These lines were in the Christmas Newsletter 2021 and originally written in German…
This beauty, this delicate magnificence that Nature can create, is really incredible! This ephemeral piece of art that the fog, the birch and the sun created together up at Sihlsee is astonishing.
And sligthly astonished I am also about the social warpage (a wonderful word, isn’t it…), which the divine creator came up with, but a few lines about this further down…
… and yes, to finish the above started train of thoughts about the human aberrations and confusions, which get presented to us these days, it is truly astonishing as well! I guess our “golden cage generation” has never been shaken that strongly before as in the last two years…
I am deeply grateful that the Yogadharma as a spiritual path grants us a compass and a guide, which helps to understand the whole psychological and social mess we are in.
Shingzen Young, an American Dharma teacher, writes in his book “The Science of Enlightenment” a short and very interesting and enlightening section, which I would like to share briefly with you:
“When Flow is unimpeded, we say that we are living in the world of oneness and spirit. When Flow stiffens up, we say that we are in the world of separateness and materiality. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the world of separateness and materiality, as long as it is not the only world in which we are constrained to live. Unfortunately, this is exactly the case for the great majority of human beings. They are constrained to live in rigid space and linear time. ”
You can replace the word Flow (with capital F!) with the word Yoga, with the state of oneness, where the identification with the I is weakeaned and for once the I is not the center of the universe. The I, which feels itself solid and separate from everything, is in constant fear to stop existing and this fact makes it an easy target for manipulation and exploitation on a large scale. The Catholic church has shamlessly done this for centuries (of course there was the selling of indulgencies to buy oneself free from this fear) and in the last three centuries it has been replaced by the capitalistic system based on the belief of scientific materialism.
The crutial words in the quote are “only” and “unfortunately”.
The whole desaster of the last two years (and I guess years to come, minding all the collateral damages) condenses in the word “unfortunately”! Unfortunately the larger part of humankind only lives in the separate, materialistic modus… good luck then…
For us however, this is a motivation to keep going in service of Yoga and the Dharma through offering spaces for healing (becoming whole and ultimately maybe holy) and transformation where we explore the path towards the Flow. Human beings in the Flow, in oneness and spirit, are free on all levels and cannot be manipulated.
May all beings be free and happy, may all of us live healthy and confident.
Lokah Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu
With Love
Adrian
