizon. Through many, many failures, this will inevitably change him and open himself up. By having a deep trust in the tree and by its Grace, the flower will be able to bloom in its unique way, through its unique beauty. Man longs for God, but perhaps God longs even more for Man, because it’s only through Man that God can pour Himself into this world so He could Know Himself. This Divine Love is both the alpha and the omega of the beauty of the human struggle, in all its light and dark aspects.

Surrendering to the Unknown means willing to cross the familiar area of one’s safe home, the centre of one’s entire existence up to that moment, towards its horizon and to create a first footstep in the enormous, unknown shadow lands which lie beyond. Traveling towards the horizon is doomed to remain infinitely more easier than actually crossing it. Traveling towards the threshold of the known world is both exhilarating and utterly frightening. There can be such a tremendous feeling of longing to cross the horizon that it almost physically hurts. But the moment one actually stands on top of the horizon, the feeling of an utterly frightening despair may unfold itself and swallow up all previously built masks of protection. Now is the time to shed one’s skin, to stand naked in front of the frightening Unknown, without any real protection from the ego who, with all its might, will try now to pull one back into its safe haven of masks, deceptions and superficial trickery. It will put tough questions into one’s head, like “why would you risk going there? Do you really want to destroy yourself, because that’s what will happen if you try to ignore me, your conscious mind? What is it that you wish to find there, in those hostile territories where no one has been before? Is it not wiser to stay here, in your little, most familiar world of every day? Why go to such extremes if you don’t even know what you’re actually looking for, while everything you really need to be safe and sound can basically be found here, in the familiar world you’ve known for so long? Do you really believe you will find happiness or peace in this place which seems to consist only of darkness, demons and a dangerous forest of chaotic and wild forces?”

It’s hard to be a needle to these huge but rather empty balloons which are obstructing the way yet to be made. All your life you’ve relied on these balloons to sustain your world, and now you should become a needle to puncture them all. And all this because you’re supposedly driven by a world you cannot see, hear, smell, touch or taste; a world of dark uncertainties where you’re supposed to travel in utter loneliness, trying to make your own way with only a small burning candle of faith to guide you. And all this in the name of what you trust is Life about?

No wonder your ego tries to persuade you not to go there..

Yet if you persist, a first footstep in the Beyond can cause a huge relief. Despite all its initial fears, ego wasn’t destroyed, but in fact encapsulated by a greater and deeper sense of wholeness. It was forced to open the door to something which it cannot control. Ego becomes much more relaxed and humble by welcoming this stranger who finally has the power to force him to step down from his unnatural throne. This first footstep into the Unknown might actually be the first creation ever made which is truly, uniquely of one’s own. It’s a first gigantic leap towards finding the scissors to cut a hole through the enormous web of ties which ego and society has built to “protect you, thus to control you”. What was called “the horizon” was merely the inner shell of the cocoon in which you were trapped: at first by the natural defense systems of the ego which were then unconsciously manipulated by Western society, hungry for ever more power and control, in an attempt to create the “mass man” as Jung once called it, the man without an identity who thínks he is free (“we’re allowed to vote!”) but who’s actually reduced to an insignificant “one of a dozen”. Even though it advocates the highest morality, to modern society, the only valuable purpose of Man lies in his function to uphold an endless consumerism so the same system can survive which reduced his vibrant soul to a painfully darkened, shallow wasteland in the first place. The deep, inner spirituality of the soul was expelled to favor the flat, outer functionality of a system whose unnatural, arid fixation flawlessly replaced the organic growth of natural Life. A vicious circle of sado-masochism, uncontrollably eroding us on the largest scale, first our souls, which is then reflected onto the world at large! As a victim, contemporary Man is being unconsciously controlled by an a-human society so he is led to believe that this social system is his best defense against a supposedly greater and unknown evil lurking in the shadows. Because he believes he’s already free, he stays put, refusing to acknowledge his own utterly small yet immensely significant role in the creation not only of this society but also of the darker evils which are now threatening to drown him. He fails to recognize that society is actually a coagulation of victims, now doing the same evil things which each individual victim actually feels threatened by.

The ongoing veneration of the unnatural throne of the One Ego translates in a worldview of external division: the larger external world suddenly becomes an enemy because the larger internal world is denied. How many conflicts and wars didn’t result from this unconscious yet monstrous projection? Jung already warned that man himself is the great danger. All the contemporary problems are merely the result of something more disturbing and sinister, namely the schism within the modern psyche of the ordinary man. If he cannot succeed in breaking this immensely contagious circle of habits in which he’s trapped on an individual level, nothing will ever truly, deeply, irreversibly change on a world scale. Nowadays he’s só immersed in the mass of millions, that if the herd jumps off the cliff, he will most probably jump too, even though his common sense tells him that everyone’s completely going the wrong way, the way towards self-destruction. Although he’s not individually responsible for a society’s history, he has the huge responsibility to stop participating in the spreading of these delusional ideas.  Each one of us has the inner power to cure this massive suffering of Stockholm syndrome on an individual level, thus influencing others to find their own cures. If only the patient would this time realize he has the potential within himself to become his own medicine..

Man has simply lost the Art of wrestling with God which is needed to become His True expression; a process which would profoundly heal his inner and outer world. The Bible says God made us in His image, but it fails to mention that we have to become pilgrims willing to travel to vast, unknown lands and wrestle with its inhabitants, if we genuinely want to express His image. Instead, contemporary man doesn’t dare to look inside, thus reflecting his inner contradictions onto the world at large. Modern man doesn’t dare to think about breaking the circle of habits which has cocooned the wild beauty living within the core of the soul he was given. Should man keep avoiding the confrontation with his inner polarities, then the external polarities will continue to become more extreme, until humanity will eventually fall into an abyss which is too dark for words.

breaking the circle of habits – part 1: spiritual crystallization

How difficult can it be to do something which lies far beyond the vicious circle of habits? You fight against it in order to attain it and from time to time you get a small victory, a swift gaze just around the corner. But the honey-sweet, colorful taste of deep vision is almost always rapidly changed back into the cocooning bitterness of that monstrosity called “ego”. However, monstrosity as it often might be, it still remains a most vital part of us which is needed to live Life more or less properly, without which we would all dissolve into a devastating, schizophrenic chaos.

Through its vitality it’s also an instrument of growth, an process (or rather, a highly dynamic and organic cyclic dance which is never truly the same again after each turn) during which its boundary must continuously be expanded. This does not mean an ever inflating, limiting sense of “I” versus “the world”, rather than an ever deepening, embracing awareness of “me” inside “the world” or “the world” inside of “me”.

Breaking the circle of habits, this cocoon woven by the ego, is almost like attempting to crystallize a purely white substance out of an otherwise formless and colorless liquid. This can be done by pouring in a second liquid which forces crystals to coagulate and to grow so they become visible to the naked eye. However, initial crystal formation can be deceiving: a few drops can suddenly make the solution all cloudy, but when you shake a little, they often disappear and are gone forever if no more drops are added. The more drops are added, the longer these ephemeral clouds of tiny crystals can be seen, until it can, hopefully, remain stable enough to become the cradle for some beautiful crystal growth. Only when such saturation is reached can crystals start to grow.

Likewise, the act of soul-making out of the dark, unknown soil from which all Life stems, requires the recognition of an always-present intuitive Longing so that one, driven by the Will which is rooted in a divine urge to unfold the Self, can finally surrender and grow in order to Belong to the Greater Mystery more fully, more authentically and more heartfully than could ever be achieved from within the cocoon of ego.

Breaking the circle of habits through spiritual crystallization (or should we say, recrystallization?) needs more than a rational analysis of the situation. Painful reflection or psychotherapy can flawlessly deliver all the apparent causes of any vicious circle, its entire history starting from the supposed point of origin. But all this knowledge doesn’t break it. It helps to understand it, that’s for sure, but it’s not enough to finally break it. The same patterns will continue to pop up, mercilessly tormenting the conscious mind who feels helpless, abandoned and utterly powerless to facilitate inner change.

What else is needed then besides rational analysis?

The seed of every living organism is planted in a dark, fertile Earth, a deep Unknown which cannot be disturbed in its dark retreat. Likewise, the seed of a vicious circle often lies in a shadow territory of the human soul, where the ego feels powerless. To enter this Great Unknown means to open up towards the bitter and disillusioning fact that one contains more than merely an ego. It’s bitter, because an ego is incredibly well adapted to do especially one thing, namely to inflate itself, regardless of one’s awareness of the process (at least, my ego has this hugely annoying tendency, but annoying as it is, there’s an innate potential for transformation and growth hidden below its outer “negative” aspects). This tendency for inflation makes ego the supreme ruler of its universe. Every other presence in its house needs to be controlled, or repressed in case the Other One can’t be controlled. The path to the realization that the world is not all about the ego, but that ego is just one of many satellites orbiting a much larger sun, thus becomes indeed a difficult, painful and, more often than not, a lifelong path.

To open up towards the Unknown doesn’t mean to approach it with the usual arrogance and vanity of the ego; now a genuine sense of humility, awe, respect and compassion has to form the basis of its further communications. Absolute honesty towards oneself is crucial; lying against one’s own depths is useless and highly contra productive because the seed of lying first takes root in that same depth. The Unknown is a shadow land where the soul feels more at home than within the overwhelmingly bright neon environment of the ego, so one’s approach requires a subtlety which, unless you’re naturally gifted, can only be learned through much trial and error. Once you open yourself up for the deeper, unconscious regions of the soul, the Unknown will slowly but steadily become a mutual friend. Instead of the supreme ruler of its house, the ego becomes a beautifully transparent yet paradoxical vessel through which the Unknown can express itself by pouring itself in the world at large: the vessel doesn’t own Her contents, yet the shape of these contents constantly reflects the vessel’s shape, until the vessel eventually realizes She is the same as Her contents (the Grail mythology is a magnificent allegory to this).

(to be continued..)

the pursuit of happiness – part 2: the beauty of being imperfect

How many people nowadays are truly, honestly happy, with their happiness shining through every moment of their lives, not only for themselves, but especially for others? Nowadays, happiness seems to be measured by the amount of material possessions, the quality of marriage and professional life, and the well-being of the children. Of course these can be excellent sources of happiness. But the question remains: what exactly is the core of happiness truly about? Perhaps someone who is truly happy is someone who is at peace with the contradictions he’s confronted with, within himself and the world. Everything that is, is at its heart as it should be and can only be accepted as being as it is. Good, bad, light, dark, male, female, warm, cold, all these are aspects of a reality which, at its heart, is utterly incomprehensible; aspects which cannot be derived from each other, but which are inevitably and vitally entwined. Life is always what it Is and, much more often than not, not what we would like it to be. That does not mean Man is a completely helpless victim of some all-pervading, predetermined fate. No, it means that each moment we are given the choice to accept the things we already have at that moment, or to keep grieving over how things might have been. Even if we are utterly poor outwardly and physically disabled, we are still alive, so each day we are still given the chance to rejoice the graceful creativity and immense abundance of Life, erupting out of each moment.

The things you have are what they are, and it’s up to you to find the fertile seeds of inner growth within them, no matter how dark they might appear to be. Yet, difficult as it may often be to reconcile us with whatever Life has to offer, reconciliation also means an acceptance of our imperfections. Man falls and falls and falls, yet each time he has been given the chance to get up again and have another chance. Perhaps we should more often celebrate the chances we get after each mistake and stop complaining about the pain of our fall. Making mistakes, being imperfect is alright, because it is as it Is; our innate nature compels us to be flawed and make mistakes forever again because they are the vital ploughs going through the hardened, dark soil under our feet, so air and rain could penetrate its obscure depths. Contemporary humanity tends to strive after perfection in an attempt to eliminate our flaws and failures, our sickness and suffering, yet this attempt leads to an artificial world full of newly created tensions in which modern man is haunted by his more natural, imperfect side. He often fails to see that flaws, inner pain and suffering are like life-giving rains on the parched plains of his soul; they only appear as arid winds because he rejected and never really acknowledged their existence in the first place.

Without the moisture of our flaws creeping through the deep fissures within the fertile Earth, no seeds would be given the chance to germinate and grow into the beautiful flower hidden within its unknown essence. To a great extent, a soil is only as dark and dry as we allow it to be. Tasting the fearful mists of our innate struggles means cultivating a healing perspective in the long term, a perspective in which Man is not forced anymore to strive after perfection, but a perspective which teaches him he’s a vessel of human contradictions, necessary for his inner growth, his inner meaning and even his very survival. It’s a perspective which might create the much needed shift of attention from a destructive perfection to a healing wholeness. Perhaps then he learns to see his flaws, his inner pains and his wrestle with the world as an act of kneading and molding the raw earthy darkness of his mind in an attempt to weave his first humble footstep, his first genuine Creation, his first genuine attempt to break the mirror of his often superficial fixations; attempts which usually fail if attention remains fixed on the shell of pain instead of its core of healing potential.

Flaws are perhaps our deepest and most humbling resources to understand what Life is about; they might even be God’s best attempt to pour Himself out of this jar, this soul each one of us was given. Perhaps happiness entails becoming friends with one’s own flaws and the realization that one has merely just begun this journey of a thousand miles. Instead of being unhappy with the idea that he has not reached perfection yet, Man should rather start seeing his imperfection as a gift, because an imperfect soul is a flower impatiently waiting for the first spring sun so she can open herself up to the world and grow, and grow! An imperfect soul, above all, longs for being carried on Man’s back across the dark, cold and lonely marshes of the Depth to become an agent of spiritual nurturing instead of the victim of prejudiced, ignorant repression.

When Man befriends his flaws, he’d start feeling the soft winds of genuine Humanity blowing in his eroded face; winds sailing to him from beyond the horizon, carrying the subtle scents of Virtue which burns heavily within his deep, invisible core, waiting to grow into an endless river of Compassion. His own inner struggle and pain thus becomes the mediator for the growth of genuine Virtues. Thanks to his persistence and his surrendering to all his inner pains and suffering, he can now start Living the paradox he truly Is. The confrontation with the deep pain hidden within the core of so many conflicts, traumas and obstacles might have scarred his ego heavily, but on a deeper level, the pain becomes the fertilizer for the soul’s barren meadows, sprayed by the innocent hand of a lone wanderer, the awakened pilgrim now roaming again these unknown, fertile lands of old. Instead of fighting or fleeing the inner pain, he welcomes it, because it makes him painfully aware of his inner reality, this eternally swirling waltz of light and dark, out of which all Creation comes forth. Flaws, imperfections, inner pain and suffering might seem quite disturbing at first sight, but through their great healing power, they tend to make one generally more aware of one’s soul. Awareness leads to relativity, which itself leads to forgiveness, receptivity, kindness and a deep compassion with humanity. Humility blooms while he learns to accept others as they are, full of light hues and dark shades, just like he discovered within himself. The deeper he confronts, accepts and comes to terms with his own innate imperfections, the deeper and the more genuine the empathy flows out of him towards other people, replacing the old patterns of incomprehension and paranoia. In his utter solitude, he weeps over other people’s misery as if their misery is his own. But he is happy now, deeply at peace with his inner suffering, immensely grateful for its continuing blessings as it lets him further grow in humility and respect towards the Great Mystery which allowed him to follow this path in the first place; a path which is now truly of his own making. In the end, every path towards the realization of one’s innate paradox leads to a feeling of deep Self-value which can grow to become a freeing bridge, reconnecting the struggling soul with the living certainty of the Mystery he truly Is, that Being called “Human” under whose roof the Divine is housed.

How wonderful would it be to be born in this world as a naturally imperfect human being amidst other imperfect human beings, rather than a “perfect” human being striving after even more perfection to compete with the rest of humanity, which always appears to consist of other, even more perfect human beings. How could there ever be peace in such an artificial world?!

How wonderful would it be to be born in a giant field of flowers, each with their own little dark shades, yet each of them wildly dancing on the tones of a playful wind. If only we’d be more receptive to this healing perspective rather than forcing us to be born in an arid desert where the mortal fear of one’s shadow once became a heat wave of massive proportions, burning everything on its path. The wind retreated back beyond the horizon, the flowers curled back into their seeds and the wells of life were driven back into their dark caves below the Earth.

Oh Heavenly songs of old! When will your lights shine again visibly across the depths of the sea, the heights of the land and the hearts of the people? Why aren’t your symphonies being read anymore by a cup of tea in the silence of dawn, while its gentle light paints the first fragrant flowers of the day? Why is your serenity broken by the monotone hum of dead steel and grey concrete? Your songs resound like water droplets, falling through the foliage, longing to be a mantle protecting us against the bleak northern winds.

And yet..

Yet your whispers can still be heard during those countless little divine moments which happen each day, unknowingly to us, for if we would actually realize them, we would be shattered to pieces by the brilliance of their Divinity.

Oh Heavenly songs of old!

How beautiful your whispers are seen within the first gaze between two soul mates who, once born out of the same stardust, now face each other again after billions of years, somewhere on an unknown train speeding towards an unknown destination. Every gesture of evading glances, faltering words and blushing smiles is an eruption of inkless poetry on the vast lands of their timeless silence, spreading its hot lava between these divine moments of old.

Oh Heavenly songs of old!

Such Beauty and

such tragedy in this world!

the pursuit of happiness – part 1: the human struggle

How can one save the world? This is another question I’ve posed myself often. People tend to believe they’re too insignificant to make any difference, but I think that is a huge mistake. If one manages to free himself from the choking tentacles of most of the principles ruling contemporary (Western) society (which Wilber so aptly named “Flatland”) and to change himself to become a more natural human being, he will always facilitate change in his immediate surroundings. Subtle and insignificant as it may be, it might be the little ball of snow needed to create an avalanche in the long term. This contemporary society, deformed as it may be, consists of individuals, people who all possess the power to grow into little balls of snow, little vessels each blessed with the potential for genuine change. And yet, these deeply meandering powers of transformation are not of our own making, just like the minerals needed for a blossom to bloom are not made by the young blossom itself. They are given to him by forces deeper and older than he will ever grow up to be; forces, obscurely hidden within gnarled roots and dark soil which need the potential hidden within the seemingly insignificant blossom to express themselves in a continuous act of authentic Creation. Likewise, Man does not possess these powers of transformation, but he can be a mediator to express them in the most creative and influencing way. Moreover, change should make one humble towards the potential he has been given; if the blossom believes he owns the powers of the tree, arrogance, self complacency and blind ignorance will fall like acid rain on its fragile flowers until it even threatens to undermine the health of the whole tree if such a belief pervades the entire group of blossoms.

Perhaps that is what is happening with this world today. The age-old wells of Creation seem to get buried deeper and deeper on an evermore faster pace. Instead of an individually unfolding inner Beauty subtly driven by a Holy Fire, a collective outer order of Ugliness has emerged, sailing chaotically on the chilling winds of the unchained yet still unrecognized forces of life. There’s a catastrophe in the making without precedence. At its heart, this catastrophe is not due to all these external problems the world is experiencing nowadays. Global warming, environmental degradation and pollution, overpopulation, crimes against humanity, the eternal hunger in the world, corruptions of power and the delusions sprayed by the Holy Religion of Money, all these problems appear to be merely the consequences of a disease which is rooted at a much deeper level. It can’t be found in any external things, but it hides deeply within the fathomless human soul, where the political, social and scientific revolutions of the past few centuries have created a split within the fabric itself from which Man is born.

Man did not just throw away God in the Abyss, but in his limitless arrogance and blindness he has even tried to take over His seat. Nature has lost Her sacred values to become the cold, statistical game of atoms, molecules, proteins and genes. Her eternally refilling well of wisdom is slowly being evaporated by the blistering sun of an all-consuming ratio and the ignorance of a race which is still arrogantly trying too hard to blow up every bridge which still linked him with his Origin of Creation. Man is no longer born as a Mystery which needs to be delicately unwrapped, but as a functionally complete unit, obscurely programmed for flat consumerism in an artificial world striving for technological perfection. The ancient foundations of countless, incredibly rich spiritual traditions, including all their preciously grown relations with the indescribable Mystery called Life, are threatened now, after only a few centuries, by utter annihilation as they’re forcibly dragged right towards the edge of the Abyss. It’s the choice between dying a silent yet deafening death, and being assimilated into this ever-expanding pseudo-religion of deadening Consumerism.

The few remaining people who still genuinely cultivate and experience this deep connection through their ancient rituals are seldom appreciated any deeper than by the money people are earning on their behalf, either by tourism or by desecrating their confiscated relics in Western museums, even though the people involved might claim otherwise. Man is slowly forgetting his roots thanks to the stubbornly ignorant denial of his own deep value. And he’s starting to notice it. More often than not, there appears to be something missing in his daily experience, something vital to his very survival on this planet. Not yet explicitly visible on the surface, but a creepy itch at the back of his head perhaps, hiding every time he tries to get a hold of it.

While his ego may think he is born as a complete individual standing on top of the highest mountain, in the depth of the soul he’s given he might actually be just a todler standing on top of a low dune after having lived in the depths of the ocean for many many eons. The idea that modern man is born a complete man seems só logical to him that it’s difficult to see what causes more damage to himself and his environment: his ignorance regarding his own, real position or his grotesque arrogance stemming from this delusional idea of being the ruler of the world.

Life is the neverending search for the path we’re individually painting by walking it. Modern man is loosing his painting skills as he has almost stopped searching. He is standing still and focuses on everything he sees beside his collective path. He is plucking the flowers by the wayside not knowing that at the same time he’s slowly yet inevitably cutting the roots of his own origins and the purpose of his existence. The faith of modern man in his completeness makes him dry and rigid, a massive monolith of external superficialities for which each expression of true inner beauty and depth needs to be marginalized in order to uphold the integrity of his precariously constructed personality structure. Every counteraction against the essence of this rigid, artificial monolith, every serious attempt to glance beyond the narrow boundaries of this limiting world of reductionistic materialism is immediately considered as highly suspicious and abnormal.

But perhaps this monolith is also necessary for change. Because it is so unnatural, a counteraction must happen one day. Man is no monolith, but a living, dynamic and miraculously swirling dance of light and dark, turning and turning and turning…

Every unnatural behaviour is like a ball thrown up the slope of a steep mountain. At some point, the natural gravity of the place will stop the ball in his upper movement, and, whether or not he likes it, will cause it to roll the other way. Of course, we wouldn’t be humans if this counteraction would not result in an exaggeration in the opposite way, on the opposite hill. It’s only after countless up and down movements that the ball will find its rest in the darkly green, lush valley in the middle. It’s impossible to reach other mountain tops without going through the valley, but only by following this lowest path in the fertile valley can one reach all mountains.

Instead of roaming these fertile valleys, people nowadays search after the high altitudes of the mountains. Each standing on a mountain top, people are loosing touch of each other; in their deceptive yet tragic solitude they keep fighting for the highest summit, barren and cold as it may be. They are slowly forgetting about the verdant valleys below, where the mountain creeks still sparkle and the sun still welcomes the first rustles of blooming buds during the early days of spring.

How did it come this far? How could this devolution be stopped and changed? No doubt the individual has a huge responsibility in this change: he’s part of the system, thus programmed to follow the herd to where ever it’s going, even if it means jumping off the highest cliff. But if he manages to change himself radically, he can be a lantern for others, a little ball of snow becoming an avalanche, who cannot be touched anymore by the mentality of the herd.

Perhaps then the world will already be irreversibly changed..

the primal cause of fear

What is the primal cause of fear?

This is a question I’ve posed myself so many times during the past decade, yet each time the question appeared in another form. When I look at my situation, there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer to it. The little pieces of a distant answer often don’t come by chance, but arrive at me by going through just another dark and heavy door made out of the piled up crippling memories of old. The key to these doors usually remains hidden up to the last moment, revealing itself only when all hope seems nearly gone.

Instead of steadily and meticulously delving into the soul I was given, I (that is, my ego) tend to avoid these tough questions and rather flee from the scene into all kinds of more or less nonsensical activities (my favourite one is wasting a whole evening on watching stupid, meaningless movies). A world of inner fantasies often opens up to compensate the outer shortcomings. Fear to open myself up towards the inner and outer world. Fear to make a step into the Great Unknown because the fear to loose everything is still greater than the hope to win everything. “Trust is the key to growth”, Saint John of the Cross would have said, yet I rather seem to prefer the certainty of a fear that to risk would mean to fall into the Abyss, than the uncertainty of a trust, a faith and a hope that everything will eventually be alright. Although genuine proof is offered to me during every single moment of every single day (and all of it by free! If thát doesn’t make one humble, I don’t know what does..), it still remains difficult to transform the uncertainty of a fragile faith into the intuitive certainty of a deep Knowing.

I truly am standing at the edge of an Abyss, wondering what I should do. The Great Unknown awaits me on the other side, and to be honest it looks quite hostile from my position, with volcanoes spitting devastating pyroclastic flows and giant monsters roaming arid deserts of stone and dust. How I cannot stop crying! A desert of twisted darkness, wild and chaotic, naked and revealing keeps confronting me every second of my life with the inescapable fact that its darkness is largely because I feared to look at it, because I feared to answer the continuous knocks on my door. The only thing useful I can really do at this edge is exactly the thing I fear most: to make a step off the cliff, thereby trusting the Great Mystery that this step is not a step into an Eternal Darkness, but the first cobblestone of a narrow bridge yet to be made, a first authentic, humble gesture towards an Unknown which begs me to take up my responsibility towards its very existence, yet a gesture which at the same time strikes at the heart of the existential crisis of my stubborn ego mind.

This existential crisis reminds me of a dream I had not so long ago. In it, I was standing in a large, dark bedroom on the first floor of my grandfather’s house. There were about ten beds, and on each of them one person was lying on top of the blankets. All of them wore white masks on their faces. So I went to one of them and took off the mask, only to find another white mask beneath it. After about five or six more layers of white masks I finally got to the last one. Yet underneath it I found….. only darkness. No face, not even a cushion. Nothing except an utter darkness. This seems to be the innate structure of my ego mind: masks upon masks upon masks upon a dark emptiness which is too terrifying to directly experience without having a deep, vivid trust and hope, throbbing at the heart of one’s soul (the one direct experience I had a few years ago was terrifyingly crushing indeed, because I hadn’t previously built any decent hammock to break my fall).

Yet that’s exactly where I am right now: the edge of that same Abyss with the last mask almost torn apart now. Insanity clutches the hands of wisdom even tighter. The last door of this decades long struggle seems lying ahead, right there in that darkness. But a step must first be made, a risk must first be taken, a bridge must first be made. I’ve done almost everything I can possibly do on my own, but now I have to go beyond and trust a Greater One, a Deeper One, an Unknown One. Loose everything or win everything. In my innermost core, am I fear or am I hope?

Perhaps I truly am that small baby which has just been thrown upon an unknown beach in an unknown land by an immensely vast and deep ocean, crying and moaning as he’s blindfolded by his own fears, his own disbelief in the value of his desperate cries for help.

Perhaps help is already on his way.

Perhaps help has never really left him..