Forgiveness and healing

Economic and financial systems are in crisis, and the sticking plaster remedies that are being applied are beginning to unravel themselves, as the scale of the wounding emerges. The Eurozone is stumbling on with vast bail-outs to a country such as Greece whose inhabitants have clearly had enough. This is, as most of us know, the thin end of the wedge, and Spain, Italy and Portugal may soon be in the same boat. With Germany and France in uneasy collusion, and the UK standing imperiously apart, it feels like some bizarre replay of the Second World War. In the meantime, revolutions, civil wars are being acted out in the ancient countries of Iran, Iraq, Syria.  Thirty years ago, the events of , for example, Syria, would  become the dominant story for a long period of time, At present, however, everywhere we look, we can see destruction, violence and uncertainty.

In the UK, however, it is still business as usual. We can still look at the ‘Antiques Roadshow’ on a Sunday, and Agatha Christie still graces our screens. As does the new ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ in which the depiction of events coming up to the Second World War become alarmingly vivid, as the collective atmosphere of events unfolding in the present, in these different countries, impacts us through television and internet. Whilst we may continue to entertain ourselves with these comforting programmes which help distance us from the current crises, it is becoming more and more impossible to avoid the fact that we are globally interconnected. ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ may still be playing, but in the UK we are educating thousands of students who are coming from these war-torn countries. Unemployment has never been so high, and there are greater and greater numbers of people presenting with mental health issues. We cannot continue to ignore the great sickness of our planet by denying the interconnectedness of the human species.

At the heart of many of these problems is the world-wide imbalance between the rich and the poor, and the damage that is being inflicted in maintaining this imbalance. This is a very sick patient, where a minor part of the body politic and social receives attention, and the house in which the patient lives is tumbling down. This is truly pathological, and can only be resolved by waking up to the reality, and collectively working to the building up of something new.

What might this take? This will take place at many different levels: a new worldview fuelled by the findings of new science and evolutionary biology and supported by spiritual and therapeutic practice; a complete re-adjustment of the role of money in our interconnected systems such that the energy that is locked up in the imbalance revitalises the other parts of the body; opening to  a world-wide healing process that works at individuals and at the collective levels.

The first steps however, are baby ones: the acknowledgement and understanding of how it is that we have come to this impasse, in order to learn how not to do the same things. For this, we will need collective compassion, forgiveness and love. From this place, all is possible. 

Will Hungarians be the first to collapse or the first to evolve? Notes from the East West Sanctuary

I am writing this from my eyrie in the East West Sanctuary eastwestsanctuary.com in the Buda hills near Budapest. I am pondering on the role of Hungary given the stance that the prime minister, Viktor Orban is taking in the current Eurocrisis. Orban has pushed through a new constitution with powers cutting down the independence of banks, and other public institutions. This has all been done in the light of  the need for extreme reform given the collapse in the economy. Many Hungarians are horrified by this, particularly the middle class who are rapidly losing the ability to stay solvent. It seems the constitution is a strange mixture of vision and draconionism. However, the Hungarian economy is in dire need of money from the IMF, and the European Commission is demanding that changes be made in the constitution in order to receive this money, since the new constitution transgresses the political principle of the EU.

In a way, this is not surprising, given the nature of Hungary and its inhabitants. Throughout the last millennium, Hungary has been occupied by other countries: Turks, Austrians, Russians, and has learnt to survive despite the occupiers, appearing to work with them,  but creating alongside it their own private economy and a freedom of creative intellectual thought. It is not by chance that Hungary has the most Nobel prize winners per head of population than any other country.   

It was this ability for the spirit to survive in such conditions that drew me here in the first place. I met here a depth of thinking and creativity that seems to be stifled in my home country, the UK. It is also imbued with a spiritual wisdom whose roots are difficult to express geographically, but which is latent in its magical language, unlike any other in the world. Few Hungarians would be able to express this, because the character here can be generalised to a big heart, individuality, but lack of confidence that is expressed either through a deep pessimism and melancholy. It is a place of extremes.

This is manifesting in the current situation where the rich are growing outrageously rich, and living alongside those struggling to keep themselves in the middle class. For example, in the local Steiner school, there are parents who  are multi-millionaires giving the same amount of money to keep it going as the former middle classes struggling from month to month. Of course, this gap is happening all over the world, but Hungary is so small that these extremes are quite literally rubbing shoulders with one another when picking up their children from school. Generally, this gap is less visible. Despite the on-going poverty, somehow the resilience of the Hungarians pushes them to ever greater depths of resistance, and survival. This has, equally been supported by, and resulted in, the maintenance of  a world view that is informed by a tangible relationship both to the earth and to the cosmos, and not so much affected by the reductionist views of the West. 

This became apparent to me when I noticed the themes and topics that Hungarians would present at international conferences.  Hungarian researchers would talk from their own view of the world, even of their own cosmological system. The thought of having a cosmological system individual to a person would be impossible in the West. Cosmology has long been taken over by scientists who are busy viewing the world through the senses alone, and determined by strictly regulated methods. There is currently no room for questioning the philosophical underpinning of these methods. My own view at the time, was that this was not ‘academically sound’ due to the lack of method, but my arrogance on this has since disappeared, and my feeling now is ‘why not’? That is, why should every person not have their own cosmological view? Or put another way, their own felt and reflected relationship into the universe in which we have all been born. It is such individuality, which requires true separation from the other human being, Jung considered to be moving forward towards the goal of individuation: that is the ideal path of the individual seeking to transcend collective behaviour but also to lead an ethical and rich life in the company of other human beings. Steiner too, in his ‘Philosophy of Freedom’ shows how it is only by understanding our thinking processes, and how they connect our inner world with an outer world, that we can begin to understand the world of spirit which imbues everything with meaning.

It is these characteristics of resistance, individuality, creativity, free-thinking and above all resourcefulness  that I believe could, in the long-term ensure that Hungarians are the first to evolve in the new world that is appearing before our eyes – indeed that we are in the process of co-constructing. Hungary may well be the first to leave the European system – but just as Hungarians have kept a cosmological view alive ­ – so they may be able to return to this with actions that help them regain freedom, and with it show the possibilities to the rest of the world.  If we consider that the economic system is just another offshoot of our own conceptualisation of the world manifesting in collective structures which are now under threat, then Hungarians may be in a better position to face the crisis.  They may have the courage to face the uncertainty, and less vested interests in what happens if it does collapse. They may have the spiritual ground to breakthrough mind structures and question these, as is indicated by their ability to keep their own confidence in individual cosmologies – and by this I mean an ability, freedom and confidence to create their own views of the world. It is no surprise, perhaps, that here in Hungary is the only state-funded Buddhist university http:www.tkbf.hu/ENGLISH/ and also  spiritual teachings which are retained and manifested through independent schools, such as the Javas.

The challenge for the Hungarians will be to have to work together and collaborate in this – as historically this has often been their downfall. In my time here, I have experienced this too, an inability to keep the projects going, resulting in the aforesaid melancholy and lack of confidence.  

It is this, however, above all this creativity which has drawn me to Hungary, and probably the many other foreigners who find themselves here. This willingness to live on the edge of our being, on the edges of chaos, and yet still survive can be both a gift and a curse. Who knows where this will lead politically and economically for either Hungary or the EU, but in a way, this stance has begun perhaps to reveal that the economic and political  Emperor is standing naked, and to open doorways to something better.  

Ushering in the New Year: revolution, power and the growth of the soul

Revolution has been the hallmark of 2011, and is also set to continue through into 2012. As I write, the revolutions and uprisings have spread to Nigeria, and gone beyond the reasons given for the fall of totalitarian dictatorships in Arab countries. The mark of the revolution is the coming into being of a collective desire for change, which has been kept under the surface, but which suddenly erupts into being. What we are witnessing are the first glimmerings of a volcano as it is about to erupt.  The level of changes as we move into this year is, perhaps for the first time, reflected in every area of human existence: geological, climate, economical, political, social, philosophical  - even cosmological.

The difference with former times is that at this stage, we have developed forms of communication that enable us to see what is happening in different parts of the globe  – and  this can challenge us as to our limited views of ourselves as members of a nation state, and to ask questions of ourselves as global citizens.

Never before has there been the possibility of understanding the interconnectedness of human beings, the planet and the universe in which we live, and yet never before has there been such a sense of helplessness in the face of the systems which in the past ensured our survival. Those systems no longer serve our collective survival, but serve the desires of a global elite who quite literally dominate the globe, through their occupation of positions of power in government, corporations and the media. These conditions have not arisen consciously, but are the consequences of a philosophy that has cut out Faith or any idea of the transcendent out of the equation, and which demands the immediate gratification of sensual desire, promoted by the media.

It is quite sobering to reflect that those of us who have reached a certain age, have had a machine in the living room that is daily shaping the choices that we make – a television that daily shapes my desire. It is not just in my living room – it is everywhere.  This consumer pressure leaks out of the very wallpaper to such an extent that we no longer notice it, and take it for granted. The growing rhetoric of government and communicated through the media, is to tell us just how much choice we can exercise – for example in the different types of  food that is available. Whilst this may feel like choice, it actually sucks us  deeper and deeper into a system whose values are purely material. Paradoxically, the one distinguishing feature of ourselves as humans – that is our free will, so much espoused as part of democratic systems, is the one thing that is denied us in these economic systems. However, by not engaging with what consumer capitalism offers me as choices, I am deemed to be rather simple minded, and not working towards progress or growth. I become the scapegoat: she who is not wanted. We are being fooled, and our souls are becoming more and more encrusted.

What is then this growth that is so important? It is growth in our output of goods and services  in competition with other nation states. This growth, however, is merely a growth in quantity, and not in quality.  It has become wrapped up in an economics system which only knows how to count in a mechanical, Newtonian fashion, and where well-being is measured in terms of monetary value, and where the system has grown out of all relationship to the material values it is supposed to represent. The astronomical figures that are bandied about daily have become meaningless. However, as living beings, we exist in a world that is formed by other qualities of feeling, tone, beauty, sadness, joy and sorrow.  These  are the qualities of the universe which both forms and supports us, and of a universe which  we also bring into being, through our understanding and consciousness of it.

Just as we are becoming connected globally, we are witnessing a return and a deepening into the collective unconscious – that phenomenon first articulated by the philosopher Jung. So there is hope too, as well as fear. Within this collective unconscious lie the seeds of change and of reconnecting with the universe that does support us.This is the unknown, the uncertain - that which we have sought to banish from our world.  There is hope here, though, for a reconnection with soul and ultimately spirit and this will be found in the realism that we are all having to come to terms with in a reshaping of all our values, expectations, which have been created by consumer capitalism. In order to make this reconnection, however, we will all need to journey through our own psyches to cut out the conditioning that has rendered us so seemingly helpless in the  face of a system that has grown out of control. We can reclaim our own power – not through violence but through careful re-alignment of our actions with our soul’s yearning for its own growth.

As the winter solstice of 2011 draws to a close, InterConnect Chronicles begins its task. We are entering an unprecedented age of transition, from an industrial era to one of new technology, new ways of working, new scientific and spiritual insights.  As we enter this period, human beings have become fragmented , disconnected,  isolated, facing innumerable environmental, political, economic and social problems. Violence, disaster, revolution dominate the global news, yet at the same time the human spirit lives on, emerging, evolving, finding different forms of individual and collective expression.

As the oppressive power of the corporates shapes the world we live in, this is the story of how we learned to reconnect to the earth that supports and nourishes us. This is our story and Interconnect Chronicles is both story-teller and participant, weaving the myth of magic that heralds an opening of doors that we never knew existed, of vistas long vanished, tracing pathways forwards.

This is the story of how these oppressive powers were unearthed, exposed, and defeated, of a time of courage, intelligence and evolution. Living on the edge, it is a story not of heroism, but of hope:  how the human spirit learned to stay on the planet, and sowed the seeds to sustain the children of the future. How woman and man relearned how to come back into connection. It was a time of great danger, but within this danger lay the maps to connection – it was and is a collaborative effort, and this page charts the efforts, reflections of those who dared to come back into relationship – who reclaimed their souls and honoured their place on earth.