06/10/2011 | by jonas
One day I found myself in Gaziantep, a city that got wrapped in many layers of history. Hittites, Romas, Selçuks, Ottomans, French and Turks imprinted their marks on this place in the sout-east of Turkey. And while visiting some ruines and historical buildings I felt confronted by the immense wave of history and I realised how many kingdoms, empires and states have come and gone. Languages were lost forever, cultures faded away and great pieces of art were meaninglessly left behind. Sometimes they were swallowed by invasions, migration or conversion but sometimes they simply disappeared in the regular change of ideas, habits and relations.
21/08/2011 | by jonas
I can often be pretty harsh when I talk about gurus. I am nonetheless a big fan of the guru-principle for I am convinced that people often need spiritual teachers and that such teachers can bring their students a step further in the search for the depths of the soul. It’s just that the teacher-student-relation is too often abused and that lots of gurus do not make their followers more free but on the contrary bind these followers to themselves in order to become more famous, powerful or rich.
It simply is an undeniable fact that both in East and West many gurus are nothing else but commercial wolves in spiritual sheep skin. Throughout my own experiences I therefore gathered some easy guidelines that can help anyone to expose guru fraud.
25/05/2011 | by jonas
In an earlier text I used the word ‘rulerust’. In itself it doesn’t exist but I could not think of a better word to describe this typical spiritual problem. Spontaneously it probably makes people think of bureaucrats and servants who can’t digress a millimeter from the rules that were forced upon them and who keep everybody in their vicinity imprisoned in the same set of rules. That probably is indeed the most archetypical form. But rulerust comes up more frequently than one thinks and it limits daily life in a variety of ways.
20/04/2011 | by jonas
Sooner or later every spiritual seeker encounters some theory which explains the different levels of consciousness. The spiritual evolution of man, so these theories uphold, builds up in different phases towards a climax of wisdom and perfection. In other words: there are different steps on the ladder that leads to enlightenment. The first step, it mostly goes, is the realisation that there is ‘more’ in this world and the last step is total unification with the divine that hides behind that ‘more’. Sadly enough one of the most necessary in-between steps on this path to God is often forgotten: to understand that there actually aren’t any levels at all.
15/03/2011 | by jonas
In my text on silence of the soul, I posed acceptance as the opposite of fear. Perhaps, to some, this might sound somewhat counter intuitive since in general it’s ‘courage’ which is seen as such. But courage stems from acceptance and not the other way around. You have to accept the possibility of losing the fight before you can go to battle truly courageous.
09/02/2011 | by jonas
One weekend I shared a couple of silence and fasting days with some friends when a funny little Zen story kept popping up in my mind: There once were four monks that lived in a small monastery. One morning they decided to remain silent for the rest of the day and spend it meditating. They entered the meditation room, placed several candles around themselves, closed their eyes and submerged into meditation. After a couple of hours some candles began to go out. One of them remarked: “Look. The flames are dying out." The monk sitting next to him immediately replied: "ssssh! We are not supposed to break the silence today so we shouldn’t talk." With a loud voice the third snapped at the second: "Don’t you see you break the silence yourself by saying so?" The last monk waited two minutes but eventually said: "Imbeciles, I’m the only one who hasn’t spoken."
08/12/2010 | by jonas
On the days before and after the funeral of my father-in-law – a very good man who, sadly enough, died rather young – people tried to console my wife and my mother-in-law by saying: “What can you do? Life goes on, doesn't it?” I kept silent not to offend anyone, even after hearing it about twenty times, but inside I felt a need to correct this well intended but sincerely misleading expression. Hence the words written here.
26/09/2010 | by jonas
Those who've read some of my texts know that I perceive God's presence in all acts of true self-giving. When I once voiced this idea during a lecture, a listener remarked: “so you see God in the one who sacrifices himself,” he said, “but isn't that what suicide terrorists do as well?”
It's a legitimate question of course, but it stems from a wrong comprehension of the spiritual idea behind 'self-giving'.
26/08/2010 | by jonas
Religion doesn't 'oppose' science at all. Religion only acknowledges a reality that isn't discussed by science. Religion sees an extra dimension in existence. It sees another force at work throughout the physical reality. And religion perceives that force above all when the chain of cause and effect is broken.
26/07/2010 | by jonas
Within certain spiritual circles they seem to think the East offers more spirituality than the West. There is however little truth in this assumption. In any society it's just as easy or difficult to find spirituality.
