Most people would like to have some interesting experiences. However, they also crave for security. Growth and development are ok – but within our comfort zone, please. In this way, we are ready to develop and prove ourselves. Therefore, those adventures that seem controllable provide excitement. There is a great selection of them, and everyone chooses their own degree of intensity. Do you prefer climbing a mountain (which is not too difficult) or would you like a bungee jump? A desert trip or a beach holiday with a folk music evening? Would you rather read a thriller or a love story? Or would you like to have a love affair? We have experiences, but usually they are nothing but a collection of interesting moments, which are eliminated a short time afterwards, since there was nothing that really enriched us, just a little paint that came to life and faded again.
Is it our “normality” that creates these crises?
It gets more interesting if we have a look at what is happening in the world. We can see crises everywhere. There is the climate crisis, the environment crisis, the refugee crisis, growing aggressions between states, collapsing states, alliances that are falling apart. What do they want to tell us? Is it our “normality” that creates these crises? Is it possible that we are often indifferent to the consequences of the way we live, of what we cause due to our fears, desires and ambitions? Are the problems that we cannot perceive and solve in our private life reflected on a large scale? Doesn’t our private life often fluctuate between opposing interests? Don’t our own conflicting objectives keep leading us into a state of stagnation? A “crisis” is a decisive situation that can, if we take the right decision at the right moment, be a turning point.
Humankind can only act differently on the global scale if a lot of people are ready to know themselves and if they find the problems in themselves. Can we get to the bottom of our ego? We need to perceive that, despite our intelligence, there are a lot of things we do not want to see. Our hearts are often blind and indifferent. Unconscious fears cause many of our behaviors and they keep us from facing necessary change positively. We do not know ourselves sufficiently and this ignorance goes deeper than we see in our outer perceptible life. The knowledge that we are missing something can only develop when the temporal within us can be led to an encounter with the eternal.
Our life on a small scale can teach us many necessary things. It is often through the difficulties we have overcome or even from the losses that we have suffered that we can emerge with more power. We may be relieved when we have thrown another illusion overboard, even if it wasn’t done voluntarily at first. We may be strengthened because we have had the experienced that a loss did not take anything essential from us. We experience an unexpected freedom, the beginning of an independence of things and circumstances, of desires, fears and needs.
About the river of life
Whenever we really get involved with people and situations, it can be illuminating and liberating. Those who dare to follow a situation spontaneously and reject their own life plans or even leave a seemingly mapped out path, will discover new sides within themselves. Through their devotion, such people will find depth within themselves that they knew nothing about. They will discover that chiseling on themselves was less expedient than what the river of life has made visible. Then some freedom can develop, e.g., freedom from self-portrayal, from preconceived roles. Then one can ask the question whether the self is definable and terminable. Isn’t there the most truth in self-forgetfulness, in cooperating with others?
Our view of life is sharpened through all these experiences. We are now seeking for fullness, love, perfection. From now on it gets difficult since the experience of fullness cannot be kept. If we try to hold on to it, we will experience stagnation. We seek for real love and realize that we set conditions and that we cross-charge the giving and taking. We want to get back the first great advance of feelings that we have given away. It is normal to think that life (and others) owe us something. But is this the case?
If we look for perfection, we will have to be honest with ourselves. We can do this by realizing that we are one with ourselves in our thinking, feeling and acting. However, there are too many conflicting objectives within us. We would like to have the security of our well-being and the freedom of light luggage. We want to be one with all the souls out there, but can we stay within our own four walls, please. We like to help, but on what basis and with how much commitment? Can we be true, can we be good? Can a human being be good at all? “Nobody is good, not even one”, said Jesus. This sentence is like a shot across the bow, which won’t, however, stop the souls from seeking.
Life always gives us our adventures in unexpected encounters, in relationships we enter, in conflicts we accept and through experiences. Failures may suddenly uncover an unexpected inner treasure, which show us a place within, in which mine and yours, wrong and right melt into something new. A path opens up on which there is trust, where it becomes possible to lose “ourselves” without any expectations and where we are carried by the unknown which awaits us at the end of the path.
The Immortal within us is travelling through space and time
What would our life journey look like if we could see it from the perspective of the eternal within us? We look for “ourselves”; the eternal within us wants to show itself as the true self. We are reflected in people and things; the eternal is reflected in us – but do we understand it? We seek for perfection in ephemeral things, but they are “only a parable” for the eternal. We look for unity and let ourselves be fettered. But there is the immortal within us, which is connected to the all and which wants to solve its temporal fetters. We have a period of about eighty years at our disposal; the eternal has been travelling through space and time from time immemorial. We are in separation. The eternal, however, is an integral part of the divine universe; it is a microcosm, a small universe, which wants to reach its journey’s destination with our help. This means that the microcosm accompanies us through all the experiences we have. We experience an adventurous life – but the adventure of the microcosm, of the eternal within us – is what we really are.
Often when we overcome losses or difficulties or if we experience something particularly beautiful or touching, we can have a flash moment of freedom. Then we act without any fear, we let go without being afraid of the consequences. At the beginning it is a process of soul maturity. From there, a consciousness of the soul develops and there is a growing openness for the unfathomable, the eternal in our midst (and within all the others!). We learn to listen within. Love for and devotion to the divine self can grow in those who proceed. For the first time, there is the perception that the eternal needs the temporal, that it goes through a development with our help. A conscious encounter is not yet possible, however.
But something strange is happening. All the incidents become an open gate. If we pass through it, we approach the eternal with us, through everything that constitutes our life. It then seems that everything that happens wants to channel this way for us.
At the same time a great transformation has begun in our consciousness, in our thinking and feeling. Limits are abolished. Fears, hostility and polarity become weaker; the unity in everything becomes visible. What’s more, this unity becomes the basis of our thinking and feeling. This is the beginning of a transformation. A new will is going to grow within those who consequently pursue this path. They will overcome the old material ties. This new will becomes a source of life forces which will never dry up; it will be the gate to an imperishable life. New forces will flow into the whole being and transform it. For the temporal ego, it is a way of letting go, of severing, of “perishing” and “rising” in the New that is approaching. In the end, it is a rebirth of the eternal within our midst. Those who go this way become conscious inhabitants of two worlds, i.e., of the eternal one and the temporal one. Is there any greater adventure than this journey?
